hot.’
Steel sniffed. ‘You took your time.’
The box went on the table. ‘Fourteen steak, six mince, four macaroni, four cheese and onion pasties, and a dozen sausage rolls.’
‘Where’s my change?’
‘And about a million packets of tomato sauce.’ Guthrie dug a hand into his pocket and produced a mound of coins. They rattled on the tabletop.
The interview team swarmed around the box, pulling out grease-spotted paper bags, checking the contents, and passing on anything they didn’t fancy.
Logan rubbed his fingertips against his eyelids, trying to massage the grit away. ‘Lots of rumours about Jenny being available for a price, but no one knows who’s selling. Or they’re not saying.’
Rennie appeared with a pair of paper bags, the green-and-gold Chalmers of Bucksburn logo going slightly transparent. ‘Macaroni pie, or cheese and onion pasty?’
‘Cheese and onion.’ He took the proffered bag and scrunched it down around the golden flaky pastry like a makeshift napkin. ‘I mean, what are we supposed to do? No one’s going to stick their hand up and admit to kidnapping and murder, are they?’
Steel shrugged, then took a dainty bite out of her pie and chewed. ‘Early days, Laz. Got a lot more perverts to get through.’
‘Yeah, and at the rate we’re going it’ll take us three and a half days, minimum.’
‘Oh.’ She stared at the hole in her pie for a moment, then tore the top off a sachet of tomato sauce and squirted it inside.
Logan frowned. ‘Unless we get the back shift to do some?’
A nod. ‘Sort it out with Ding-Dong. Sooner we get a result the better.’
‘Have you been to the scene?’ The pasty was filled with savoury napalm, almost too hot to eat. He brushed pastry flakes from his fingertips as he chewed. ‘I was thinking of paying a visit later. Get a feel for the ground.’
A lump-faced constable stuck her head around the meeting room door. ‘Guv?’ She waved at DI Steel. ‘That’s the next bunch arrived downstairs, you want me to get them up to the rooms, or let them stew for a bit?’
‘Fuck ’em, we’re eating pies.’ Steel took another bite and the tomato sauce she’d so carefully squirted in squirted out in a blood-spatter, all over her hand. ‘Bastard…’ She licked at her wrist. ‘Where’s the napkins?’
‘I mean, they must’ve checked out the house before the abduction, they went straight to Jenny’s room and—’ Logan swore, his phone was ringing. He hauled it out with greasy fingers and checked the display: ‘UNKNOWN’.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello?’
‘Who’s—’
‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ Doc Fraser must have been fiddling with the buttons at his end, because a series of bleeps sounded in Logan’s ear. Followed by, ‘Logan? You there? I’ve just got the tox screen back from the lab. Thought you’d want an update before I went and spilled the beans to Finnie and his fellow wankers.’
Logan opened his mouth, then shut it again. ‘Er, Doc, are you sure you should be—’
‘Now pay attention: we scraped every little vein in that toe for blood cells and found trace amounts of morphine. The fatty tissue contained a minuscule quantity of thiopental sodium. And I mean a tiny, tiny quantity. Damn lucky we detected anything at all.’
He dug his notebook out of his pocket, pinned the phone between his ear and his shoulder, and scribbled it all down … Taking a rough stab at the spelling, ‘THIGH-O-PENTHAL (SP?)’. ‘Care to hazard a guess?’
‘You buggers never change, do you? At a guess – and this is just a guess – she was given the morphine to keep her quiet. Compliant. It would work pretty well as a sedative. Thiopental sodium, on the other hand, is a general anaesthetic. They probably planned to put her under before removing the toe, but something went wrong. An allergic reaction maybe, or she’d eaten too recently, threw up, and choked … Either way, it was quick – if that’s any consolation – otherwise there’d be more of the drug laid down in the fatty tissue.’
Logan closed his eyes. ‘When?’
‘Nearly impossible to tell. But from the look of it, I’d say it was severed at least six hours after death, then kept in a fridge. Maybe up to a week?’
So Bob was right – Jenny was dead before they’d even received the first ransom demand.
‘The amputation’s pretty good, certainly done by someone with medical training using a thin, fine blade. And thiopental sodium is used to knock people out before they go in for surgery – before they put you on the air and gas. So you’re looking at hospitals: operating theatres, in-house pharmacy, neurology, the ITU … Or maybe a vet? I think they use it on animals too.’
‘What about doctors’ surgeries, GPs, people like that?’
‘They don’t get anything stronger than lidocaine. Same with dentists.’
‘Thanks, Doc.’ Deep breath. ‘Can you do me a favour?’
‘Depends.’
‘When you tell “the wankers”, don’t call them that, OK? Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean they won’t take it out on us.’ Logan pressed disconnect, then looked up to see Steel staring at him.
‘Well?’
He told her about the drugs and a smile broke across her face.
‘Right.’ She banged her hand against the table. ‘Listen up you shiftless bunch of jessies – when you’re interviewing your mongs and stots this afternoon, I want to know if anyone’s got connections up the hospital or at a vet’s, OK? Job, volunteer work, friend, family – the lot.’ She stuck two fingers up. ‘Hospitals, vets.’
Rennie frowned. ‘How come?’
‘’Cos I say so. Laz, call Ingram – tell him we need everyone we’ve seen today back tomorrow morning.’ She beamed, then punched Logan in the arm. ‘We’ve finally—’
‘Ow!’ Bloody hell, that stung! He wrapped a hand around his deltoid, trying to squeeze the pain away. ‘What was that for?’ The skin underneath throbbed and burned.
‘Oh stop moaning, you big girl’s blouse. Barely touched you. We’re actually going to catch the bastards.’
‘That hurt!’
‘Jesus, and I thought Rennie was a wimp.’
The constable paused, halfway through a huge sausage roll. ‘Hey!’
Logan rubbed at his arm. ‘I don’t go around hitting you, do I?’
‘Inspector?’ The lumpy constable hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the corridor outside.
‘Aye,
