Dying Light. Stuart MacBride

was almost afraid to ask, ‘What?’

      She sat back on her heels. ‘Literally. This torso.’ She pointed at the swollen, rotting lump of meat, crammed into a suitcase and hidden beneath a tree in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere. ‘It’s not human.’

      7

      There was silence in the tent, broken only by the buzzing of flies. Thick, fat bluebottles that settled on the decomposing torso. Feeding. It was Logan who asked the obvious question, ‘What do you mean, “It’s not human”?’

      ‘Well, for a start it’s completely covered with hair.’

      Logan peered into the stinking suitcase. Isobel was right: what he’d taken for black, furry mould, was, in fact, fur. Genuine, bona fide fur. ‘If it’s not human, what is it?’

      Isobel prodded the torso, less careful with it than she would have been with human remains. ‘Has to be a dog. Maybe a Labrador? Whatever it is, the SSPCA can deal with it.’ She stood, wiping twin trails of slime down the front of her boiler suit.

      ‘But why is it here? Why go to all this trouble to hide a dead dog?’

      ‘You’re the detectives, you tell me. Whatever the motivation, these remains aren’t human. Now if you’ll excuse me I have real work to do.’ She swept out.

      Logan watched her go, bemused. ‘When did this become my fault?’ he asked Steel. The inspector just shrugged and buggered off outside for a cigarette, closely followed by the Procurator Fiscal. Logan shook his head. ‘Doc? You want to hazard a guess?’

      Doc Wilson scowled. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said, ‘it’s beneath the great pathologist to examine a dead dog, but it’s OK for me to do it, is it? I’m a doctor, no’ a sodding vet!’

      Logan gritted his teeth. ‘I just want someone to tell me what the hell is going on! Do you think you could get off your prima donna horse for five bloody minutes and actually help for a change?’

      Everyone else in the tent suddenly took an all-consuming interest in their shoes as Logan and the duty doctor scowled at each other. It was Logan who folded first. ‘Sorry, Doc.’

      Dr Wilson sighed, shrugged, then hunched down in front of the suitcase, beckoning Logan over to join him. As it was no longer a murder enquiry, they didn’t have to pussyfoot about with the evidence. Grunting, the doctor dragged the suitcase free from its prison of roots and dumped it on the forest floor, the foul-smelling liquid slopping out onto the fallen needles.

      Coughing and spluttering against the stink, Doc Wilson prodded at the hairy torso, turning it over in the suitcase. The underside was saturated with liquid decay. The head, legs and tail had all been cut away, leaving dark purple, swollen flesh behind. ‘I’m no pathologist, mind,’ he said, ‘but it looks like these cuts have been made by some sort of very sharp, medium-length blade. Could be a kitchen knife? Cuts are fairly solid, not a lot of hacking going on. So whoever it was knew what they were doing: slice around the joint then separate the limb from the socket. Very economical.’ He turned the body over onto its back again. ‘Cut marks around the head are a bit more muddled. No’ an easy thing to do, get a head off a body. Tail’s just been chopped off…’ Doc Wilson frowned.

      ‘What?’

      He pointed at the base of the torso, where the fur was a mess of fluid and flies. Gingerly, he poked and prodded at the rotting carcass. ‘Genital area: multiple stab wounds. Poor little sod’s had his bollocks hacked to pieces.’ And that was when Logan knew.

      Standing back upright, he told the IB team to get going with the bagging and tagging. This was to be treated as a murder scene, even if it was just a dead dog. Puzzled, the bloke with the moustache started to argue, but Logan was having none of it. Everything was to be taken seriously: trace fibres, fingerprints, tissue samples, post mortem, the whole nine yards.

      ‘What’s the point?’ demanded the moustache. ‘It’s just a bloody Labrador!’

      Logan looked down at the dismembered torso, stuffed in a suitcase, hidden in the woods. ‘No,’ he said, getting that old familiar sinking feeling. ‘It’s not just a Labrador. It’s a dress-rehearsal.’

      DI Steel had Rennie drop Logan off on the way back to the station, so he could get a few hours’ sleep before reporting for duty at ten that evening. As they drove off up Marischal Street, Logan cursed his way in through the communal front door and up the stairs to his flat. Neither Steel nor the Procurator Fiscal had been happy to hear his theory about the torso, but they had to agree it looked a hell of a lot like a pre-murder. Someone testing the waters before diving in. So the PF had authorized a full post mortem; Isobel was going to love that, hack up a dirty, rotting Labrador in her nice clean morgue? She’d throw a fit. And then she’d blame him. Grumbling, Logan climbed into the shower, trying to wash off the stench of decaying dog, and half an hour later he was sitting in the lounge, tin of beer in one hand, cheese toastie in the other, watching daytime television, trying to bore himself to sleep.

      Jackie had made a big difference to Logan’s flat when she moved in – it wasn’t half as tidy as it used to be. The woman was chaos with boobs. Nothing in the kitchen made sense any more. Whenever she used anything, it went back in a completely different place to where she’d found it: it had taken him ten minutes just to find the toastie machine. Magazines spilled over the side of the coffee table, newspapers were heaped on the floor, unopened letters mixed with takeaway menus and assorted scraps of paper. Her collection of pigs had also taken up residence: porcelain pigs, pottery pigs, little pink cuddly pigs. They festooned the lounge, gathering dust. But Logan wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

      Soon he was well into his second tin of beer, the sunlight spilling in through the lounge window, making the room soft and warm. He was actually starting to drift off: sleep washing in and out, like the approaching tide, bringing dismembered corpses with it…

      Logan sat bolt upright on the couch, eyes bleary and wide, heart hammering in his ears, trying to figure out where he was. The phone went again and he swung round, cursing, grabbing the handset as the dream rotted away. ‘Hello?’

      A Glaswegian voice boomed happily into Logan’s ear. ‘Laz, my man. How you doin’?’ Colin Miller, golden-boy reporter on the Press and Journal, Aberdeen’s main daily newspaper.

      ‘Sleeping. What do you want?’

      ‘Sleepin’? At this time of the day. Been up to a bit of the old afternoon delight with the lovely WPC Watson, eh?’ Logan didn’t dignify that with an answer. ‘Anyway, listen, I got a call from some woman says she found a body in the woods today.’ Christ, thought Logan, that Mrs Hendry didn’t waste any time, did she? ‘Come on, man, spill the beans! Who is it?’

      Logan frowned. ‘You’ve not spoken to Isobel yet, have you?’

      An embarrassed pause and then, ‘Aye, well, she’s no’ answerin’ her mobile, and her office phone’s on voicemail only.’ In addition to being a golden-boy reporter, Miller was also Isobel’s bit of rough, the one who’d taken her fancy when she was finished with Logan. It should have been more than enough reason for him to dislike the pushy wee shite, but for some bizarre reason it wasn’t. ‘Come on, Laz, spill the beans! Bloody media office’s givin’ the usual “no comment” bollocks. You was there wasn’t you?’

      Sighing, Logan slumped back to his chair. ‘All I can say is that we found some remains in Garlogie Woods today. You want more details, you’re going to have to go through the media office. Or wait for Isobel to get home.’

      ‘Shite… C’mon, Laz, give me somethin’ to work with here! I’ve been a good boy, no’ printed a thing she’s told me without goin’ through you first – give us a break, eh?’

      Logan couldn’t help smiling, it was nice to have the upper hand for a change. If Miller printed a word of what his pathologist girlfriend told him between the sheets without getting the OK from Logan, she was finished. Logan would go straight to Professional Standards and tell them all about Isobel’s