Dark Blood (4 page)

Logan nodded towards the Honda. ‘This is the car he says he sold for four and a half grand.’

‘Er…no it isn’t. Just cos it’s the same make—’

‘And the same colour, and the same number plate.’ Logan held up the registration documents. ‘Want to explain that?’

‘It…Er…’ Middleton sagged back against a Ford Fiesta, staring up at the low grey sky, breath steaming out as he swore. ‘I got it back. OK?’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Come on, it was four and a half grand!’

‘Which you’re no doubt claiming back on your insurance.’ Logan ran his eyes over the collection of cars on the forecourt. ‘Have you had a visit from Trading Standards recently, Mr Middleton? Checking the odometers aren’t clocked? All the vehicles are roadworthy? No cut-and-shunt jobs?’

‘What was I supposed to do? I’m a small businessman, I can’t afford to have people ripping me off! You know how it—’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Steel stomped her feet. ‘Shut up the pair of you. I’m cold and I’m bored and if it’s all the same to you, I’d kinda like to get home before the next sodding ice age sets in.’ She turned her back on them. ‘Logan, get your arse in gear. We’re leaving.’

‘But—’

‘Now.’
She clambered into the passenger seat and slammed the car door.

Brilliant. Nothing like being supported by your senior officer. Logan pointed a finger at Middleton. ‘This isn’t over.’

‘Thanks a lot.’ Logan changed gear and put his foot down, overtaking a minibus on the dual carriageway. ‘That was
really nice. Empowering.’ The traffic was getting heavier the closer they got to the Kingswells roundabout. Rush-hour congealing the arteries leading in and out of Aberdeen like a deep-fried Mars Bar.

Steel cracked open the pool car window and blew a stream of smoke out into the cold afternoon, mobile phone clamped to her ear. ‘What did you want to do? Arrest him? Impound all his stock? Spend the rest of the night filling in sodding paperwork?’

‘He’s dodgy.’

‘Shock horror, a dodgy second-hand car dealer. Who would’ve thunk it? That
has
to be a first.’

‘He’s—’

‘Come on Steve, pick up the bloody phone!’ She squinted her face up, cigarette gripped between her front teeth. ‘Finnie’s getting a DI down from Fraserburgh to cover my cases while I’m away. Try and no’ whinge too much when you’re working for him, eh? Make it look like I run a tight ship.’

‘Brilliant. Bring someone else in.’ Logan gripped the steering wheel tighter.

‘Steve, it’s your mum. Where the hell are you? Call me back.’ She snapped her phone shut. ‘Voicemail.’

‘
I
could’ve run the caseload.
I
know it all inside out. I’m already doing all the bloody work. Instead of which I’m going to have to hold some Teuchter numpty’s—’

‘Wah, wah, wah. You’re such a bloody moan. Just be thankful I didn’t let them hand everything over to Beattie.’

Small mercies.

Steel stuck the phone back in her jacket. ‘Can’t decide if I’m more pissed off or worried about Steve.’

‘Steve who?’

‘Polmont, my chiz.’

Which explained the, ‘it’s your mum’ bit – keeping it all secretive, in case anyone else heard the message.

Logan frowned. ‘How come you even know his name?
Personal info’s meant to stay on the other side of the “sterile corridor”, or whatever rubbish they’re calling it now. Who else knows who he is?’

‘No one.’ She flicked ash out of the window. ‘Just me, Frog-Face Finnie, and now you.’

‘Thought all informant stuff was meant to be handled by the Spook Squad? Why—’

‘Look it just is, OK? And shut up.’ She took an angry sook on her cigarette. ‘This is top, top Secret Squirrel. Understand?’

Logan sighed. ‘I think I can—’

‘I’m no’ joking. This gets out, I swear to God I’ll wear your wee heterosexual arsehole as a foot warmer. He’s a sparky at Malk the Knife’s building site.’

‘He’s the one we were waiting for on Monday? Told you: no one’s going to be daft enough to squeal. What is he, suicidal?’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of…Poor wee bugger could be lying dead in a ditch for all I know.’

‘So go round his house, pay him a visit.’

She sniffed. ‘Don’t have an address.’

‘Then get a GMS trace on his mobile. If it doesn’t move overnight, that’s his house.’ Logan stuck his foot on the clutch, popped the pool car out of gear, and drifted to a halt at the back of a long line of traffic. ‘What about the counterfeit cash? Want to get a warrant organized for the guy who bought the car?’

‘Tonight?’ Steel stared at him. ‘Are you
mental
? Be after five by the time we get back to the ranch. Get some backshift troglodyte to pick the bugger up. I’m going home.’

‘But—’

‘Don’t make me “La-la-la-la-la” you again.’

‘…
celebrations outside the offices of McLennan Homes. Back to you in the studio.’

The picture jumped to a balding anchorman with an unfeasible moustache.
‘Thanks, Tim.’
That familiar, blurry photo of Richard Knox they’d used on the front page of the
Aberdeen Examiner
appeared on the screen.
‘A convicted rapist took up residence in the Grampian Region today…’

Logan turned the sound down, then cracked the ring pull on another tin of Stella. Cold beer after a hot curry. Singing wafted through from the bathroom, Samantha doing her best to murder a Marilyn Manson cover of a Soft Cell version of a Gloria Jones song.

But it was still better than listening to yet another report about Richard Creepy-Pants Knox setting up home in Aberdeen. The anchorman disappeared from the screen, replaced by a lumpy woman mouthing angry somethings at the camera. Probably complaining about Grampian Police mollycoddling perverts when there were drunken yobs hanging about her local community centre.

Logan toasted her with his tin of beer.

Then it was over to the weather. Which apparently was going to be crap for the foreseeable future.

A standard January in the north-east of Scotland, then.

‘What you watching?’

Logan turned to see Samantha standing in the lounge doorway, wearing a pink fluffy bathrobe and a pink towel turban. She even had pink fluffy socks on. ‘You’re looking very goth tonight.’

She stuck her middle finger up at him. ‘Any beer left?’

‘Fridge. And there’s a film coming on at half ten, if you fancy it?’

‘Got an early start tomorrow.’ She plonked herself down on the couch and stole a scoof of his beer. ‘Your mum was on the phone earlier.’

Logan groaned.

‘Relax, I told her you’d died of dysentery.’ Samantha unwrapped the towel from her head, and rubbed at the bright red hair it had been hiding. ‘Oh, and some bloke called Reuben called? Wouldn’t leave a message.’

Fuck…Reuben.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t say anything at all?’

‘Nada. Your mum wants us to go round for Sunday lunch to discuss, and I quote, “access to her grandchild”.’

What the hell did Reuben want?

Silence.

‘You know, if you get over your fatal bout of the squits?’

And how the hell did he get their home number?

‘Logan?’

‘Hmm?’ He looked up. ‘Sorry, miles away.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Samantha, undoing the tie on the front of her robe, ‘maybe I’ve got something here that’ll bring you back from the dead…’

‘What’s he doing?’

Mandy wrinkled her nose. ‘Praying, I think.’

Harry peered around the doorway at the figure kneeling in front of the broken three-bar electric fire. The whole house
smelled of damp and mould. Dark and creepy. Dank and creaky. Harry put his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. ‘He’s a bit…you know? I mean, you saw the papers, right?’

Mandy turned and smiled at him. She was pretty. Brown curly hair. A little black mole at the corner of her mouth. A bit on the chunky side, but that just gave you something to hang onto, didn’t it? Not that Harry would ever say anything. Well, you don’t, do you? Not when you work together like this. But still…she had tremendous knockers.

She punched him on the arm. ‘Worried our boy’s going to find you irresistible?’

‘Ha, ha.’ Harry shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Anyway, Knox likes auld mannies. And in case it skipped your attention, I’m in the prime of my life.’ If you could call a divorced forty-three-year-old man with a receding hairline and expanding waistline in the prime of anything.

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Mandy went back to staring at Knox. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting some kip? It’s nearly midnight, and you’re on at six.’

Harry shrugged again. ‘Can’t sleep the first night in a strange house. You?’

‘Like a log.’

Harry tore his eyes away from the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. ‘I hear he attacked more than a dozen pensioners in Newcastle. Chained them up like dogs.’

Mandy put her head on one side, still staring at the praying man. ‘Had to watch a paedophile once. Primary school gym teacher. Abusing little girls in the changing rooms. Got away with it for seven years.’

‘Jesus…’

‘Watched him for three weeks, till he slashed his throat with the lid off a tin of tuna. Bathroom looked like a horror movie, blood everywhere.’ She sighed. ‘Ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes.’

‘There’s a lovely image.’

‘Point is, he was never going to be a hundred percent safe: didn’t matter how long it took, he was always going to see six-year-old girls as sex objects. If he hadn’t topped himself, I’d probably still be watching him now. Knox is the same. Did it before, he’ll do it again.’ She shrugged. ‘If we’re not here to watch him.’

Harry tried a smile. ‘Good job I got in a couple packets of HobNobs then.’

She nodded at the man kneeling on the threadbare hearthrug. ‘Maybe you should have bought some tins of tuna…’

Richard Albert Knox tries not to smile. He can see them, reflected in the dusty screen of the dead television. Standing there at the lounge door like a pair of old women, gossiping.

His knees ache, but that’s all right. A little pain never did anyone any harm. Sometimes it did them a lot of good. And after all those years kneeling on the concrete floor of his cell, the tatty old rug’s something of a luxury.

But all that time on his knees really paid off, you know? Not like some of them dirty bastards in Frankland Prison; the time
they
spent on their knees was for a different reason. Not that Richard had anything to do with that, thank you very much.

No.

Well…only once, and it wasn’t like he had any option, was it? Not with a length of sharpened pipe waiting for him. They soon learned though, didn’t they? Felt the wrath of God. No one bothered him after that.

He sneaks another look at his two minders from Sacro. Harry and Mandy. A right pair of do-gooders.
‘Oh aren’t we so special, volunteering to look after rapists and paedos?’
How stupid can they be?

Richard can’t keep the smile off his face. They have no idea what’s coming their way.

DC Rennie scowled. ‘Is it me, or did the weather just get even crappier?’

Logan watched the windscreen wipers clunk and squeal across the glass. Rain drummed on the roof of the CID pool car, made spreading puddles on the uneven pavements, shivered the branches of a tall leylandii hedge. The little cul-de-sac was quiet, just a few kids being bustled into cars for the last-minute school run. ‘You got the warrant?’

Rennie dug it out of his jacket pocket. His short blond hair stuck up in all directions, as if he’d just fallen out of bed, and his face had the kind of unnaturally orange fake-tan glow any D-list celebrity would be proud of. ‘Thought nightshift were supposed to deal with this.’

Logan scanned the paperwork – all duly noted and authorized. ‘You ready?’

‘No.’

‘Tough.’ He opened the car door and hurried up the path to the semi-detached house, hop-skip-stepping to avoid the deepest puddles, Detective Constable Rennie sploshing along behind him.

They huddled under the little porch while Rennie thumbed the doorbell. ‘Argh…it’s trickling down the back of my neck!’

‘Better watch it doesn’t wash your tan off. You’ll go all streaky.’

‘Hey, at least I…’

The front door opened. A young man peered out at them: black eye, bruised cheek, and swollen lip, one arm encased in plaster from elbow to palm. The Police National Computer check said he was eighteen, he looked a lot younger. ‘Yeah?’

‘Mr Walker? Douglas Walker?’

He flinched, one hand coming up to shield his bruised face. ‘Don’t hit me!’

Logan held up his warrant card. ‘Police.’

Walker sagged. Sighed, then turned and limped back into the building. ‘Close the door behind you, yeah?’

Inside, it was a study in chintz. Walker levered himself down onto a floral sofa complete with lacy antimacassars. A gas fire hissed away to itself, the mantelpiece littered with glass ornaments, sparkling in the light of a standard lamp. Oil paintings covered the walls – scenes of Aberdeen in OTT gilt frames. Walker grimaced. ‘This about that car?’

‘What do you think?’

The young man stared at the swirly beige carpet. ‘I didn’t know, OK? I thought the cash was legit.’

‘Let me guess,’ Logan edged in front of the fire, letting his trousers steam, ‘soon as you found out there was a problem, you were in such a hurry to give Kevin Middleton his car back, you fell down the stairs a couple of times?’

Walker sniffed. ‘I’m not pressing charges. And you can’t make me.’

Logan let the silence drag out for a while, but Walker kept his face towards the floor.

‘You want to tell me where you got four and a half grand in dodgy twenties?’

He shook his head.

‘OK.’ Logan pulled out the warrant. ‘Douglas Walker, it is an offence to pass counterfeit moneys under section fifteen
of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, punishable by up to ten years in prison.’

At that, Walker
did
look up. His face pale, mouth working up and down. ‘But…I…’

‘I have a warrant here for your arrest. On your feet.’

‘You can’t…’

‘Stand up, Mr Walker.’

‘Oh Jesus…’ He struggled upright, trying not to use his broken right arm. ‘I didn’t know, really I didn’t!’

Logan slipped the papers back in his pocket. ‘Do you want to come with us voluntarily, or shall we do it the hard way?’

Walker bit his bottom lip, setting it bleeding again.

Rennie took out his handcuffs and the young man whimpered.

‘Voluntarily, I’ll come voluntarily.’

‘Good move.’ Logan scribbled that down in his notebook, then got Walker to sign it. He pointed the eighteen-year-old towards the door. ‘Anything I should know about before I get a team in here to tear the place apart?’

‘My mum and dad are in Corfu…’ He wiped a hand across his eyes. ‘They’ll kill me.’

Rennie grinned. ‘If I was you, I’d be more worried about my new cellmate.’ He made an obscene, pokey-pokey hand gesture.

Logan scowled at him. Then turned back to Walker. ‘You got any more counterfeit money on the premises?’

Walker stared at the carpet again, snivelling. He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘There’s another three grand in a holdall in my wardrobe.’

He led them upstairs to a medium-sized bedroom at the front of the house, overlooking the surrounding homes and south towards the River Dee, barely visible through the rain. An easel sat in front of the window, with a landscape of Bennachie sketched out in rough charcoal strokes. The whole place smelled of linseed oil and turpentine.

Walker pointed at the wardrobe sitting next to an unmade single bed. ‘In there.’

Rennie snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and went rummaging.

Logan examined the canvas. ‘Those paintings downstairs yours?’

‘Yeah…’ The young man sniffed. Rubbed at his eyes again. ‘Doing a degree at Gray’s School of Art.’

‘They’re good.’

He shrugged, a blush creeping up his cheeks. ‘I was trying to capture the—’

‘Got it!’ Rennie dragged a black holdall from the mass of shoes and trainers, holding the handles wide apart so Logan could see inside. Lots of little folded bundles made of crisp twenty pound notes.

Logan told him to zip it up again. Then turned back to Walker. ‘You sure you don’t want to just fess up now? Save us all the legwork?’

‘I…erm…’ He sniffed. Looked out of the window at the rain-drenched landscape. ‘Think I should speak to a lawyer.’

Logan slumped back in the visitor’s chair and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Like interviewing a bloody cardboard cut-out.’

DI Steel picked one of the clear plastic evidence pouches from the pile on her desk and peered at the stack of notes inside. ‘There’s no’ another couple of grand knocking about you forgot to sign into evidence, is there?’

Logan looked at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She dumped the cash back on the desk. ‘You any idea how much it’s going to cost to put wee Jasmine through a decent school?’

‘Jasmine?’

‘If it’s a girl.’ She opened her top desk drawer and pulled out a set of screwdrivers and a pair of pliers. ‘Want to help vandalize a window lock?’

‘No.’ Logan picked up the discarded packet of counterfeit cash. ‘You notice it’s all in drug-dealer-bundles? Four twenties laid flat, one twenty wrapped around them at ninety degrees, then the whole lot folded—’

‘Aye, thanks, Captain Sesame Street, but I do actually know what a sodding DDB looks like. Detective inspector, remember?’

‘Just saying it’s a bit odd, OK? Would have thought counterfeit notes would come in big stacks, hot off the presses. Looks like this lot’s been done up for junkies and pushers.’

Steel selected a flat-head screwdriver from the set and swivelled her chair around, hunkering over the catch on her office window. ‘What’s Wallace saying about it?’

‘Walker, not Wallace. Douglas Walker. He’s saying bugger all, wants to speak to a lawyer first.’

‘Jesus, no’ again.’ Dig, dig, poke, poke…

‘Says he heard about that case where the European Court decided someone’s human rights had been violated by not letting them have a lawyer during questioning.’

Steel sighed. ‘Human rights my crinkle-cut arsehole. Tell you, the Americans got the right idea – waterboard the lot of them. Pass me those pliers, eh?’

Logan did as he was asked. ‘Still say it’d be easier to go outside and smoke like a normal person.’

‘You think this Walker kid’s going to crack?’

‘Going to let him stew for a couple of hours. Conned him into coming in on a volley, so there’s no time limit. Maybe drop a few hints about doing a deal if he gives us his supplier. Usual vague lies.’ Logan checked his watch. ‘We got that MAPPA meeting in ten minutes. I’m off for a fag. Want one? Or you going to stay here practising your housebreaking?’

Steel sniffed, then dumped the screwdriver on her desk. ‘Aye, what the hell.’

Outside, on the rear podium car park, it was teeth-chatteringly cold. The tall, rectangular ‘U’ shaped bulk of FHQ
acted as a windbreak, but the granite buildings it backed onto blocked out the low sun, leaving the whole place shrouded in deep-freezer shadows.

Logan sparked up a cigarette, hands cupped around the glowing tip for warmth, Steel shivering beside him, fingertips rammed into her armpits. Stomping her feet and swearing out a stream of white smoke and breath.

‘Fuck me, it’s cold.’

‘Any word from your chiz yet?’

She grimaced. ‘Bugger’s still no’ answering his phone. Got the GSM trace though, looks like he’s staying somewhere south-east of Balmedie.’

‘Want to take a run over after the MAPPA meeting?’ Logan took a deep drag on his Benson and Hedges, then spluttered it out in a rumbling cough as the back door opened and the familiar, porky figure of DI Beardy Beattie lumbered out, hauling on an Arctic-explorer-style padded parka. Logan stuck two fingers up in the man’s direction. ‘Wanker.’

If Beattie heard, he pretended not to, just clambered into one of the CID pool cars and drove away.

Steel pulled the cigarette from her mouth. ‘You know…people are beginning to notice.’

‘Good for them.’ Logan took another puff. ‘Notice what?’

‘Your attitude.’ She turned till she was staring out at the little frost-covered stairway down to the mortuary. ‘There’s been complaints.’

Typical.

‘It’s Beattie, isn’t it? That useless tosser thinks I’ve got nothing better to—’

‘It’s no’ just Beattie, OK? It’s everyone.’ She flicked away a nub of ash. ‘The DCs are fed up with the sarcasm and the shouting. The DIs are fed up with you complaining all the time and stinking of booze. The DCI’s fed up of everyone moaning to him about it. And I’m fed up defending you the whole sodding time.’

Silence.

Logan sucked hard on his cigarette.
‘My
sarcasm?
My
shouting? What about that fucker Finnie? And—’

‘Enough, OK? Enough…’ Steel turned and stared at him, eyes crinkled at the edges, mouth turned down. ‘It’s no’ about Finnie, it’s about you. Either you pull your socks up, or people are going to start making it official.’ She poked him in the chest. ‘That sound like fun to you: spending all your time getting hauled up by Professional Standards?’

Logan glowered at her. ‘And you agree with them? That it?’

‘Fucksake, I’m
trying
to help you!’ She stormed off a couple of paces, then turned and stormed back. ‘You used to be a bloody good cop, you really did. A team player. But right now you’re a fucking haemorrhoid dipped in Tabasco. A broken-glass suppository. A…’ She paused. Frowned. ‘A barbed-wire butt-plug!’

‘Oh don’t be—’

‘Whatever’s wrong with you, get over it. Or you’re going to end up out on your ear and no one’ll be sorry to see you go.’

He dropped his half-smoked cigarette and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. ‘Anything else?’

‘Get a bloody haircut.’

Logan backed into the boardroom, carrying a tray covered with wax-paper cups and a plate of pastries. He placed it in the middle of the long, polished table and everyone stopped what they were doing to scramble for the jammy doughnuts. Leaving him with a greasy-looking apple turnover, a white coffee, and a sulk.

Bunch of bastards. Complaining about his attitude, like he was the worst person in the whole bloody place. Hell, he wasn’t even the worst person in the
room.

Like all Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements meetings the place was packed with people doing their best
to come up with ‘defensible decisions’. Decisions they couldn’t get blamed for if anything went wrong. Social Services, the Council, Sacro, and Grampian Police, all covering their arses and hoping to God that Richard Knox would eventually get fed up of Aberdeen and bugger off back down south. Become someone else’s problem.

Detective Inspector Duncan Ingram – in charge of monitoring every pervert, rapist, and paedophile in the north-east of Scotland – stood at the front of the room, writing up the exit strategy for Richard Knox on the whiteboard in squeaky green marker pen. Pausing every now and then to check his thin, military moustache was still obeying orders.

It was a complete waste of time. Knox didn’t need an exit strategy, he needed an exit wound. Preferably from a shotgun to the back of the head.

DSI Danby sat at the other end of the long, polished boardroom table, taking notes. DI Steel slouched in her seat, picking her teeth. And DCI Finnie stood in the corner, holding a murmured conversation with someone on his mobile.

Ingram rammed the cap back on his marker pen, and supervised his moustache again. ‘Now, as you can see from the risk assessment matrix, we’ve got several environmental factors against us where Richard Knox is concerned. The house is within easy walking distance of one sheltered living facility, a bowling green, and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. All places we can expect old men to be found on a regular basis…’

Logan tuned him out.

How could anyone complain about his attitude?

This was so bloody typical of—

Someone kicked him under the table.

‘Wh…’

Steel was making less than subtle gestures towards the whiteboard. Mouthing, ‘Pay a-fucking-tention!’

‘…and
that’s
why,’ DI Ingram had written ‘HMP P
ETERHEAD
’ on the board, ‘we have a disproportionately large number of
sex offenders to manage. Of the three hundred and twenty-three currently living in the North East, about half are classed as “indefinite”. So they’re on the list for life…’

Logan tuned him out again. It was all rubbish anyway, background info for a nodding DSI Danby. Now
there
was someone with an attitude worth complaining about. But did they?
No,
they had to whinge about Logan instead. Obviously, that cock-weasel Beattie was behind it all. Wanted taking out and—

Steel kicked him again. Then turned and announced to the room, ‘How about DS McRae takes us through the surveillance routine?’

Cow.

Logan scowled at her, then stood and marched to the front of the room, snatched a red marker from the tray beneath the whiteboard and scrawled up a rough outline of the house in Cornhill that Knox had inherited. ‘We can’t put surveillance cameras in the house without Knox’s permission, so we’re going to set one on the lamppost opposite…’ Logan sketched in the street. ‘Here, and another one here. This gives us a coming-and-going view the length of Cairnview Terrace. He’ll get level one surveillance for the first week, then—’