The Blood Road. Stuart MacBride
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Brian flinched as if he’d been slapped. ‘I don’t…’
‘Don’t you?’ Logan held up the phone again, reading from the screen. ‘“The milk of your passion fizzes inside me like finest champagne.” If that helps jog your memory?’
‘Oh God.’ Brian wrapped his hands around his head.
‘You said there’d been “a sort of fight”.’
‘You don’t know what it was like. She was never here. Not properly. Even when she was physically in the room, she was somewhere else. I was…’ Deep breath. ‘Stephanie is… I met her at work. She’s the account manager. We… Her husband isn’t there either. We were lonely.’
Logan stepped back. ‘And Lorna found out you were having an affair.’
The heating gurgled. The rain fell.
Brian shrugged. ‘Steph was here yesterday afternoon. We were in the bedroom when her car alarm went off. Someone had smashed the windscreen and the garage door was lying wide open. It’s… It’s not like Lorna and me had a sex life of our own, is it? We don’t even sleep in the same room any more!’ He ran a hand across his face. Bit his lip. ‘I was going to ask Lorna for a divorce next week, once we’d got her birthday out of the way. It would’ve been Wednesday.’
And with that, Brian dissolved into tears again.
The garage looked strangely empty without Chalmers’ body hanging there. Like a living room after the Christmas decorations had been taken down… Now the only sign that she’d ever been there were the scuff marks on the concrete floor – tiny tufts of fabric stuck to the rough surface where her socks had dragged across it.
Logan turned and stared at the shelving unit by the door. Chalmers’ glasses sat on a shelf next to the dishwasher tablets. Her shoes were on the shelf below lined up side by side.
Rennie pointed at them. ‘Why do people do that? Why take off your shoes and glasses before topping yourself?’
The glasses were cold to the touch. Surprisingly heavy. ‘Suppose it’s like getting ready for bed.’
‘See if it was me? If I was crossing the great dark veil? I’d want to see where I was going.’
Logan put the glasses back on their shelf. ‘Her husband’s having an affair; she’s about to be suspended; she’s on antidepressants; she’s sacrificed having a family for her career, but her career’s going nowhere.’
‘And I wouldn’t want to tread in anything either.’
‘She’s getting into fights…’
Rennie nodded. ‘Sounds like she had a proper, full-on, card-carrying meltdown.’
‘Yup.’ Logan walked out into the hall. No point wasting any more time here. Still had to figure out what Chalmers knew about Ellie Morton’s disappearance. He opened the front door. Paused on the threshold. ‘Do me a favour: soon as we hit the station, have a word with the CCTV team and see if they can place her car anywhere. Find out where she went yesterday. Maybe we can dig up who she spoke to.’
‘Guv.’
Logan hurried down the driveway, shoulders hunched against the rain, Rennie trotting along behind him.
Pale faces gazed out at them from the surrounding houses. The nosy ghosts of suburbia, haunting the lives of their neighbours. Feeding on their tragedy.
He clambered into the PSD pool car and checked his watch. A little after nine. ‘Probably got time to pick up coffee on the way to the cemetery. If we’re quick.’
Rennie clunked his door shut and sat there, looking up at the house. ‘Guv… Not being funny or anything, but back there, with the husband, was that not a bit … harsh?’
‘Good.’
‘No, but what if he makes a complaint?’
‘Brian Chalmers was screwing around on his wife. A wife he knew was on antidepressants. He was going to ask for a divorce the day after her birthday.’ Logan fastened his seatbelt. ‘So yes: I gave him a hard time. What do you think I should’ve given him, biscuits and a cuddle?’
Rennie started the car. ‘Sure you weren’t just punishing him because you feel guilty about what happened to her?’
Idiot.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘So, let’s get this straight,’ Rennie turned, voice and face deadpan, ‘being investigated by Professional Standards had nothing to do with her topping herself.’
The little sod might have a point.
‘Oh … shut up and drive.’
Hazlehead Cemetery stretched down towards the Westhill road. They’d made an effort to lay this bit of it out in long sweeping curves, but there was a lot of ground to fill. Space for thousands more bodies.
And soon, there would be space for one more.
A bright-yellow JCB sat by a bend in the road that wound through the middle of the cemetery – presumably so the hearses could deliver their passengers to their allotted spots. The digger hunched over one of the graves. Like an expectant beast. Growling.
Logan and Rennie stood beneath a row of trees, on the very edge of the cemetery. Not that they provided a lot of shelter from the thick drifts of pewter-grey drizzle that coated everything with a sheen of cold and damp. But at least it was somewhere to drink their coffee.
Next to the JCB, three SOC-suited figures were busy erecting a Scene Examination tent – big enough to plonk over the grave when it was excavated.
Rennie sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘You ever had a shot on a digger? I’d love that. Gouging huge great clods out the surface of the earth… Oh, ho. Clap hands, here comes Charlie.’
A man in a brown suit and council-issue tie worried his way up the hearse road towards them, clutching his fluorescent-yellow waterproof jacket shut. Woolly hat jammed low over his ears, a scowl pulling his jowls into a disappointed-scrotum shape.
His glasses were all steamed up too. ‘Closing the cemetery… I don’t see why this couldn’t have been done last night!’
Logan had another sip of lukewarm coffee. ‘Health and safety.’
‘There are people wanting to visit their loved ones and they expect the council to facilitate that. If you’re a bereaved relative, what are you going to think about all this?’
Logan leaned over to one side, looking across the cemetery to the car park. Its only occupants were the PSD pool car, Scene Examination’s grubby white Transit, the duty undertaker’s discreet ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, and the battered rattletrap Mr Scrotumface had arrived in. Other than that, the place was deserted. Logan stood up straight again. ‘Please don’t let us stop you comforting them. We’ll let ourselves out.’
‘Hmmph!’ An imperious sniff, then he turned and marched off into the drizzle again, nose held high. Walking as if his buttocks were tightly clenched. Presumably to stop the stick from falling out.
Rennie sidled closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Bet he’s the kind of guy who can’t get it up unless he’s filled out a requisition in triplicate to boink his girlfriend.’
Logan’s Airwave handset gave four bleeps. He answered it. ‘McRae. Safe to talk.’
‘Bet he’s a riot in the bedroom too.’ Rennie put on a droning nasal voice. ‘Tonight, Jean, you’ll observe that we’re departing from our usual missionary position due to roadworks on the A944 outside Dobbies Garden Centre.’
Down by the JCB, one of the white-oversuited figures waved at them. Then her voice crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘That’s us ready.’