Broken Skin. Stuart MacBride

spit-flavoured coffee. He wasn’t much to look at – twenty-one years old, sticky-out ears, weak chin, dark spiky hair, a single black eyebrow stretched across his skinny face – but the little bugger could run like the wind and score from halfway down the pitch.

      ‘He come clean? Confess all his sins?’

      Rennie snorted. ‘No. And his one phone call? Made us ring his mum. She was down here like a bloody shot, shouting the odds. Woman’s like a Rottweiler on steroids. Aye, you can take the quine out of Torry, but you can’t take Torry out the quine.’

      Logan cranked the volume up, but there was nothing to hear. DI Insch was probably trying one of his patented silences again: leaving a long, empty pause for the accused to jump in and fill, knowing that most people were incapable of keeping their gobs shut in stressful situations. But not Macintyre. He didn’t seem bothered at all. Except by his crushed gonads.

      DI Insch’s voice boomed from off camera, crackling through the speakers. ‘Going to give you one more chance, Rob: tell us about the rapes, or we’ll nail you to the wall. Your choice. Talk to us and it’ll look good in front of the jury: shows remorse, maybe gets you a shorter sentence. Don’t and they’ll think you’re just a nasty wee shite who preys on young women and deserves to go down for the rest of his life.’ Another trademark pause.

      ‘Look,’ said Macintyre at last, sitting forward, wincing, then settling back in his chair again, one hand under the table. He’d not been in the limelight long enough to lose his Aberdeen accent yet, all the vowels low and stretched. ‘I’ll say it again, slowly so you’ll understand, like. I was out for a wee jog. Keepin’ fit fer the match Saturday. I didn’t rape anyone.’

      Jackie got as far as, ‘You had a knife—’ before Insch told her to shut up. His bulk loomed into the frame, leaning on the tabletop with both fists, his bald head glinting in the overhead lights, obscuring Macintyre from the camera.

       ‘Yes you did, Rob – you followed them, you jumped them, you battered them, you raped them, you carved up their faces—’

       ‘It wasnae me!’

       ‘You took trophies, you daft sod: necklaces, earrings, even a pair of knickers! We’ll find them when we search your house.’

       ‘I never did nothin’, OK? Get that intae your fat, thick heid. I NEVER RAPED NOBODY!’

       ‘You really think you’re going to walk away from this? We don’t need your confession, we’ve got enough on you—’

       ‘Know what? I’ve had enough of cooperatin’ with the police. I want tae see ma lawyer.’

      ‘We’ve been through all this: you get to see a lawyer when I say so, not before!’

       ‘Aye? Well you might as well send out for more coffee then, ’cos it’s gonnae be a long night. And I’m no’ sayin’ anythin’ else.’

      And he didn’t.

       3

      Rob Macintyre’s arrest had come too late to make the first edition of the Press and Journal – Aberdeen’s local paper – but it was on the Scottish bit of the early-morning TV news. A dour-faced newswoman stood outside Pittodrie football stadium in the dark, talking to a small knot of shivering fans. Asking their opinion on the whole superstar-striker-as-marauding-rapist thing. God knew how the BBC had got onto the story so quick.

      The supporters, all dressed in bright-red, replica AFC football tops, backed their hero all the way: Macintyre was a good lad; wouldn’t do anything like that; it was a fit-up, the club needed him … And then it was on to a house fire in Dundee. Logan sat in the lounge, yawning, drinking tea and listening to some lopsided freak from Tayside Police telling the public how important it was to check the batteries in their smoke alarms. And then the travel, weather, and back to the London studio. An entire country’s news squeezed into eight minutes.

      Logan’s unidentified male wasn’t due to be post mortemed till ten am – nearly three hours away – but there was a shedload of paperwork to be filled in first.

      He finished his tea and went to get dressed.

      The morgue at FHQ shone with an antiseptic fervour. Sparkling white tiles covered the walls and floor, glinting cutting tables sat beneath polished extractor fans, the room lined with pristine work surfaces. Logan changed into the compulsory white over suit with hood and blue plastic booties before pushing into the sterile area. The guest of honour was already laid out, flat on his back in all his pasty, bloodstained glory while an IB photographer clicked and flashed his way around the body, documenting everything as another technician used sticky tape to remove any trace evidence he could find. A slow-motion dance complete with disco strobe.

      Doc Fraser was slumped over one of the other cutting tables, a copy of the P&J spread out on the stainless-steel surface in front of him. He looked up, saw Logan walking in and asked him for an eight-letter word beginning with B.

      ‘No idea. Who’s SIO?’

      The pathologist sighed and started chewing on the end of his pen, ‘God knows; I’m just corroborating today. The Fiscal’s about somewhere, you can ask her if you like. No one tells me anything.’

      Logan knew the feeling.

      He found the Procurator Fiscal out in the viewing room, pacing back and forth, looking as if she was talking to herself until he saw the little Bluetooth headset attached to her ear. ‘No,’ she said, fiddling with a palmtop computer, ‘we need to make sure the case is airtight. I don’t want to be fielding questions when I’m working on my tan. Now what about those Bridge of Don burglaries? …’ He left her to it.

      It wasn’t long before the answer lurched through the morgue doors, hauling at the crotch of her SOC coveralls and coughing as if she was about to bring up a lung. DI Steel, their senior investigating officer. A five-foot-nine, wrinkly, middle-aged disaster area, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and Chanel Number Five. ‘Laz!’ she said, grinning as soon as she clapped eyes on Logan, ‘This no’ a bit fresh for one of your corpses? Thought you liked them a bit more ripe?’

      Logan didn’t rise to it. ‘He was found outside A&E last night, bleeding to death. No witnesses. Something horrible’s happened to his backside.’

      ‘Oh aye?’ The inspector raised an eyebrow. ‘Medical horrible, or “I was hoovering naked and fell on a statue of Queen Victoria” horrible?’

      ‘Queen Victoria.’

      Steel nodded sagely. ‘Yeah – I wondered why they gave me this one. We about ready to get started? I’m bursting for a fag.’

      Doc Fraser looked up from his crossword, pulled the pen out of his gob and asked Steel the same question he’d asked Logan. The inspector cocked her head on one side, thought about it, frowned, then said, ‘Buggered?’

      ‘No, it’s got an S in it. We’re waiting for Dr MacAlister.’

      DI Steel nodded again. ‘Ah, it’s going to be one of those post mortems.’ She sighed. ‘Come on then, Laz: let’s hear it.’ So Logan talked her through the statements he’d taken last night while the victim was in surgery, then the paperwork that had come down from the hospital with the body. ‘What about the CCTV?’ she asked when he’d finished.

      ‘Nothing we can use. The car’s number plates are unreadable – probably covered with something – driver wore a hooded top and baseball cap.’

      ‘Ah, thug chic. Got a make on the car?’

      ‘Fusty-looking Volvo estate.’

      Steel blew a long, wet raspberry. ‘So much for an easy case. Well, maybe Madame Death can tell us something, presuming she ever