‘Boo!’.
She didn’t even flinch. ‘I could see you reflected in the sneeze guard.’
‘Oh … How’s it going?’
Jackie peered over the counter at the little old man fumbling about with the coffee machine. ‘How long does it take to make three bloody cups of coffee?’
‘That good, eh?’
She shrugged. ‘Honestly, I’d be quicker swimming to Brazil and picking the bloody beans myself!’
When the three cups finally materialized, Logan walked her back down to interview room number four. ‘Here,’ she said, handing him two of the paper containers, ‘hold these.’ She peeled the plastic lid off the third, howched, and spat into the frothy brown liquid, before putting the lid back on and giving it a shake.
‘Jackie! You can’t—’
‘Watch me.’ She took the other coffees back and pushed through into the interview room. In the brief moment the door was open, Logan could see the huge, angry shape of DI Insch leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, face furious, and then Jackie banged the door shut with her hip.
Intrigued, Logan wandered down the corridor to the observation room. It was tiny and drab – just a couple of plastic chairs, a battered desk and a set of video monitors. Someone was already in there – ferreting about in his ear with the chewed end of an old biro: DC Simon Rennie. He pulled the pen out, examined the tip, then stuck it back in his ear and wiggled it about some more.
‘If you’re looking for a brain, you’re digging in the wrong end,’ said Logan, sinking into the other seat.
Rennie grinned at him. ‘How’s your John Doe then?’
‘Dead. How’s your rapist?’
Rennie tapped the monitor in front of him with the ear-end of his biro. ‘Recognize anyone?’
Logan leaned forward and stared at the flickering picture: interview room number four, the back of Jackie’s head, a scarred Formica table, and the accused. ‘Bloody hell, isn’t that—’
‘Yup. Rob Macintyre. AKA Goalden Boy.’ Rennie sat back in his seat with a sigh. ‘Course, you know what this means?’
‘Aberdeen doesn’t stand a chance on Saturday?’
‘Aye, and it’s bloody Falkirk. How embarrassing is that going to be?’ He buried his head in his hands. ‘Falkirk!’
Robert Macintyre – the best striker Aberdeen Football Club had seen for years. ‘What happened to his face?’ The man’s top lip was swollen and split.
‘Jackie. She did a Playtex on his balls too: lift and separate …’ They sat in silence for a minute watching the man on the screen shifting uncomfortably, taking the occasional sip from Jackie’s 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.
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
