Close to the Bone by Stuart MacBride Read Free Book Online

warm.’
    ‘Plenty of time to get to the jewellers, cut the alarm cables, get in, tie up the proprietor and his bit on the side, rob everything, then sod off into the night.’
    Logan took a biro from the mess on his desk and tapped it against his chin. ‘Interesting.’
    ‘Ooh,’ Rennie sat forward in the chair. ‘Maybe your victim’s one of the team? Someone got greedy, or they thought he was a snitch? ’
    ‘Would explain the gangland execution, wouldn’t it? ’
    A knock at the door, then DS Chalmers stuck her head in. ‘Guv? ’ A huge grin split her face, teeth all small, pointy, and glinting. ‘We just got DNA back: it’s a match.’
    Looked as if DCI Steel was right after all. There’d be bacon flapping its way past the window any minute now. ‘Get on to the PNC, I want—’
    ‘Criminal record? ’ She held up a manila folder.
    ‘And—’
    ‘Current address? ’ She placed a printout in the middle of Logan’s desk, then stood back, showing off her happy little teeth. ‘And there’s a pool car waiting outside for us.’
    Cocky, ambitious, and efficient. Maybe not such a bad combination after all.
    Chalmers took them out through the city limits, heading north on the Inverness road, sitting in the outside lane of the dual carriageway, doing eighty, with the blue flashers going. ‘. . .and you’d think he’d be a bit more grateful, wouldn’t you? At least now he knows where his precious Range Rover is. But he was a complete arsehole about it.’
    Logan watched the fields go by, fluffy white sheep and big rectangular cows polka-dotting the swathes of almost luminous green. ‘Uh-huh.’
    ‘OK, so it’s a burned-out hulk, but he’ll have third-party fire and theft, won’t he? Don’t know what he’s moaning about, really. Just because we haven’t got a clue who stole it in the first place. . .’
    ‘Right.’ A fortress of pine trees flanked the dual carriageway for a minute, needles shining in the sunlight, the earth below wreathed in brambles and sharp-edged shadow. And then more fields. Aberdeenshire at its bucolic best, sliding by outside the car while DS Chalmers jumped from topic to topic in a perpetual-motion monologue.
    ‘. . .and I know blow’s never really that difficult to get hold of, but it’s everywhere right now. Cannabis as far as the eye can see: Inverness, Aberdeen, Ellon, Keith, Peterhead, it’s like a plague. . .’
    ‘Mmm. . .’
    Down the hill to Blackburn, through the roundabout, and on. The sky was a blanket of sapphire blue, streaked around the edges with misty white. Warm in the car. Logan blinked. The army ants had all congregated in the bridge of his nose, and now the little sods were having a hoedown. In clogs.
    ‘. . .can’t believe the SPSA are still fiddling about and re-organizing stuff. Honestly, can you think of a single person who’s actually in favour of all this? Nothing but cost-cutting pirate bollocks – not surprising the SOCOs are all grumbling about industrial action. . .’
    Sodding Isobel and her ‘analgesics’. Might as well have downed a couple of kiddie Aspirin for all the good they were doing. Should’ve taken some of the proper painkillers from the caravan: the ones that made the world go all fluffy, warm, and soft. Like sleeping on a giant kitten.
    ‘. . .just have to look at this guy – we get a hit on his DNA, but nothing on the fingerprints. You know why? Because they can’t leave well enough alone, that’s why. If it’s not broken, poke and fiddle with it till it is. Honestly. . .’
    ‘Hmm.’ Might be nice to move further out of town. The caravan was OK, not that much smaller than the flat, and it was all on the ground floor – which was a bonus. And the view wasn’t bad out over the fields, and trees, and the River Don. Just had to ignore the sewage treatment plant directly opposite. Other than that it was OK. Be nice to have a bigger place though.
    ‘. . .continual budget cuts. I bet we could catch half the neds in