Close to the Bone. Stuart MacBride

‘associates’ come round to make sure Logan was in no fit state to press charges? Because he was propping up a concrete patio somewhere in Elgin.

      He rolled out from beneath the duvet and onto the gritty carpet, hand searching the space under the bed. Discarded socks. Shoebox. Plastic bucket. His fingers curled around the wooden pickaxe handle.

      That’d put a dent in someone’s morning.

      Unless they had a shotgun…

      He hauled on a pair of trousers, not bothering with pants or a shirt, and padded his way to the caravan’s front door. Stopped to one side, flattening himself against the stripy wallpaper, ear pressed to the wall. Listening.

      Nothing.

      Tightened his grip on the pickaxe handle.

      OK.

      Wasn’t hard to imagine someone standing out there, watching the spyhole, waiting for it to dim as Logan stepped in front of it, then BOOM – a shotgun blast, tearing through the wood and then his chest. One more to the head, and that was it. Drive off into the early morning traffic.

      Light spilled in around the letterbox. So it was darker in here than it was outside. That meant no shadow on the spyhole.

      Logan crept over and peered out.

      No one on the top step. And no one standing outside the caravan either. Just the turning circle streaked with shadows as the sun climbed its way up a duck-egg-blue sky. Early morning midges out for a pre-bloodsucking ceilidh, glittering like flecks of gold. A lone magpie pop-hopping across the roof of his geriatric Fiat Punto.

      Deep breath.

      He turned the key in the lock and wrenched the door open, jumping out, waving the pickaxe handle, teeth bared…

      No one.

      The magpie stopped on the Punto’s bonnet, head cocked to one side, staring at him. Then it took off for the nearest tree, cackling. Ha bloody ha.

      A small cardboard box sat on the doorstep, mummified in brown packing tape.

      He nudged it with the pickaxe handle, but it didn’t explode or start ticking, so he picked it up and went back inside. The magpie stayed where it was, laughing at him.

      Logan slammed the door on it, dumped the box on the kitchen working surface and stuck the kettle on. Six in the morning. What kind of scumbag rang people’s doorbells and ran away at six in the morning?

      No address on the package, no sender’s details. He grabbed a knife from the draining board and slit the brown tape. Inside, the little box was full of shredded newspapers – the Press & Journal from the look of it – and nestled, right in the middle, another knot of chicken bones. This one was tied to what looked like a bouquet garni, the herbs wilted, greying, and dead.

      He tipped the whole lot out and picked through it, but there was no sign of a note. Just a junior starter kit for making soup. He weighed the bones in his hand. Bloody kids. In what way was this funny?

      Through in the bedroom the alarm clock went off, blaring some cheesy eighties pop song.

      Cup of tea, shower, then off for another jolly day at work. God, how lucky was he? The only thing that could make it any better was—

      His mobile added its voice to Bananarama’s. ‘If I Only Had a Brain’: Rennie.

      Logan grabbed his phone from the bedside cabinet and hit the button. ‘What?’

      ‘Morning, Guv. We picked up your good Samaritan’s missing mate last night, the one who did a runner from the hospital? Denies everything about the jewellery heist, but his story’s bang on with everyone else about the necklacing victim.’

      The bathroom was in a bit of a state: towels on the floor, the hollow bones of dead toilet rolls building up behind the toilet, a sour smell coming from the shower curtain, soap and toothpaste acne speckling the tiles and mirror above the sink. The patch of mould that looked a bit like a face. Should really give the place a bit of a clean…

      ‘Bugger.’

      ‘Sorry, Guv, but I thought we kinda knew all this anyway?’

      ‘Wasn’t talking to you…’ Logan leaned over the sink and peered at the battered lump in the mirror. Both eyes were sunk into dark-purple bags. Wonderful.

      ‘Anyway, thought you’d want to know: Ding-Dong’s down to interview Reuben this morning, soon as his solicitor’s been round. And you’ll never guess who’s representing him.’

      Logan poked a finger into the swollen bruised skin. Didn’t hurt, just looked bloody awful. ‘Not in the mood.’

      ‘Hissing Sid.’

      Great. He let his forehead clunk against the dirty mirror. ‘When?’

      ‘Dunno. PCSO says Reuben woke up about five and spewed his ring all over the floor; got a hangover like a car crash right now, so I doubt Mr Moir-Farquharson will be strutting his slimy stuff before ten-ish.’

      Welcome to Monday morning.

      High above, the sun burns like a furnace, baking all the people below as they trudge their way through their desperate little lives. Unaware that things walk amongst them.

      A couple laugh on the pedestrian area beneath her viewpoint, wrapped up in each other like ivy around a tree. They ignore everyone marching past – the shining lights, the grey, and the darkness.

      There: a woman with a small child in a pushchair. No one knows that she’s an angel, because they can’t see her. They think she’s just another fattie in a tracksuit, smoking a fag, wheeling her screaming kid about on the way to the dole office.

      And there: the man with the dark-blue suit and the sunglasses, stuffing a green Markies bag into his leather satchel. Pale-blue aura swirling around him as he tries to decide who he’s going to eat today.

      No one sees it but her.

      She walks in the door to the ladies’ lingerie department. Plastic people in bras and pants, frozen poses for the masses. Some will come alive at night and hunt for mice and rats, cooking them on the hot radiator pipes before swallowing them whole.

      An old woman pushes past, trailing thin lines of black mist that hiss and crackle.

      Rowan looks away before she can turn around. Not safe. Not safe at all.

      Down the escalator, into the bowels of the shop, where beasts graze the food department, hunched over their trolleys. Like torturers over their victims.

      Don’t make eye contact. They can smell the fear, but unless they see your eyes they don’t know whose it is.

      She reaches for a sandwich … then pauses. Counts three to the left. Then one down, because it’s Monday. Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato. BLT. Blood, Ligature and Tallow. Good enough.

      One of the beasts stops behind her, breath heavy on the back of her neck as it reaches past with a thick hairy paw to stroke the sandwiches she’s already touched. Feeling for her. Hungry.

      She clutches the BLT to her breast and ducks, slipping to the side and away. Glances back at the end of the chiller cabinet to watch it sniffing the sacrificial offerings.

      Right, past the little forests in the little pots. Then more plastic statues, these ones wearing dresses and cardigans.

      Exit. Exit. EXIT.

      A hand on her shoulder makes her squeal.

      She spins around, and a puzzled face stares back at her: skin like midnight, hair like dark curly wool.

      ‘Sorry, miss, but I think you forgot to pay for that.’

      Rowan looks down at the sandwich. The paper container is crushed against her chest, the shards of dead pig sticking out between the bread, like blades. Then back up at that kind face with the beautiful eyes and the halo of