Rennie wriggled his bum in his seat. ‘I would like to announce that I’m damp right down to my pants here. There’s going to be a whole lotta chafing going on.’
‘What else did you dig up on Fred Marshall?’
‘Forget trench foot, I’m going to get trench—’
‘Rennie: concentrate! Fred Marshall.’
‘OK, OK. Sheesh...’ He pulled out his phone and poked at the screen. ‘Emailed myself the details.’ More poking. ‘Here we go: Frederick Albert Marshall, AKA Freddy Marsh. Two kids, both under five. Different mothers, though. He’s got a brother doing a nine-stretch in HMP Grampian for armed robbery and his sister’s awaiting trial for attempted murder.’
‘Bet family Christmases are fun.’
‘His mum died of an overdose when he was eleven and his dad’s not been arrested for three whole years. Which is something of a record for him. Burglaries, possession with intents, assaults... oh, and dear old dad’s a registered sex offender too.’
The security guard came limping up the road again, one hand clutching his side, face a worrying shade of puce. No sign of the brandy or the little girl.
A bus rumbled by, drenching him with dirty road spray.
Rennie started the engine and cranked up the blowers. ‘If we hurry, we can probably make the PM on Not-DI-Bell’s burnt and stinky remains?’
‘It’ll be all poking about and tissue samples. Won’t get anything useful out of the labs for weeks. If we’re lucky.’
The security guard clambered over the low stone wall and into the car park. Then turned and shook his fist. Bested by an eight-year-old criminal mastermind. And a bus.
Hmmm...
Logan frowned. ‘Has Fred Marshall still got a social worker?’
‘Dunno, but I can find out?’
Laughter rang through the Bon Accord shopping centre — high-pitched and giggly — as Logan climbed the stairs. Then some screaming. Then more giggling.
He stepped onto the landing.
The upper floor was pretty crowded. Families. Feral children. Couples. Slouching teenagers. Young men and women with clipboards and collecting buckets. Lots and lots and lots of shops full of damp people.
Rennie topped the stairs and looked around, then pointed over at the food court. The usual collection of baked tattie / salad / things on a conveyor belt / fried chicken joints were arranged around the outside of the seating area. ‘That’s her there.’
Two women sat at a table over by the baked tattie place: one short, young-ish, with a short-back-and-sides haircut, a leather jacket that had seen better days, a pot of tea, and a raisin whirl; the other a sagging, knackered-looking figure in a burgundy cardigan, hunched over a latte and a sticky bun. Her brown hair had a thick grey line, right down the middle of it, face as pale as rice pudding. Not a make-up kind of person.
The pair of them had bags under their eyes you could fit a week’s shopping in.
Logan walked over. ‘Maureen Tait?’
The one in the scabby leather raised a hand. ‘For my sins.’ She nodded at her becardiganed companion. ‘This is Mrs McCready, she was Fred Marshall’s C-and-F worker when he was a juvenile. What she doesn’t know about him ain’t worth knowing. Isn’t that right, Mags?’
Mrs McCready looked up from her milky coffee and pulled a sour face. ‘Has he decided to grace us with his presence again, then? Freddie?’
Logan patted Rennie on the shoulder. ‘I’ll have a tea, thanks.’ Then pulled out a chair and joined the pair of them as Rennie slumped off, muttering under his breath.
McCready sniffed. ‘Well?’
‘Thanks for agreeing to meet us. Especially as it’s the weekend.’
Tait folded her arms, chin up. ‘So come on then, what’s he done? Where’s he been?’
‘You’ve not seen him for, what, two years?’
She hauled a massive handbag up onto the table and went a-rummaging — producing a large ring binder packed so tight it was on the verge of bursting. It thumped down next to the handbag, setting her crockery rattling. ‘Freddie was... challenging, but he never missed a single appointment.’
McCready nodded. ‘Not since he first came to see me, when he was six.’
‘And then, two years, two months ago: nothing. We went round his flat, but they hadn’t seen him for a week.’
Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘We?’
Tait dumped her handbag on the floor again. ‘Yes “we”. Margaret and me. And I know, technically, that Children-and-Families aren’t supposed to maintain involvement in a service user’s life once they’ve transitioned to supervision by the Criminal Justice team, but Fred Marshall needed... continuity.’ She looked at her colleague. ‘Didn’t he, Mags?’
‘His father beat his mother so badly she ended up in a wheelchair. She’d forgotten to put a bet on for him.’ Mrs McCready tapped the huge file. ‘Not that she was any sort of saint, but when she died it really messed Freddie up.’
‘Must be hard losing your mum to an overdose.’
That got him a pitying look. ‘She was in a wheelchair, Inspector, who do you think bought drugs for her? Can you imagine being eleven years old and feeling responsible for your mum’s death?’ A sigh. ‘You know, I was probably the closest thing he had to a stable family relationship? When he was a teenager he’d go out and shoplift just so they’d catch him and he could see me again. How sad is that?’
Tait nodded. ‘He was a very troubled young man.’
Rennie reappeared, complete with tray: two cups, two wee teapots, some wee tartan packets of something. ‘I got us some shortbread. You’re welcome.’
McCready picked at her sticky bun. ‘And, of course, I told him he didn’t have to get arrested, I’d be happy to see him anyway. As long as it was always somewhere public. Course he wanted to come stay with me — thought it would be the best thing in the whole world if I adopted him so we could see each other all the time. But...’ The hole she’d worried in her bun got bigger. ‘Freddie always had that sharp little core of violence in him, you could see it even when he was a wee boy. No way I was exposing my kids to that.’ McCready frowned and ripped the chunk right off. Dunked it in her latte.
Tait tucked into her raisin whirl, flecks of pastry falling from her mouth as she spoke. ‘Tell them about Jeffery Watkins. Go on, tell them.’
‘Watkins was a wife-beating armed robber with a drink problem. His daughter, Nadia, was a client of mine. He didn’t like that I recommended she be taken into care, so he broke my nose and my wrist. Freddie tracked him down and battered the living hell out of him. Freddie was thirteen, Watkins was twenty-six.’
Sounded lovely.
Logan poured himself some tea. ‘Did Fred Marshall ever mention Aiden or Kenneth MacAuley?’
Rennie whipped out his notebook and pen. Poised and expectant.
Tait stared at him, face pinched, voice guarded. ‘Was he capable of it? Possibly. Did he do it?’ A shrug.
‘What about DI Duncan Bell?’
‘Oh, he was called all the names under the sun. Questioned Freddie at least five times about the killing and the abduction, even though there was absolutely no evidence. But you know what some police officers are like, they won’t...’ Tait stared at them. ‘Wait, DI Bell? He’s the one who faked his own death, isn’t he? It was on the news. You exhumed...’ She reached out and took her colleague’s hand.
Mrs McCready shrank away from the table, eyes and mouth open wide. ‘Oh God... It’s him, isn’t it? It’s Freddie in that grave! That bastard, Bell, killed him!’