Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

'Don't know if it'll do any good. Would you believe me, if you were him?'

Kevin collapsed onto the mattress, buried his head in his hands. 'They're gonnae kill my kids…'

Logan sat next to him. 'Tell me who they are and maybe I can help, OK?'

The thin man rolled onto his side, face to the wall, knees drawn up against his chest. 'I'm no' a clype.'

There was a knock on the cell door and Kevin flinched. 'It's them!'

'Don't be ridiculous. You're in a police station.'

Kevin backed away from the door. 'I know how it works! You're in on it — you're all in on it!'

The door opened and DCI Finnie was framed in the glow of a fluorescent tube. He clasped his hands together and nodded at Kevin. 'Just checking everything's in order with your room, Mr Murray. Bed comfortable? Enjoying the view?' There wasn't one. The room's single window was three rows of rippled-glass bricks, six foot off the floor. 'Would you like a newspaper, or an early morning wakeup call?'

Kevin just sat on the thin blue mattress. 'I never grassed them up.'

Finnie stepped into the cell. 'I've got this from here, Sergeant. Why don't you knock off? I understand DI Steel is organizing a trip to the pub, maybe you could have one for Kevin here. Would you like that Kevin?'

The thin man scowled, face all puckered up around his gauze-covered nose. 'You're a right bastard.'

Finnie loomed over him. 'Oh, you have no idea.'

'Got any spare change?'

Logan stopped in his tracks, and looked down at the figure huddled in the entrance to Lodge Walk — a little alley that ran between the Toll Booth museum and the pub on the corner, connecting Union Street to Force Headquarters. It was a shortcut in regular use by uniform and plainclothes officers. Not the usual place for beggars. And at five to seven on Thursday morning, it was a bit early too.

She was sitting cross-legged on a dirty orange Kenny-from-South-Park-style parka, gazing up at him with panda eyes. She'd done her best to make them match, but the left eye was all swollen, the bruising barely hidden by a thick layer of pancake makeup and too much eyeliner. Bright-red veins spidered their way across the white of her eye, making the pupil look like an emerald floating in a sea of Tabasco. It was Tracey — the girl who'd fingered Creepy Colin McLeod for battering Harry Jordan's head in with a hammer.

She was dressed in a short black skirt and a lacy top that still had the security tag hanging from the side, high-heeled ankle boots, and stockings with more ladders than your average fire station. Someone had broken her nose.

'Oh,' she said, 'it's you…' Tracey stuck out her hand and Logan pulled her to her feet, where she wobbled on four-inch heels. As she bent to grab the parka she'd been sitting on, he caught a flash of skin between her skirt and her top. It was a collage of bruises and welts.

'Been waiting, like, forever.' She ran a hand through her bleached blonde hair. 'Haven't got a fag, have you? I'm gasping.'

'Gave up years ago. What happened to your face?'

She turned and squinted across Union Street at a small flurry of pigeons fighting over a discarded kebab. 'I was wrong, you know? About what happened. It… it wasn't Colin McLeod battered Harry.'

'What?'

'It wasn't him. It was someone else. Colin didn't touch him.'

'You can't just change your statement-'

'I was wrong, must've been off my face or something, you know? Colin was nowhere near the place when Harry got his head caved in.'

'And all of a sudden he's "Colin", not "Creepy"? Tell me, Tracey, would this have anything to do with your new black eye?'

'I was wrong, OK? It wasn't Colin, you gotta let him go!'

'We found a claw hammer in Colin McLeod's garage with traces of Harry Jordan's blood on it.'

'It… We…' She rubbed at her arms. 'You must've planted it. You know? To fit him up, like.'

'You got a visit from Agnes McLeod last night, didn't you? That or a couple of her son's associates, and they helped change your mind about what happened.'

'No! I just remember it better now. It wasn't Colin. It wasn't…' She grabbed for Logan's hand. 'You've got to let him go.'

'We can't do that, it's-'

'How about a blowjob? Right now, on the house like? No? I got girlfriends, we could, you know, put on a show for you? Like an orgy or something? You could do whatever you like, we wouldn't tell no one…' She licked her chapped lips, leaving a smear of saliva behind. The effect wasn't exactly erotic. 'You know you want to…'

'No I bloody well don't.' Logan got a cappuccino and a rowie with butter and jam from the canteen. And as a rowie was, more-or-less, just a croissant that had really let itself go, technically it counted as a continental breakfast. Chewing, he made his way to the morning briefing.

With any luck all that salt and saturated fat would kill him before he had to tell Finnie that Tracey was changing her story.

Halfway down the stairs Logan's phone started ringing. He juggled hot coffee and greasy pastry. 'Hello?'

'Hello? Yes?' A man's voice. 'Is this Detective Sergeant Mackie?'

'McRae.'

'Is it? Oh, sorry. This is Father John Burnett, Sacred Heart… Well, Saint Peter's now I suppose. Erm… I know it's early, but you left a message asking me to call you back?'

Two minutes later Logan was hurrying out of the side door, dragging a moaning Constable Karim with him.

'But I'm supposed to be at the briefing; you know what Finnie's like!' Karim was dressed in the standard Grampian Police uniform: black T-shirt, black stab-proof vest, black peaked cap, black trousers, black boots, and a fluorescent yellow waistcoat with 'POLICE' across the back. Which kind of spoiled the whole ninja ensemble.

Logan punched the keycode into the gate that lead out onto Lodge Walk. 'We're only going to be fifteen minutes.'

'But-'

'You can blame me if it makes you feel any better.'

'Damn right I'm blaming you.' He followed Logan out of the shadowy alleyway and onto Union Street. The sunshine was blinding. 'Jesus!' Karim grabbed his hat and pulled it as far down as it would go, hiding in the shade of the brim — making his ears stick out at right angles. 'Like a sodding microwave out here…'

They crossed the road and headed into the Castlegate, a wide-open plaza of cobbles and pigeon droppings, with the Mercat Cross sitting in the middle like a dirty granite carousel. A pair of tramps were slouched against the hoarding that surrounded the Salvation Army Citadel, basking in the morning sun and sharing a breakfast of white spirit and cigarettes. They waved and cheered as PC Karim went past.

Logan waved back. 'Didn't know you had family in Aberdeen.'

'Oh ha, ha.' The constable sniffed. 'That's Dirty Bob and his mate Richard. Saved them from a kicking last year. They might stink, but at least they're grateful, unlike some people. Broke up a fight outside the McDonalds last night: rival hen parties. Matron of honour called me a Paki bastard and tried to take my head off with a plastic tray. Said I should go back where I bloody came from.'

'What: the exotic, sun-soaked shores of Fraserburgh?'

'Makes you proud to be Scottish, doesn't it?'

St Peter's Catholic Church was hidden away at the end of the Castlegate, between a card-shop-come-printers and a defunct hairdressers. A little recess led between the buildings into a tiny courtyard that stank of bleach and disinfectant.

A pair of big blue doors sat off to one side — beneath a lancet window of unstained-glass — posted with the standard welcome for this part of town: 'NOTICE ~ THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY CLOSED CIRCUIT TELEVISION SECURITY SYSTEMS'.

Karim marched straight past them and up to the battered wooden door of the parochial house. It opened on a clean, but shabby hallway: primrose walls, white ceilings — the paint blistering and cracked, showing the grey plasterwork beneath. The whole place had an air of neglect Logan hadn't been expecting. It was a long, long way from the opulence of the Vatican. Like a dying relative no one wanted to talk about, let alone visit.