Close to the Bone. Stuart MacBride

lines. But it was the hair that really stood out. And up. And in every other direction too. As if she’d brushed it with an angry cat. ‘Looks funny to me.’ She wafted in, bringing a fug of stale-cigarette-stink with her.

      Steel gave Rennie a wee slap on the back of the head. ‘Shift it, Tintin.’

      He grumbled, then hauled himself out of the visitor’s seat. He pointed at the tinfoil package on Logan’s desk. ‘Booby-trapped buttie going spare, if you want it?’

      Steel settled into the seat. ‘Looks like you might make a decent DS after all.’ She reached out and plucked the thing from the desktop. ‘Now be a good boy and sod off. You’ve got tramps to find, and the grown-ups need to talk.’

      She unwrapped the foil and took a big bite. Then froze, face creasing up around a soured mouth – red lipstick spidering out into the skin. ‘Urgh, this is cold!’

      Rennie disappeared, giggling, closing the door behind him.

      Logan pulled the napkins from his nose and peered at the paper, stained a deep poppy red. He dumped them in the bin and grabbed a fresh handful from the pile. It was as if someone had lodged a burning coal in the middle of his face, filling his head with smoke and fire. ‘If you want to give me a hard time about the jewellery heist: don’t. We’re doing everything we can.’

      ‘Doc Ramsey tells me you’re lucky it’s only broken. Could’ve been a lot worse.’

      ‘And yes, there was another racial attack last night, but the victim refuses to talk. Won’t even admit to speaking English.’

      ‘Says you’re in for a full-on panda set of shiners when the swelling goes down. Like a grumpy raccoon. We should get you a stripy jumper and a big sack with “Swag” written on it.’

      He stared up at the ceiling tiles. Big brown stains made continents on the pockmarked grey squares. ‘If it’s not the jewellery heist, and it’s not the racial attacks, what is it?’

      ‘Do you know you can die of a nosebleed? Seriously: fifteen minutes and you’re a corpse.’ She checked her watch. ‘How long’s it been?’

      ‘Feel free to sod off at any point.’

      She took another bite of buttie, chewing around the words. ‘It’s no’ that bad if you pretend it’s just an egg sandwich. You got any salad cream?’

      ‘Top drawer.’

      ‘Any porn?’

      ‘Just salad cream.’

      A shrug. She dug through the desk, coming out with two blue sachets he’d liberated from the canteen. ‘So how come you let Reuben get away?’

      ‘I didn’t.’ Logan dabbed at his nostrils. The napkins came away with scarlet blooming across the white. ‘He lumbered off before the patrol car got there. Useless sods couldn’t arrest books in a library.’

      ‘We’ll get him picked up, do him for assaulting a police officer – or what passes for one these days – and get him off the streets for a year or two. Can’t be bad, can it?’ She tore open the sachets and squeezed them into the roll. ‘Should’ve let him punch you in the face ages ago.’

      ‘Have you not got flying monkeys to train or something?’

      Another bite left her with a smear of white on her cheek. ‘Where are we with the necklace guy?’

      ‘No witnesses. The Joyriders’ Graveyard isn’t exactly on the beaten track, which was probably the point. We ran a check on all the burned-out cars…’ He waved a hand at his in-tray, then tipped his head back again. ‘Report’s on the top.’

      ‘Very good. Want to give me the quick version?’

      Sigh. ‘Forgot your glasses, did you?’

      ‘Don’t need sodding glasses. Nothing wrong with my eyes, I’m just busy: so summarize.’

      ‘DVLA gave us plates to match the chassis numbers. Got DS Chalmers to check out the registered keepers on the police national computer.’

      A yawn. ‘God, the suspense is killing me.’

      ‘A couple with form for drunk and disorderly. One guy’s done four years for assault. There’s nothing more than a handful of parking tickets between the rest of them.’

      ‘ID on the victim?’

      ‘Face is gone, and his hands were chained behind him so the tyre dripped burning rubber all over them. They’re scorched; apparently we might get a partial off what’s left of the right thumb, but no one’s holding their breath. We could try matching dental records, but for that—’

      ‘We’d need to know who he was in the first place.’ Steel chewed in silence, scowling out of the window. ‘Do you have any idea what the CID budget’s like right now? Can’t buy a bag of crisps without the ACC’s say-so. And you know what he’s like.’ She dropped her voice an octave and put on a posh Morningside accent. ‘I can assure you, Roberta, that the press are only too happy to make Grampian Police look like idiots on this. I would appreciate your team not helping them out on that front. We need a swift and decisive result!’ She let out a long wet raspberry. ‘Like we’re sitting about on our bumholes doing sod all about it.’

      ‘What do you mean, “we”?’

      ‘Lucky our victim copped it on a Saturday night. Be all over the papers come Monday. Editorializing tosspots… Get your victim DNA tested, and if the ACC moans I’ll drop my breeks and tell him to pucker up.’ Steel stuck her feet up on Logan’s desk and polished off the last of the buttie. ‘Speaking of tosspots, have you done anything about Agnes sodding Garfield yet?’ Steel dug into her pocket and hauled out a wad of ‘WHILE YOU WERE OUT’ stickies. She chucked them onto his desk. ‘All from the mother. Says she’s going to the papers if we don’t get our finger out and find her wee girl.’

      Logan picked them up and dumped them in his bin. ‘She’s not a wee girl, she’s eighteen. And she’s not missing: she’s run away with her boyfriend.’

      ‘Don’t care if she’s sodded off to join the circus – her mum’s going to make a pain in the arse of herself till we find her. Can you no’ at least look as if you’re trying to find her?’

      Yeah, because he didn’t have anything better to do. ‘Is that it? Nothing else you want?’

      Steel sooked her fingers clean. ‘Could murder a cup of coffee.’

      Logan groped for the office phone, then punched in DS Chalmers’s number.

      She picked up on the second ring. ‘Guv?’

      ‘Got a minute?’

      ‘Be right through.’

      Steel waved at him. ‘Tell whoever it is to bring coffee!’

      Logan blinked at the printout a couple of times, then handed it back. The bleeding had stopped, but burning army ants were marching through his sinuses, trying to force his eyes out of their sockets. A scrunched-up tail of white paper stuck out of each nostril, just in case his head started leaking again. ‘Nothing at all?’

      DS Chalmers stood to attention in front of his desk, her curly hair more or less under control in a lopsided ponytail. She consulted her notebook. ‘I chased them up at eight, on the dot; told them to put a rush on the DNA, and got an earful of moaning about the new procedures, and the re-organization, and the software upgrade, and it’s Sunday…’

      Steel settled back in the visitor’s chair, eyes clamped on Chalmers’s buttocks. ‘You don’t say…’

      ‘Yeah, the SPSA got this big IT company in to rationalize everything, and nothing works anymore. Apparently there’s a pensioner in Dumfries that’s come back as a positive DNA match for eight murders, thirty-seven housebreakings, six arsons, and five rapes. Not