Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

She took a good long draw on her fake cigarette. ‘Well, well, if it’s no’ the Dark Prince of Professional Standards himself. What can we do you for, this sharny night, Nigel?’

Napier stared at her for a moment, then put his hands behind his back. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel, I’m detaining you under Section Fourteen of the Criminal Procedure — Scotland — Act 1995, because I suspect you of having committed an offence punishable by imprisonment.’

She glanced past him at Logan. ‘Oh aye?’

‘Please, get in the car.’

‘What if I don’t want to get in the car? What if I want to kick off, right here?’

He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. ‘Please, just get in the car.’

‘I’ve done sod-all and you know it.’

‘That’s for a court to decide.’

She jabbed a finger in Logan’s direction. ‘Tell him, Laz. Tell this lanky strip of gristle he’s got the wrong woman.’

One of Napier’s people stepped up and took hold of Steel’s arm. ‘Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be, OK?’

‘Laz?’

The other one stepped up, and between them they steered her towards the patrol car.

‘Laz, tell them!’

They opened the back door and eased her inside, one putting a hand on top of her head so she wouldn’t bash it.

‘LAZ! TELL THESE BASTARDS WHAT—’

Clunk . The car door shut, taking her angry voice with it.

The snow-covered landscape hissed past the Big Car’s windows, headlights glittering back at them from wet tarmac. Every time the windscreen wipers travelled across the glass, they squeaked and moaned, as if someone was murdering a lot of mice one at a time.

Harper was staring at him.

Logan kept his eyes on the road.

‘Well, Sergeant, are you going to tell us what that was all about?’

‘DCI Steel is consulting on one of the Chief Superintendent’s cases.’

Trees drifted by in the distance, their branches drooping under the accumulated frozen weight.

‘Hmmm...’

Sitting in the back seat, McKenzie kept her mouth shut, thumbs busy poking away at her mobile. Texting or playing Candy Crush.

Harper scowled out at the darkness. ‘I can’t believe we’ve been so stupid . There never were any gangsters, were there? All that rubbish about getting a loan from Malcolm McLennan — Milne made it up.’

‘He falls out with Peter Shepherd, they fight, it gets out of hand, and next thing you know, he’s got a body to get rid of.’ Logan changed down for the hill. ‘So he comes up with the idea of staging it to look like the photo in The Blood-Red Line and framing McLennan for it. Tells us McLennan loaned them two hundred thousand so we won’t do him for embezzling the cash — suddenly he’s the victim. A nice neat little package.’

‘And I should have listened to you in the first place.’ She banged a hand on the dashboard. ‘Idiot.’

Harper’s Airwave gave its four point-to-point beeps. ‘ Ma’am, it’s Narveer. ’

She pressed the button. ‘Go ahead.’

‘ I’ve sent the Jotun Sverd ’s crew on their way. No fish suppers for them. ’

‘What about everyone else?’

‘ There’s a couple of house fires in Peterhead, and a factory unit’s gone up in Fraserburgh. Sounds like wilful fire raising. Everyone on duty’s en route. I’ve disbanded everyone else. No point totally spanking the overtime budget. ’

The road wound up, then plunged down like a rollercoaster.

‘Thanks, Narveer. We’ll need to get started on the paperwork first thing tomorrow. See if we can justify the almighty cock-up and expense.’

‘ Will do. Do you... with—... isn’t for—... next... ’ Then hissing. Then nothing at all.

Harper slapped the Airwave against her palm. ‘Work you stupid lump of plastic.’

McKenzie shifted forward. ‘It’s the hollow here. No reception.’

Through a gap between the hills, the sea was a slab of clay, framed by snow-flecked woods.

Logan took them around the corner, and slowed. A woman stood at the side of the road, wearing jeans, a Barbour jacket, and a knitted bunnet. She waved her arms over her head, caught in the on-again off-again flash of a Range Rover’s hazard lights.

He stopped and buzzed down his window. ‘Broken down?’

Her cheeks and nose glowed bright pink. ‘There’s been an accident — a car’s left the road. Please, you have to help them!’

‘Hold on.’ Logan pulled the Big Car up onto the verge, behind the Range Rover, then jumped down into the snow. Reached into the back for his high-viz jacket and peaked cap. ‘Becky, can you get the warning signs out of the boot and stick them up round the corners? Don’t want some idiot rallying their way into the back of us.’

McKenzie put her phone away. ‘OK.’

‘There’s a spare high-viz in there too.’

The woman tugged at his sleeve. ‘Please hurry.’

Logan took out his torch and crunched his way through the snow to the front of the Range Rover. A pair of tyre marks cut through the dirty white crust, heading over the edge. He played the beam down the ravine and across the trees, then stopped. Red tail-lights reflected the torchlight back at him.

He peered closer. It looked like a hatchback, about thirty feet down the gorge, tipped up on its side, crumpled between the trunks of two trees. Maybe a Clio or a Fiesta — something boy-racery with an oversized exhaust, the number plate half hanging off.

‘Right,’ he turned back to the woman in the Barbour jacket, ‘I need you to get back in your car and head up the hill. Soon as you get to the top, call nine-nine-nine. Tell them...’

She wasn’t looking at him, she was staring at the Big Car.

Someone lay in the road, on their front, not moving.

It was Harper. Facedown on the tarmac, as if she fancied a nap.

What, had she fallen out? Slipped on the snow?

Logan took a step towards her, then stopped as something hard pressed into his back.

A thick, dark voice sounded over his shoulder. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Sergeant Logan McRae.’

He licked his lips. ‘Reuben.’

The Range Rover’s back doors opened and two men climbed out: one huge and solid, the other thin and knife-like. Smiler and Mr Teeth, AKA: Allan Wright and Gavin Jones. The remaining two-thirds of Reuben’s Transit van team since Eddy Knowles got his head caved in. They were both wearing black leather gloves. Both holding semiautomatic pistols.

So this was it.

Reuben jabbed him in the back again. ‘You’re supposed to be dead.’

Every inch of Logan’s skin fizzed, the hair stood up on his arms and head, his mouth was full of wasps. ‘Tried it once. Didn’t like it.’ He eased around.

Reuben had his sawn-off shotgun in one hand. The other held a crutch — stainless steel with a grey plastic cuff — keeping the weight off that leg. ‘Did you really think you were going to get away with it? Pulling a gun on me, like I’m some sort of prick?’

Funny, but now that the moment was here, it was almost calming. No need to worry about when Reuben would make his move, when he’d get his revenge, because it was now . There was something liberating about that.

Logan nodded back towards the Big Car. ‘Detective Superintendent Harper and DS McKenzie have nothing to do with this.’

‘What, you think you’re going to play the big hero? “Save them, it’s me you want?” That kind of crap?’

Someone crunched through the snow behind him, getting closer. Then another familiar voice. ‘Can we get this over with?’ It was McKenzie.

‘Oh for God’s sake. You’re working for Reuben ? Seriously?’