Shatter the Bones

Logan skimmed the names. ‘Think I did Liam Christie for stealing shop mannequins last year. Silly sod said he was building a plastic army to overthrow our reptilian overlords. Bloody medical students are always the worst…’ He stopped, then pulled a list from his own pocket. Double checked the names and addresses. ‘You’re in luck, Bob — I’m speaking to some of these guys today anyway.’

‘Do us a favour: ask them if they’re doing a bit of dealing to pay their way through university, eh?’

Logan threw Bob’s list back at him. ‘We can sort out what it’s going to cost you later.’

Chapter 31

‘It’s just, like, can the world get any worse?’ Another poky little room — this time plastered with Twilight posters and featuring a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the vampire bloke with the greasy hair. Tanya Marsden dabbed at her pink eyes, sniffed, then worried the paper hanky into tiny scraps with bony fingers. ‘I mean, first Alison, and now poor Bruce. It’s like, the whole university’s been placed under some evil curse…’ She stared at Logan from the depths of a dark, floppy fringe.

‘How well did you know Bruce, Miss Marsden?’

‘Please, call me Tiggy. We used to role play together: AD amp;D, a bunch of us, you know, got a group together in first year. Most of them just drifted away… But Bruce hung in till last Christmas — too much studying to do. I like Bruce. He was a good friend, you know?’

‘And did he ever speak to you about drugs?’

‘For real? No way. Bruce is going to be a doctor…’ She looked down at the shredded paper in her hands. ‘Was going to be a doctor. He was super smart, there’s no way he’d risk getting kicked out of uni.’

‘Did he say anything to you in the last couple of weeks? Anything that might explain why he did it?’

Her shoulders quivered. ‘I should’ve done something. I mean, what’s the point of doing psychology if you can’t even help a friend? He was always working, you know? Always had his head in a textbook, never went to the pub…’ She bit her bottom lip, blinked, then rubbed a hand across her eyes. ‘I’m sorry…’

Logan sat back in the plastic chair and watched her sniff. That was the trouble with psychology students, the little sods were being taught how to manipulate other people. Of course, they didn’t call it that, they called it Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and things like that. The kind of thing Rennie was trying to pull with the sex offenders.

‘So, you knew Alison McGregor, eh? Must’ve been hard for her — single mum, studying, raising a little girl, rehearsing, being on the telly?’

She rolled her eyes and laughed, a short, brittle sound. ‘Oh God, yes. But she was terrific, seriously, like a total inspiration. We were thick as thieves, Alison and me, complete BFFs. Used to crib each other’s lecture notes, if one of us couldn’t make it and that.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Logan wrote the word ‘LIAR’ next to Tanya Marsden’s name in his notebook. Every single student he’d talked to had sworn they were Alison McGregor’s bestest friend. Jumping on the D-lebrity bandwagon and fighting over the seats: look at me, I know the kidnapped woman and her tortured daughter!

‘I can’t believe this happened…’ The tears were back. ‘They’ll let them go, right? Alison and Jenny? I mean, there’s got to be millions in the fund by now — that’s got to be enough.’

‘She was just the best person I’d ever met.’ Jade Shepley sighed. ‘Wow. To just, I mean, imagine what she must be going through.’ She furrowed her brow. Barely nineteen and she was already wearing a twinset-and-pearls, hair cut into a sensible bob, Velma-from-Scooby-Doo glasses.

Her room was decorated with yet another collection of posters: Audrey Hepburn — Breakfast at Tiffany’s; a kitten in a tree — ‘SOMETIMES MONDAY LASTS ALL WEEK’; and a couple advertising am-dram musical productions.

‘It’s such a horrible thing to happen. Poor Alison…’ Jade lent closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘We were best of friends, you know.’

‘Oh no, I can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt her.’ Phillipa McEwan blinked, bit her bottom lip, stared at her hands. ‘Alison was just the loveliest person in the whole world. She was always popping past to talk about how her day went, or borrow a book or something.’ Posters: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout; Einstein sticking his tongue out. ‘There’s not a day I don’t pray for her.’

‘Actually, she was a complete bitch.’ Stephen Clayton sprawled in the room’s only seat, leaving Logan to stand. Posters: Coldplay; Yoda; U2; David Tennant getting his sonic screwdriver out, with the TARDIS in the background — signed; and the classic Jurassic Park logo. A remote-control Dalek sat on the floor, next to a wastepaper basket overflowing with scrunched up empty Cheesy Wotsits packets.

Clayton cracked open a tin of Red Bull and gulped at it. Belched. Skull-and-crossbones earring, T-shirt with cannabis leaf motif, stud in the nose, blond hair down to the middle of his back.

Ooh, look at me, I’m such a rebel. ‘And why was that?’

Clayton curled his top lip. ‘Why do you think? Always swanning about like she was fucking royalty.’ His voice jumped an octave. ‘“Oh, I’m on TV, I’m so special, so much better than the rest of you ordinary little plebs.” Bitch.’ He brushed the hair from his face. ‘Stuck up, holier than thou, lying, two-faced bitch.’

So predictable. ‘She turned you down.’ Logan tried not to smile. ‘Like she was such a fucking catch with a wee kid in tow. Who wants lumbered with that?’ Another scoof of caffeinated sugar. ‘Was doing her a favour.’

Yeah, you and your grow-your-own-moustache kit. ‘So, this kidnapping thing: you think she deserved what she got?’

Clayton’s face soured. ‘You’re kidding, right? When they let her go she’s going to be worse than ever. Everyone’ll be falling over themselves to lick her arse, like she’s Richard Hammond and Princess Fucking Di all rolled into one. Getting kidnapped was the best thing that ever happened to that manipulative cow.’

‘No, I didn’t know Bruce had killed himself. That’s… That’s just terrible.’ Craig Peterson sat on the end of the bed and stroked the little tuft of beard that clung onto his chin. Throw in the big nose, floppy curly brown hair and furrowed eyebrows, and he looked like a vaguely disappointed goat. Posters: Reservoir Dogs; Hitchcock’s North by Northwest; War of the Worlds — the Orson Welles version, not the Tom Cruise one; Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s La Cite des Enfants Perdus. ‘I mean, I knew he’d been a bit stressed recently — what with trying to catch up with his coursework and Tanya dumping him — but suicide? Why wouldn’t he come speak to me? He must’ve known I could have helped him.’

‘Tanya?’ Logan flipped a few pages back in his notebook. ‘Tanya Marsden?’

More beard stroking. ‘Likes to call herself “Tiggy” for some reason. I tried to tell Bruce she wasn’t his type, but “l’oeil de l’amoureux est aveugle a tout defaut”.’

Oh, to be young and pretentious.

So Tanya Marsden and Bruce Sangster had been an item — she’d kept that quiet.

‘I see…’ Logan underlined the word ‘LIAR’ next to her name a few more times.

‘Moliere — it means “the lover’s eye is blind to all fault.”’

‘Does it now.’ He moved on a couple of pages and wrote ‘PATRONIZING PRICK’ next to Peterson’s. ‘Did he ever say anything to you about drugs?’

‘Well… Off the record?’

Logan smiled. ‘No.’

‘I wouldn’t want his parents to get the wrong idea, they had very high hopes for him.’

‘But?’

‘Where do you stand on the subject of cannabis, Sergeant?’ Logan just stared at him, letting the silence stretch.

A big sigh. ‘Look, Bruce might have said something about hooking up with a woman when he was down in Dundee at one of those Dungeons and Dragons conventions last year. This person — Bruce always called her