Stuart MacBride - Dying Light

With a brave smile she picked the keys to their new car off the table. She’d just have to go to the supermarket herself. Gavin always liked steak for his birthday tea, maybe she’d make it tonight as well. Just for a treat.

Next door the music started booming.

The stakeout operation started again at ten on the dot: same team, same cars, same positions. Thick raindrops had given way to a fine drizzle before petering out, leaving the alleyway rife with puddles and slick cobblestones. High above, the clouds were low and dark, reflecting back the orange-yellow glow of the streetlights. Down in Shore Lane that was pretty much the only illumination there was. Three of the remaining lights had died, leaving only one sulphurous lamp for WPC Menzies to strut her stuff beneath.

Logan had parked the pool car in the same place as before and while the inspector called round all the positions on her radio — making sure everyone was in place — he reclined his seat and shut his eyes, determined that tonight was going to be his turn to catch up on sleep. Since leaving the hospital he’d requested Brendan ‘Chib’ Sutherland’s record from Lothian and Borders Police, chased up the lookout call on Agnes Walker — still no sign of her yet — and filled in the paperwork to get Jamie McKinnon charged for the drugs he was packing. As soon as McKinnon got out of hospital he was going to go straight to court and then back to Craiginches. Logan couldn’t help but feel sorry for the guy: it wasn’t as if he’d had much say in the matter when Chib decided to ram a quarter-kilo of crack cocaine inside him.

Logan wriggled in the driver’s seat, trying to get comfortable without standing on the pedals or banging his knees on the steering wheel. It was the same car from yesterday — no one had even bothered to chuck the chip papers in the bin. They were still lying on the back seat, along with all the items seized from Councillor Marshall’s car. Logan had half expected them to get signed into evidence, but for that to happen some sort of charge would have to be pressed, and the inspector flat-out refused to do it. Christ alone knew what sort of dodgy deal she’d done with Marshall to keep the man out of court and out of the papers.

He was just about asleep when the sound of snoring drifted across from the passenger seat. The inspector had beaten him to it. Grumbling, Logan pulled his seat upright again and sat staring morosely at the darkened alley: one of them had to stay awake in case something happened. It was going to be another long night.

Five to midnight and Logan was sent out to fetch the inspector’s chips. Again. At least it wasn’t raining any more and, to be honest, he was grateful for an excuse to get out of the car and stretch his legs. The inspector had been making sounds like a tractor from one end and a leaky inner tube from the other, all night.

Instead of heading straight up Marischal Street to the chip shop he cut right along Regent Quay, intending to make a left onto Commerce Street like last time, then keep on going till he could nip across the roundabout and in round the back of the Castlegate. At least it would keep him away from Steel and her noisome backside for an extra ten minutes.

There were a lot more people on the streets tonight, most of them drunk; lurching, staggering and singing away to themselves in a mixture of broken English and Russian. One of the big boats must be in.

WPC Davidson was standing at the corner of Mearns Street — dressed in a vast upholstered bra and tiger-print miniskirt, with a duffel coat over the top. She got into character as soon as she saw him coming, shouting out, ‘Oi, Big Boy, you looking fer a good time, darlin’? I’ll bile yer tatties and champit yer neeps! Whoooooarrrrr!’ ending with an embarrassingly graphic display of breast-clutching and hip-thrusting as he walked past laughing.

‘Couldn’t afford you, Mrs Davidson: too classy for me.’

She gave him a farewell two-finger salute and went back to picking her teeth. He took a left at the corner, leaving the Quay for Commerce Street, walking out into the road to avoid a huge puddle of black, oil-skimmed water.

It wasn’t the prettiest end of town by any stretch of the imagination. Unloved, utilitarian buildings in uniform grey, interspersed with modern units in plastic and corrugated steel. Welders and tool-rental places rubbed shoulders with ships’ chandlers, prowled after dark by late-night drunkards and drugged-up hookers. One of the latter was negotiating with two of the former in the mouth of a tiny, darkened alleyway. Logan kept walking, trying to ignore the exchange, but hearing it nonetheless: ‘Come on,’ said a big, unsteady bloke, slurring. ‘You... you can do both of us for that, can’t ye, darlin’? Aaatha same time like? Yer man Steve says you’re the best... aaatha same time?’

His mate, barely able to stand, shouted, ‘Am no’ takin’ sloppy fuckin’ seconds!’

‘Shuthafuckup — I know that! Did I no’ just say she had tae do us aaatha same time?’ Belch. Two steps backward, one step forward. ‘Which end you want?’

‘Cost more, both at same time. More!’ Slavic accent.

Logan froze: it was her.

‘More?’ It was Fat Boy again, undoing his trousers and letting them fall round his ankles. ‘C’moan, amma sex god! You should be payin’ me!’ He lurched forward, tripped over his trousers and fell in a heap on the cobbles. His friend immediately commenced pissing himself with laughter.

Logan stepped into the alley. The friend was now doubled up, as Fat Boy tried valiantly to scrabble to his feet — vast, white, hairy arse first. ‘Kylie’ watched all this with unfocused indifference, scratching away at the crook of her left arm, the one with the cigarette burns and needle tracks. Logan walked right up to her. She stared through his shoulder for a moment, before swaying her eyes up to his face and smiling. ‘You want make fuck now? You police: I do for free...’

‘Why don’t you and me go for a walk and a chat?’

She grinned. ‘I talk dirty good!’

‘Yeah, I know: you told me that before, remember?’ He took hold of her arm and steered her back towards the street, provoking a cry of protest from the bloke with his trousers round his ankles. Apparently Logan was jumping the queue. ‘She’s fourteen,’ Logan replied, ‘and I’m CID. Want to see me arresting you for child abuse?’ The big man yanked his trousers up and mumbled something about having kids himself and wasn’t it terrible and he never meant anything by it and he really didn’t know she was fourteen...

Beneath the streetlights Logan got his first good look at her. Sometime in the last week she’d managed to break her nose. ‘What happened to your face?’

Kylie shrugged. ‘Steve — he get angry. I tell him rain bad for business, but he say I not make enough money.’

‘You look like you haven’t eaten for a week.’

She shook her head, staggering a little as they walked up the side of the Citadel and into the Castlegate. ‘I eat Happy Meal. Steve good to me.’

Yeah, thought Logan, good old ‘Steve’. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you some chips.’

The queue was longer than usual, the drunk and the not-so-drunk waiting patiently for their turn to order smoked sausage supper and a mealie pudding, beneath the silent, flickering glare of a television set up above the till. Logan and Kylie slowly shuffled their way around the little chicane in the middle of the shop to encourage orderly queuing, with the Lithuanian explaining why Edinburgh chip shops were much better than the ones in Aberdeen because they did salt and sauce, not just salt and vinegar. They’d finally made it as far as the long stainless-steel-and-glass bunker — where the deep-fried bits and pieces went to die — when Kylie pointed up at the silent TV screen and squealed with delight. ‘I make fuck with him!’