Stuart MacBride: 45% Hangover

‘GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!’ The scream cut through the world like a rusty chainsaw.

It reverberated back from the walls, jerking Logan fully awake. Then making him wish he wasn’t. Something large and spiky was loose inside his head, scrabbling at the back of his eyes with long dirty claws. He screwed his eyes shut and lay there, till the echoes faded.

‘WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?’

He gritted his teeth and opened one eye. Then the other one. Wide. Then his mouth.

Oh dear Jesus, no...

They were lying in bed. No idea whose bed, but it was definitely a bed — metal framed, with a brass headboard. Floral-print duvet.

Him and Detective Chief Inspector Steel. In bed. Together.

Her hair was flat on one side, poking out in all directions on the other, her lined face pulled into a shape of utter disgust. Worse yet, it didn’t look as if she was wearing a top.

No, no, no, no...

One arm wouldn’t move, but he used the other one to grab the duvet and pull it up to his chin. ‘Why are we—’

‘IF YOU SO MUCH AS—’

‘STOP BLOODY SHOUTING!’ He screwed his eyes shut, teeth gritted. Every heartbeat made the spiky thing in his skull throb. ‘ Please .’

‘I’ll shout if I want to! You try waking up naked, in bed, with a sodding man and see how you like it.’

‘Naked?’ Oh no, not this... He raised the edge of the duvet an inch.

‘If you so much as peek, I swear to God, Laz, I’ll rip your bits off and give them back to you as a suppository!’ She hit him. ‘Get out.’

‘Arm’s gone to sleep.’

She kicked him under the duvet.

‘Ow!’

‘Get out!’

‘I can’t.’ His right leg wouldn’t move either. He jerked it to the side, but it barely moved, something was keeping it where it was. Something solid. ‘Oh no .’

She glared at him. ‘You bloody men are all the same aren’t you? Sex, sex, sex. Well let me tell you something, you randy wee shite, if you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, I’m going to...’ The glare turned into a frown. ‘Why can’t I move my arm?’

Then her head turned. She reached up with her other hand and pulled the pillow to one side.

Logan’s left hand, and her right, poked between the bars of the headboard, fixed there by a set of police-issue handcuffs.

When he shifted his other foot, the duvet rode up just enough to show the handcuff holding his right ankle to the bars at the other end.

Steel slumped back against her pillow. ‘Oh God... Because naked wasn’t bad enough, it had to be kinky !’ She covered her mouth with a hand. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

‘Thank you very much. How do you think I feel?’ He ran a hand across his forehead, then squeezed at the temples. Maybe, if he squeezed hard enough, the headache would vanish? Or his head would explode. Right now either was preferable to this.

‘How much did I drink last night?’

Good question.

The rumpled lump in the wrinkled suit raised an eyebrow, then pulled the fake cigarette from her mouth. ‘What time do you call this?’

Logan hung his jacket on the hook behind the door, then checked his watch — nine thirty. ‘Half an hour before my shift starts.’ He crossed to the window and lowered the blind, shutting out the darkness. ‘Now get out of my seat.’

‘You see the latest polls? We’re going to do it, can feel it in my water.’ Steel wriggled her bum further into his office chair, both feet up on his desk. ‘Tell you, it’s a momentous day, Laz. Mo-sodding-mentous.’ From the look of her hair, she’d celebrated by dragging herself through a hedge, sideways.

‘Seat.’ He hoiked a thumb at the door. ‘Some of us have work to do.’

‘Course I gave my team a rousing speech when they came on, this afternoon. “Ask not what your country can do for you...”’

‘You’re not allowed to campaign on Police Scotland property.’

A frown. ‘Since when?’

‘There’s been like, a dozen memos.’ Logan unlocked the filing cabinet and hauled out the thick manila folder sitting at the front of the top drawer. ‘Now, would you please sod off and let me get on with it?’

Steel raised her feet from the desk and pushed off, setting the chair spinning with her still in it. Lowered her feet down onto the windowsill instead. ‘This time tomorrow we’ll have risen up to be the nation again...’ Then she launched into a gravelly version of ‘Flower of Scotland’, getting all wobbly on the long notes, and battering out the optional Tourette’s bits.

No point fighting with her — it’d only make it worse.

Logan dumped the folder on the desk and sank into one of his visitors’ chairs. Pulled the desk phone over and punched in DC Stone’s number. Listened to it ring.

A knock on the office door, and Detective Sergeant Rennie poked his head into the room. ‘Sorry, Guv, but any chance you can keep the singing down a bit? Only people are complaining.’

Steel paused, mid-warble. ‘Unpatriotic sods.’ Then started up again.

Rennie nodded, setting his floppy blond quiff wobbling. ‘Yeah, but the mortuary says the dead are crawling out the fridge drawers and hacking off their ears.’ A grin. Then he ducked out again just before the stapler battered against the door where he’d been.

If anything, Steel had got louder.

On the other end of the phone, Detective Constable Stone picked up. ‘Guv? You forcing bagpipes up a cat’s bum in there?’

Logan put a finger in his other ear. ‘Stoney: where are we with Chris Browning?’

‘Give us a chance, shift hasn’t even started yet. Still waiting for the computer to boot up.’

‘Soon as it does, get onto uniform — I want an update on my desk by five past ten. Then we’re doing the briefing. And tell Wheezy Doug he’s on teas.’

‘Guv.’

Steel got to the big finale, and finished with her arms outstretched and head thrown back, as if she’d just finished running a marathon. Making hissing noises to mimic her own applause. ‘Thank you, Aberdeen, I love you.’ Then let her arms fall at her side. Pursed her lips. And had a scratch. ‘Pffff... What do you think, landslide?’

Logan clicked the handset back into its cradle. ‘Don’t you have a murder or something to solve?’

‘Did it yesterday, while you were off. Had a cake to celebrate and everything.’ She creaked his chair left, then right again. ‘Bit quiet today, to be honest. I’ve got a Major Investigation Team with nothing major to investigate. Going to have to drag something out of the cold-case file if we’re not careful.’

‘Then go do something about that guy from Edinburgh who got the crap beaten out of him.’

‘Not major enough.’ She waved a hand. ‘And the scumbag was a drug dealer. Probably deserved it. If they’d killed him, it’d be a different matter. But as it is? Pfff...’

‘So find something else.’ Logan pulled the top four sheets out of the folder and laid them side-by-side on the desk. The first one was the latest missing person poster: a photo of Chris Browning sat beneath the headline, ‘Missing Person ~ Appeal For Information’. He wasn’t exactly a Hollywood heartthrob — a middle-aged man with pasty skin and a receding hairline, little round glasses and sunken eyes.

Steel clapped her hands together, then rubbed them. ‘Of course, being referendum day , there’s bound to be frayed tempers and a bit of a barney, right? Might get ourselves a one-punch-murder or two.’