she kicked the guy in the ribs. ‘That’s for Christine, Laura, Gail, Sarah, Jennifer, Joanne, and Sandra.’
‘Jesus, Jackie!’ Rennie grabbed her before she could do it again. ‘What if someone sees?’
‘You said no one was looking.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘So what’s the problem?’ She stood, glowering down at the crying man in the AFC tracksuit. ‘Right, Sunshine, on your feet.’
He didn’t move. ‘Oh for god’s sake …’ She grabbed his ear and hauled him upright. ‘Rennie, you want to …?’ But DC Rennie was busy on the radio, telling Control that Operation Sweetmeat had been a success – they’d caught the bastard.
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was spreading like a concrete tumour. For years it’d been in remission, but lately it had started to grow again, infecting the surrounding area with new wings of concrete and steel. And every time he saw it, Detective Sergeant Logan McRae’s heart sank.
Stifling a yawn he crumpled up the thin plastic cup his vending-machine coffee had come in and dropped it in the bin before pushing through the brown double doors into the heady bouquet of disinfectant, formalin and death.
The hospital morgue was a lot bigger than the one down at Grampian Police Force Headquarters and a lot more cheerful. A small stereo in one corner of the large, brown room pumped out Dr Hook’s greatest hits, the music almost drowning out the sound of running water as it gurgled down a drain on one of the dissecting tables. A woman in a green plastic apron, surgical scrubs and white Wellington boots was packing an old lady’s organs back where they’d come from, to the tune of When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman.
Logan’s unidentified male was lying on his back on a hospital gurney, eyes taped shut, skin as pale as wax paper. They’d left all the surgical tubes and lines attached for the inevitable post mortem: it made the body look abandoned. Mid-twenties, short blond hair, thin, but well muscled, as if he’d been addicted to the gym. His lower limbs and abdomen were smeared red, a long row of hurried stitches marking where they’d sewn him back together again after the surgeon finally admitted defeat. Death: one, NHS Grampian: zero.
The woman stuffing the old lady looked up and saw Logan peering down at the man’s naked body. ‘Police?’ He nodded and she pulled off her mask, frizzy red hair escaping from underneath her surgical cap. ‘Thought so. We’ve not bagged him up yet.’ Stating the obvious. Not that there was much chance of getting any useful forensic evidence off the body now. Not after it’d been contaminated in the A&E lobby, examination room, and operating theatre.
‘Don’t worry about it, I can wait.’
‘OK.’ She picked the old lady’s ribcage up off a stainless steel trolley and fiddled it back into place, then started to close up.
He watched her for a moment before asking: ‘Any chance you could take a quick look at our John Doe here?’
‘No bloody chance! You got any idea what the Hormonal Bitch Queen would do to me if she found out some lowly APT played with the corpse before she got her icy little fingers on it?’
‘I’m not asking you to do a full post mortem, but you could, you know,’ shrug, ‘take a look?’ He tried on his best smile. ‘Otherwise we’re going to have to wait till tomorrow afternoon. Sooner we know, the sooner we can catch whoever did this. Come on, just a quick external examination – no one will ever know.’
She pursed her lips, frowned, sighed, then said, ‘OK. But you tell anyone I did this and you’re going in one of those bloody freezers, understand?’
Logan grinned. ‘My lips are sealed.’
‘Right, give me a minute to finish up here and we’ll see what we can do …’ Ten minutes later the old lady was sewn closed and back in a refrigerated drawer. The APT pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. ‘What do we know?’
‘Shoved out of a car at A&E, wrapped in a blanket.’ Logan hoisted up the plastic bag full of bloodstained fabric they’d given him upstairs. ‘We’ll do a full forensic on the clothes, but could be a hit and run. Driver flattens some poor sod, panics, bundles them into the back of the car and abandons them at the hospital.’ He watched as the anatomical pathology technician started prodding the cold flesh, muttering ‘hit and run’ under her breath in time to the music.
‘Don’t think so.’ She shook her head, sending a stray Irn-Bru-coloured curl bouncing. ‘Look—’ she hooked a finger into the side of the man’s mouth, pulling it back to expose the teeth, still wrapped around the ventilation tube, ‘incisors, canines and premolars are broken, but there’s no damage to the nose or chin. An impact would leave scarring on the lips. He’s bitten down on something …’ She stroked the side of the dead man’s face. ‘Looks like some sort of gag, you can just see the marks in the skin.’ Logan’s blood ran cold.
‘You sure?’
‘Yup. And he’s covered with tiny burns. See?’ Little circles and splotches of angry red skin, some with yellowing blisters in the middle. Oh God.
‘What else?’
‘Dermal abrasions, bruising … I’d say he’s been roughed up a bit … More marks on the wrists, like he’s been strapped to something. It’s too thick to be rope. A belt? Something like that?’
That was all Logan needed: another body who’d been tied up and tortured. He was about to ask her if there were any fingers missing when she handed him a pair of gloves and told him to give her a hand turning the body over. It was a mess of dark, clotted blood, reaching from the small of the back all the way down to the ankles.
The APT slowly scanned the skin, pointing out more burns and contusions as she went, then prised the corpse’s buttocks apart with a sticky screltching sound. ‘Bloody hell.’ She stepped back, blinked, then peered at the man’s backside again. Dr Hook started in on If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me?). ‘The only way this was a car accident is if someone tried to park a Transit van up his backside.’ She straightened up, peeling off her latex gloves. ‘And if you want anything more, you’re going to have to ask a pathologist, ’cos I’m not opening him up to find out.’
Grampian Police Force Headquarters wasn’t the prettiest building in Aberdeen: a seven-storey block of dark grey concrete and glass stripes – like an ugly Liquorice Allsort – jaundiced with pale yellow streetlight.
There was a lot of indignant shouting coming from the front lobby, so Logan gave it a miss. One look through the part-glazed door was enough for him: a large woman with grey hair and a walking stick was giving Big Gary on the front desk an earful about police harassment, prejudice and stupidity. Bellowing, ‘YOU SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES!’ at the top of her lungs. He took the stairs instead.
The canteen was in the post-midnight lull: just the sound of pots and pans clattering in the sink and a late-night radio station turned down low to keep Logan company as he sat slurping his cream of tomato soup, trying not to think about the dead man’s ruptured rear end.
He was finishing up when a familiar figure grumbled her way up to the service counter and asked for three coffees, one with spit in it. PC Jackie Watson
