He lifted up the mattress. A couple of baby magazines sat on the wooden slats beneath it. Would have been better finding sex toys. The magazines, hidden away like that, was just... depressing.
Logan placed them on the bedside cabinet, sighed, then wandered out onto the landing again.
There was a hatch in the ceiling, outside the bathroom.
Right: stepladder.
Probably find one in the garage.
Logan thumped downstairs and into the shelf-lined space. ‘Ladder, ladder, ladder, ladder... Ah, there you are.’ Hiding behind an artificial Christmas tree in a box.
He wrestled it free and carried it over to the door.
Stopped.
Chalmers’ glasses and shoes still sat there, on the shelves. Lined up, all neat and tidy, as if she’d nipped out for a minute and would be back for them soon.
Rennie had been right — it was weird.
Ah well, nothing he could do about that now.
Logan wrestled the stepladder up the stairs and clacked it open outside the bathroom door. Climbed it, shoved the hatch open and peered into the darkness. Like that scene in Aliens... A switch sat right by the opening and when he clicked it on, cold white light flickered into the space.
‘Great...’
The place was stuffed full of boxes. They were piled up on every flat surface, jammed in between the joists and rafters, and most of them looked as if they hadn’t been opened since Lorna and Brian Chalmers moved in.
Mind you, that cut down the workload a bit, didn’t it? Anything covered in dust could be ignored. If Lorna was planking her notebooks up here, hiding evidence, they’d have to be in a box that’d been opened recently.
Logan levered himself up into the cramped space.
And that meant these three nearest the hatch — everything else wore a thick lid of pale-grey fluff. Box one: kitchen gadgets that probably got used once then dumped. Box two: threadbare teddy bears, dolls, action figures, board games — all ancient and yellowed. Stored away, waiting for the child that Chalmers never had. Box three was full of her stuff from police college — photos, textbooks, journals.
He picked a journal and flicked through it: cramped spidery handwriting in blue biro, the occasional diagram that looked as if it’d been copied down at a lecture. Its pages dry and crackling. No sign of any recent additions, scribbled onto the last few pages, saying what had happened to Ellie Morton.
The other two journals were the same.
Logan opened the last one somewhere near the middle.
I graduate tomorrow and I couldn’t be prouder. I’m part of something magnificent! Me and Stevie and Shaz and Tommy Three Thumbs are going to make a difference!
I bet Shaz £1,000,000 I’d be the youngest Chief Constable ever and she wouldn’t take it! She said only an idiot would bet against me. Look out world, here I come!
He shut the book and placed it in the box again. Folded the lid shut. Sighed.
All that hope and optimism, reduced to this. Some lonely toys, a box full of journals no one would ever read, and a body dangling from the end of an electrical cable in a crappy garage you couldn’t even park a car in.
Shaz should’ve taken that bet.
Anyway, this wasn’t achieving any—
His phone went ding.
That would be Rennie.
Only when he dug his phone out, it wasn’t.
HORRIBLE STEEL:
I told you I’d have my REVENGE!
Yes, because today wasn’t bad enough already.
He thumbed out a reply.
What revenge? Roberta, what have you done?
SEND.
Ding.
Oh, you’ll find out soon enough...
‘All right, all right, I’m coming.’ Tara wiped her hands on a tea towel as she hurried down the hall, following the summoning chimes of Logan’s doorbell. Probably looked a right state with flour all over the only apron she could find in the kitchen — a surprisingly un-macho pink number with kittens on it that she was definitely going to make fun of him for when he got home — and bits of cheese cobbler dough caked all over her fingers. But tough.
The bell went again — two long, dark, old-fashioned bongs.
‘Keep your underwear on...’ She opened the door. ‘Can I help... you?’
It was Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel, AKA: The Wrinkly Horror, standing on the top step with a worrying smile on her face and a huge bag over her shoulder. God knew what sort of products she used to get her hair like that. Probably matt varnish and mains electricity.
The smile got worse. ‘Aye, aye: you’ve got your clothes on, so I know I’m no’ interrupting anything naughty.’ She turned, stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.
The call was answered by two little girls. Jasmine, with her dark-brown spiky hair, jeans, trainers, brown leather jacket — a sophisticated look for a ten-year-old, spoiled a bit by the threadbare teddy bear she was clutching. Her little sister, Naomi, waddled up behind, wearing a tatty-looking Halloween pirate costume — not the frilly girly version — holding a cuddly octopus toy above her head like it was a god. Or a sacrificial offering.
Something jagged coiled up in Tara’s throat. She swallowed it down. ‘Det... It... Detective Sergeant Steel. Logan isn’t—’
‘In you go, monsters.’ Steel gave the girls a push and they scampered inside.
‘But...’
‘Budge up a bit.’
Steel barged in after them, forcing Tara to flatten herself against the wall.
What was happening? Why was... What?
Outside, in the driveway, Susan waved from the passenger seat of a sensible hatchback — the engine still running. What she was doing with The Wrinkly Horror was anyone’s guess. She was a lovely, if slightly frumpy, blonde with a warm smile and dimples, while Steel was a hand grenade in a septic tank.
Tara tried for a smile of her own and waved back, then turned just in time to see Steel dump her bag in the hallway. ‘It... But...?’
Any sophistication points Jasmine had left evaporated as she caught sight of Logan’s cat and made a noise that wasn’t far off a full-on squeal. ‘Cthulhu!’ She charged off after the poor creature, closely followed by her tiny pirate sister.
‘Thooloo! Thooloo!’
Steel had a dig at an underwire. ‘Did Laz tell you how come he got the house so cheap? A fancy four-bedroom love nest in Cults must’ve cost a fortune, right?’
This must be what hostages felt like.
‘He... Someone left him money in their will.’
‘Oh aye, but this place was going cheap because the old lady who lived here... died here.’ She nudged the bag with her boot. ‘Everything’s in there: pyjamas, toilet bags, sleeping bags, bedtime stories.’
WHAT?
‘Sleeping bags?’
‘So the old lady has a stroke, or a heart attack or something, drops dead right here.’ Steel tilted her head at the big patch of new-looking floorboards at the foot of the stairs. ‘Took three months till anyone noticed she was missing. By then most of her had oozed through the floor into the basement. God, the smell! Carpet was about two inches thick with dead flies in here.’
A squeaky voice blared out through the living room door. ‘Thooloo! Thooloo! Thooloo!’
Tara swallowed again. ‘But—’
‘You’ve looked after them before, you’ll be fine.’
No, no, no, no, no...
‘But only when Logan was there too! I can’t—’