Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

‘YOU FOUND HIM?’

‘NO I HAVEN’T SODDING FOUND HIM!’ He shoved his way through a bush. ‘Sod this. And Sod you. Soon as I get back to the road you can shove your job. Don’t need this crap.’

One more bush and he was level.

His eyes were all swollen, the skin puffy and dark, shiny trails of snot glimmering on his top lip. But that was getting a face full of CS gas for you.

Logan flicked the baton up and the extendable section shot out with a clack over his shoulder. Then down again, hard, cracking it across Jones’s wrist. The gun clattered to the ground as Gavin Jones screamed — mouth open wide, full of those squint little teeth. ‘AAAAAAA—’

He snapped the baton up again. The vibration shuddered up his arm as the metal bar cracked into Jones’s face. There was a crunch like someone crushing a bag of crisps.

Gavin Jones crumpled to the ground, mouth still open. Only now the squint little teeth were nothing more than jagged stumps in ruptured gums.

Still breathing, but definitely unconscious.

‘WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?’ Reuben’s voice echoed into silence.

The snow fell.

‘JONESY, WHERE’S MCRAE?’

It settled on the boulders and the trees.

‘JONESY?’

Logan collapsed the baton against a boulder and put it away. Then knelt in the dark, running his hands over the cold earth till he found the gun.

‘MCRAE? I KNOW YOU’RE THERE!’

He turned and limped back towards the cliff face.

‘I’M GOING TO KILL YOUR SISTER! YOU HEAR ME?’

Leaned his cheek against the cold rock.

Took a deep breath.

Right, let’s try that again.

Logan eased himself over the top of the cliff and lay on his back, panting.

His arms were on fire, hands cut and scraped by the rocks and branches, punctured by long dead thistles. Both legs ached. So did his head, and his back.

Let’s face it, everything hurt.

His breath hung above his face.

Come on. Almost there.

He wobbled to his feet. Spat out a thick glob of white. Then lurched up the hill.

That crashed Fiesta lay a good forty or fifty feet off to the left.

Logan froze.

Reuben was still there. Still standing at the edge of the road, peering down into the darkness, clutching his sawn-off in one hand and his crutch in the other.

Moron. A sensible person would have sodded off by now, taken his hostage and his battered bent cop and worked on an alibi. But not Reuben. He was too busy getting revenge.

No wonder Wee Hamish didn’t want him taking over.

Logan climbed the slope, bent double, grabbing handfuls of cold damp grass to pull himself up. By the time he reached the road, he was on his knees, pulse thumping in his throat, keeping time with the drums in his skull.

The trees and snow and tarmac throbbed in and out of focus.

Be nice to lie down here for a bit. Three or four days, maybe.

The road curled around to the right, hiding the Big Car and Reuben’s Range Rover behind a massive clump of gorse.

Nearly there.

Come on.

Logan struggled to his feet and stood with his head back, arms hanging loose at his side, steam rising from his sodden black fleece. Then pulled the gun from his pocket and staggered on. ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Shut up, you idiot, he’ll hear you.’

Good point.

OK: here’s the plan. We walk up to Reuben and we shoot him in the head. No screwing about. No hesitating. No ‘accidentally’ shooting him in the leg instead.

Headshot.

Bang.

Blood and brains all over the road.

OK?

OK.

What about the body?

We can sort that when we get to it.

Right.

The Big Car appeared from behind the gorse bush’s spiny fronds, emergency flashers blinking orange light.

Not far now.

Logan flicked the safety catch off and stepped out into the middle of the road.

He raised the gun and limped past the Big Car. ‘Reuben.’

The big man stood with his back to the slope. He’d ditched the crutch — now his hand was wrapped up in a big fist of long blonde hair. The other held the sawn-off shotgun against Harper’s forehead. ‘Took your time, McRae. Been waiting ages.’

She was kneeling on the tarmac, her eyes narrow and wrinkled at the edges as if she were having difficulty focusing. Twin lines of dark red ran horizontally across her cheek. Arms behind her back. Which explained where Mr Teeth’s handcuffs had gone.

Logan aimed. ‘Let her go.’

‘Or what?’

‘I won’t miss this time.’ He kept limping, closing the gap, keeping the gun pointing at Reuben’s big fat scarred face. ‘Let her go.’

‘Nah.’

McKenzie’s body lay on the verge with its head turned to one side. There wasn’t much left of her features: the whole front of her face was a raw bloody pulp, screamingly red in the Big Car’s headlights. The woman with the knitted bunnet — the one who’d flagged them down claiming there’d been an accident — squatted beside McKenzie, going through her pockets.

Classy.

Reuben ground the shotgun’s barrels into Harper’s skin. ‘See, this wee bitch here? I’m going to paint the woods with her brains. BANG!’

She flinched, and so did Logan.

Reuben laughed, belly and chins wobbling. ‘Then I’m going to do the same to you. And then I’ll track down your kids and do them too. Because you’re weak .’

Logan pulled the trigger and the Range Rover’s rear window shattered. The handgun’s BOOOM reverberated back from the trees. ‘Let — her — go!’

The woman in the bunnet scrambled back, one hand on her chest. ‘Jesus...’

Reuben grinned. ‘Thought you weren’t going to miss?’

Harper raised her chin. ‘Shoot him.’

‘Shut up, darling, the grown-ups are talking.’ Reuben twisted the fist in her hair until she screwed her eyes closed, breath hissing out through her clenched teeth. It caught the headlights and billowed bright white.

‘Come on, Reuben. It’s not her you want, it’s me. She didn’t screw you over and make you look like a moron, did she?’ Logan limped closer. ‘That was me .’

Closer.

‘Think you’re getting a rise out of me, McRae?’

‘Wee Hamish didn’t think you had the brains to take over. He was right, wasn’t he?’

Closer.

‘You want to see brains? How about your sister’s?’

Closer.

‘It’s all falling apart, isn’t it? All your dealers are defecting to Malcolm McLennan or Jessica Campbell. You inherited an empire and now you’re king of sod-all.’

Closer.

Stevie Wonder couldn’t miss at this range.

‘Say good bye, McRae, you’re—’

Logan shot him in the face.

Narveer sucked on his teeth for a bit. Then shook his head. ‘A right cocking mess.’

Really? What gave it away?

A pair of ambulances blocked the road with their boxy white bodies, blue-and-white lights flickering on and off — catching the snow as it fell.

Logan ducked under the yellow-and-black cordon of tape: ‘C RIME S CENE D O N OT E NTER ’. He pointed at the ambulance furthest away. ‘I’m going to take her home, if that’s OK?’

The DI puffed out his cheeks. ‘Professional Standards are on their way. Going to be the mother, father, and maiden aunt of all internal investigations.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Logan looked back along the road, where someone in a white SOC suit was photographing Detective Sergeant Becky McKenzie’s body. ‘Been a rough night all round.’

Torches swung along the slope below them, wielded by more figures in oversuits — ghosts in the dark, hunting for evidence.

A patrol car sat inside the cordon, behind the Big Car. The woman in the back seat glowered out at them, knitted bunnet wedged down over her ears. Not bright enough to do a runner before reinforcements turned up. Reuben certainly knew how to pick them.