Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

Logan tried the photo of Jessica Campbell again. ‘Do you recognize this woman, Laura?’

‘Aye. Is it Oprah Winfrey?’ She grinned, showing off a couple of gold incisors. The patch where she’d thumped her forehead into the landing carpet had scabbed over, making dark parallel lines in the pale freckled skin.

‘Do you think Hamish Mowat would have liked you and Ricky switching sides? Getting your drugs from Jessica Campbell? That’s—’

‘I object.’ Mr Nervous sat up straight. ‘My client has...’

Laura Welsh stared at him, the grin turning into a growl.

He cleared his throat. Lowered his eyes to his trembling pen. ‘Yes.’

She smiled again. ‘Wee Hamish is dead. Did you no’ hear?’

Harper leaned forwards. ‘We found nine thousand pounds’ worth of cannabis resin in your house, Mrs Welsh. Do you know how many years that’ll get you?’

Laura didn’t even look at her, she raised a big hand and pointed instead. The hearts tattooed between her knuckles, flexed. ‘I don’t know you. Keep it that way.’

Silence.

Logan straightened the photograph. ‘So you’ve changed sides.’

‘See, soon as Wee Hamish Mowat died, that was it. Chaos.’

‘What about Reuben?’

‘Oh, he’s a great man with a knife, or a hammer, but running things? You imagine what it’s going to be like now Wee Hamish is gone? Going to fall apart.’

Mr Nervous fidgeted with his pen. ‘Mrs Welsh, I really think—’

‘See if I have to tell you again...’

He shrank about a foot. ‘Sorry.’

Laura nodded. ‘Sergeant McRae and me are just having a chat about general stuff. Putting the world to rights. Right, Sergeant McRae?’

‘Right.’

‘Way I hear it, everyone’s picking sides. Smart money’s on Glasgow.’ A shrug. ‘Or Edinburgh.’

‘What about the Hussain Brothers? Liverpool Junkyard Massive? Black Angus MacDonald?’

She curled one side of her face up. ‘Nah. On a hiding to nowhere with that lot. Black Angus couldn’t organize a piss-up at an AA meeting. Rest are all wannabe hardmen.’

‘Reuben’s not going to bow out gracefully.’

‘Scar-faced fat bastard wants to start a war. How’s he going to do that when all his troops have sodded off to Ma Campbell or Malk the Knife? Be nothing but him and a couple morons pissing into the wind.’ She flashed Logan those gold incisors again. ‘Desperate last gasps of a dying regime, Sergeant McRae. And there won’t be a civil war when it topples: Edinburgh and Glasgow will divvy up Aberdeenshire and that’ll be it.’

Until Jessica Campbell and Malcolm McLennan decided they wanted a bigger slice of the cake.

‘And Reuben?’

‘Sooner or later, he’s going to end up dead. Question is how many people he takes with him.’

Harper leaned in. ‘You seem to know a lot about the goings on up here, Mrs Welsh.’

A shrug. ‘I hear things.’

‘And did you hear who attacked Sergeant McRae and Detective Chief Inspector Steel on Friday night? Was it Jessica Campbell’s people, or Malcolm McLennan’s?’

Laura’s grin was back. ‘No comment.’

Harper tucked the folder under her arm, staring down the corridor as Laura Welsh was led away back to her cell. Then Harper turned and slammed her boot into the interview room door. ‘Damn it!’

‘Can’t say we didn’t try.’

‘No comment, no comment, no bloody comment.’ She took a deep breath and hissed it out. ‘Right.’ Shook her head and made for the exit, straightening her shoulders as she marched towards the double doors. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll find out who’s behind it all soon as they turn up to collect the cargo at six. We’ll still get a result.’

True.

She pushed through into the stairwell, and stopped, frowning at the window. Snow drifted across the prison car park, whipped into mini cyclones by the wind. Rattling the lights on their pillars and making them sway. ‘Better get the car warmed up, Sergeant. We’ll head back to Banff and make sure everything’s set for the swoop soon as I’ve updated the powers that be.’

‘Sir.’

She followed him down one flight, then pulled out her phone and disappeared into the admin block, leaving him alone in the stairwell.

Logan waited till she was definitely out of earshot. ‘Thanks a bloody heap.’

So he could freeze his ears off, marching outside in the snow to get the Big Car all warm and toasty for her.

Bloody Superintendents were all the same.

He thumped down the stairs, and signed out at the reception desk. Then shoved his way out into the snow.

It was like being machine-gunned with tiny white blocks of Lego, stripping the air from his lungs. The wind battered him, making him lurch like a Monday-morning drunk across the gritted tarmac to the Big Car.

Gah. Just because Peterhead was a hundred and twenty miles north of Moscow it didn’t have to show off about it. Polar bears had it warmer than this...

He fumbled his keys out with numb fingers and scrambled inside. Started the Big Car up and cranked the blowers to full, huffing warm breath into his cupped hands.

Barely half four, and it was more like the middle of the night out there. Snow hammered the car, rocking it on its springs.

He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt the outline of his mobile phone.

Do it.

No.

For God’s sake, grow a pair!

Harper was right: the only thing that stopped everything falling apart was people doing the right thing, instead of the easy thing.

Yes, but...

The blowers roared.

Steel had fitted Jack Wallace up. She’d manufactured evidence. Lied in court. Perverted the course of justice. She’d crossed the line. Yes, Wallace deserved to be in prison, but he deserved to be there for what he’d done, not for what he hadn’t. That was how it worked.

So do the right thing.
‘I don’t want to.’

No matter what it costs, remember?

A deep breath, then Logan pulled out his phone; called up his contacts list and dialled Napier.

It rang and rang.

Still not too late to hang up.

And rang and rang.

This was stupid. Hang up.

And rang and—

‘ Chief Superintendent Napier. ’

All the moisture evaporated from Logan’s mouth.

‘ Hello? ’

He clicked off the blowers. Licked his lips. ‘Chief Superintendent, it’s Logan McRae. I need to talk to you about Jack Wallace.’

Harper checked her watch. ‘They’re late.’

The harbour lights cast pale writhing shadows, distorted by the falling snow. Not a breath of wind. Thick white flakes drifted down onto the Big Car’s bonnet, melting away with the heat of the engine, even though it’d been turned off for nearly quarter of an hour.

Logan twisted the key far enough to get the windscreen wipers going. The view wasn’t that much better with the snow cleared. From here, tucked in between two bland grey buildings, the harbour walls made a lopsided triangle that sulked beneath the cold night sky. About two dozen small boats sat along the jetties jutting out into the water, not a single light between them.

He pressed the button on his Airwave. ‘All units, check in.’

‘ DI Singh: no movement.’

‘ DS Weatherford: no movement.’

‘ DS Rennie: nada for us.’

‘ DS McKenzie: no movement.’

Silence.

Logan pressed the button again. ‘DCI Steel, check in please.’

Her voice cracked out of the handset. ‘ I’m bored, I’m tired, I’m cold, and Spaver here keeps farting. Other than that? Sod all.’

Harper shook her head. ‘And they made that a Detective Chief Inspector?’