Authors: Stuart MacBride
Logan’s heel caught something buried in the snow and he went crashing down on his backside for the second time in two days. Looking up at someone who wanted him dead.
And then a blur of black and fluorescent yellow: PC Butler charged across the rutted ground, her peaked cap flying off. Stacy snarled and swung the knife again in a huge overhead slash.
Butler darted in, arm up. She blocked Stacy’s stab, reached through with her other hand in some sort of weird jujitsu limb origami, and pulled, forcing the pregnant women’s arm to bend in ways it
really
wasn’t designed to.
Stacy’s eyes bulged, then she screamed and lurched back into the wall of the caravan. ‘You’re breaking my arm!’
‘Drop the knife, or I’ll pop it right out of the socket!’
‘Get off me you
bitch
!’
One more twist and the knife thudded into the snow, blade first, the handle sticking up into the air.
‘Danny! Danny, help me! They’re hurting the baby!’
But Danny just sat on the roof of his house and stared at her.
There was a gunshot sound and Logan’s manky little Fiat puttered to a halt on the rear podium car park, leaving a cloud of grey smoke behind. Should probably get that seen to.
PC Butler killed the engine, before it died on its own. ‘Everyone out. Now!’
‘If my baby’s damaged by carbon monoxide poisoning, I’ll sue!’
Butler turned and stared at her. ‘Shut up. For
once
in your life. All the way into bloody town!’
Stacy Gardner pouted. ‘You can’t talk to me like that! I—’
‘For God’s sake!’ Sitting next to her, on the threadbare back seat, Danny Saunders gritted his teeth. ‘Give it a rest, Stacy.’
‘That’s right – shout at the pregnant woman in
handcuffs
! Oh yes, you’re such a big man, aren’t you Danny? Such a big—’
Logan climbed out and slammed the car door shut, cutting off the rest.
PC Butler stood on the other side of the dented Fiat, massaging her temples.
‘Why
are we not allowed to gag prisoners any more?’
‘Just get them processed and we’ll head out to Cove. Let someone else listen to her bitch and moan for a while.’
Butler glared at the sky for a moment, sighed, pulled on her peaked cap, then wrenched open the car door and folded the driver’s seat forward. ‘I said everyone out!’
Logan left them to it.
Logan had the Wee Hoose to himself while he waited for PC Butler to get Danny Saunders and his poisonous fiancée photographed, fingerprinted, DNA-sampled, and checked into separate cells.
He spread Danby’s cases out across the desk. The PNC printouts weren’t exactly heavy on detail, more summaries
and status reports. A couple of unsolved murders: one drug addict found with a bullet hole in the back of his head; one prostitute kicked to death behind the bins at a nightclub. One Post Office job where the gang had got away with a pathetically small amount of cash after putting a pensioner in intensive care – solved. One blackmail: a bank manager with a thing for Filipino ladyboys – solved. A couple of demanding money with menaces…
Something started ringing. It took Logan a minute to realize it was his new phone. ‘McRae.’
‘LoganDaveGoulding, Just heard back from your CSI boys about the old man who was attacked last night.’
Might have known the psychologist wouldn’t mind using the wanky Americanism.
‘What about him?’ Logan kept on reading.
The last report in Danby’s file was a drug seizure: a shipment of heroin and cocaine, smuggled in through the international ferry terminal in North Shields. Estimated street value of one-point-six million.
‘Knox didn’t rape him. He bit him, he tortured him, he beat him, but there’s no sign of penetration.’
According to the summary three men were due up in court in four weeks’ time, all of them connected to Michael ‘Mental Mikey’ Maitland’s operation.
God rest his soul.
‘So it’s exactly the same as the Sacro handler…Harry Weaver. I thought it might be because Weaver wasn’t old enough, didn’t fit the victim profile, but I’m beginning to wonder if Knox might be impotent.’
Logan skimmed a list of charges. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Causing pain is how Knox achieves arousal, it’s what gets him off. If he can’t get an erection, he’s just going to try harder. The next victim’s probably going to end up dead. And it won’t be quick either.’
Logan stopped reading. Not so good after all.
‘Any ideas where he’s heading?’
There was a pause.
‘Well…Aberdeen’s been highly traumatic for him, completely out of his comfort zone. He’ll want familiar ground, somewhere he feels safe.’
All roads lead to Newcastle. Which was pretty much what they’d been thinking anyway. Logan thanked the psychologist and hung up.
Logan drummed his fingers on the desk, staring at the blank computer screen.
God: the idea that Knox could get even worse…
‘You should eat more roughage.’
Logan turned to find Doreen settling in behind her desk.
‘What?’
‘You’ve got the same expression on your face my six-year-old gets when he’s constipated.’
‘Actually,
I was thinking about Richard Knox.’
‘Join the club. DCI Finnie’s got everyone on either Knox or Danby. It’s an absolute nightmare trying to get anything else done.’ She rearranged her cardigan. ‘Do you know if our little fairy princess got to see her grandad again?’
Logan shrugged. ‘I’ve been a bit—’
‘Oh for goodness sake.
I’ll
do it.’ Doreen pulled the phone towards her and started dialling. ‘Hello? Yes, I want to speak to someone about a little girl taken into temporary care last night…’
PC Butler stuck her head around the door. ‘You ready, Sarge?’
Logan gathered all the files together and stuck them back in the folder. ‘We got a pool car?’
Butler’s expression soured. ‘Guess.’
The Fiat groaned from second to third, then whined from third to fourth, and refused to do fifth at all. ‘You know.’ Butler hauled the gearstick back again. ‘I’ve got some friends who could arrange a little electrical fire, if you like? Claim on the insurance?’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Not that he’d get much for it – the thing only cost him two hundred pounds. Logan ran his finger across the dashboard, leaving a clean grey line in the dust. ‘Suppose you were a gangster—’
‘Cool.’ Butler grinned. ‘Do I get to kneecap that sleazy git DS MacDonald?’
‘Just shut up and listen, OK? Suppose you were a gangster and some police officer had just cost you over a mill and a half in drugs. He’s got three of your men banged up waiting for trial, and if they turn Queen’s evidence it’s going to be bad news for your other business interests. What do you do?’
She didn’t even pause. ‘Kill them. Get a couple of mentalists inside to shank the bastards. Sends out a message – no one squeals.’
Logan looked at her. ‘What if they’re loyal.’
‘Not worth the risk. Got to cut out the cancer before it spreads.’ She slowed down for a corner, the tyres rumbling over a lumpy mixture of slush and ice. ‘Then you go after the pig.’
Logan turned back to the window. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’
‘He awake yet, Babe?’
‘Dunno. Think he’s faking it?’
‘One way to check.’
Pain lances through Detective Superintendent Graeme Danby’s nipples. His eyes snap open and he roars. Or tries to. There’s something over his mouth. Something over his head, making everything dim and muffled. He rocks back and forth, fire burning across his chest.
‘Gotta love the titty-twister, like.’
Fucking hell that
hurts.
Then the woman’s voice is back again. ‘Hello, Sweetheart, remember me?’
Graeme tries to shrink back, but he’s sitting on something:
can’t move his arms or legs…A chair? And it’s freezing in here.
He’d been…He’d been wearing the white fluffy dressing gown he’d found in the hotel room wardrobe – the one with the matching slippers in a little plastic bag. But now he feels a biting draught on his bare stomach and thighs.
Isn’t even wearing any underwear.
He’s tied to a chair, stark bollock naked, with a bag over his head.
With
her.
Graeme tries to sit up straight, to bring his chin up. Not to tremble.
‘You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you, Danby?’ A man’s voice, Newcastle accent.
And then a fist slams into Graeme’s stomach, wrenching him forwards. Or as far as he can go with his wrists tied to the seat. He tries to breathe through the aching stabs, air whistling in and out through his burning nose. Everything smells of burning copper.
‘You see, Babe, we know what you’ve been up to. You and your pet rapist.’
Oh God, don’t be sick. Be sick and you’ll choke. Choke and die. Naked, tied to a chair with a FUCKING BAG OVER YOUR HEAD!
Slowly, he hauls himself back up, eyes scrunched tight shut. Swallowing it down.
‘Neil? Do the honours will you, Darling, I hate questioning someone when I can’t see their eyes.’
Fumbling. The whoosh of fabric against his face. Then a cool draft of air.
Graeme opens his eyes, blinks. Looks down at his pale, naked body – the big dent in his right leg where the bone poked through years ago.
‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
Julie. She hasn’t changed much since last time: still wearing
the same cowgirl jeans-and-boots combo. That polished razorblade smile.
Someone looms into view over his shoulder – Elvis quiff, big nose, tufty eyebrows. ‘Afternoon, Guv. Sitting comfortably?’ Elvis has a tartan pillowcase in his hand. He drops it to the floor.
Julie pulls up a chair, wrong way round, and straddles it. Smiles down at Graeme’s crotch. ‘Didn’t think it was
that
cold.’
He tries on his best Senior Police Officer Glower, but she just laughs.
‘Neil?’
A fist slams into the side of Graeme’s head. Ringing in his ears. The taste of blood. Lights flashing on and off. Then a throbbing ache.
‘Now, Babe, you need to think really hard about this, because if you get the answer wrong you lose ten points and we move on to the water round. And trust me, you
won’t
like the water round. Understand?’
Graeme stares at her. Then nods.
‘Good. Neil, you can take the gag off.’
A harsh ripping noise, eye-watering agony. ‘Fuck…’
Elvis holds up the duct tape, grinning. ‘Got half his beard off in one go! Can we do his eyebrows next?’
‘Bastards…’ Breath hissing through gritted teeth.
‘OK, Babe: here’s your starter for ten.’
He can hear her chair scraping closer.
‘Where’s Richard Knox?’
‘No, I can barely hear you.’ Logan stuck his finger in his ear as they juddered up the hill past the truncated concrete pyramid of the Shell building, heading south. A massive eighteen-wheeler passed them in the outside lane, sending filthy grey-brown spray all over the car, the windscreen wipers struggling to clear it, leaving two diarrhoea-coloured rainbows across the glass.
‘I said, where the bastarding hell are you?’
‘Nigg roundabout. Should be with you in ten minutes.’
If the car didn’t die by then.
‘Listen, I found a possible motive for abducting Danby – million-and-a-half in seized—’
‘I don’t care. Just got a call from Susan, she’s got these stomach cramps…’
Oh no.
Logan swallowed. ‘She all right?’
‘Course she’s not, she’s having bloody stomach cramps!’
Silence.
‘What if she loses the baby?’
More silence.
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine.’ That was what you were meant to say, wasn’t it?
Steel coughed. Sniffed. Cleared her throat.
‘Sod it, I’m taking her to
A&E.
You’re in charge: give the search another couple hours then wind it down. Make it look like we tried.’
‘Do you want…’
But Steel was gone. He was talking to a dead phone.
‘Sod it.’ Logan jabbed the car’s cigarette lighter with his thumb, and when it popped up he pulled a cigarette from the packet and sooked it into life.
Butler immediately started making pantomime coughing noises.
‘Fine…’ Logan ground it out in the overflowing ashtray. ‘Happy?’
‘Bad enough I’ve got to drive this rattletrap without catching your second-hand smoke.’
‘Just drive, OK?’
The gritters were out in force – two of them taking up both lanes of the dual carriageway, huge rusty yellow things topped with flashing orange lights, strafing the road with salt and sand. All the cars hanging back to avoid having the paint battered off their bonnets.
Butler took the second exit at the next roundabout, heading
into Cove, weaving through the suburban streets for the south-east corner.
Jimmy Evans’s house sat on its own at the end of a long, rutted driveway, potholes and ice making Logan’s tatty little Fiat slither and jerk as Butler got them as close to the brightly lit house as possible.
A series of patrol cars and police vans snaked back from a snow-covered driveway, blocking the lane.
‘We’ll have to walk from here.’
Sunlight speared down from a crystal blue sky, making the fields glitter, the snow crunchy underfoot, the sound of dogs and police chatter ringing in the crisp air.
The Police Search Advisor met them at the front door, scratching an armpit. With thinning, scraggy blonde hair and a pointy nose, he looked a bit like a meerkat with mange. ‘So.’ He squinted at Logan. ‘It true you’re in charge now?’
‘That a problem?’
‘Hey, long as you sign off on the overtime, I’m happy.’ He held out a stack of reports and Logan flicked through them.
‘You want to summarize this for me?’
More scratching. ‘No sign of Knox anywhere.’
There was a shock. ‘IB?’
The POLSA took his hand out of his armpit for long enough to point at a familiar filthy Transit van. ‘Still doing the guest bedroom. Family’s cleared out, so we’ve got the run of the place.’