Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

Snow crunched beneath his feet as Logan picked his way along the road to the patrol car and rapped on the driver’s window.

It buzzed down, exposing a square face with thick eyebrows. ‘Help you?’

Logan showed her his warrant card. ‘Sergeant McRae. Anything happening?’

‘Nah. Kids came home from school about twenty minutes ago, Tesco van dropped off shopping at number twelve, other than that: quiet as the grave.’ A sniff. ‘Freezing our backsides off here.’

‘It’s OK, you can Foxtrot Oscar. I’ll stay over and keep an eye on the place. Just make sure someone’s back here for nine-ish tomorrow.’

She curled her lip and raised one of those family-sized eyebrows. ‘Yeah...’ Then reached for her Airwave. ‘Think I’ll check with my guvnor first, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘Be my guest.’ Logan hooked a thumb back towards his manky rusting Punto. ‘But before you go, you can give me a hand getting DCI Steel inside.’

‘Ummmph...’ Logan dumped Steel on her bed, then stood back panting. ‘She’s heavier than she looks.’

‘Why do you think we’re all on diets?’ Susan hauled one of Steel’s legs up and undid the boot on the end.

The bedroom looked like something out of a catalogue: the bedding toned with the carpet and the curtains, the wallpaper went with the two chairs, and the wooden bed frame, wardrobe, vanity unit, and ottoman all had exactly the same twiddly bits.

He stepped over to the window as Susan got to work on the socks. ‘Hour and a half it took to get here. Traffic’s appalling.’ The front garden was almost swallowed by snow, the shrubs and bushes fading into soft outlines. Thick plumes of white purred from the patrol car’s exhaust, then it pulled away from the kerb. Off to fight crime. Logan smiled and turned his back on the scene. ‘And the snoring . Dear God, it was like being battered over the head with a chainsaw.’

‘Welcome to my world. Give me a hand with her jacket?’

They ate in the kitchen.

‘Nothing fancy, I’m afraid.’ Susan put a big bowl of pasta down in front of him, studded with mushrooms and flecks of bacon. Then she sat and watched him eat, her own plate untouched. ‘Are you feeling all right, Logan? Only you seem a bit... you know.’

‘This is lovely, thanks.’ He shovelled in another mouthful and tried for a smile. ‘I’m OK. You know: been a tough week.’

‘Well, if you need someone to talk to.’ She reached across the breakfast bar and took his hand.

‘Thanks.’ But two people in an illegal conspiracy was probably enough.

‘Come on, Monkeybum, time for bed.’

Jasmine stuck her bottom lip out and pulled on a kicked-puppy expression. ‘But I’m watching Adventure Cat with Dad .’

On the TV, a round fuzzy cat in a weird hat leapt off a space jukebox and ninja-kicked an oversized rat dressed as the King of Transylbumvania.

If Police Scotland really wanted to make inroads into the drugs trade, arresting everyone involved in children’s television would probably be a good start.

‘You heard your mum.’ Logan switched off the telly, then plonked a palm down on top of Jasmine’s head and ruffled her hair. ‘Teeth, then bed. And if you’re good I’ll read you some of your favourite book.’

‘But, Da-ad...’ Head on one side, making her eyes as big as they possibly could be — eyelashes fluttering.

Yeah, she was going to cause fights in pubs when she was older.

‘No Skeleton Bob and the Very Naughty Pirates for you then.’

‘Oh... poo.’ Then she hopped down from the table and went to do her teeth.

Logan checked his watch: eight o’clock.

Four hours to go.

Logan settled on the edge of the Peppa Pig duvet — covering Daddy Pig’s genitalia-shaped head — and picked the book up from the windowsill. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

It was strange, but after working with Detective Superintendent Harper, the family resemblance was actually pretty clear. OK, so the hair colour was different — Jasmine’s dark brown versus Harper’s off-blonde — but they both had the same strong jaw, the same lopsided smile. The same big ears.

Jasmine frowned at him. ‘Why do you always say that, before you read a story?’

‘Because I’m old.’ His hand drifted up, feeling the outline of his own ear. It wasn’t really that big, was it? Oh, sodding hell: it was. God, they were a family of elephant people.

He opened the book to a lurid illustration of a wee skeletal boy in a knitted pink suit and feathery pirate hat, on a boat, sword-fighting against what looked like octopus tentacles. ‘Ahem.’ He put on a cod West Country accent.

‘“The following tale, Dear Reader, I fear,

Is probably not for your sensitive ears,

The old and the wobbly, the scared and the sick,

Had better read something else pretty darn quick,

For this is a tale that’s both scary and true,

Of how Skeleton Bob joined a most scurvy crew...”’

Rasping snores thundered through the wall, making the paintings on this side vibrate. Logan lay flat on his back, on the bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, with the evidence bag resting on his chest. Heavy. Pushing down on his heart.

A faint yellow glow oozed in through the curtains, picking out the edges of more catalogue furniture.

He pulled out his phone and checked the time: quarter past eleven. Give it another five minutes.

Surely Susan would be asleep by now? Then again, how anyone could sleep next to that racket was anyone’s guess. They said love was blind, but apparently it was deaf as well.

Four minutes.

Shadows made patterns on the ceiling, barely visible in the gloom. There an open grave, here a severed hand. Was that a claw hammer encrusted with blood and hair?

Where the hell was Samantha when you needed her? Someone to hold his hand and tell him he was doing the right thing.

He was, wasn’t he?

OK, not the right right thing, but it was this or... what?

Couldn’t even go to the Procurator Fiscal and get Reuben done for battering Tony Evans to death. No body, no witnesses. And even if he could get Reuben sent down for eighteen years, Logan would be off to a cell of his own. Where Reuben could have him shanked in the laundry room. Raped and strangled in the showers. Stabbed in the exercise yard.

Two minutes.

So grow a pair of man-sized testicles and do what needs to be done.

Easy as that.

God...

How could people like Reuben just kill people and not worry about it? Why didn’t it keep them awake, staring at the horror-film shadows on the ceiling?

One minute.

OK that was long enough.

Logan slipped off the bed and picked up his shoes. Eased out into the corridor. Closed the door, slow and gentle.

The snoring didn’t miss a beat.

He crept downstairs and out into the night.

‘You know what this is, don’t you?’

The Fiat Punto rattled its way along a narrow country road, windscreen wipers moaning their way back and forth across the glass, smearing the snow as it melted.

Logan glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror. ‘Stupid?’

‘What if it’s a trap? What if Urquhart’s set you up?’

‘Could be.’

A tiny row of houses crawled past on the left. Two or three lights were on, but other than that they were dark. Nearly midnight, and with luck nobody would be wandering about, taking down number plates.

Mounds of grimy white lined the tarmac. The road hadn’t been gritted, but it had been ploughed which made it slightly easier to drive on. Logan’s Punto rattled through the troughs, doing no more than twenty, heater up full, blowers at maximum.