The Missing and the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

couple of times, didn’t get anywhere, then hung limp.
    ‘Well?’ She gave him a little shake. ‘What’ve you got to say for yourself?’
    He bit his top lip. Then shrugged. ‘It’s a comment on our political elite and the disenfranchisement and disengagement of the common man.’ His voice tried out three octaves along the way.
    ‘Spray-painting willies on a Conservative Party billboard doesn’t count as political commentary.’
    ‘Does too.’
    She pushed him at Logan, then dragged out her notebook. ‘Name?’
    He tensed, as if he was about to bolt again. Logan grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘You want a go in the handcuffs? Because I can arrange that.’
    He looked up, over his shoulder. A blush filled in the pale skin between his freckles. ‘You’re not going to tell my mum, are you?’
    Nicholson poked him with her pen. ‘
Name
?’
    ‘I mean, they lord it over us from Edinburgh, don’t they? Our political masters. No one really cares what we think any more. We’re like drones to them, only instead of honey they grow fat on our taxes.’
    Logan pulled his chin in. ‘
Our
taxes? You’re, what, thirteen? When did you last pay any tax?’
    ‘Workers control the means of production.’
    Nicholson poked him again. ‘You’ve got one more chance, then I’m doing you for refusing to give your details. Now:
name
?’
    He took a deep breath. Stared down at his trainers. ‘Geoffrey Lovejoy.’ Then a sniff, and his head came up again, eyes glinting. ‘I’m a political prisoner. I demand you call the United Nations. Power to the people!’
     
    Logan looked up from his notebook. ‘And you’re sure you’d recognize her again if you saw her?’
    The shopkeeper nodded, setting a crowd of chins on a Mexican wave. ‘Absolutely. She had half a dozen bottles of Chanel Number Five, a handful of Touche Éclat concealer, Elizabeth Arden, and every single bit of Paco Rabanne we had on display!’ He swept a hand towards the other side of the chemist’s, where the front door was being held open by a little old lady wearing a plastic headscarf. ‘Scooped them up and ran off without so much as a blush. Our Stacey chased her, but …’ A shrug.
    Nicholson’s stabproof was beginning to look as if she’d smeared it with camouflage paint – green grass stains mingling with the mud from their run-in with the escaped cow. It wasn’t a good look. She pointed at the security camera bolted to the wall behind the till. ‘You get it on CCTV?’
    A blush swept across the puffy cheeks. ‘It’s plastic. I bought it off eBay for a fiver.’
     
    Nicholson pointed. ‘Is that not Liam Barden?’
    On the other side of the road, a chubby man in an Aberdeen Football Club shirt walked into the Co-op.
    Logan frowned as the automatic door closed, hiding the man and his bright-red shiny shirt. ‘You sure?’
    ‘Certain.’ She parked outside the shop. ‘Well … eighty percent. You got the ID sheet?’
    He dug into the glove compartment and came out with four creased sheets of A4, stapled together. Two photos on each sheet, along with names and details of when and where they went missing. Liam Barden was on the third page: grinning away at a Caley Thistle match, both thumbs up, and what looked like a gravy stain splodging the Orion Group logo on his blue-and-red football top. A wee gold thistle glinted on a golden chain around Liam’s neck. Very classy. A proper Ratners special.
    Liam shared the printout with a picture of everyone’s favourite drug-dealing scumbag, Jack Simpson – jagged tribal tattoos on his neck, sunken cheeks, pierced nose and ears.
    He’d also grown a Hitler moustache, a pair of glasses, Frankenstein’s Monster bolts, and a blacked-out tooth. There was even a speech balloon with ‘I H AS A S EXY !!!’ written in it.
    ‘For God’s sake.’ Logan held the sheet out. ‘How many times do I have to tell people
not
to draw things on missing persons photos?’
    ‘Don’t look at me: don’t even own a