— swept Naomi up for a hug and a kiss.
Giggles.
Then groped that magnificent arse of Susan’s, gave her a smooch, accepted the proffered slices of hot buttered toast and swept from the room.
Susan’s voice thumped out from the kitchen as Roberta marched down the hall. ‘Don’t be late tonight! We’re going to see that play. And remember to pick up my trophy from the engravers!’
‘Love you.’
Photos of every family holiday they’d ever taken lined the walls. Just the two of them in Benidorm, Margate, Normandy, Shetland, Edinburgh, Wales. Half a dozen pictures of Susan on her own, showing off her latest golfing trophy. That trip to New York when Susan was six months pregnant. Then more holidays with the addition of a teeny weeny Jasmine — getting bigger and bigger. And finally: all four of them on the sands at Lossiemouth, everyone but Naomi grinning at the camera — she was too busy trying to eat a flip-flop.
Roberta grabbed her jacket from the coat rack, chomping on toast as she plucked car keys from the bowl and pulled out her phone. Bumping out the front door, dialling and chewing all at the same time. Multitasking.
Sunlight dappled through the trees, making leopard-spot shadows undulate across the garden. Next door were getting their roof redone — the whole place shrouded in scaffolding, their builders far too well behaved to wolf whistle. Well, Rubislaw Den was a classy area. Couldn’t have riff-raff swinging from the scaffolding with their sexual harassment and hairy arse-cracks on show.
Barrett’s voice sounded in her ear, all efficient and polite. ‘CID office, can I help you?’
‘Aye, aye, Davey. Is everyone in?’
‘In and working, Sarge.’
‘God, that’ll be a first.’ She plipped the locks on her MX-5 and clambered in behind the wheel. Propped the toast up on the dashboard. ‘What about Beatrice Edwards?’
‘Your rape victim? Nothing so far.’
She started the car and pulled away from the kerb. ‘But they’ve arrested that crenelated fudgemonkey Wallace, right?’
‘Actually, the word of the day is—’
‘Don’t mess with me today, Davey.’
‘Sorry, Sarge.’
She turned left at the bottom of the street, past rows and rows of pale granite homes. ‘I’m off to pick up Tufty. With any luck that bash on the head will have dunted some sense into it.’
‘Well, we can always dream, can’t— Oops. Hold on, got a visitor.’
A muffled voice in the background sounded suspiciously like Detective Chief Infector Simon Stinky Rutherford. ‘Where’s Detective Sergeant Steel?’
‘Don’t you dare, Davey!’
‘Sir. She’s just left to collect Constable Quirrel from the hospital.’
‘Oh. Good. And what about these phones and things: progress?’
‘Tell him to jam them up his fundamental orifice.’
‘Got our first batch of people coming in to collect their property later today.’
‘Excellent. Well, keep up the good work, and tell DS Steel I need to see her as soon as she gets back. Top priority.’
‘Will do, sir.’ He lowered his voice, all conspiratorial. ‘You get that?’
‘Oh I can hardly wait.’
She locked her MX-5 and sauntered across the car park, puffing away on her fake cigarette. Making clouds of watermelon steam. That was the trouble with real cigarettes, they didn’t come in fun fruity flavours. And ‘menthol’ didn’t count. That was just like smoking a rolled-up old person.
Anyway: twenty to nine and the hospital car park was already crowded with the usual collection of rustbuckets and massive four-by-fours that never had to deal with anything more ‘off-road’ than the potholes on Great Western Road.
Nice day, though. Warm and sunny.
What was that, four days in a row? Probably due a monsoon by the end of the week, then. Or snow. After all, it was only July. Probably be sledging down School Hill in—
The harsh breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep of a car horn made her jump, then scuffle off to the side as a hatchback growled past on lowered suspension and alloy rims. Peugeot 208 with an oversized spoiler and a neon-orange paintjob. The wee turd behind the wheel couldn’t have been much past seventeen: a baseball cap on backwards and a pair of oversized dark sunglasses perched on a long nose. Young woman in the passenger seat.
The words ‘TOMMY & JOSIE’ were printed on a strip at the top of the windscreen. Did people really still do that?
And it was a bit early in the day for boy racers too.
The Peugeot stopped at the end of the row, as close as you could actually get to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in a car these days. Then the passenger door popped open and the young woman got out. Blonde hair long enough to reach the small of her back, a mole on her right cheek. She turned and blew a kiss back into the car, with pouty red lips.
Well, well, well. If it wasn’t the star of Tufty’s erotic bathroom photo shoot — the one on the stolen phone. Which meant the guy behind the wheel was the phone’s owner. Just as well he was barely out of nappies, because in real life, with her clothes on, his photographic model didn’t look a day over fifteen. Skin-tight jeans, bright-red crop top, denim jacket, and shiny-white trainers with three-inch soles.
Little Miss Porn Star trotted around to the driver’s side and he buzzed the window down, letting out his horrible Bmmmm-tsh-Bmmmm-tsh-Bmmmm-tsh techno music. She gave him a quick snog, winked, then blew him another kiss, hopped over the wooden barrier and skipped across the road towards the hospital’s main entrance. ‘TOMMY’ watched her all the way. Probably ogling her fifteen-year-old backside, having nasty filthy thoughts about what he’d do to it later.
Roberta marched over, narrowed her eyes, leaned forward and stared into the car.
‘JOSIE’ disappeared through the automatic doors and ‘TOMMY’ faced front again. Saw Roberta staring at him and flinched.
‘The hell you looking at, Granny?’ He gave her the finger, cranked up the tunes, and drove off. BMMMM-TSH-BMMMM-TSH-BMMMM-TSH...
Who the fudgemonkeying motherfunker was he calling ‘Granny’?
She whipped out her phone and took a photo of the Peugeot’s number plate before it disappeared. Little sod was about to find out what happened when you screwed about with the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009.
Roberta thumbed out a quick text to go with the picture:
Gordy: I need you to look up a wee shite
for me
Possible first name “Tommy”
Drives a sharny neon-orange Peugeot GTI
Registration number in the pic
ASAP
The Peugeot BMMMM-TSHed its way along the road skirting the car park, then zoomed off with a boy-racer roar of oversized exhaust.
Dick.
Her phone launched into Cagney & Lacey.
‘Gordy?’
‘Aye, hold on. System’s running like a one-legged dog the day... OK. Registered owner is Angela Shand, sixteen Oldfold Gardens, Milltimber.’
‘He didn’t look much like an Angela.’
‘Checking insurance details... Here we go: named driver is Thomas Corona Shand, seventeen, resident at the same address.’
‘Seventeen? Insurance must be costing them a sodding fortune.’ Still, if ‘JOSIE’ was fifteen instead of fourteen, Tommy would have a decent chance of getting off when it came before the Procurator Fiscal. A less than two-year difference got him a free pass under Section Thirty-Nine.