A young woman in a yellow summer dress was frozen in the middle of unloading an armful of shopping from the boot of a little hatchback. Staring at the two men charging towards her.
Action Man grabbed her arm and sent her spinning, practically throwing her right at Tufty.
She hit with a squeal and down they both went, crashing to the lock-block in a clattering hail of tins and packets. They rolled to a halt against the grey harling wall. Which was when she started slapping him. ‘Get off me, you pervert! HELP, POLICE!’
Thunk — that was a car door slamming. Then the engine roared into life.
Tufty struggled free, just in time to see Action Man stick the car in gear and look back over his shoulder. The hatchback’s tyres screeched and it jerked backwards, off the driveway in a cloud of blue smoke... BANG — right into the side of a Volvo parked on the other side of the street.
A piercing shriek filled the air: the Volvo’s car alarm screaming in indignation, hazard lights flashing.
Then the sound of grinding gears and the hatchback lurched forwards again, just as Tufty reached the kerb, swinging round and— Too close! Too close! He jumped back and the bumper snatched at the leg of his trousers. Missed by about half an inch. Then away, engine and tyres squealing in protest.
Miss Sundress staggered into the road beside him. ‘Come back with my car, you bastard!’ She grabbed up a fallen tin of beans and hurled it after the departing hatchback. But it fell too short, buckling against the tarmac as the car screamed down the road, round the corner, and out of sight.
‘Can you smell that?’ Barrett looked up from his clipboard. ‘For some reason, I’ve got a strange craving for stovies.’
Harmsworth scowled at him. ‘Oh ha, ha. Very funny. Let’s make jokes at poor Owen’s expense.’
The living room was... OK, it was a hovel. Piles of pizza boxes on the floor, heaps of shoplifted clothes in the corner — most with the security tags still on. A carpet that... Aye, well, probably best no’ to think about what made it so sticky. But for all the overwhelming mank they had an impressive collection of kit. A huge TV and just about every games console going. Roberta settled into the leather couch, arms along the back. Probably the only clean thing in the entire house.
Harmsworth dabbed at his face with a towel again, turning more of it scarlet. ‘You’re all horrible to me.’
‘We do our best.’ Barrett noted down the details of another iPad, sealed it into an evidence bag, then placed it into one of his blue plastic evidence crates. Happy as a wee squirrel, gathering nuts for winter.
The boy, Tufty, was on the phone again, standing in the corner with one finger in his ear. Presumably to stop his brain from falling out that side. ‘Yeah.... Yeah, OK, thanks.’ He hung up. Pulled a constipated face. ‘Nothing from the lookout request.’
Roberta shook her head. ‘Motherfunker...’
‘Hmph.’ Harmsworth made a big thing of wiping his eyes. ‘I’m fine, by the way. Thanks for asking.’
Barrett slipped a mobile phone into another bag. ‘Got to be thousands and thousands of quids’ worth here.’
‘Not as if someone tried to blind me or anything.’
Then Lund’s dulcet tones came screeching down from somewhere upstairs. ‘SARGE? SARGE, YOU BETTER COME SEE THIS!’
No thanks.
Roberta stretched out a bit. Enjoying the farty squeak of the leather.
‘SARGE, I’M SERIOUS!’
Wonderful.
She hauled herself up from the couch’s leathery embrace and stepped around the soggy pink figure of Harmsworth. ‘Don’t be such a crybaby, Owen. He chucked a jar of beetroot at you, no’ sulphuric acid.’
‘Pickle vinegar really stings!’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’ She slouched out of the manky living room and up the manky stairs to a manky landing decorated with more stick-figure-porn graffiti.
Lund poked her head out of a room at the end. ‘Sarge?’
‘Why can no bugger do anything without me holding their hand?’
But Lund just ducked back inside again.
‘Swear to God...’ Roberta dragged herself down to the end of the landing and into a bedroom that stank of socks and sweat and something a bit sweet and funky smelling. Cannabis hiding beneath the BO.
Five single mattresses were lined up on the floor: some with duvets, some with sleeping bags. All surrounded by drifts of dirty clothes.
A built-in wardrobe with mirrored doors took up nearly the whole wall opposite the curtained windows. Lund was hunkered down in front of it, peering in through a gap between two of the sliding doors.
‘You better no’ be coiling one out there, Veronica. You’re no’ in Elgin now.’
Lund held out a hand to the wardrobe, voice low and gentle. ‘It’s OK. No one’s going to hurt you.’
Roberta frowned, then shuffled around till she could see what Lund was looking at.
Oh...
Two wee boys cowered in the wardrobe, between the coats and things. The pair of them filthy, wearing nothing but grubby T-shirts and grubbier underpants. Five, maybe six years old? Poor wee sods.
She crouched down next to Lund. ‘Hey, guys, are you OK? Want to come see your Aunty Roberta? We’ve come to take you home to your mummies.’
The wee boys didn’t say anything. Then one of them reached out, took hold of the wardrobe door and slid it closed. Leaving Lund and Roberta staring at their own reflections.
Great.
The back garden looked like the kind of place plants went to die. And then get widdled on. Nowhere to sit. So Roberta turned a bucket over and sat on that instead. A modern-day version of Oor Wullie, only much sexier.
She took a long draw on her e-cigarette, dribbling the vapour down her nose as she chased an itchy bit around her left armpit. Mobile phone clamped between her ear and shoulder. ‘No, they’re no’ saying. But the snottery one in the SpongeBob T-shirt’s got a Belfast accent, so maybe no’ even local.’
‘Hmmm...’ DCI Rutherford sounded a bit distracted, as if he had something more important to do. Tosser. ‘You’d think someone would miss a five-year-old boy...’ The clickity sound of a keyboard being fingered rattled out of the earpiece. ‘We’ve got nine missing children in Aberdeen-slash-Aberdeenshire right now: four girls, five boys. Six of them “allegedly” abducted by a parent. Remaining three are early teens.’
‘Social Services are on the way. Maybe if we get them cleaned up and photographed...?’ Roberta rubbed at her eyes as the weight of it all dragged her shoulders down another inch. ‘Wee kids, hiding in a wardrobe.’
‘We just have to do what we can.’
She took the e-cigarette out of her mouth and spat into the yellowy grass. ‘Yeah. Suppose so.’
Didn’t make it feel any better, though.
Chapter Two
in which it is a Braw, Bricht, Moonlicht Nicht
and Tufty Has a Clever — and then a bath
I
Steel stopped on the stairs for a scratch. ‘Will you stop whinging?’
Division Headquarters was surprisingly quiet for a change. Peaceful. Probably because everyone else — all the lucky people — had actually managed to go home.
Tufty peered over the stack of evidence bags, shifted the large plastic crate in his arms. Biceps already wobbling with the strain. ‘This weighs a ton!’