He clambered into the PSD pool car and checked his watch. A little after nine. ‘Probably got time to pick up coffee on the way to the cemetery. If we’re quick.’
Rennie clunked his door shut and sat there, looking up at the house. ‘Guv... Not being funny or anything, but back there, with the husband, was that not a bit... harsh?’
‘Good.’
‘No, but what if he makes a complaint?’
‘Brian Chalmers was screwing around on his wife. A wife he knew was on antidepressants. He was going to ask for a divorce the day after her birthday.’ Logan fastened his seatbelt. ‘So yes: I gave him a hard time. What do you think I should’ve given him, biscuits and a cuddle?’
Rennie started the car. ‘Sure you weren’t just punishing him because you feel guilty about what happened to her?’
Idiot.
‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘So, let’s get this straight,’ Rennie turned, voice and face deadpan, ‘being investigated by Professional Standards had nothing to do with her topping herself.’
The little sod might have a point.
‘Oh... shut up and drive.’
Hazlehead Cemetery stretched down towards the Westhill road. They’d made an effort to lay this bit of it out in long sweeping curves, but there was a lot of ground to fill. Space for thousands more bodies.
And soon, there would be space for one more.
A bright-yellow JCB sat by a bend in the road that wound through the middle of the cemetery — presumably so the hearses could deliver their passengers to their allotted spots. The digger hunched over one of the graves. Like an expectant beast. Growling.
Logan and Rennie stood beneath a row of trees, on the very edge of the cemetery. Not that they provided a lot of shelter from the thick drifts of pewter-grey drizzle that coated everything with a sheen of cold and damp. But at least it was somewhere to drink their coffee.
Next to the JCB, three SOC-suited figures were busy erecting a Scene Examination tent — big enough to plonk over the grave when it was excavated.
Rennie sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘You ever had a shot on a digger? I’d love that. Gouging huge great clods out the surface of the earth... Oh, ho. Clap hands, here comes Charlie.’
A man in a brown suit and council-issue tie worried his way up the hearse road towards them, clutching his fluorescent-yellow waterproof jacket shut. Woolly hat jammed low over his ears, a scowl pulling his jowls into a disappointed-scrotum shape.
His glasses were all steamed up too. ‘Closing the cemetery... I don’t see why this couldn’t have been done last night!’
Logan had another sip of lukewarm coffee. ‘Health and safety.’
‘There are people wanting to visit their loved ones and they expect the council to facilitate that. If you’re a bereaved relative, what are you going to think about all this?’
Logan leaned over to one side, looking across the cemetery to the car park. Its only occupants were the PSD pool car, Scene Examination’s grubby white Transit, the duty undertaker’s discreet ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, and the battered rattletrap Mr Scrotumface had arrived in. Other than that, the place was deserted. Logan stood up straight again. ‘Please don’t let us stop you comforting them. We’ll let ourselves out.’
‘Hmmph!’ An imperious sniff, then he turned and marched off into the drizzle again, nose held high. Walking as if his buttocks were tightly clenched. Presumably to stop the stick from falling out.
Rennie sidled closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Bet he’s the kind of guy who can’t get it up unless he’s filled out a requisition in triplicate to boink his girlfriend.’
Logan’s Airwave handset gave four bleeps. He answered it. ‘McRae. Safe to talk.’
‘Bet he’s a riot in the bedroom too.’ Rennie put on a droning nasal voice. ‘Tonight, Jean, you’ll observe that we’re departing from our usual missionary position due to roadworks on the A944 outside Dobbies Garden Centre.’
Down by the JCB, one of the white-oversuited figures waved at them. Then her voice crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘That’s us ready.’
Logan pressed the button. ‘Off you go then.’
‘Instead we’ll be attempting the “Reverse Cowgirl” in honour of John Gordon MP, the 178th Lord Provost of Aberdeen — 1705 to 1708.’
She turned and gave the digger driver a wave.
The great beast roared.
‘And I know it’ll cause you a great deal of sexual excitement, Jean, when I say that John Gordon was also the 185th Lord Provost of Aberdeen. He served two nonconsecutive terms in office. Hmmm? Hmmm? Yes, I thought you’d like that.’
The digger’s yellow arm reached forward, its claw digging deep into the turf, peeling it back to expose the dark-brown soil beneath.
‘Now, enough foreplay, Jean. Let us commence with having “the sex” as per council regulation fifty-four, paragraph six, subsection—’
Logan hit him.
10
The JCB towered over the opened grave, glistening in the drizzle. Its claw thick with dark-brown earth.
Logan inched closer.
One of their three-person Scene Examination team peered down into the pit, hands on her knees. ‘You ready?’
Her two colleagues hunched at the bottom of the hole, fiddling with thick tie-down straps. Then the bigger of the two stood and gave her the thumbs up, his white oversuit clarty with dirt.
She passed the signal on to the digger driver and the JCB’s engine growled again — the arm lifting over the hole. A chain with a hook on the end of it dangled from the claw.
Clarty the Examiner reached up and fastened the straps onto the hook, before he and his filthy friend scrambled out of the grave.
‘OK.’ The scene examiner in the clean suit pointed a few graves down. ‘If we can all retreat to a safe distance, please.’ She ushered Logan and Rennie to step away from the hole, and all five of them gathered around a shiny black headstone — like a chunk of kitchen worktop with gold lettering on it: ‘NOW ANNOYING THE ANGELS’.
She took off her facemask and raised her eyebrows at Logan. Shirley, from Chalmers’ garage that morning. ‘This your first exhumation?’
‘Third.’
Rennie leaned against the headstone. ‘I’ve never done one before. It’s kinda like Burke and Hare, only with a JCB. And in daylight. And not Edinburgh. Or 1828.’
Everyone stared at him.
The tips of his ears went a darker shade of pink. ‘Sorry.’
Shirley raised a hand to shoulder height and pointed at the sky. Then made small circles with her finger, the other hand held flat just beside it.
A deeper growl and the digger’s arm went up, slow and steady.
She smiled at Logan. ‘And, as if by magic...’
A mud-covered shape rose from the grave. It wasn’t a standard wooden coffin — a chunk of dirt fell off exposing what looked like wickerwork. One of those trendy woven-from-sustainable-materials biodegradable jobs.
It cleared the lip of the grave and kept going... five, maybe six foot into the air... and that was when the bottom gave way. The remains cascaded down into the pit. Bones and chunks of stuff and plastic bags swollen with internal organs. Everything slithery and glistening and dark. As they spattered back into the earth, the stomach-clenching stench of rotten meat exploded out from the pit and everyone recoiled, coughing and gagging.
Rennie slapped both hands over his nose and mouth. ‘Aw... God!’