Dark Blood (10 page)

The first lesson from God: know when to keep your mouth shut.

Course, then they all had little accidents, didn’t they? And God said unto them, never fuck with a man who works for Mental Mikey – the holy word delivered by a couple of screws who owed the big man a favour.

Guardian angel, see?

Richard watches the policeman hunch his way down the garden path, through the rusty gate, and into a little brown Fiat that looks like a motorized turd.

Stared at him like he was mad, didn’t he? Didn’t believe Richard was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So. Help. Him. God.

It’s all a test. It’s all a lesson. How you deal with things is important to Him, isn’t it? Stands to reason. Otherwise He wouldn’t make things happen the way He does.

And God loves Richard Knox.

Richard places his hand against the glass and scrubs away the picture he drew in the grime. Smiles to himself.

Soon. Very, very soon…

It was nearly half ten by the time Logan got back to the CID room. The place was packed – plainclothes and uniformed constables sitting in every seat, working the phones. The almost constant murmur of conversation and electronic ringing.

‘Yes, sir, I know you’re worried about your father but—’

‘In Kincorth? I see…And what makes you believe it was Richard Knox?’

A constable stuck her hand over the mouthpiece and offered the phone to Logan. ‘Sarge, there’s a bloke on the phone says he was attacked by Knox last night, do you want to deal?’

Logan looked out across the crowded, noisy room. ‘Is every nutjob in the city calling in?’

‘Pretty much. So, you want it?’

‘Do I buggery.’ He hurried through into the little sergeants’ alcove, before anyone else tried to lumber him with their loony, closed the door – shutting out the babble – and collapsed into his seat. Rubbed at his thumping forehead.

He had the little office to himself, no one to see him rummaging through everyone’s desks on the hunt for painkillers. OK, so he was a bit hungover but after Reuben
and everything he’d deserved a drink, hadn’t he? Even if the late night vodka hadn’t been the best of ideas.

DS Mark MacDonald had a packet of ibuprofen hidden in a drawer. Logan helped himself to two, washing them down with the pint of orange juice he’d bought on the way back to the station. His stomach gurgled as the liquid hit, bitter acid at the bottom of his throat.

There was a Post-it note stuck right in the middle of Logan’s computer screen: a summons in block capitals. ‘MY OFFICE AS SOON AS YOU GET BACK!!!’ Signed, ‘DI BEATTIE!’ just like that, with an exclamation mark. Just in case Logan didn’t know he was a dickhead.

Logan peeled it off, scrunched it up, and hurled it at the bin.

Someone shouted, ‘Shop?’ and Logan looked around to find PC Butler standing in the doorway. She wasn’t exactly the tallest officer in Grampian Police: petite, with cropped blonde hair, Butler looked like the kind of person who helped little old ladies across the road; raised money for underprivileged kittens; couldn’t pull the skin off a boiled tattie. Which just went to show how wrong you could be.

She waggled a manila folder at him. ‘You in for an armed robbery?’

‘Dump it on Doreen’s desk.’ He jerked his thumb towards a neatly ordered workstation, with law books alphabetically arranged on a shelf above the computer.

Constable Butler pulled a face, wrinkling her nose, and puckering her mouth. ‘You sure you don’t want it?’

‘Positive.’

‘Oh come on.’ She settled onto the only clear patch on Biohazard Bob’s desk. ‘DS Taylor’s being a right cow at the moment. Ever since her husband ran off with that accounts assistant, you can’t do anything right.’

‘Give it to Bob then.’

Butler shuddered. ‘I’d have to drive him about, and it’s too
bloody cold to have the windows open all the time.’ She batted her eyelashes. ‘Please?’

‘DS MacDonald?’

‘Wandering hands. He does it again I’ll have to castrate him. Don’t want that on your conscience, do you?’

Logan turned away and jabbed the power button on his computer. ‘Thought you lot in uniform were all whinging about me being shouty and sarcastic.’

He could hear her shifting on the desk behind him. ‘Yeah, but you’re kinda the lesser of four evils. So…armed robbery?’

Logan slumped back in his seat and swore at the ceiling tiles. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Great.’ She slapped the folder down on the desk in front of him. ‘Henderson’s the Jewellers, on Crown Street. Bloke wanders in with a wee kid in a pushchair, asks to see the engagement rings, and when the assistant hauls them out, our boy produces a sawn-off sledgehammer.’

‘Who the hell holds up a jewellers with a sawn-off sledgehammer? You sure it wasn’t a shotgun?’

‘Positive.’

Logan flicked through the file. ‘Time?’

‘Nine fifteen this morning.’

‘Anyone hurt?’

‘One witness peed herself, that count? Said she was only in to pick up her husband’s watch.’

Logan pulled out the witness statements, skimming them as PC Butler waited. At the back was a list of items the jewellers claimed their mystery shopper had got away with. It had an estimated value of just under five hundred pounds. Not exactly worth getting banged up for. ‘Is that all?’

Butler shrugged. ‘Apparently. Went on a bit of a rampage, smashed open display cabinets, stuffed his pockets with shiny tat, then legged it.’ She paused. ‘Got the security camera footage upstairs if you want to see it?’

‘What the hell.’ Logan thumped the folder on top of his heaped in-tray. ‘Fingerprints?’

‘Gloves.’ Butler smiled. ‘Thanks, Sarge.’

Logan checked his watch. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes, then I’m out of here.’

‘But Sa-arge—’

‘Got an appointment with a cadaver dog. Take it or leave it.’

‘Done.’

They’d got as far as the corridor outside the CID room when Beattie appeared. Face pink and shiny, nose red, all bundled up in a duvet-style puffy jacket. There were droplets glittering in his moustache and as he saw PC Butler and Logan he wiped them away with the back of his hand. ‘DS McRae, I need to see you in my office.’

Logan didn’t move. ‘Got an armed robbery to look into.’

Beattie frowned. Looked at PC Butler. Sniffed. Rubbed at his beard. ‘Constable, will you excuse us for a moment?’

She made herself scarce.

‘You were supposed to help me with the knock-off merchandise enquiry.’

Logan slumped back against the wall. ‘Did you phone Trading Standards yet?’ Knowing full well that there was no way the beardy tosser—

‘I did it yesterday.’

‘Oh…Right.’ Pause. ‘And?’

‘It’s getting worse. We’ve had fifteen complaints about dodgy DVD players this week, then there’s the hair straighteners, and the vodka, and the perfume, and the iPods. Whole city’s awash with counterfeit goods.’ Beattie sniffed, then hauled out a lumpy grey hankie and blew his nose into it. Paused to check the contents. ‘Talking of which: Big Gary tells me you’ve got a lead on those dodgy twenties?’

Logan shrugged. ‘We arrested someone, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Still in custody?’

‘Far as I know.’ Because he hadn’t bothered to check. Sod DI Steel, there was no way he was running about just to keep some jumped-up solicitor happy. Whoever Douglas Walker’s lawyer was, he could bloody well wait.

Beattie chewed on the edge of his moustache for a bit. ‘Right, about these fake handbags and things…’

There was more, but Logan wasn’t really listening. DI Steel had just limped through the double doors at the end of the corridor, legs bowed, face all pinched up on one side, showing gritted, yellowy teeth as she hobbled towards them.

‘…do you understand?’ Beattie paused, obviously waiting for a response.

‘Erm.’ Logan frowned. ‘In what way?’

Beattie rolled his eyes. It made him look even more of a tit than usual. ‘Will you sort it out or not?’

Steel was getting closer. Limping and wincing all the way.

‘Erm, yeah, sure.’

‘Monday. Don’t forget.’

She hissed to a halt and scowled at Beattie blocking the corridor. ‘Move it or lose it, beardy boy.’

Beattie stiffened. ‘There’s no need to—’

‘Blah, blah, blah. Out the way before I introduce Mrs Boot to Mr Testicles.’ She winced, paused, hauled at the crotch of her grey trouser suit. ‘Second thoughts: McRae, kick his knackers into orbit. Then get your scarred backside down to Interview room three, Douglas Walker’s brief’s waiting for you.’

‘Actually,’ Beattie stuck his hairy chin out, ‘Sergeant McRae already
has
a job to do. Don’t you Sergeant?’

Steel limped closer. ‘Aye, he has: working for
me.’

Beattie glowered. ‘I’m not some wee DS for you to push around any more, I’m a
detective inspector.
And I say McRae’s working for me!’

Logan groaned. It didn’t matter how this went, he’d be the
one who’d end up getting the blame. He turned and looked back towards the CID room.

Steel and Beattie were shouting at each other, nose to nose in the middle of the corridor, so Logan crept back through the door, leaving them to it. With a bit of luck he could sneak out the other side of the CID room, down the bare concrete stairwell and away before they even noticed he was gone.

Logan swore, told PC Butler to pause the tape, and dragged out his phone. ‘McRae.’

DI Steel’s gravelly voice crackled in his ear,
‘Where the sodding hell did you disappear off to? I’ve got an angry solicitor wanting someone to shout at, and he’s no’ bloody doing it at me!’

The review suite was a tiny room on the ground floor of Force Headquarters: two creaky plastic chairs, a storage cabinet for the police van CCTV hard drives, and the rancid-fatty smell of stale chips coming from somewhere underneath the little Formica desk.

Butler fumbled with the remote, and the image on the screen froze: Henderson’s the Jewellers in glorious black-and-white.

A woman stood by a display stand of porcelain figurines, a small boy clutching at the hem of her skirt. A shop assistant slouched behind a long glass counter. A lumpy man was halfway across the shop floor, flat cap on his head, pushing one of those mountain-bike-style strollers – all chrome and big chunky wheels. He had a little child strapped into the seat, wearing a knitted bobble hat, sooking on the floppy ear of a cuddly bunny.

They didn’t exactly look like a crack team of armed robbers.

Logan put a hand over the mouthpiece of his phone as Steel ranted away.

‘…is it no’ bad enough I’ve got idiots like Beattie to deal with, without…’

He pointed at the screen. ‘This digital, or DVD?’

Butler shook her head. ‘Tape.’

‘…show some sodding responsibility for your actions? And another thing…’

That meant the image probably wouldn’t be good enough to enhance beyond an indistinct blur. ‘OK, let it play again.’

The man stepped up to the counter, head down – looking at the shiny things arrayed beneath the glass. He’d been in the shop two minutes now and the camera still hadn’t got a decent shot of his face.

There was a moment’s silence from the phone, then,
‘McRae! Are you listening to me?’

‘Uh-huh.’

Logan tapped the screen again. ‘Look at the front door.’

‘I swear to God I’m going to snap my foot off in your arse if you don’t start…’

Butler leaned in closer, face screwed up. ‘What?’

‘Bottom right corner. He’s dropped something where the door meets the jam, so it won’t shut all the way.’

‘…bastard Beattie: see how you like that!’

The man pointed at something glittering away beneath the counter’s glass surface, and the shop assistant nodded. She undid some sort of catch, then opened the back of the display, pulling out a black velvet tray. There was no audio, everything happening in complete silence.

Outside the shop window a bus juddered past. The time stamp in the corner of the screen read ‘09:14’.

‘…bloody solicitors crawling up my…’

The assistant held up one of the items from the tray.

The man in the flat cap nodded, then reached into his long black overcoat.

PC Butler smiled. ‘See, told you.’

The sledgehammer was about half the length it should have been, but that didn’t stop it shattering the glass counter top into a million glittering fragments. Another swing and
the cash register went flying. Another, and a display case exploded. A silent ballet of destruction.

‘…should know better by now! Honestly, you’re no’ a child so stop acting…’

The woman in the corner scurried back against the wall, hauling her little boy with her. Mouth open. Screaming.

‘…
your own. That what you want?’

The man hoisted the sledgehammer over his head and brought it crashing down, double handed, into the counter again. The flat cap went flying, exposing a swath of bald head hiding beneath a thin comb-over.

‘…
but no,
you
have to play the bloody idiot
…’

A scramble of black gloves through the wreckage, stuffing rings and bracelets and necklaces and bits of broken glass into his pockets, then the flat cap was snatched up and rammed down on the balding head again. Not once had he looked at the camera.

The man backed away through the open door, pulling the stroller with him, and—

Logan sat forward and poked the screen. ‘There: the cuddly rabbit.’

The little kid in the stroller must have lost its grip, because the rabbit went tumbling to the glass-strewn shop floor. Bounced once. Then lay there.

‘The kid was sooking on it, we’ll be able to get DNA from the saliva.’

Butler stared at him. ‘The kid didn’t rob the shop, it was—’

‘You don’t hold up a jewellers with someone else’s kid, do you? What sort of crappy babysitter would that be? It’s his. Or maybe a grandchild, but it’s definitely related. We’ll get a familial DNA match.’ Logan sat back in his seat, pleased with himself. ‘Get round there and pick up…’

He drifted to a halt, then swore as a hand reached back
into the shop from outside and grabbed the fallen bunny. Then kicked away whatever had been keeping the door ajar, allowing it to finally clunk shut.

So much for that.

And then Logan realized Steel had stopped ranting in his ear. ‘Inspector?’ Silence. ‘Hello?’ He looked at the phone’s display. She’d hung up.

Couldn’t have been that important then.

Logan sat back in his seat, tapping the mobile against his chin. ‘There’s something not right about this.’

He told Butler to wind the tape back to the start, then sat and watched everything unfold again. ‘See, he blocks the door from closing, so he obviously knows the first thing jewellery shops do is trip the silent alarm. Bang, all the exits lock till the police turn up. But when he does the smash and grab, he goes for sparkly, worthless crap…’

PC Butler shrugged. ‘Maybe he watches too much telly?
CSI, The Bill,
that kind of thing?’