A Litter of Bones Read online

  “Not fussy,” said Caitlyn.

  “Hamza? Do you need, like… halal, or…?”

  DC Khaled’s face split into a grin. “Nah, you’re alright, sir.”

  Logan nodded a little awkwardly. “Right. Grand. Won’t be long. Phone me if anything comes up.”

  He marched out of the Incident Room.

  A moment later, the door opened again and his head popped around the doorframe.

  “By the way, anyone have any idea where the shop is?”

  “Oh, and double chips. In fact, double chips twice.”

  The lad behind the counter glanced up from the till. “Quadruple chips?”

  “Aye. If you like,” Logan replied. He fished his wallet from his coat pocket. “How much is all that?”

  The till bleeped a few times. Logan shifted impatiently from foot to foot, watching the lad pick a path through the buttons. “That’s…”

  Logan sucked air in through his teeth. “That’s…?”

  “Thirty-eight forty—Wait. No.”

  More bleeps.

  “Forgot the chips.”

  Logan stood, wallet poised.

  “Forty-four forty-five.”

  Logan muttered something about ‘double chips,’ then produced his debit card.

  “Sorry, we don’t take cards.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t take cards.”

  Logan looked down at his card, then up at the kid behind the counter. His face was contorted in confusion, like none of this made any sense.

  “You don’t take cards?”

  “No.”

  “How can you not take cards? What are we in, the roaring twenties?”

  The lad shrugged.

  “You seriously don’t take cards? In this day and age?”

  “There’s a cash machine up the street,” the kid offered. “But you’ll have to be quick, we shut in forty-five minutes.”

  “I thought you shut at ten?” Logan said.

  “We do.”

  Logan glanced at his watch. “Jesus. Right, fine. How far up the street?”

  “About… a mile and a half.”

  “Fuck off!” Logan retorted, the words tumbling out of him before he could stop them. “A mile and a half? It’s pissing down.”

  The kid glanced at the big windows like he hadn’t previously noticed the onslaught of water hammering against the outside.

  “You could order online,” he suggested. “We take cards online.”

  Logan’s mind, which had already been struggling to deal with the fact that this place didn’t accept card payments, practically exploded.

  “I can pay by card online, but not in person?”

  “Cash only in person,” the employee confirmed. From the expression on his face, it was clear that he’d had this same conversation on several occasions before, and very probably had to go through it on a daily basis.

  “Jesus.” Logan slotted the card back into his wallet. “Fine. Where’s this cashline, then?”

  The lad rattled off a concise but detailed explanation without very much thought, reaffirming Logan’s suspicions that he was an old hand at this particular conversation. Logan made a mental note of the directions, then opened the door. A gust of wind and a blast of icy rain swirled in, scattering a bundle of menus piled up on the counter.

  “Stick it all on now, I won’t be long,” he said.

  “We don’t usually start making the food until people come back,” the employee explained. “Because a lot of the time they don’t bother.”

  “I’ll be back,” Logan told him, a touch more Terminator-like than he’d intended.

  The kid waivered, unsure. Logan let the door close, crossed to the counter, and flashed his warrant card.

  “I’ll come back. Alright? Pinkie swear.”

  “Right. OK. Good,” the lad said, snapping to a sort of panicky attention. “I’ll get it all put on for you now.”

  “Thank you,” said Logan, trying not to sound sarcastic, but failing. As he turned, his eyes fell on the logo on the pizza box. He took out his phone and opened the photo app. “Quick question. Does this guy look familiar?”

  He showed the kid the snap he’d taken of Walker’s mugshot, and watched as the boy looked at it, his eyes lifeless and disinterested.

  “No. Don’t know him.”

  “He’s not a customer?”

  “Not that I’ve seen. Why?”

  Logan returned the phone to his pocket. “Nothing. Doesn’t matter. I’ll go get that cash.”

  He was halfway to the door again when the phone rang. He paused, listening to the kid rattle off a robotic salutation and take an order.

  Once the lad had hung up, Logan approached the counter. “Do people phone in orders a lot?”

  “Huh? What?” The kid’s eyes went to the phone, like the answer might be written there. “Yes?” he said, more like a question than an answer.

  “For delivery?”

  “Um, yeah. Why?”

  “What about Cowie Avenue?”

  “What about it?”

  “Number sixteen. Ever get orders phoned in from there?”

  The kid looked blank.

  “Ham and Pineapple.”

  “You mean a Hawaiian?”

  Logan’s eye twitched. “I don’t want to debate the semantics. Does he ever phone an order in?”

  “What?”

  Logan rapped his knuckles on the stainless steel counter.

  “Wake up. The guy at Sixteen Cowie Avenue. Ham and Pineapple. Does he ever phone in?”

  “I think so. Yeah. Yeah, a few times. Why? Is that the guy in the picture?”

  “When was the last time he ordered anything?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t work every night.”

  Logan’s nostrils flared. “Well, when’s the last time you remember?”

  He watched the kid thinking, could practically see the steam coming out of his ears as he ploughed through his memories.

  “Thursday, maybe?” he decided. “I think it was Thursday.”

  Logan sighed, unable to hide his disappointment. “Thursday. Right.” He turned to the door. “Get the food on. I won’t be long.”

  “OK,” the kid said. Then: “Actually, wait.”

  Logan stopped.

  Turned.

  “I think he might’ve phoned in last night, too,” the lad said. “But he didn’t get it delivered to the usual place.”

  Something lit-up inside Logan’s head. Something fluttered in his chest.

  “Do you remember where?”

  “It’ll be written down,” said the kid, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of nowhere in particular.

  Logan’s hand slipped into his pocket, reaching for his phone again. “Good. Then hold the food, son,” he instructed. “And get me that address.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Caledonian Canal was a world-renowned tourist attraction, apparently. Logan couldn’t really figure out why. It was, as far as he could tell, just a canal like any other. Water. Lock gates. Boats. The usual. Nothing startling about any of it.

  Sure, if you were into that sort of thing it was probably nice enough, but it didn’t do a lot for him. Maybe it was because it was getting dark.

  Or, more likely, because he had more pressing issues to think about.

  He sat behind the wheel of the Focus, peering ahead through the gloom at a long wooden houseboat moored a few hundred yards along the canal path, just off a little wooden jetty. It sat low in the water, rocking gently as the wind shoved it around.

  The curtains were drawn over the boat’s windows. Behind them was mostly darkness, but occasionally an oblong of light would sweep across the curtains from the inside, as if someone was moving a torch around.

  “How long until armed response gets here?” Logan asked. He clicked the windscreen wipers on for a moment, clearing the rain away.

  “Forty-five minutes, maybe,” said Ben from the passenger seat.

&
nbsp; Logan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.

  “We can’t wait that long.”

  “Aye, we can,” Ben argued.

  “No saying what’s going on in there,” Logan said, his gaze boring into the side of the boat as if some previously latent X-Ray vision might suddenly kick in.

  “Well, no, but…”

  Ben sighed.

  “You couldn’t have got me the bloody chips first?” he muttered, then he sighed a second time for effect. “Fine. What’s the plan?”

  “It’s no’ really a ‘plan’ as such. ‘Plan’ would be stretching it,” Logan said. “Is everyone in position? Path blocked further up?”

  “Tyler’s got a couple of cars and a van up around the corner,” Ben replied, motioning ahead to where the towpath curved around to the right. The area on the right of the path was fenced off and thick with trees that nicely hid the vehicles stopped round the bend. “Caitlyn has a crew covering the exits behind.”

  “Good,” said Logan. The door clunked as he pulled the handle and shouldered it open. “Right, then. You stay here. Eyes peeled.”

  As Logan exited the car, Ben clambered clumsily across into the driver’s seat. “For Christ’s sake, be careful,” he warned.

  Logan gave him a curt nod, then gently pushed the door just far enough for the mechanism to click into place. He didn’t want to risk fully closing it, in case the sound of it alerted Walker.

  Pulling his collar up against the rain, then thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, Logan set off walking up the path. He kept to the right, away from the boat, eyes fixed on the path ahead like he had a very specific destination planned, and it wasn’t anywhere around here.

  His boots made a series of soft crunching sounds on the limestone surface of the path, but he reckoned the sound of the wind and rain against the boat’s windows should mask that, with a bit of luck.

  The torchlight licked the inside of the curtains. Logan picked up the pace.

  He was twenty feet away when the door at the back of the houseboat opened and a wild-haired man in a leather jacket launched himself onto the path.

  “Shite!” Logan spat. “Walker, stay where you are!”

  Walker clearly wasn’t great at following instructions. He set off at a clip, racing away from the DCI, headed in the direction of the bend. He glanced back, and the sight of Logan kicked his legs into higher gear.

  “Get him, I’ll check the boat.” Ben’s voice came in snatches from behind Logan, sliced and diced by the storm.

  Logan didn’t need telling twice. He knew the coat would only slow him down, so he shrugged it off. Then, head down, arms pumping, he set off after the bastard.

  His old P.E. teacher had always told him that, ‘You might be a big lad, but you can fair move.’ Logan demonstrated that again now, his size twelves slamming against the limestone path, propelling him on through the rain like pistons.

  Walker was almost at the bend, and was about to run straight into Tyler’s team, but Logan very much wanted to be there to see him getting collared.

  With a final glance back at the pursuing detective, Walker lumbered around the curve and out of sight. Being unable to see him spurred Logan on. Digging deep, he found some extra reserves of speed, and was soon clattering around the corner himself, chest heaving beneath his now almost-transparent shirt.

  The curve went on for a couple of dozen yards. Logan was halfway around it when the worry kicked in. There was no shouting. No raised voices. No barked commands.

  He stumbled onto the straight, then hissed when a set of car headlights illuminated, blinding him.

  “Stay where you are!” barked a voice from beyond the lights.

  Tyler.

  “It’s me, you daft bastard,” Logan spat. “Where is he?”

  “We haven’t seen him, boss. We thought you were—”

  “Bastard! He’s gone into the trees.”

  Logan vaulted over the wire fence that ran alongside the path, misjudged the landing, and went staggering down the grassy incline on the other side, branches whipping at him.

  “Well, don’t just fucking stand there!” he bellowed back over his shoulder as he plunged on into the woods, gravity and momentum pulling him down the steepening hill.

  A van door slid open. Two car doors slammed. Logan heard the fence shake and feet come thudding onto the wet grass as he pushed through the trees.

  “On the right!” called someone from behind. Logan’s eyes shot in that direction and caught a glimpse of a burly figure haring away from him.

  The route in front of Logan was uneven and choked with scrub and branches, but it was a dream compared to what Walker had to go through. The beardy-bastard alternated between cursing and sobbing as he struggled through a tangle of jaggy bushes, the thorns ripping at his legs through his faded jeans.

  There was a path or road ahead through the trees, maybe fifty feet away. Walker was desperately making his way towards it, but Logan was going to make bloody sure he never got there.

  Thundering down the hill, the detective skirted the jaggies, used the trunk of a tree as an anchor point, and swung himself sideways into Walker, hammering him with a shoulder-barge that sent him crashing into the undergrowth.

  “Right, then—” Logan wheezed, making a grab for Walker’s arm. Walker twisted, swung. Logan caught a fleeting glimpse of something metallic, and then pain exploded across the side of his skull and his legs turned to jelly.

  He sensed Walker’s movement more than saw it, and grabbed for him. His fingers found the leather jacket, but Walker shrugged him off.

  The forest spun. The rain, which had been falling from above now came at Logan from all directions at once, a cyclone of icy droplets that twirled him around and sent waves of nausea flooding through him.

  “You alright, boss?”

  “Get after him!” Logan hissed. He shook his head and Tyler’s face blurred into focus.

  Tyler set off again. Logan started to run, but his legs objected, and his head voiced its own concerns with a series of stabbing pains that almost dropped him to his knees.

  An uneven line of uniforms in high-vis vests came scrambling past him. Blinking against the rain, Logan was just able to make out Walker stumbling the final few feet towards the edge of the tree-line.

  He was going to make it. The bastard was going to make it.

  A blue light illuminated directly ahead of Walker as he launched himself onto the road. Logan heard a shout, a grunt, a clatter.

  “Get off me! Get the fuck off me!” Walker howled.

  “Edward Walker? I am arresting you on the suspicion of the abduction of Connor Reid.”

  That was DS McQuarrie’s voice. Logan let out a little groan of satisfaction and slumped against the trunk of the nearest tree, his semi-transparent shirt pinkening down the front with his blood.

  “You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be noted and may be used in evidence.”

  Logan raised his eyes to the sky, letting the rain wash over him.

  “Got the bastard,” he said, and then he pushed himself away from the tree, dabbed at his wound with his sleeve, and set off down the hill.

  By the time Logan reached the bottom, Walker was already cuffed and in the process of being bundled into the back of one of the cars with the lights flashing. He had been putting up a bit of a struggle, but the sight of the blood-soaked Logan striding closer made him practically throw himself into the back seat.

  “I didn’t do nothing, alright?” he protested. “I didn’t do it.”

  DS McQuarrie, who had been standing back while a couple of uniforms manhandled Walker into the car, pulled her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen.

  “Boss,” she said, showing Logan the message she had received.

  Boat empty. No sign of boy.

  Logan’s face darkened. He tore his eyes from the screen and marched to the car.

  “Where is he? Where’s Connor?”

  “I
told you, I don’t know!” Walker protested. He was vibrating, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I knew this would happen. I fackin’ knew it. I didn’t have nothing to do with it, alright? I ain’t seen him.”

  Logan’s fists clenched. His teeth ground together.

  He slammed the door before he could do anything stupid.

  “Get him to the station. Log him in, then get him in an interview room,” he instructed anyone and everyone within ear shot. “Do not let him talk to anyone. Do not let him eat or drink. Don’t even let him go for a slash. Get him booked in, get him sat down, and get him warned that he had better start talking.”

  Logan raised his voice to ensure Walker heard the next part. “Or I may not be responsible for my actions.”

  “You need your head looked at,” Tyler said.

  Logan turned on him, eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry?”

  “I mean, no. I’m not saying your mental, or anything, sir. I mean…” Tyler pointed to the side of Logan’s head, just above the temple. “That might need stitching.”

  Logan dabbed at the wound with the back of a hand. It came away bloody. Very bloody, in fact.

  “Bollocks. Fine. DS McQuarrie, can you…?”

  “Hop in, boss,” Caitlyn said, indicating her car. “We’ll swing by the hospital.”

  “Right. Thanks,” Logan said. He eyeballed Tyler while stabbing a finger in Walker’s direction. “Not a bite to eat, not a drop to drink, not a moment to piss. Alright?”

  “Got it.”

  “But try to get him talking before you get him in. If he knows where Connor is, we need to find out pronto.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  Bending, Logan brought his face close to the back window of the police car. Walker slid a little further along the seat away from him as Logan glowered at him through the tinted glass.

  “I’ll see you soon, Eddie.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Half an hour later, Logan sat in the front seat of Caitlyn’s car, gingerly brushing his fingers across three neat sutures on the line of his head where skin met scalp. The car’s wipers were thunking away, working overtime to push back against the rain.

  “I’ll tell you, for a wee hospital, they’re good,” Logan said. “What was that? In and out in twenty minutes? You wouldn’t get that down the road.”