Sod.
Logan leaned against the wall next to her. ‘Any luck with DNA?’
‘You’re kidding, right? When you take a body, blow its head off, burn everything, post-mortem what’s left, then bury it in an eco-friendly grave for two years, what you end up with isn’t exactly DNA viable. The smell, on the other hand...’
‘Wonderful.’
She toasted him with her mug. ‘Welcome to my world. If we had the teeth, then maybe we could have drilled something out of the tooth pulp cavity, assuming they weren’t cooked too much. But guess what?’
‘No teeth.’
‘Once again, “the shotgun makes its mischief felt”.’ She pushed off the wall and squinted at him. ‘And for future reference, see next year? When someone asks what to get me for my birthday? Assuming anyone sodding remembers. Tell them gudding about in rotting corpse bits isn’t as much fun as they think!’
‘Oh...’ He pulled on a smile. ‘Happy birthday.’
‘Yeah, now you remember.’ She stalked off, shaking her head. ‘They’re all the bloody same...’
14
Somewhere, off in the gloom, a radio belted out a cheery ‘modern’ song. Which, let’s be honest, was a euphemism for ‘crap’.
‘Pfff...’ He scuffed a foot along the concrete floor. ‘Getting old, Logan.’
Yeah, but it was crap.
A large sign sat on the metal grille that separated the small reception area from the expanse of shelving, boxes, and crates: ‘OFF-SITE EVIDENCE STORAGE FACILITY’. It lurked above a small whiteboard with ‘THIS FACILITY HAS WORKED FOR 3 DAYS WITHOUT A LOST TIME ACCIDENT’ on it.
They’d probably do better on that front if they fixed the lighting: no windows in here, so there was nothing but the striplights overhead and about a third of those were dead. Half of those still alive buzzed, blinked, and flickered into darkness — only to judder on again ten or fifteen seconds later. As if someone had tried setting up a Santa’s grotto in hell.
Logan took a deep breath and made a loudhailer from his hands. ‘COME ON, ELLEN, SOME OF US STILL HAVE CAREERS TO GET ON WITH!’
‘Cheeky sod.’ She came limping out from the depths of the storeroom. Small, but solid. The kind of person whose pint you really wouldn’t want to spill. Dust greyed the front and arms of her Police Scotland T-shirt. Probably from the large cardboard box she was carrying. ‘You’re in luck.’ Ellen shouldered open the gate and kicked it closed behind her. ‘Normally suicide stuff gets cleared out after a couple of years.’
She thumped the box onto the productions desk and raised her eyebrows. ‘Teeth?’
‘Teeth.’
Ellen went digging in the box, laying evidence bags out in front of him. ‘Teeth, teeth, teeth, teeth...’ More bags. Then a couple of small cardboard boxes. Then some big bags. ‘Let’s see: we’ve got burned clothes, burned shoes, a burned shotgun, and a petrol container. Also burned. No teeth.’
‘Please tell me they didn’t leave them at the scene.’
‘OK: “they didn’t leave them at the scene”.’
‘Oh for God’s sake...’ He paced away to the other side of the reception area and back again. ‘I’ve got a body lying in the mortuary and no idea who it belongs to. How am I supposed to find out, if there’s no bloody evidence?’
She held up a finger. ‘There’s evidence, there’s just no teeth.’
‘Urgh...’ Logan slumped forward, thunking his forehead gently against the grille.
The rustling of paperwork sounded behind him, then: ‘That’s odd. Looks like they did find some teeth, but they’re not in the box. Did you try the mortuary? Might have sent them over there for analysis.’
‘They swear blind they’ve never seen them.’
More rustling. ‘According to this, the IB recovered Ding-Dong’s prints off the shotgun and the shells inside it. His prints were on the caravan table’s metal frame and the petrol containers and the caravan door handle too. No one else’s prints were found.’
‘That’s sod-all use to me. I know DI Bell was there — he had to be, he set all this up. What I need to know is whose head he blew off!’ The grille rattled as Logan boinged his head against it again. ‘How could we bury the wrong bloody person?’
‘To be fair, Ding-Dong left two suicide notes. The body was wearing his watch, wedding ring, signet ring, and a stainless-steel bracelet with his initials on it. It was all returned to his widow, by the way, in case you think we’ve lost them too. She also ID’d what was left of his clothes, his shoes, and the wallet they found on the passenger seat of his car. I mean, look at it.’
Logan turned.
Ellen held up a photograph. The skeletal remains of a caravan sagged over the blackened carcass of its contents — everything burned to small unrecognisable lumps. Everything except for the torso-sized chunk of charcoal caught on the metalwork that used to support the floor and the twisted chunks of arms and legs scorched all the way down to the bone in places. A Volkswagen Passat sat in the background, the paintwork on its bonnet blistered from the heat, front-left tyre flattened.
She shook her head. ‘Not surprising they believed it was him, is it? I mean, no way you’re getting DNA out of something burned that badly, right? And with all the documentation...’
Why did everything have to turn into a disaster?
Logan sighed and held out his hand. ‘Let’s see the wallet.’
She scribbled something onto a clipboard, spun it around on the desk so it was the right way up for him. ‘Sign there. You need gloves?’
He scribbled his signature on the line and nodded. Snapped on the proffered gloves and opened the evidence bag: one black leather wallet, with pictures of Bell’s children proudly displayed in two matching photo insets.
Logan laid the contents out in a line. Two credit cards and one debit. A bunch of slips of paper that had filled one segment of the wallet — receipts probably, their thermal ink all faded away by the heat. A condom lurked in its wrapper at the back of the wallet. And last but not least: three filthy five-pound notes. He added them to the line.
Ellen whistled. ‘Fifteen quid and a condom? Naughty old Ding-Dong.’
‘Better give me the suicide notes too.’
The off-site storage facility loomed over the pool car in all its miserable glory. A bland industrial building in a bland industrial business park, sealed behind bland industrial chain-link fencing. Topped with exciting razor wire. Or at least, anyone trying to clamber over it would find it exciting — a DIY vasectomy courtesy of Police Scotland.
Above, the sky had taken on a disturbing burnt-toast look, spattering down fistfuls of rain that clattered against the car roof, fighting with the roar of the blowers.
Logan opened the big brown envelope and pulled out two A4 sheets in individual plastic wallets. Rested them against the pool car’s steering wheel.
DI Bell’s suicide notes. One to his children, one to his wife. Both handwritten in red biro on what was probably photocopier paper.
‘If I Only Had a Brain’ warbled up from Logan’s mobile phone and he answered it, not even needing to check the caller ID. ‘Simon?’
Rennie’s voice bounded out like a Labrador. ‘I have news, my liege!’
‘Did you know it was Sheila Dalrymple’s birthday today?’