‘Help! Mr Ghent! Police brutality!’
On the other side of the road, an old bloke with grey hair and a Metallica T-shirt looked up from putting out his wheelie bin. Sniffed. Then shuffled off to get the recycling.
‘Let me guess, hipster hairdo and a brand-new Kermit the Frog tattoo?’
‘AKA: Norman Clifton. Stark naked on the floor, hammering away like he was playing Whack-a-Mole.’ He steered the aforementioned pervert towards the parked pool car.
‘Bet he’s got another spare key: confiscate it. And did you find that phone yet?’
Tufty plipped the locks and ‘assisted’ Norman into the back, holding his head down so he wouldn’t bash it on the roof. ‘Not even looked yet, Guv. I’ve been too busy getting No-Longer-Naked Norman here dressed again.’ Tufty thumped the door shut and leaned on the roof. ‘Think he might have something to do with it? Maybe he’s the type who lets himself into other people’s houses in the dead of night and Whack-a-Moles away while they’re lying there sleeping? Maybe he finds Lorna Chalmers all unconscious with booze and antidepressants and decides, “Way-hey, my luck’s in tonight!”’
‘Could be. Get him processed and stuck in a cell. And not a nice one either, one of the scabby ones next to someone with a smack habit and Tourette’s. Soon as his solicitor’s had access, I want the hipstery wee pervert in an interview room.’
‘Hurrah: finally someone to grill like sausages!’
‘No. No sausages for you until you find that phone.’
Oh poo...
Tufty sagged. ‘Guv.’ He hung up and opened the car door. Loomed inside with his scary police-officer face on. ‘Right, Norman, one chance and one chance only: how did you get into Mrs Chalmers’ home? Did you break in, or have you got a key? You’ve got a key, haven’t you?’ Tufty stuck his hand out. ‘Give.’
Norman Clifton blinked at him, bottom lip wobbling like strawberry jelly on a washing machine, and burst into tears.
A big grey slab sat on the other side of the junction, with ‘THE JAMES HUTTON INSTITUTE’ on it, complete with strange wavy logo and a bunch of arrows pointing the way to various access routes and bits of the campus.
Steel followed the one marked ‘Reception’, driving through a set of wrought-iron gates and onto a winding, narrow road through the trees. ‘...the upshot of which is: you and Ginger McHotpants take the kids that week and I take Susan to Reykjavik for pickled fish and naked fireside-wriggling on a bearskin rug.’
Logan put his phone away. ‘OK, one: no. Two: don’t be disgusting. That’s a horrific image to plant in anyone’s mind. And three: stop calling Tara “Ginger McHotpants”!’
Steel reached across the car and thumped him on the arm. ‘Who are you calling a horrific image? Think your naked body is anyone’s idea of a Monet oil painting? Because I’ve seen it, and believe me, it isn’t.’
He stared at her. ‘We swore never to talk about that ever again!’
‘I still have nightmares.’
‘Oh yeah? Well I got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from seeing your—’
‘Don’t!’ Her finger hovered centimetres from his nose. ‘Just don’t.’
Fair enough.
The Hutton Institute campus emerged from the trees — an old two-storey granite building tacked onto a massive white shopping-mall-style extension that completely dwarfed it.
The car park was empty, except for a red Porsche four-by-four parked near the reception.
Steel slid the pool car in next to it. Then sat there, hands still on the wheel, frowning out at the institute. ‘Might wait here. Dr Famptonstein always gives me the willies with her,’ Steel put on her best B-movie vampire voice, ‘“the soil is the life, ah... hah... haaaaah...” shtick.’
Logan climbed out. ‘Don’t be such a big boy’s pants. And don’t look at me like that: apparently we’re not allowed to say “big girl’s blouse” any more. It’s sexist.’
‘Pfff...’ She locked the car and scuffed her way towards reception. Shaking her head. ‘And they made you an inspector...’
Dr Frampton fiddled about with what looked like a huge espresso machine, but probably cost about half a million. Pressing buttons with her purple-nitrile-gloved fingers. Peering at the display through a pair of little round glasses.
The units and workbenches were littered with expensive-looking bits of equipment, sample containers, more equipment, computers, cupboards marked ‘HAZARD!’...
Steel slouched in the corner, eyes down, poking away at her phone.
Logan leaned against a worktop — not touching anything. ‘Sorry to drag you in on your day off.’
Dr Frampton looked up from her... whatever it was. ‘Well, I suppose. I’ve got a conference in South Korea next week so it doesn’t hurt to clear the decks a bit. I can knock off a couple of outstanding analyses before Edward’s got the joint out resting and the roasties in the oven.’ A smile. ‘I’ll be heading off to Seoul with a clear conscience for a change.’ Then over to the screen hooked up to the thing. ‘Come on, little mass spectrometer, work for Mummy...’ A bleep and data filled the screen. ‘There we go.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s a mixture of noncalcareous gleys with peaty gleys, and going by the mineral distribution... that gives us...’ She shuffled across to a desktop computer and punched things into the keyboard. Waved Logan over.
A map of Aberdeenshire appeared, covered in bruise-pattern swirls of blue and red and yellow and brown and purple.
‘The blue bits are all the areas in the northeast with mineral gleys, but ours are from this bit, west of Newtonhill.’ A click and the map zoomed in. ‘Our samples also contain coprostanol and 24-ethyl coprostanol, plus an unusually high ratio of plant sterols to fatty alcohol levels—’
‘Doctor?’ Logan gave her a pained smile. ‘Bearing in mind that we don’t all have PhDs in organic chemistry...’
‘Sorry. OK, in layperson’s terms: we’ve got good biomarkers for faeces here. Most likely porcine. So you’d be looking for a pig farm...’ Her fingers danced across the keyboard again. ‘Which gives us eight possible locations, but when we factor in the organic aggregates...’ Clickity click. ‘Et voila.’
She made a flourishing hand gesture and turned the screen to face Logan.
He peered in closer. A blue amoeba sat in the middle of a yellow splodge, overlaid on an Ordnance Survey map. West of Portlethen, not far from where the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route carved its way through the countryside. ‘And you’re sure?’
‘The soil never lies, Logan. It speaks to us from beyond the grave, whispering its secrets to those prepared to listen.’
Steel didn’t bother looking up from her phone. Just took a deep breath and went, ‘Ah... hah... haaaaa...’
‘And in this case, I mean that literally. There are traces of cadaverine in the sample. And where there’s cadaverine...?’
Great.
Logan covered his face with his hands. ‘Oh God, not another dead body...’
29
Steel kicked a stone across the weed-flecked concrete, phone clamped to her ear. ‘Nah, I’m fannying about on a disused pig farm in the middle of sodding nowhere.’
It must have been quite impressive in its day, but that day was long gone. Someone had panned in all the farmhouse windows — possibly the same someone that had daubed ‘MALKY WAZ HERE!!!’ across the front of it in drippy red paint. The house was surrounded by a collection of crumbling outbuildings, their corrugated-metal roofs sagging in rusty grandeur.