Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

'It was that serial nutter: the one in the papers! He-'

'No it wasn't. Simon doesn't fit the pattern: he's not Polish, he wasn't dumped in Torry, we didn't even get a phone call. Someone saw all the publicity and thought they could use it to cover their tracks. Now who's trying to move in on him? Polish mafia? Russians? We know Manchester's been sniffing around.'

She went back to stroking the dog. 'I can't, OK?'

'You have to.'

'I've never seen him so scared before.'

'Hilary, you can't let them get away with this. You tried it Colin's way and it didn't work, did it? Running around hammering people's knees at random? And after what he did to Harry Jordan-'

'He didn't!' She rubbed a hand across her eyes. 'It wasn't him. Those bitches are lying.'

'Even without their testimony we've got him on the forensics-'

'He wasn't even there.' Hilary pulled back the dog's hood and ruffled the hair between its ears. 'Poor little Skye has Cushing's disease, don't you sweetie? Her fur falls out in big clumps, leaves nasty raw patches, so she has to wear a silly coat.'

'Hilary, this is important.'

She glanced over her shoulder, back towards the lounge. 'There's nothing they can do for him. He's always going to be blind.' A fat tear rolled down her cheek, and dripped on the Westie's head.

'We-'

'He can't even get glass eyes: they won't stay in… Someone burnt off his eyelids. What sort of person does that?'

Logan reached across the kitchen table and took her hand. 'Then help me catch them.'

That got him a small, bitter laugh. 'You want them caught? These bastards? You want them to stop hurting people? Let Colin go.'

Samantha wasn't answering her home phone, or her mobile, so instead of heading straight home after signing out, Logan took the lift up to the Identification Bureau's lab on the third floor. Just in case.

Considering how much police work relied on forensic science the place was tiny. It wasn't much bigger than Logan's living room, and every available surface was piled high with plastic crates full of guns. A single white lab-coated figure was dusting an AK-47 for prints over by the vacuum table, the loud hum of the motor fighting against the radio — Northsound Two turned up full blast. The Chief Constable on the local news:

'… recent upswing in drug-related violence should give us all great cause for concern. Criminals seem to think Aberdeen is a soft target for their hard drugs, but I'm here to tell you that we are anything but. Officers recovered a substantial amount of heroin earlier this week, with a street value of over two hundred thousand pounds…'

Logan stopped at the central table. 'Hello?'

'… complacent. So if anyone sees anything suspicious, they can call our dedicated drugs hotline…'

Try again. 'HELLO?'

Samantha turned, pulled off her safety goggles and breathing mask, and shouted back at him, 'WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU LAST NIGHT THEN?'

'WHAT?'

Logan turned down the radio as the newsreader came on. 'And finally, jobs in the North East were given a boost today when McLennan Homes chairman Malcolm McLennan announced plans for yet another luxury golf course…'

'You're all grubby.'

'Tell me about it. Bloody fingerprint powder gets everywhere…' Samantha switched off the vacuum table and the motor whined to a halt. 'You look like someone's battered you about the head with a sledgehammer.'

'Fancy doing something later?'

She pointed at the stacks of weapons. 'I wish. Roz is on holiday, Mark's got a dose of the squits, Davie's on a training course, and Tracy's in Glasgow giving evidence. So I'm on my lonesome.' She hefted the AK-47 onto a stand for photography. 'Could do with the overtime, anyway.'

'Oh.'

'Tell you what though…' She snapped off her blue nitrile gloves. 'Long as you're here, you can give us a hand in the store room.'

Not exactly the way Logan had planned on spending his evening, but it was probably better than going home to paint the lounge ceiling. Ten minutes later someone shouted, the store room door flew open, and DI Steel appeared. 'Where the hell is every…' She stood there, staring as Logan and Sam straightened their clothes. 'No wonder the labs are backed up! Bloody IB spends all its time shagging CID.'

'We weren't shagging.' Sam's face went bright red. She grabbed a random bit of equipment from the shelves that lined the walls, 'I was looking for this and got something in my eye-'

'Got something in your pants, more like.'

'It's not-'

'Oh, like I care. Just give us the results of that DNA test I sent up yesterday and you can go back to your bonking.'

'We weren't bonking!' Sam pushed past Steel back into the lab, marched over to the filing cabinet, and yanked out a drawer.

'And while you're there,' said Steel, 'see if there's anything on that fire at the Turf 'n Track.'

'We've not had time. We're up to our ears fingerprinting this lot.' She pointed at the piles of weapons.

'Too busy bumping uglies with Detective Sergeants, more like.'

Samantha glared at Logan. He cleared his throat. 'Erm… Why don't I chase these up and bring the results down to your office, ma'am?'

The inspector stood there for a moment, shrugged, then wandered out of the lab with her hands in her pockets, whistling the tune to Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

As soon as the door closed, Samantha slumped back against the wall and buried her head in her hands. 'Oh God… it's going to be all over the station by morning…'

Logan tried for a reassuring smile. 'Could be worse?'

'She's a nightmare. She's a card-carrying, cold-sweat-in-the-wee-small-hours, bed-wetting nightmare.'

'Don't let her get to you.' He stroked the back of Samantha's neck, feeling the soft downy hairs goosebump beneath his fingers. 'Anyway, so what if everyone knows about us?'

'Easy for you to say, you're not going to be "the tattooed slut who shags Detective Sergeants in the bloody store room", are you?'

'I'll have a word with her. She's not really as bad as everyone thinks. Besides…' he looked back at the door and suppressed a shudder. 'She wants me to do her a favour.' They found the remains of the Turf 'n Track petrol bomb buried under a stack of evidence bags. It only took five minutes to bring up three good clear prints from the broken bottle.

Samantha took reference shots with the lab's digital camera, then transferred the prints off with lifting tape to an acetate sheet and handed them to Logan.

'Just promise me,' she said, filling in the paperwork, 'you won't tell anyone I rushed that through for you, OK? If it gets out I do favours for sex there'll be a line right round the bloody building…'

The sign on the door said, 'ABERDEEN BUREAU ~ SCOTTISH FINGERPRINT SERVICE', which was pretty grandiose, given it was just a couple of rooms at the end of the third-floor corridor. One wall was dominated by a huge rack of pine drawers, each one stuffed with hundreds of old-fashioned fingerprint files, the rest of the space taken up with cubicles and light-boxes.

Logan found someone in the computer room — little more than an alcove with a scanner, a desktop machine, and a laser printer. The fingerprint technician sagged in his typist's chair, groaned, rubbed at his eyes, then pulled a sheet of acetate from the scanner, replacing it with another one from the pile.

He clicked the mouse a couple of times then glanced at Logan. 'Whatever you want, the answer's no. I'm swamped.'

'Who says I want anything? Maybe I just popped up to say hello.'

'Yeah? Then how come you're holding a fingerprint sheet?'

Logan slipped it onto the top of the pile. 'Oh, come on, Bill. I only need-'

'No! I've got three million prints to run for Finnie as it is. Supposed to be home having a romantic dinner with my wife…' All the time he was talking, the mouse was moving on the screen, clicking and dragging things.