Blind Eye (39 page)

'Ah well... Bring us back some vodka, eh?'

'Speaking of Finnie,' Logan grabbed the printout, 'he about?'

Logan could tell Rennie was thinking: he could smell the burning dust.

'Nope,' the constable said at last, 'got a phone call and went scurrying out of here. Back door I think?'

Logan said his goodbyes, signed out, then sauntered outside, making for the keypad controlled door that led onto Lodge Walk.

The door was ajar. Logan pushed it open, going from bright sunshine into the blue shadow of the alley.

DCI Finnie was just turning back towards the station, stuffing a brown envelope into his inside jacket pocket. He looked up and saw Logan standing there, then frowned. 'What are--'

'Going to get my suitcase.'

'Oh, right.' Finnie said something about interdepartmental cooperation with the Polish police, but Logan wasn't listening. He was looking over the Chief Inspector's shoulder at a spotty youth marching away down the gloomy alleyway and out onto Union Street. The sunlight caught in his bright green hair, making it shine like electric grass. And then he was gone.

A hand thumped down on Logan's shoulder breaking the spell. 'Good luck, I'm counting on you.'

'Oh, right ... thank you, sir.'

'Soon as you're back I want you on Operation Tailback. It'll probably be a couple of days before we can make the announcement - about the promotion I mean - but I want you heading up a team ASAP. OK?'

And then Finnie's phone rang. The DCI dragged it out and headed back towards the station: 'What? ... No, of
course
I don't mind waiting
three days
for a warrant. He's only wanted for
armed robbery
after all, not like it's anything
important
...'

Logan stayed where he was, staring down the alleyway to the patch of glowing street at the far end. Green hair. Spots. And a brown envelope.

No doubt about it: background radiation could be a dangerous thing.

40

At least he'd managed to get a window seat. Logan was halfway across the North Sea, with a strange cheese and pesto sandwich and a tiny bottle of white wine. The wheezy old woman sitting next to him had lasted a whole fifteen minutes before falling asleep, twitching as she dreamed, like a cat.

The report he'd printed out before leaving the office didn't make very scintillating reading - Goulding went on and on about 'behavioural indicators' and 'stress-point escalators', none of which made any sense to Logan.

Gilchrist continues to refuse to discuss his victims, or even acknowledge their existence. By removing their eyes he has removed the very essence of their humanity; many cultures believe the eyes to be the gateway to the soul, and Gilchrist has removed that gateway, rendering them spiritually inert (an important distinction for someone with Gilchrist's strong, though twisted, religious convictions {
see Appendix B, section 3.2
}), as such they have no meaning to him.

It would not surprise me if Gilchrist later admits to consuming the eyes. Possibly as part of a ritual based on his somewhat individual views on the sacrament, designed to absorb his victim's immortal soul.

However, this remains conjecture at this point.

Blah, blah, blah ... Logan skimmed forward a couple of pages. The whole thing was a great steaming pile of conjecture as far as he could see.

Certainly Ricky Gilchrist represents a very real danger to the public, and while there are no current indications that he may be suicidal, I recommend that he be kept under close observation.

Which seemed to be a long-winded way of saying what they'd known all along: Ricky Gilchrist was a nut-job.

Logan put the report down and stared out at the glittering blue surface of the North Sea.

Should have brought a book with him.

The woman sitting next to him had stopped twitching and started snoring, the noise barely perceptible over the plane's engines.

Logan polished off his wee individual bottle of white wine, then asked for another one, and settled down for some industrial-strength brooding. First about Samantha. And then about Detective Chief Inspector Andrew 'Brown-Envelope' Finnie.

And then he went back to brooding about Samantha again.

Playing with his scars, then acting as if
he
was the one with the problem. Logan shifted in his seat. OK, so he had a problem... But that didn't mean she had to yell at him and storm off.

Away on a trip to Poland, two high-profile arrests under his belt, a promotion to DI coming up - God knew he'd been waiting long enough - and then
this
had to happen. Tainting it all.

He placed a hand on his stomach, pressing until he could feel the old familiar tug of knitted tissue, the stitches, the months in hospital.

Bloody Angus Robertson: even after all these years he was still screwing up Logan's life.

Za Nasza I Wasza Wolnosc
[F
OR
O
UR
F
REEDOM
A
ND
Y
OURS
]

41

Logan stifled a yawn and joined the shuffling queue for passport control. The place was even more soulless than the one back at Aberdeen airport. Plus all the security guards were wearing drab-olive military uniforms, complete with side arms. Even after doing his firearms training, there was something about seeing policemen with guns that gave Logan the willies.

He picked up his suitcase and slouched into the arrivals lounge - a big empty room with white walls and a glass ceiling. A couple of men held up sheets of paper with indecipherable names scribbled on them. A handful of small children squealed around a businessman, their mother hanging back. Scowling and heavily pregnant.

There was no sign of anyone who looked like a 'Staff Sergeant Lukaszewski', or a 'Senior Constable Wiktorja

Jaroszewicz'.

Typical.

Logan dumped his luggage at his feet, and stood there looking gormless for a minute. Until a balding man in a shabby grey pullover sidled up and said, 'You tourist? You want taxi, yes?'

Alarm bells.

Logan pulled out his warrant card. '
Policja.
'

The man backed away, stammering, '
Przepraszam, pomylilem sie...
' and then froze as a hand slapped down on his shoulder.

The woman standing behind him couldn't have been an inch over five foot five, mid-thirties, blonde hair scraped back in a severe ponytail. 'Damn right you made a mistake!' At least she was speaking English.

Mr Shabby Pullover closed his eyes and winced. '
Cholera jasna...
'

She spun him around. 'How many times have I told you?'

'
Przepraszam:
sorry, I am sorry...'

'You are lucky I am busy, Radoslaw.' She let go. 'Go on, get out of here you dirty
zboczeniec
.'

A smile scrambled onto his face. '
Dziekuje, dziekuje bardzo!
'

And then he all but ran for it, her parting shot ringing around the arrivals hall as he scampered away: 'Next time I catch you, you will not be thanking me, you will be clutching your balls and crying like a little baby: stay away from the airport!'

There was silence as her threat echoed away, everyone staring at Logan and the woman. 'Come on.' She grabbed Logan's bag and strode for the exit. 'I am parked outside.'

They stepped through the sliding doors and emerged under some sort of flyover, surrounded by grey concrete on all four sides. Rain poured down a set of stairs. The distant rumble of thunder. Welcome to Warsaw.

Her car was a right-hand-drive Opel hatchback in grubby silver. She threw Logan's luggage in the boot, and jumped in behind the wheel. It wasn't until Logan walked around to the passenger side that he saw the damage - it was one long collection of dents and scrapes. The door squealed as he hauled it open, and groaned when he pulled it shut.

The woman shook her head. 'You have to slam it hard, or it will pop open every time we go over a pothole.'

Logan did as he was told.

'Piece of shit, yeah?' She stuck the car in gear, and floored it.

'Jesus...' Logan grabbed onto the handle above the door as she roared around the corner and nearly into the back of a bus.

She didn't seem to notice, just shifted down and swerved round the outside, bumping up onto the kerb on the way past. And then they were out from under the flyover, swapping grey concrete for an even greyer sky.

Rain hammered down, making the tarmac shimmer, reflecting back the car headlights, even though it was only ten to five on a Monday afternoon.

She took one hand off the steering wheel and offered it to Logan. 'Senior Constable Wiktorja Jaroszewicz. You say it: Yahr-oh-SHAY-veetch.'

'I know, you told me when--' Logan tried not to close his eyes as she threw them around the roundabout and onto a tree-lined dual carriageway, but she was still shaking his hand while she did it. 'Detective Sergeant Logan McRae.' Forcing his voice down the two octaves it had suddenly jumped.

'Look at this idiot...' She leant on the car's horn and raced up the back end of a mouldy Volvo estate. 'Move it grandfather!' BRRRREEEEEEEP! 'I tell you, rush-hour brings them all out.'

And then she accelerated past, nipping between an articulated lorry and a telecoms van. 'You were lucky I turned up,' she said, swerving back into their original lane, 'Radoslaw would have taken you for everything you had.'

'I wasn't going to--'

'He turns up at the airport, pretends to be this helpful old taxi driver, and if you go with him you end up on the wrong side of the river.'

'Not a very good taxi driver then?'

'Not unless you like being robbed at gunpoint, no. We think he gets two or three tourists a month, but we can't prove anything.'

Lightning flickered across the clay-coloured sky, silhouetting the trees and ugly concrete buildings on either side of the road. Then came the deep, bass rumble of thunder.

Senior Constable Jaroszewicz hunched closer to the steering wheel. 'Bloody rain. What happened to summer?'

She launched into a stream of weather-related invective, but Logan was too scared to listen to it, holding on for dear life as she leapt from one lane to the other.

A horn blared at them, Jaroszewicz ignored it. 'I checked the records again. We have twenty-three victims since 1974; most of them happened after we kicked the Communists out. I brought everything I found with me, you can read it on the train.'

'Train? I thought we were going to--' He closed his eyes as the rear end of a truck suddenly appeared in front of them. 'Oh God.'

The tyres squealed on the wet road. Jaroszewicz leant on the horn: BRRRRREEEEEEEEP! 'Asshole! Are you trying to kill everyone?'

And then she was roaring past on the inside, sticking one finger up at the old lady behind the wheel. 'There are no living victims left in Warsaw, so we are going to Krakow.'

'Can we slow down please?'

'No.'

Logan tried not to think about what his body was going to look like when the Polish fire brigade finally cut it out of the wreckage. 'What happened to the other victims?'

'Dead. Some had accidents, some got ill, some died of old age, and some killed themselves.' Shrug. 'It must be a hard thing to live with.'

The bland communistic apartment blocks opened up, revealing central Warsaw. It was a vista of skyscrapers: huge chunks of glass and steel reaching up into the downpour. A big Marriott hotel sat in the background, the top seven floors covered in white lights that flashed messages out across the gloomy, rain-drenched city. The other skyscrapers were slightly less vulgar, but everything paled into insignificance next to the huge Palace of Culture: an evil wedding cake in rain-blackened sandstone, dominating the skyline.