Shatter the Bones

‘Woohoo!’ Rennie started a round of applause that rippled around the room, then grew.

Logan stared at his hands. The knuckles were still slightly swollen, the skin around them mottled with faint bruises. That was what they were clapping for — because he beat the crap out Shuggie Webster, a crippled junkie with his hands cable-tied behind his back.

Go Team Logan.

He should have resigned when he’d had the chance.

‘I know, OK?’ Logan covered his head with his hands, then slumped back in his seat in the make-shift office. ‘It’s not like I planned it, is it?’

He could hear Steel sighing. ‘You’re a sodding lucky bugger, Laz. But if Shuggie changes his mind…’

‘He won’t.’ Not unless he wanted to feel the wrath of Wee Hamish Mowat. And Jonny Urquhart had made it quite clear what would that would involve.

There was a pause. Then her voice went cold. ‘That what you were doing up the hospital yesterday afternoon? Threatening him to keep his gob shut?’

‘No…’ Logan crumpled forward until his elbows touched the desk. ‘I spoke to Trisha’s mum, I sat with Samantha. That’s all.’

‘You used to be…’ Steel grunted. He could picture her, standing behind him, shaking her head, eyes closed, chewing on her top lip. ‘Fuck’s sake, Laz.’

The door banged open. ‘Celebrations!’ Rennie danced into the room — a one man conga line. ‘Da-da-dada-da, da! Da-da-dada-da, da!’

He grabbed Steel’s hips and kept on dancing. ‘Da-da-dada-da, da! Da-da-dada-da, da!’

‘Get off me you daft wee sod!’ She smacked his hands away. ‘Oh, come on Guv, not every day one of our own gets bumped up the ranks.’ He performed a little curtsey. ‘Detective Inspector McRae, may I be the first to tell you how gargantuanly sexy you look as a DI, and if you ever need a sidekick-’

‘Thanks, but-’

‘I think Detective Sergeant Simon Rennie has a certain ring to it, don’t you? I mean, if you’re being promoted, they’ll need someone to fill in for you at the Wee Hoose, yeah?’ He grinned, his teeth sparkling white against the unnaturally orange tan. ‘Then I can get some poor sod to make the tea for a change.’

‘Good idea.’ Steel clicked her e-cigarette into life and sooked on it. ‘Latte: three sugars, extra chocolate, and some of that hazelnut syrup if they’ve got it. DI McRae’ll have decaf: two and a coo.’

Rennie’s grin slipped. ‘Can’t I get someone else to-’

‘If you’re no’ back in two minutes with those coffees, you’re going to spend the rest of the day as Biohazard’s bitch, understand?’

Rennie pretty much sprinted from the room.

Steel waited until the door was closed and they were alone once more. ‘I’m no’ going to say this twice, so pin back your lugs: you ever, ever do anything like this again, I’ll hang your arse out like a pair of scabby knickers, understand?’

‘Then let me quit.’

She thumped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re no’ getting off that lightly.’

Of course he wasn’t. ‘Now what?’

Steel sent a perfect smoke ring crashing against his computer monitor. ‘I mean it, Laz. I’ll no have wee Jasmine growing up with a bent copper for a dad.’

Logan logged into his email, scrolling through the backlog of messages. ‘Anything else?’ Not looking at her.

‘Yes.’

‘What?’ He clicked on an email from DI Bell — an update on the interviews conducted overnight with the ‘Marley brothers’.

‘I’m sorry about Samantha. If you need to talk to anyone…’

‘I don’t need to-’

‘’Cause if you do, you can call your pet psychologist. All that touchy-feely bollocks gives me the dry boak.’ She sniffed. ‘Now, maybe we should-’

Logan’s mobile burst into song. ‘Laz?’ Colin Miller. ‘We got another message from the wankers in the white sperm-suits. You near your computer?’

The email package chimed at him, a little window popping up in the bottom left corner of the screen: ‘COLIN MILLER.

FWD: ONE DAY TO GO.’

The door banged open and Rennie lurched over the threshold, breathing like a pervert, clutching his side. ‘They’ve… They’ve got a … got a … a new video!’

Logan opened the message: a link to YouTube. He clicked on it.

‘No’ more toes, is it?’ Steel pulled the fake cigarette from her mouth.

The video finally downloaded enough to start playing. Logan hauled the headphones out of the socket and the speakers crackled with static, then that cold computer voice boomed into the room.

Chapter 43

Steel tapped the screen. ‘Play it again.’

‘You have twenty-four hours left to save Jenny’s life.’

On the screen a fuzzy image snapped into focus — Jenny McGregor lying curled up on a bare mattress. A chain was wrapped around her neck, the other end padlocked to the metal bed frame. Her Winnie the Pooh pyjamas were grubby, but the bandages on her feet looked fresh — a faint stain marking where her little toes had been hacked off.

Steel bared her teeth. ‘Bastards.’

‘Some newspapers insist on telling you that this is all a hoax: it is not. I promise you Jenny will die if you fail to raise enough money.’

A figure stepped into shot, dressed in the familiar white SOC outfit with gloves and a plastic mask that distorted their features. They held up an eight-inch carving knife.

‘She will die, and the police will receive a different part of her dismembered body every day for fourteen days: one piece for every day you failed to raise enough money.’

The speakers crackled. A woman screamed, ‘Don’t hurt my baby!’ and the camera swung around to show Alison McGregor, scrabbling at the bare floorboards with her finger-nails, trying to drag herself away from the radiator they’d chained her to. Her hair was a mess, face bright pink, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then the sound cut off, leaving Alison screaming and shouting in silence.

Jenny filled the screen again.

‘If you fail her, she will die. Then we will start the process all over again with her mother.’

The white-suited figure took a handful of hair and hauled the little girl’s head up, then held the knife against her throat.

The picture zoomed in. Jenny’s nose bright pink and shiny, her bottom lip trembling. Her eyes darted up to the right, probably looking at the bastard with the knife, then she nodded. It wasn’t a big nod, but it was still enough for the blade to make a little crease in her skin. She looked straight into the lens, and fat tears sparked in the corners of her eyes.

Her voice came from the laptop’s speakers, small and trembling. ‘I don’t… I don’t want … to die…’

‘You have until midnight.’

The screen went dark, then YouTube’s little line of ‘if you liked that, you’ll love these’ videos appeared, along with an option to play the thing again.