Стюарт Макбрайд - The Blood Road

He stopped by the bathroom for pills and a pee, then clumped his way along the landing floorboards. Clunk-scuff, clunk-scuff . Unbuttoning his shirt with his free hand on the way.

‘Westlife tribute band’ indeed. Superintendent Doig was a cheeky sod.

The bandages around his stomach were pristine white, except for the faint yellow stain over the hole Number Five made. Still: could’ve been worse — Lee Docherty had an exit wound to deal with as well. And hopefully it really hurt.

Finally — the bedroom.

He opened the door and froze.

Sunlight streamed in through the windows. A solid bar of it lay across the bed, catching Tara’s hair and making it glow like Lucozade. She was spreadeagled on top of the duvet, fully clothed in joggy bottoms and a tartan T-shirt, one leg hanging over the edge of the bed. Mouth open, making snuffling snorey noises.

At least that solved the mystery of the missing cat — Cthulhu was curled up on her chest. A fuzzy yawn and Cthulhu stood, back arched as she launched into her stretching routine, tail fuzzy as a feather duster.

‘Well, it wasn’t my fault I had to stay in hospital for a week, was it? Somebody stabbed me. Again.’

She padded over and he rubbed her ears, smiling as she closed her eyes and leaned into it, purring.

‘Oh ha, ha. “That’s just careless.” You’re a laugh riot, aren’t you?’

More purring.

Tara screwed up her face, making little smacking noises with her mouth. Then peered up at him, blinking. Scrubbed at her eyes. ‘Whtimisit?’

‘Thought you were in Birmingham on a course?’

‘Urgh.’ She yawned. Shuddered. ‘Time off for good behaviour.’

He peeled off his shirt, undid his trousers, and collapsed onto the bed. Winced. ‘Ow...’

‘And before you complain, I was going to tidy up before you got home tomorrow.’ Tara rolled over and draped an arm across him. ‘You’re—’

‘Ow! Get off, get off!’ God, it was like being thumped with a crowbar.

She squinted at him. ‘And if this is your idea of foreplay, it leaves a lot to be desired too.’

Ahhh...

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’

‘Positive.’ Logan settled in amongst the bubbles, mug of tea in one hand, the other making lazy ripples bob through the water. Warm. Comforting. Wet. ‘My surgeon says I’m allowed baths.’

‘Hmm...’ Tara sat on the toilet lid, with a large glass of red wine. She held the shiraz out. ‘I don’t mind sharing, you know.’

‘Can’t: pills.’

Cthulhu hopped up onto the bath surround and sat there, watching him, head on one side, prooping and meeping.

Logan groaned. ‘All right, all right, quit nagging. I’m doing it.’ He turned to Tara. ‘Thanks for looking after the furry monster here for me. It was a massive help and I really, really appreciate it.’

‘That’s the only reason you gave me a key, isn’t it? So I’d look after your cat if you got stabbed and hospitalised.’

‘Yeah... something like that.’ He rested his head against the tiles and closed his eyes.

‘So, did it all turn out well in the end?’

Good question.

‘Well, Sally MacAuley got her son back for a whole ten days — he’s in care now and she’s off to prison. DI Bell ruined his life for her and got killed for it. We still don’t know who all the paedophiles in the animal masks were. A journalist got kicked to death. And I’m lying here with yet another stab wound to join the collection. So, on the whole? Not really.’

She dipped a couple of fingers in the water. ‘God, you’re cheery, aren’t you?’

‘There’s one consolation: Mrs Irene Marshall isn’t too happy about Crowbar Craig Simpson trying to pin Kenneth MacAuley’s murder on her beloved dead husband. So she’s been telling DI Fraser all sorts of interesting stories about what Crowbar’s been up to since he moved in with her: extortion, drugs, punishment beatings, that smash-and-grab at Finnies in July... You know what they say: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”’

‘Hark at you with the poetry.’

‘And while we’re doing him for all that, it’ll give us plenty of time to prove he was the one who murdered Kenneth MacAuley and abducted Aiden. He’ll get at least twenty years.’

Tara raised her glass. ‘Then here’s to Craig Simpson spending the rest of his life in prison.’

Logan clinked his mug against it and smiled. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

Marky scuffed his way down B wing.

The sound of what could almost pass for singing boomed out across the Second Flat as the newly formed HMP Grampian Male Voice Choir committed attempted murder on an acapella version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

He stopped outside Crowbar Craig Simpson’s cell. Peered in through the open door.

A small room, identical to all the others in this place: one corner walled off for the tiny en suite shower and toilet, a narrow desk with a kettle and a cheap TV on it, a barred window looking out to sea, walls covered in film posters and photos of a curly-haired woman with big glasses, a toddler, and an ugly dog. The inoffensive scent of lemon floor polish...

Crowbar was on his bunk, dressed in the standard prison-issue navy jogging bottoms and blue sweatshirt, one hand behind his head, the other mangling a paperback — the spine bent so far back it was broken.

Now that made Marky’s gums itch. There were killers in here, people who’d strangled their wives, or battered a drug rival to death with a sledgehammer, or drowned their own brother, or slit a stranger’s throat because they supported the wrong football team.

But to do that to a book?

Marky knocked on the door frame and Crowbar tore his eyes from PC Munro and the Cheesemaker’s Curse for all of two seconds, before returning to his tortured paperback.

‘What do you want, Marky?’

See, that was the trouble with your criminal element today: no respect. Someone like Crowbar looked at someone like Marky and all they saw was a little old man, his joggy bottoms and polo shirt faded almost grey after years of washing in the prison laundry. White hair going a bit thin on top. Arthritis-swollen hands. A back that would never be straight again.

Marky shuffled inside. ‘You busy?’

‘What’s it look like?’ Lying there with his stupid handlebar moustache and, what was it they called it these days, a ‘soul patch’? A barbed-wire tattoo around your throat didn’t make you a hard man. Not in here.

Didn’t even have the decency to put his book down when someone visited him.

Very rude.

Marky made a come-hither gesture and Ripcord and Charlie Bing slipped into the cell. Huge men, but they could move like ballet dancers when they wanted to. Charlie Bing: almost totally covered in DIY tattoos. Ripcord: face like the back end of an articulated lorry. Both wrapped in the kind of muscles you only got by spending eight-to-life in a prison gym.

The cell wasn’t big to start with, but now it was positively claustrophobic.

Marky put his hands in his pockets. ‘No need to be like that, Crowbar, not when I’ve got a present for you.’

Crowbar turned the page. ‘Not interested.’

He still hadn’t looked up from his book. How could anyone be so completely self-absorbed and unaware?

‘That’s a shame.’ Marky nodded at Ripcord and the big man eased the door closed without so much as a single squeak, muting the choir’s crimes. Another nod.

Ripcord and Charlie Bing lunged forward, silent as cats, pinning the disrespectful sod to the bed — one of Ripcord’s huge hands clamped down over Crowbar’s mouth.