Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

She bared her teeth at Logan, through the glass.

He waved back. ‘Hope your handcuffs are so tight your fingers fall off.’

Narveer shook his head. ‘She can’t hear you.’

‘It’s the thought that counts.’

‘Yeah... You really need some time off, don’t you?’ He put a hand on Logan’s shoulder and steered him towards the ambulances. ‘Go. Get the boss home before she starts trying to take over the investigation.’

Logan ran a hand over his face. ‘Suppose we’ll both be suspended from active duty, till it’s dealt with.’

‘Probably.’

By which time he’d probably be in a cell looking at sixteen years.

Logan limped along the road, past the Range Rover with the shattered back window, and on towards the ambulances.

The one nearest had its back doors firmly shut, and he stuck up two fingers as he hobbled past to the other one.

Harper sat on the tailgate, a bottle of water in her hand and a silver blanket around her shoulders as if she’d just run a marathon. She blinked at him, then batted the paramedic away. ‘Get off.’

The wee man in the green overalls dumped a stained clump of cotton wool into a kidney dish, then pulled out another, using it to clean the blood off Harper’s cheek and forehead. ‘You’ve probably got concussion. Any idea how serious that can be? Because the answer’s very .’

The other ambulance growled as it pulled away. Accelerating as it passed them, its siren cutting through the snowy night.

Logan groaned to a halt. ‘Touch and go, but they’ll do their best.’

Harper sniffed. ‘Can’t believe you shot him in the head.’

‘Think I should’ve let him kill the pair of us instead?’

‘It’s going to take weeks to shampoo him out of my hair.’

‘Look into the light.’ The paramedic knelt in front of Harper and shone a pencil torch in her eyes. ‘Can you hear any—’

‘Seriously, if you don’t sod off right now, I’m going to arrest you.’

‘Fine. If that’s what you want.’ He put the torch away. ‘It’s your funeral.’

She climbed down onto the snow. The ambulance tyres had left four lines of black tarmac showing through, but everything else was slowly disappearing under a pall of white.

A roar of rotor blades whupped by overhead, a spotlight from the helicopter catching the trees in freeze-frame.

Logan led her over to one of the patrol cars arrayed along the road. ‘How’s the head?’

‘Sore. Yours?’

He touched the wad of gauze taped over the egg growing out of his skull. ‘Yes.’ He opened the door and helped Harper up into the passenger seat, then limped around to the driver’s side. Sagged for a minute, then started the engine. Clicked the headlights up full beam.

She turned in her seat, looking back towards the cordons and the vehicles and the ghosts. ‘What did you mean?’

Logan pulled the car away from the verge, one back wheel vwipppping on the snowy grass till the tyre took hold. ‘You can stay in the spare room tonight. Paramedics said you’re not supposed to be alone in case you die.’ At least it was safe to go home now, and he and Cthulhu were spared having to live out of a series of anonymous bed-and-breakfasts.

‘You told him, I wasn’t the one who screwed him over and made him look like an idiot.’

‘The paramedic?’

‘The big ugly fat guy with the scars.’ She tugged at a clotted coil of hair. ‘Mr Wash-And-Go.’

‘No I didn’t.’

A very clean grey van appeared over the crown of the hill, with ‘B EATON AND M ACBETH ’ in discreet lettering on the side. Andy and George waved at him as they passed. With one body at the foot of the cliff and another on the roadside, it was going to be a busy night for the duty undertakers.

Harper faced front again. ‘You did, I heard you.’

‘No, I said I made him look like a moron.’

‘And?’

As they crested the hill, Logan’s phone started dinging and bleeping — text messages coming in after all that time in the gully.

‘And I was trying to piss him off. Get him angry and distracted.’

‘Yes, but why pick that?’

‘Worked, didn’t it?’

‘You know there’s going to be an inquiry.’

And he was screwed whether Reuben regained consciousness or not. Gavin Jones would probably last about fifteen minutes before spilling his guts, and it would all be over for Sergeant Logan Balmoral McRae. ‘Good.’

He flicked the windscreen wipers up a notch, clearing the glass as the snowfall thickened.

The world was a swirling mess of white and grey — visibility down to a dozen feet. Logan dipped the headlights. It helped a bit.

She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you. For not letting him blow my head off.’

A shrug. ‘What are big brothers for?’

The wipers squealed and groaned.

The grey-white world slid by.

‘Logan? When—’ Harper’s Airwave handset gave four beeps.

‘ DS Robertson to Detective Superintendent Harper, safe to talk? ’

She sighed, then pulled it out and pressed the button. ‘Go ahead, Robertson.’

‘ Yeah, listen, Boss: are you still needing us to lockdown the Milne place? Only my guys were meant to be off-shift half an hour ago. Someone coming to relieve us? ’

Harper turned and widened her eyes at Logan, giving him a flash of teeth. ‘You stay where you are, Robertson — I’ll OK the overtime. Sergeant McRae and I are on our way.’

‘ Boss. ’

Logan sighed. ‘We’ve been involved in a fatal shooting. They won’t want us on active duty. We—’

‘Has anyone officially said you can’t take part in an active investigation?’

‘Not officially, no.’ He kept his eyes on the road. ‘Sure you don’t want to go home?’

‘Oh I’m absolutely positive. I’ve had a very bad day, and Martin Sodding Milne is going to find out what that feels like.’

Logan pulled up outside number six, Greystone View.

The lights of Whitehills were blocked out by the blizzard, thick sheets of heavy snow howling in on a wind that hammered the trees and gardens. A gust rocked the patrol car on its springs. He killed the engine.

Snow moaned and hissed against the roof.

Another patrol car was parked in front of them and the passenger door popped open, disgorging a skeletal lump in a high-viz jacket. DS Robertson hurried over, bent almost double by the wind. He rapped on the car window and Logan clicked the keys in the ignition far enough to buzz it down.

The wind growled.

‘Thought you’d forgotten about us.’ Flakes of white clung to his ludicrous sideburns, weighing them down.

‘Any movement?’

‘Sod all. Light’s been on all night, but the curtains have barely twitched. No one in or out, as per.’

Harper clunked her door open and climbed into the snow. Stuck her hand out. ‘DS Robertson, can I have your cuffs?’

A shrug. ‘Don’t see why not.’ He passed them over as Logan buzzed up the window and creaked his way out of the car. It was as if his joints had all rusted on the twenty-minute drive over here. The muscles in his arms and legs ached, his back complaining as he struggled his way into a high-viz jacket. He puffed out a breath and waited for the worst of it to pass.

‘You OK?’ Robertson was frowning at him. ‘Only you look like crap.’

‘Yeah. Hang on for ten minutes, OK? Just in case.’ He turned his shoulder to the wind and fought his way up the drive, cold leeching through his damp boots into his damp socks.

Harper stamped along beside him, using him as a windbreak.

Logan leaned on the bell. Turned his back on the blizzard. Snow thumped into his shoulders, threatening to tear the peaked cap from his head. ‘Samantha was right, I should have gone to Spain.’