"Dying light" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacBride Stuart)

44
I

'Shut up! Fuckin' shut up!'

'That's why you killed her, isn't it? You were jealous she wasn't all yours. Anyone could have her for the price of a burger.'

'Shut up…'

Steel settled back in her chair, scratching vaguely at the damp patch under her left arm. She nodded in Logan's direction and he asked Jamie where he was between eleven o'clock Monday night and two o'clock Tuesday morning.

'I was at home. Asleep.' But there was something in his eyes. 'Suzie'll tell you. She was there.'

DI Steel raised an eyebrow. 'No' in the same bed, I hope.'

Jamie just scowled at her. 'We've got Forensics turning your flat upside down: they're going to find her blood, aren't they? You beat her so bad, you must've been clarted in it.'

She leaned forwards in her seat, tapping the table with a nicotine-stained finger. 'Wouldn't be the first time you beat her up either, would it? She kicked you out 'cos of it.'

'I didn't mean to hurt her!' The tears were starting.

Steel's smile turned into one of triumph. 'But you did, didn't you? You didn't mean to, but you hurt her really bad.

Was it an accident? Come on, Jamie, you'll feel better if you tell us.'

An hour later they still hadn't managed to get anything else out of him. And as Steel said, it was too hot in the interview room to bugger about any longer. So down to the cells went Jamie McKinnon and down to the canteen went Logan and DI Steel. Chilled tins of Irn-Bru all round. 'Christ, that's better she said, standing outside on the rear podium two minutes later, surrounded by the patrol a'nd pool cars, drink in one hand, cigarette smouldering away in the other. 'We'll get the PF in to look at the tape. "I never meant to hurt her," my arse, all we need is a couple of witnesses and we're laughing.'

She smiled and knocked back a mouthful of Irn-Bru. 'Knew it was about time my luck changed.'

Unfortunately Logan's hadn't. When DI Steel said, 'All we need is a couple of witnesses,' what she actually meant was that Logan had to change shifts and spend the next couple of nights wandering around the docks chatting up prostitutes.

The first time in ages that his shift pattern was the same as Jackie's, and the inspector wanted it all changed again. Jackie was going to kill him.

'You're young,' Steel told him when he complained, 'you'll get over it. Better bugger off home after lunch. Get some kip. In the meantime, let's get the PF down here…'

The Procurator Fiscal and her new deputy sat through the recording of Jamie McKinnon's interview in silence. The tape was a good start, but it wasn't enough to secure a conviction, for that they'd need some real, hard forensic evidence.

'Speaking of which,' said Rachael Tulloch, deputy PF to the stars, 'how did you get on with those contraceptives?'

The Fiscal looked momentarily flustered as Logan explained about the two hundred and thirteen second-hand prophylactics sitting in the morgue's specimen freezers; it looked like this was the first she'd heard of her deputy's spectacular plan. At least Rachael had the decency to blush and admit it was a lot more condoms than she'd been anticipating, but now that they had a suspect under arrest, couldn't they match his DNA to them? Prove he was there? The Fiscal went quiet for a minute, considering it, and then agreed it probably couldn't hurt. Logan tried not to groan. Isobel was bound to blame him for all the work she was about to get. He consoled himself with the thought that she didn't like him much anyway.

When he went down to the morgue to break the bad news, Isobel was hunched over her brain-in-a-bucket again. Her reaction to Logan's request for DNA testing was pretty much what he'd been expecting. Only with more swearing.

'Don't look at me,' he said when she paused for breath.