Cold Granite (38 page)

Desperate Doug MacDuff was clambering his way over the top of the high fence.

'Hold it right there!' Logan legged it across the snow, slipping and sliding to a halt at the end of the drying green just in time to see Doug vanish from sight again. 'What are you, bloody Houdini?'

Clambering up the chainlink, Logan suddenly realized how Desperate Doug had managed to disappear so suddenly. The fence marked the dividing line between the Sandilands Estate and the railway track north out of the city. Hidden by the scrubland and bushes was a deep, wide, man-made ravine with railway lines at the bottom. Doug had slithered his way down one side of the steep siding.

The old man wasn't running very fast any more. He had slowed to a lurching jog, clutching one arm to his chest as he scuffed his way along the railway tracks.

Logan pitched himself over the top of the fence and hit the ground hard. Immediately his feet went out from under him. Gravity did the rest. He tumbled down the bank like a boulder, scraping through gorse and bracken, smacking into the hard gravel at the bottom of the ravine. He hit with a cry of pain. Blood was seeping from a gash on the back of his hand. His head rang from its sudden stop against the gravel. But worst of al was the pain exploding in his bel y. One year on and Angus Robertson, the Mastrick Monster, was stil hurting him.

The high banks of the railway siding sheltered the bottom of the ravine from the wind.

Here the snow fel steadily from the sky, drifting down like a blanket in the stil air.

Logan lay on his side, groaning, trying not to be sick, letting the snow settle on him. He couldn't even move. But he did have a perfect view of Desperate Doug as the old man risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the policeman who'd been chasing him lying, bleeding on the railway tracks. He stopped running and turned to watch Logan, his breath fogging the air in huge, ragged lungfuls.

And then he started back up the tracks towards Logan. He dug in one of his pockets and something shiny sparkled in his hand. Something sharp.

Ice water rushed through Logan's body. 'Oh God...'

He tried to rol over, get to his feet before Desperate Doug reached him. But the pain in his stomach was too much, even with death walking slowly up the tracks towards him.

'You didn't have tae fol ow me.' Doug's voice came out in jagged puffs. 'You could've just minded yer own bloody business. Now I'm gonnae have to teach you a lesson, Mr Pig.' He held up the shiny thing: it was a Stanley knife, the blade ful y extended.

'Oh God, no...' It was happening again!

'I'm real fond of bacon, me.' Doug's face was bright red, creased and florid with broken veins. His milky, dead eye, the same colour as the snow, his twisted smile nicotine-brown. 'Thing

'bout bacon is, you gotta slice it nice and thin.'

'Don't...' Logan desperately tried to rol over again.

'Aw, now you're no goin' tae cry are you, Mr Pig? Gonnae greet like a bairn? Hel , wouldn't blame you like. It's gonnae fuckin' hurt!'

'Don't...please! You don't have to do this...'

'No?' Doug laughed, the sound turning into a thick, rattling cough and a stream of black-and-red spit. 'What,' he asked when he final y got his breath back, 'what have I got to lose? Eh?

I've got the cancer, Mr Pig. Nice wee man at the hospital says I've got me one, maybe two years, tops. And they're gonnae be shitty years. And you bastards are after me, aren't ye?'

Logan gritted his teeth and pushed against the ground, getting as far as his knees before Doug put a foot in the centre of his back and pushed. The ground slammed against Logan's chest. 'Aaaaaaaaaaaa...'

'See, youse bastards are gonnae lock me up again. I'm no comin' out alive. No with the cancer eatin' ma lungs and bones. So what can they do to me if I slice you up? I'm dead before my sentence is up anyway. What's one more dead body, eh?'

Logan groaned and rol ed onto his back, feeling the snow fal ing cold against his face.

Keep him talking. Keep him talking and someone might come. One of the uniform. WPC Watson.

Anyone. God, please let someone come! 'Is that...is that why you kil ed Geordie Stephenson?'

Doug laughed. 'What's this? You think we're gonnae have us a nice wee chat and I'm gonnae 'fess up tae everything? Keep the old fart talking and he'l spil his guts?' He shook his head. 'You watch too much television, Mr Pig. Only guts I'm gonnae spil are yours.' He waggled the Stanley knife and grinned.

Logan kicked him in the knee. Hard. There was a loud pop and Doug col apsed, dropping the knife, clutching at his ruined kneecap. 'Ahyafucker!'

Hissing through his teeth, Logan rolled onto his side and lashed out with his foot again, catching the old man on the side of the head, opening up a three-inch gash.

Doug grunted, his hands covering his bleeding scalp as Logan aimed another blow at the old man's head. Two of his fingers snapped beneath Logan's boot. 'Fuckinbastard!'

He might have been old and riddled with cancer, but Doug MacDuff had earned his reputation as a hard man in the toughest prisons Scotland had to offer. Earned it the hard way.

Snarling, he scrabbled backwards, getting out of range. And then he lunged, wrapped his nicotine-stained hands around Logan's throat and squeezed, his face creased and brutal as he strangled himself a detective sergeant.

Logan grabbed at the hands encircling his neck, trying to pull them away, but the man's grip was like iron. Already the world had started to take on a red tinge, his ears ringing with the pressure in his head. He let one hand go, curled it into a fist and smashed it off the side of Doug's face. The old man grunted, but didn't let go. Screwing his face up, Logan did it again and again, blood from Doug's wounds dripping down al around him, turning the snow pink. Fighting for his life, he slammed his fist into Doug's head, cracking the jaw, closing the milky, unseeing eye. Punching for al he was worth as the world started to go dark. Again and again and again...until at last the hands around Logan's throat went slack and the old man went limp, slumping over sideways to lie, bleeding in the fal ing snow.

29

They rushed Douglas MacDuff straight through Accident and Emergency and into a treatment room. He looked like death. His lined and wrinkled face was covered with a growing network of dark red bruises. His breathing was shal ow and rattling. He hadn't regained consciousness in the ambulance on the way to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, just lay there, oozing blood from his battered face.

The ambulance men hadn't spoken a word to Logan al the way over here. Not once they learned he was the one who'd beaten up the old age pensioner.

Standing in silence, shivering, Logan watched as a nurse wired Desperate Doug up to a bank of monitors, bleeps and pings marking time with the old man's heart.

She looked up to see Logan standing at the foot of the gurney. 'You're going to have to go,' she told him, unbuttoning the old man's shirt. 'He's been beaten up pretty badly.'

'I know,' Logan left off the fact that he was the one who'd done it. His voice was rough, painful.

'Are you a relative?' Her face was concerned and professional as she careful y peeled Doug's shirt open.

'No. A police officer: DS McRae.'

She stopped, her expression becoming cold. 'I hope you catch the bastard who did this and lock him away for life! Beating up an old man!'

And then the doctor arrived: a short, balding man with a clipboard and a stressed expression. He didn't care that Logan was an officer of the law. Everyone was to leave so that the patient could be diagnosed and treated.

'His name is Douglas MacDuff,' said Logan, trying to keep his gravel y voice level. 'He's the chief suspect in a murder investigation. He is to be considered extremely dangerous.'

The nurse backed away from the gurney, wiping her hands down the front of her blue smock, the latex of her surgical gloves making a dull, squeaking sound beneath the regular ping and beep.

Logan rubbed tenderly at his throat. 'I'l post a PC to watch him,' he said, swal owing painful y.

The nurse gave him an uncertain smile, but the doctor was already poking and prodding Dougie's battered body. With a deep breath she squared her shoulders and went to work.

Logan arranged for someone to stay by Desperate Doug's bedside and left them to it.

Out in the hal he almost fel over a nurse pushing a trol ey covered with bottles of pil s. He turned to apologize and found himself looking into a familiar face. Only this time Lorna Henderson's mother was sporting a huge black eye. She'd tried to cover it up with six inches of make-up, but the bruising stil shone through. 'Are you OK?' he asked.

A nervous hand fluttered up to the puffy eye and she forced a smile onto her face.

'Fine,' she said, her voice brittle round the edges. 'Never better. How are you?'

'Did someone hit you, Mrs Henderson?'

She smoothed down her blue nurse's uniform and said no. She had walked into a door.

It was an accident. That was al .

Logan gave her one of DI Insch's patented silences.

Slowly the fake smile slid away, leaving her pale and jowly again. 'Kevin came round.

He'd been drinking.' She picked at the name badge pinned to her chest, not looking Logan in the eye. 'I thought he'd come back to me. You know, dumped that flat-chested tart. But he said it was al my fault that Lorna was dead. That I should have never made her get out of the car. That I kil ed her...' She looked up, tears making her eyes sparkle in the fluorescent lighting. 'I tried to make him understand we could get through it together. Be there for each other. That I stil loved him. That I knew he stil loved me.' A single fat tear spil ed over the edge and down her cheek.

She wiped it away on the back of her hand. 'He got upset and shouted even louder. Then he...I deserved it! It was al my fault! He's never coming back...' Tears spil ing down her face, she abandoned her trol ey and ran.

Logan watched her disappear through a set of double doors and sighed.

WPC Watson was sitting in the waiting area, with her head back and a scrunched-up handful of toilet paper jammed against her face. It was bright red.

'How's the nose?' asked Logan, plonking himself down on the next plastic chair along.

Trying to keep himself from trembling.

'Sore,' she said, peering at him from the corner of her eye, not moving her head. 'Ad leasd I don'd thing id's broken. How's the prisoner?'

Logan shrugged and instantly regretted it. 'How's everyone else?' he asked, his voice coming out as a painful croak.

WPC Watson pointed off down the corridor to the treatment rooms. 'One of the dog-handlers is gedding his ribs checked out. Everyone else is OK.' She smiled and winced.

'Oww...Someone from the bookies god their front teeth knocked out.' She peered at him again, watching as Logan rubbed a hand around his throat for the umpteenth time since sitting down.

'You OK?'

Logan pulled down the col ar of his shirt, exposing his neck in al its strangled glory.

Watson winced again, but this time for him. Desperate Doug's finger marks stood out against the pale skin in red and purple. The two biggest bruises sitting on either side of the windpipe, where the old man's thumbs had tried to squeeze the life out of him.

'Jesus, whad happened?'

'I kind of fel down and couldn't get up.' Logan went back to rubbing his throat. 'Mr MacDuff wanted to make it permanent.' The knife blade flashing in the light. He shivered again.

'The old bastard!'

Logan almost smiled; it was nice to have someone on his side for a change.

DI Insch was not so understanding. When they got back to Force Headquarters, Logan with another pocket ful of painkil ers and WPC Watson with confirmation that her nose wasn't broken, the message was delivered by the desk sergeant: Logan was to report to the inspector's office. Now!

The inspector was standing with his back to the door, hands clasped behind his back, his bald head shining in the overhead lighting as Logan entered. Insch was staring out of the window at the steadily fal ing snow. 'What the hel did you think you were doing?' he asked.

Logan rubbed at his throat again and said he was trying to arrest George Stephenson's kil er.

Insch sighed. 'Sergeant, you just beat an old man unconscious. The hospital say his condition is serious. What if he dies? Can you imagine how that's going to play in tomorrow's paper? "Policeman Beats Pensioner To Death!" What the hel were you thinking?'

Logan cleared his throat and wished he hadn't. It hurt. 'I...I was defending myself.'

Insch spun around, his face beetroot-red. 'Reasonable force does not include battering old...' He stopped when he saw Logan's bruise-ringed neck. 'What happened? Watson go into a love-bite feeding-frenzy?'

'Mr MacDuff tried to strangle me. Sir.'

'That why you hit him?'

Logan nodded, wincing. 'It was the only way to make him stop.' He dug a clear plastic wallet out of his pocket and clunked it down on DI Insch's desk with a trembling hand. There was a Stanley knife inside. 'He was going to carve me up with that.'

Insch picked up the knife, twisting it around, examining it through the plastic. 'Nice to see the old ways aren't dying out,' he said at last before looking Logan square in the eye. 'You're probably going to be suspended from duty while this is investigated. If Desperate Doug decides to press charges...' he shrugged. 'You know what it's like around here right now. We don't need any more bad PR.'

'He was going to kil me...'

'You beat an OAP unconscious, Logan. It doesn't matter why. That's al they're going to see. Police brutality of the worst kind.'

Logan couldn't believe his ears. 'So you're hanging me out to dry?'

'Sergeant, I'm not doing anything. Professional Standards won't let me. This is al out of my hands.'

The incident room was empty except for Logan and his paperwork. He sat in the semidarkness, a cup of cold coffee on the table next to a half-eaten packet of Maltesers. Trying not to shake.

The knife.

Logan ran a hand over his face. He'd not thought about that night for a long time. Lying on the tower block roof, half-unconscious, while Angus Robertson stabbed and stabbed and stabbed...Desperate Doug MacDuff had brought it al screaming back.