kid stood, limped, collapsed against the battered sofa poking out from the lounge door. A set of bloody footprints followed him across the glass-strewn carpet.
‘There you go.’ Logan clunked a tin of Irn-Bru down on the bare floorboards at the side of the mattress.
Ricky Brown wrapped his arms around his knees, face set in a line much harder than the two crusted streaks beneath his nose. He turned his head away.
‘How’s the feet?’
The response was too mumbled to make out.
Logan pulled up his tatty left trouser leg, showing off three parallel lines of scabs. ‘See, you’re not the only one.’
Ricky picked at a loose thread on the ribbons of towel Logan had wrapped around the little boy’s feet. The soles slowly soaking through in shiny red patches.
‘Where’s your mum, Ricky?’
A shrug. ‘Went out.’
Aha, so he could speak after all. ‘You know where she went?’
He shook his head, little more than a twitch. ‘Said someone killed Dad’s dog.’
‘Shuggie Webster’s your dad?’
‘This week.’ Another thread unravelled from the improvised bandage.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘Mum went to get food and that.’ Pause. ‘You going to arrest me?’
Logan forced a laugh. Why would I do that?’
‘Gran says it’s what you pig bastards do. You arrest people what haven’t done nothing wrong.’
‘No, Ricky, I’m not going to arrest you.’ He held out the Irn-Bru. ‘Did your mum say when she’s going to be back?’
‘Gran says you arrest people and you shag them up the arse. ‘Cos you’re all paedos and poofs.’
‘Yeah, your granny sounds like a bundle of laughs.’ Logan cracked the ringpull off the tin, and helped himself to a swig. ‘Your mum and dad are messed up with some very bad people, Ricky. Now, I can help, but I need to know where they are.’
Silence.
‘Don’t you want your mum and dad to be safe?’
Ricky shifted his feet, leaving a red smear on the duvet cover.
‘OK, well, if you’re sure.’ Logan knocked back another gulp, then set the tin down back on the floor. ‘Right, I know a nice doctor who’ll fix you up, then we’ll see if we can find someone to look after you.’
‘She’s coming back for me.’
‘Never said she wasn’t.’
‘She told me last night.’
‘Yeah, well we’ll …’ Frown. ‘Last night? You’ve been on your own since last night? In the wardrobe?’
‘Said she’d come back soon as it was safe.’
And the nominees for ‘Mother of the Year’ are …
Logan stood. ‘You think you can walk, or do you want me to give you a piggy back?’
Ricky looked up at him, then away again. He gripped a handful of duvet cover. ‘Are you going to shag me up the arse?’
‘Wasn’t top of my agenda, no.’
A nod. ‘Can you carry me then?’
Logan knocked on the doorframe. The paintwork was chipped and peeling, a thick grey line halfway up marking where countless trolleys had bashed their way through. ‘Shop?’
The mortuary was nearly twice the size of the one in the basement of FHQ, done in sparkling white-and-blue tiles, like a swimming pool. A little speaker system sat on a shelf by the refrigerated drawers, Dr Hook’s Sexy Eyes echoing slightly in the antiseptic space.
‘Hello?’ A head appeared from a door at the back of the room – ginger curls bobbing as she wheeled a mop and bucket into the cutting room, white mortuary clogs squeaking on the floor. She smiled. ‘Sergeant McRae, we’ve not had you here for a while. Picking up, or dropping off?’
‘They got you mopping up now? You not a bit overqualified for that?’
‘Fred’s off sick, so we’re all chipping in.’ The Anatomical Pathology Technician hauled the mop out of the bucket and slopped it across the tiles, making little streams rush along the grout. ‘How’s Sheila? She still channelling Vincent Price?’
‘Three weeks to go.’ He limped into the room. ‘Wanted to ask you a question.’
‘What happened to your leg?’
‘Rottweiler. Look, I’ve only got a minute – have you had any dead children in recently? Girls. Between four and eight years old?’
‘I had a neighbour with a Rottweiler, lovely big lump it was. Broke her heart when it got cancer.’ The APT dumped the mop back in the mangle bit of the bucket and hauled the handle down, squeezing out the dirty water. ‘Hop up on the table and I’ll take a look.’
Logan looked at the stainless-steel table, the one with guttering around the edges, and a water supply to rinse away the blood. ‘I’m … Nah, it’s OK. I’m fine.’
‘Oh come on.’ She smiled. ‘Never lost a patient yet.’
‘Ever saved one?’
A sigh. ‘That’s a good point.’ She leant the mop against the wall, then crossed to a laptop sitting on its own on an expanse of shining worktop. ‘Little girls between four and eight …’ Her fingers clicked across the keys. ‘Am I allowed to ask why?’
There’s no need to sound so dramatic, Sergeant. Where do you think the kidnappers got the thing from, Toes R Us?
Was sitting upstairs, waiting for them to put a dozen stitches in a wee boy’s feet, and I thought – where would you get a dead little girl’s toe from?’
‘Lovely.’ She shook her head, Irn-Bru curls swaying. ‘So when you think of dead little girls: I’m the one who springs to mind?’
‘Have you had any? Over the last two or three weeks? They’d have been given morphine and thiopental sodium.’
She leant her head closer to the laptop’s screen. ‘That narrows it down a bit … Here we go: female, five-year-old, brought in suffering from abdominal pains. Died on the operating table.’ A sigh. ‘Poor wee soul.’
The song on the stereo changed to All the Time in the World.
Logan limped over. ‘Could we do a DNA test? See if the toe they sent us was hers?’
‘I
