Close to the Bone

‘Phalanges? ’ She put them back on the paper hand. ‘My life coach told me Aberdeen was weird. .’ She cleared her throat, then dug a ruler from her stack of books and measured each of the bones in turn. ‘You can estimate height and sex from phalanges, but it’s unreliable. And I mean seriously unreliable. I wouldn’t even put it in writing.’

Logan licked his lips. ‘Thought they were chicken bones.’

‘You have to promise not to quote me on this, but best guess: these belong to a woman, about five-two, five-four, something like that. There’s a touch of arthritis, so she might be in her fifties, possibly sixties? They’ve been boiled, so you can whistle for DNA, but you could try stable isotope signature analysis? ’

‘Human fingers.’

‘There’s a professor I know in Dundee who does pro bono work for police cases. I can give him a call if you like? ’

‘I’ve been chucking them into the bushes. .’

Rowan shifts sideways on the wooden bench, making enough room for the woman with the shopping bags to puff down beside her. Pregnant. Taking the weight off her swollen ankles. A tight coil of green and blue spirals out from her tummy, making a question mark in the air that shimmers with antici-pation.

St Nicholas Kirk graveyard basks in the warm morning, the ancient granite headstones turning their crumbling lichened faces to the sun. The church building gnaws at the sky with jagged dark-grey teeth, dirty stained-window eyes glowering out at the dead and the living alike.

A comforting place.

The Kirk is my mother and father. It is my rod and my staff. My shield and my sword. What I do in its service lights a fire in God’s name.

Rowan forces down another mouthful of Blood, Ligature, and Tallow, sitting on the bench with her ankles crossed beneath her, curling around her sandwich, shoulders hunched. Newly dyed hair hangs over her face, hiding her eyes.

No one recognizes her as a redhead.

The broodmother unbuttons the top of her shirt and flaps the collar, trying to force cool air in over her swollen udders. ‘Ungh. . This heat!’ Then she pulls a rumpled newspaper from one of her carrier bags and uses it as a makeshift fan. ‘Ahh, that’s better.’

She has no idea what’s growing inside her. .

Another mouthful — forcing it down. Should have bought some water.

‘You know, Steve says I always moan when it’s too cold, but dear God I can’t wait for it to rain.’

Rowan just nods.

The broodmother dumps the newspaper on the bench between them, then pulls out a plastic bottle of apple juice. Cracks the seal and drinks deep. It smells like sunshine. ‘Pfffffff. . Can’t believe it’s this hot. We went on honeymoon to Kenya and it wasn’t this hot.’

Between them, the headline shouts in big black letters: ‘“I COULDN’T LET HIM SUFFER” ~ BRAVE GUY TELLS OF NECKLACING VICTIM’S HORROR’ and a photograph of an ugly young man in a hospital bed.

The woman sighs. ‘Horrible, isn’t it? How could anyone do something so. . horrible? ’

A shrug, then Rowan rubs at the scars on her left wrist. Like thin shiny worms wriggling beneath her fingertips. ‘Maybe he deserved it? ’

‘No one could ever deserve that.’ The blue and green swirl trembled. ‘Oooh. . junior’s on the move again. Tell you: I feel like that bloke out of Alien. Only he was lucky — he didn’t have a little monster’s foot in his bladder.’

If only she knew.

Broodmother looks out at the sea of deathstones. ‘I was here when they had that service for Alison and Jenny McGregor, did you see it? Got Robbie Williams’s autograph. .’

A man walks in through the ornate pillared frontage that screens the graveyard off from Union Street. He’s here. The man has a mobile phone pressed to his ear, a bag from Primark in his other hand. And an aura like a house fire — black and orange and red tongues of smoke trailing in his wake, caressing the tombs.

‘Of course, that was before Steve. And now look at me.’

The wide path from the main street to the church is made up of paving slabs and ancient headstones, worn almost smooth by generations of feet. The living trampling on the dead. She can almost hear them groaning as he marches past the bench.

‘I tell you, they say giving birth’s the greatest thing you can ever do, but it’s the bit before that’s a pain in the- Oh, are you off? ’

Rowan marches after him, staying far enough back to not be touched by his filthy stench: the cracking lines like burning blood. The beasts are too powerful and so was the woman with the aura of black, but a witch. . Now that’s something different.

The Kirk is my mother and father. It is my rod and my staff. My shield and my sword. What I do in its service lights a fire in God’s name.

13

‘It’s not my fault, OK? ’ Logan grabbed his jacket off the hook by the filing cabinet in his office. ‘Not like I ordered them off the bloody internet.’

Steel blocked the doorway. ‘How could you no’ know they were human? ’

‘Yes, because you’re such an expert on anthropology. Who leaves actual finger bones on someone’s doorstep? ’ He picked up the phone on his desk, punched in the number for the CID main office. ‘Who’s this: Guthrie? ’

Little sod sounded half asleep. ‘Yes, Guv? ’

‘I need you to go through the missing persons reports. Looking for someone between forty-five and sixty-five, right-handed, with arthritis. Five-one to five-six.’

‘Aye, right.’ Steel had a dig at the underside of her left boob, one side of her face all creased up. ‘Like that’s no’ going to throw up a million hits.’ Dig, dig, dig. ‘Think my boobs are getting bigger? ’

‘Male or female? ’

‘Probably female, but check both just in case.’ Logan put the phone down on the grumbled complaints.

‘I think they’re getting bigger. .’ She squidged them together, making a crevasse of wrinkly cleavage. ‘Look.’

‘No.’

‘What about your mate the scumbag journalist? He got his fingers lopped off, maybe he’s sending you the bits as a wee gift? ’

‘I need a search warrant for Reuben’s house. And he’s got a workshop, or a lockup or something, out in the countryside — we need to search that too. He’s killed someone, maybe a rival dealer, that’s where he’s getting the bones from.’

‘You’re no’ right in the head. When did you last hear of a little old lady drug dealer? ’

Logan hauled open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a bundle of empty evidence bags, held together with an elastic band. ‘There was that one in Torry last year with the cannabis farm in her garage. And the granny selling coke in Northfield. And the bunch of pensioners running that meth lab in Huntly.’

Steel scowled at him. ‘They were retired chemistry teachers, it doesn’t count.’

The drawer clanged shut again. ‘Reuben’s the only-’

‘God’s sake, you’re obsessed. Why would Reuben boil the bones clean? Why no’ just send you the fingers? ’

‘Well, who else would it be? ’