Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

'…the labs yet?'

'Hmm?' Logan swivelled his seat round till he was facing the newcomer — Detective Sergeant Pirie, back from the Sheriff Court, swaggered across the room.

'I said, "do you have that photo back from the labs yet"?'

'What's with the smug face?'

'Richard Banks got eight years. Bastard tried to plea-bargain it down, but the PF stuck him with the whole thing.'

'Congratulations.'

'Photo?'

'They're still working on it.'

'Rape kit?'

'Same answer.'

'Ah…' Pirie ran a hand through his ginger, Brillo-Pad hair. 'The boss isn't going to like that.'

'Really? That'll make a change.'

'Yes, well… email me everything you've got on our Jane Doe then you can go back to running about after that wrinkly disaster area Steel.'

Logan stared at him. 'Do you really want a "whose DI is the biggest arsehole" competition?'

'Fair point.' Pirie settled onto the edge of Logan's desk. 'Finnie tells me you tried to take our victim's prints with a water glass…' His eyes roved across the piles of paperwork and then locked onto the plastic evidence bag with the glass in it. 'And here it is! I thought he was just taking the piss.' He picked up the bag and grinned. 'What are you, Nancy Drew?'

'Ha bloody ha.' Logan snatched it back and stuffed it into his bottom drawer, burying it under a pile of Police Review magazines, then slammed the drawer shut.

'I don't get it: why's he got it in for me? All he ever does is… moan.'

'That's easy,' Pirie stood, turned, and sauntered out the door, 'he doesn't like you.'

The phone on Logan's desk started ringing, cutting off his opinion on what DS Pirie could do with his foreskin and a cheese grater.

'McRae?'

'You still working for Frog-Face Finnie?' DI Steel, sounding out of breath.

'Not any more, Pirie's taken over the-'

'Then get your arse downstairs. We've got a riot on our hands!' The Turf 'n Track wasn't the sort of place you'd put on a tourist map. Unless it was accompanied by a big sticker saying, 'AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!' It sat in a small row of four grubby shops in the heart of Sandilands, surrounded by suicidally depressed council flats. A pockmarked car park sulked in front of the little retail compound, complete with burnt-out litter bin, the vitrified plastic oozing out across the greying tarmac. There was a grocers on one side, the dusty corpse of a video store on the other — its windows boarded up with plywood — and a kebab shop on the end. Everything was covered in layer upon layer of graffiti, except for the Turf 'n Track. Its blacked-out windows and green-and-yellow signage were pristine. Nobody messed with the McLeods. Not more than once, anyway.

The whole area had a rundown, neglected air to it, even the handful of kids clustered on the borders of the car park, watching the fight.

Logan screeched the pool car up onto the kerb and leapt out into the warm afternoon, shouting, 'POLICE!'

No one paid the slightest bit of attention.

DI Steel hauled herself from the passenger seat and sparked up a cigarette, blowing out a long plume of smoke as she surveyed the scene. Six men were busy trying to beat the crap out of one other. 'You recognize anyone?' she asked.

They were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, all swinging punches and kicks with wild abandon. Someone would rush in, throw a fist at someone else, then retreat fast. Amateurs.

The inspector pointed at one of the combatants — an acne-riddled baboon with a bloody lip — as he took a swing at a fat bloke with a bowl haircut. 'Him: Spotty. I'm sure I've done him for dealing.'

Logan tried again: 'POLICE! BREAK IT UP!'

Someone managed to land a punch and a ragged cheer went up from the spectators.

'I SAID BREAK IT UP!'

Steel laid a hand on Logan's arm. 'No' really working, is it: the shouting?'

Logan took two steps towards the mass of flying fists and trainers. The inspector tightened her grip. 'Don't be an — idiot they might be a bunch of Jessies, but they'd tear you apart.'

'We can't just sit back and-'

'Yes we can.' Steel hoiked herself up onto the bonnet of the pool car, her shoes dangling a foot off the ground. 'Come on: none of them's got any weapons. Sit your backside down and enjoy the show. Uniform will be here soon enough with their Freudian truncheons and batter the lot of them.' She flicked an inch of ash onto the tatty tarmac. 'You eat that curry yet?'

'Yeah… Had it for lunch.'

'And?'

'Tell Susan it was very nice. Bit spicy, but nice.'

'You're such a wimp. Next time I'll get her to make you a nice girly korma.'

Another fist hit its target and this time DI Steel joined in the celebration, clapping her hands and shouting, 'Jolly good! Well done that man! Now kick him in the goolies!' She checked her watch. 'Where the hell's Uniform got to? Bunch of lazy-'

Right on cue a siren wailed in the distance, getting closer.

'Ahoy, hoy,' the inspector pointed across the car park at the front door of the Turf 'n Track. A large man stood on the threshold, half in shadow: mid-thirties, face like a bowl of porridge, missing a chunk of one ear, huge shoulders, a lot of muscle just starting to turn into fat. 'Looks like the guvnor's in. Shall we go say hello, perchance to partake in a cup of tea and a garibaldi?'

'You'll be lucky. Last thing Simon McLeod offered me was a stiff kicking.'

'Watch and learn…' She wiggled her way down from the car bonnet, then sauntered around the punch-up, hands in her pockets, whistling a jolly tune, right up to the betting shop's front door. 'Afternoon, Simon, how they hanging?'

He wrinkled his nose. 'Do I smell bacon?'

'No, Chanel Number Five.' Steel smiled sweetly. 'Anyway, from the look of things, you smell pies.' She stopped and poked him in the stomach. 'Lots and lots of pies.' She nodded back towards the brawl. 'These your boyfriends then? Fighting over who gets to take you to the dance?'

'Fuck you.'

'Lovely offer,' she said, holding up her left hand with its sparkly wedding ring, 'but my wife doesn't like me playing with podgy gangsters.'

The first of the patrol cars appeared, slithering to a halt on the hot tarmac. Simon McLeod uncrossed his huge arms and took a couple of steps forward, shouting, 'Get out of it, you stupid bastards: police are here!'

Spotty the Baboon turned someone's nose from flesh and bone to blood and meat paste. The man sat down hard, and got a kick in the head for his trouble. But as soon as the first uniformed officer jumped out — extending her truncheon with a flick of the wrist — the fight started to break up.

The bright ones ran for it: Bowl Haircut and Hippy with a Limp made for the council housing estate. Tattooed Gimp sprinted back towards the roundabout. And Low-Budget Porn Star scarpered down the road, a uniformed officer chasing after him, shouting, 'Come back here!'

Mr Meat Paste for a Nose lay on the ground, curled up in a ball with his arms protecting his head as Spotty the Baboon tried to kick him to death. The other officer from Alpha One Four waded in with her truncheon.

Logan watched Spotty fight back, before being battered into submission. Steel was right: Uniform could look after themselves.

He turned back to the doorway, expecting to see Simon McLeod still arguing with the inspector, but there was no sign of either of them. Right now McLeod was probably turning DI Steel into lesbian tartare. Logan swore, dug out his little canister of pepper-spray and hurried through the door.

Out of the sunshine and into the heart of darkness.

Inside, the Turf 'n Track was shabbier than it looked from the car park. The only natural light oozed in through the door, and even that was too scared to go more than a couple of feet over the threshold. The woodwork was black as a smoker's lung, coated in the accumulated tar from countless cigarettes. A pair of televisions were bolted to the wall at either end of the counter, flickering away to themselves: a race meeting in Perthshire, with the sound turned off. The door to the back office was open.