Part 32 (1/2)

'Only one of us who is. Don't break her heart for G.o.d's sake, we'd be b.u.g.g.e.red if she took the hump and left.'

'So...' said Logan, choosing his words carefully, 'Debs: she's a Rankin fan.'

Rickards froze, and that was all Logan needed to know he'd been right: she was part of the BDSM scene.

'I saw the book in her handbag.'

'Oh.' The constable s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in his seat. 'Not a problem, is it?'

'Not with me.'

'Good.'

He supposed it wasn't that surprising Insch's top star was into bondage that Tina woman in Cafe Ici kept banging on about performing being like pulling on a second skin. Being something and someone you weren't. Just like wearing a full-body rubber suit. Which probably explained why Rickards was attracted to her. Logan wondered if that made her a top, or a bottom. Looking at the constable it was easy to see him as the spankee rather than the spanker, but you never knew.

He frowned, feeling the little wheels going round in his brain. 's.h.i.+te.' It was obvious when you thought about it.

'Sir?'

Logan grabbed the DVD of Jason's final performance and hurried from the room. There were a couple of things he needed to check, but he had a sinking feeling he knew what he'd find.

And DI Insch was not going to be happy about it.

50.

'No.' The inspector scowled at the printouts Logan had spread across his desk. 'This is just a load of-'

'But if you look at the-'

'No: it's not her!'

'Look at the pictures! She's the same body shape as the woman in the bondage suit, she's in the scene ask Rickards and she's a switch, exactly what Fettes was advertising for. Plus she's new, inexperienced, likely to make mistakes.' It had taken some doing to get all that out of the constable without letting him know why, but eventually Rickards had spilled the beans.

'It's not her! You should be out there chasing up that search team, not in here wasting my b.l.o.o.d.y time!'

Logan shuffled through the images. 'Here the e-fit of the driver, if you lose the moustache, gla.s.ses and goatee it looks just like her.' He'd cheated a bit on the second image, using the various Mikado posters Insch had stuck up all over the station for reference, making sure the new e-fit had Debbie Kerr's eyes and mouth: the resemblance was uncanny. 'There never was a second person, it was all her.'

Insch picked up both pictures and held them side by side. 'Her face is more heart-shaped. This isn't-'

'Remember the impersonation she does of you? She's a brilliant mimic, how hard would it be for her to slap on a fake moustache and Irish accent?'

'Don't be b.l.o.o.d.y...' Insch went silent, staring at the printout. 'It's a coincidence.'

'She even moves the same way watch the video again and you'll see! You know she's a good enough actor to carry it off. They say BDSM lets people be someone else someone without boundaries. That's what she does on stage, isn't it? Be someone else?'

The inspector sighed, screwed up his face and swore. Logan knew it seemed like a stretch, but he could feel it in his gut, between the scars: the amazing Debbie killed Jason Fettes. All he had to do now was prove it.

Logan grabbed a couple of uniforms and sent them off to do a background search on Deborah Kerr, hoping it would turn up some sort of history: drugs, violence, parking tickets he wasn't fussy. And if they could find out where she might have taken Fettes that would be a bonus friends' or relatives' houses, rented accommodation, holiday home, secret bondage dungeon exactly the same thing they'd done with Frank Garvie before he killed himself.

And then he went to check up on Insch's search team.

The wind whistled through the granite streets, stealing the warmth from bundled-up bodies as they picked their way through Holburn, Ruthrieston and Mannofield, looking for the little red hatchback Rob Macintyre had taken on his jaunts south. 'Anything?' asked Logan, collar turned up, hands deep in his pockets as a large, s.h.i.+vering policeman slowly succ.u.mbed to hypothermia.

'b.u.g.g.e.r all.' The sergeant cupped his hands and blew into them, ears and nose neon red. 'b.l.o.o.d.y thing could be anywhere. If it was me, it'd be a burnt-out wreck somewhere out Ballater way by now, or at the bottom of a loch. We'd never find it.'

Which was pretty much what Logan was starting to think. And without the car they had no forensic evidence.

Four o'clock and they still hadn't found the hatchback, so he and Insch were back in interview room two with Rob Macintyre's fiancee. A day in the cells hadn't done her any favours her make-up was smudged, mascara all down her face, her eyes red and watery, nose raw from wiping it on the sleeve of her black blouse, leaving little, glittering silver trails. Logan doubted she'd stopped crying since they'd questioned her that morning.

Insch didn't beat about the bush: 'Where's the car?'

Ashley shrugged, eyes down, picking the red varnish off her nails. 'Think Rob's auntie might have picked it up again'

'She lives in a nursing home in Ellon. She's in a wheelchair.' They'd checked.

Another shrug. 'Not my car.'

'Let's try something else then.' Logan opened the case file and started pulling photographs out, laying them one by one in front of Ashley. 'Christine, Gail, Sarah, Jennifer, Joanne, Sandra, Nikki, Jessica, Wendy. These are the before shots.' All smiling young women, making nice for the camera with their whole lives ahead of them and no idea what was coming. Looking at them all together like this, it was obvious that Macintyre was a predator of opportunity. None of his victims had anything in common, other than being young, attractive, and in the wrong place at the wrong time. 'Would you like to see what they looked like after your fiance got hold of them?'

Ashley stared at him. 'My Robert didn't do anything.'

'Sarah Calder.' Logan laid the photograph taken when she'd got out of hospital on top of the smiling 'before' image. Dark hair, frightened eyes, bruised chin, her left cheek held together with black st.i.tches: an inch and a half of raw, puckered flesh. 'She's twenty-three. Was getting married in April, but now she can't stand for her boyfriend to touch her.' He took the next pic out and placed it over another happy face. 'Jennifer Shepherd, she was second.' A deep-purple bruise stretched across her forehead, her nose swollen and misshapen where it had been rammed into the pavement, the mark of the knife curling from her left ear to the side of her mouth. 'She works with disabled children. On tranquillizers now, too scared to leave the house.' Then it was numbers three, and four, and five, and six, the violence and scarring getting worse every time. 'Christine killed herself: swallowed a pile of sleeping pills and painkillers, climbed into the bath and slit her wrists from here to here,' Logan took hold of Ashley's arm and demonstrated with the tip of his finger.

She yanked it back out of his grasp, rubbing at the skin as if it were infected. 'He didn't! I...'

'You gave him an alibi, Ashley: you lied for him. And he went out and he did that.' Pointing at the women. 'Every time you lied, another one got added to the list.'

He pulled out the first photo from the Dundee attacks. 'Nikki Bruce.' And as Logan went through the list Ashley got paler and paler, crying quietly, eyes wide and bloodshot. Rocking back and forth with an arm wrapped around herself, as if that would hold her world together.

He almost felt sorry for her.

Logan placed the last photo down, completing Rob Macintyre's mosaic of pain. Insch leant forward. 'What did it cost?' he asked, tapping the table with a fat finger. 'What did he give you to lie for him? New car? Jewellery? Don't tell me: you did it for love!' Logan's money was on jewellery, like that fancy gold and ruby necklace she'd been wearing the day they went round to interview Macintyre after the first Dundee rape. The one she played with whenever the attack was mentioned. Then there were the earrings and the bracelet. A brand-new, blood-red ruby for every woman her fiance attacked.

Bottom lip trembling, she wiped the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. More welled up in their place. 'Why?'

'Why what?'

'Why are you doing this? He's in a coma, for G.o.d's sake!'

Insch's voice was like a dark rumble in the silence that followed. 'Can you not see the photographs? Do you think your boyfriend being in hospital makes it all better? That they don't wake up screaming in the dark, because of him? They deserve more than that.'

She jumped to her feet, eyes full of fire and tears. 'WHAT ABOUT ME? WHAT DO I DESERVE?'