Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

'I know about the hammer.'

Silence.

'I… eh?'

'Under the floor: in your little hidey hole, there's a claw hammer in a plastic bag with blood all over it.'

'What? No. But…'

'It wasn't Creepy, was it? It was you. You battered Harry Jordan and tried to frame Colin McLeod.'

'No! It can't… Me and Colin, we're… you know? He said he'd take me to Australia, start over… maybe even get married. Have babies…'

Another voice in the background, asking who it was, and then Kylie's sister Tracey was on the phone. 'You found a hammer, yeah? Must've been that old bag Mrs McLeod. Planted it, like. Make it look like it wasn't Creepy smashed the bastard's head in.'

Logan hefted the carrier bag in his gloved hand. It was a long shot, but what the hell: 'Then why has it got your fingerprints all over it?'

Pause. 'It has?'

'What do you think?'

This time the silence dragged on for so long Logan had to check his phone to see if he'd lost the signal. 'Well?'

'Kylie, love, get us a can of Coke, or something, eh?' Pause. A door closing. 'It wasn't her, it was me. I did it. She doesn't even know.'

Score one for the educated guess.

'Why?'

'Why do you think? Harry was going to hurt her again. Sooner or later, and maybe next time she's not so lucky, you know?' Her voice was starting to wobble. 'Maybe next time he kills her, or she ends up a vegetable. I had to, OK?'

She sniffed. 'Told him we was leaving, but he wouldn't let us. He's got this big knife and he's off his face on smack. Going on about how no one fucks with Harry Jordan, how we belong to him, got to learn respect, he's going to cut off our faces… I was scared, OK?' Her voice dropped to a whisper, 'I kicked over Harry's wheelchair and he goes sprawling on the carpet. Hits his head on the sideboard.'

Logan looked down at the broken sideboard with its missing leg. 'You're saying it was an accident? How stupid do you think I am?'

'He… he hit the sideboard — and there's blood pouring from this gash in his forehead, you know? And it's all down his face and he's trying to drag himself along the carpet, shouting and screaming how he's going to kill the pair of us… I got a hammer from Harry's toolbox, and I made him shut the fuck up. You know? Once and for all. No more threats, no more fists, no more of his shite.'

Logan closed his eyes and swore quietly. 'And you thought you could blame Colin McLeod.'

He could almost hear her shrugging all the way from Lossiemouth. 'Was a hammer, wasn't it? Creepy likes hammers…' She sniffed again, but her voice was a lot calmer than before. 'I'm glad I did it, OK? Harry Jordan was an evil bastard. And Creepy's just as bad. Way I see it, I did the world a favour. Harry's in a coma and Creepy's in prison, and they can't hurt my sister no more.'

Bloody hell. Logan sat on the ruined couch, holding the carrier bag with the claw hammer still in it. The one piece of evidence that would damn them all.

Tracey was right — the world would be a much better place without Colin McLeod and Harry Jordan. And all Logan had to do was lose the hammer. Pretend he'd never found it.

Hammer? What hammer?

Kylie and Tracey get to start their new life in Lossiemouth, off the drugs and off the game. No one would miss Harry Jordan, and Creepy Colin McLeod deserved to rot in jail for the rest of his natural life.

All Logan had to do was drive out to the middle of nowhere and ditch the hammer. Or chuck it in the River Dee. Or just drop the damn thing in a wheely bin.

No one would ever know. DI Steel's cough rattled out of the phone's earpiece, followed by some light blasphemy. Logan let her get it out of her system. Dawn had finally arrived, the sun slowly crawling its way up the sky, casting a rectangle of watery gold through the lounge window. Making the smoke from Logan's third cigarette shine like ivory.

'It's half five!' Steel groaned. 'Someone better be dying…'

'I need to ask you something.'

'If it's no' about you filling a wee plastic cup with spunk, I'm no' interested.'

'I've got an ethical problem.'

Pause. 'And you phoned me? Jesus, things must be bad. Hold on…' He could hear her bumbling about, then she was back. 'Well, come on then?'

'Suppose there's someone who's going to get sent down for attempted murder, but you've got proof he didn't do it. He did heaps of other stuff, but always gets away with it: drugs, beatings, extortion, maybe a couple of deaths… But if you tell anyone what you know, the bastard walks and someone else has to take the blame. Someone who maybe doesn't deserve it.'

'You got me out of bed for this?'

'But it-'

'Who we talking about?'

'No one. It's… hypothetical.'

'Hypothetical my sharny arse. You don't wake me up at five thirty in the morning for hypo-bloody-thetical. Who is it?'

Logan took a long draw on his cigarette, the smoke burning deep in his scarred lungs. 'Colin McLeod.'

'Creepy Colin? But he's…' She swore. 'Are you telling me someone else bashed Harry Jordan's brains in? Oh, that's just bloody brilliant. First chance we've got to put him away and the son-of-a-bitch didn't do it?… What's Chief Inspector Frog-Face say?'

'Haven't told him.' Logan dropped his cigarette to the grubby carpet and ground it out with his foot.

'He'll go bonkers.'

Logan walked over to the window, rubbing a clear patch in the dusty glass. Looked like another beautiful day to be a police officer, with outbreaks of infighting, sulking and recriminations. 'What if we don't say anything?'

There was a pause. 'We? When the hell did it become "we"? You're no' dragging me into this.'

'But-'

'Just hypothetical you said.'

'But-'

'Look, Laz, I love you like a slightly retarded little brother, but you know what you've got to do. Wouldn't have called me otherwise. I am your conscience, your Jiminy Cricket, your Fairy Sodding Godmother. Soon as you told me, it's no' a secret any more: truth's out. You've got to tell Finnie.'

'Oh… bollocks.'

'Aye, and if you're lucky you'll still have yours by the time he's finished with you.'

There was a slightly bleary edge to Force Headquarters at seven in the morning: constables, sergeants and inspectors slouching around like half-shut knives, bent under the weight of a night in the Illicit Still, celebrating DCI Finnie's recent drug bust.

Logan asked around and finally tracked the DCI down in the canteen, tucking into a fry-up.

'Mmmph.' Finnie looked up, mouth full, a bean juice cold sore on his top lip. He chewed and swallowed. 'What happened to you last night?'

'I… ahem…' Logan sat, and tried not to watch as the Detective Chief Inspector got stuck into a glistening disk of black pudding, little flecks of oatmeal and fat peppering the cooked blood.

Finnie stuffed down a forkful, talking while he ate. 'Got a table booked at Toni's tonight: you, me and Pirie. Celebrate you getting back on the job after your accident.'

Accident…

Logan tried a smile. It wasn't easy with his stomach churning. 'I had a visit from Hilary Brander yesterday.'

'Oh aye?'

Logan told him about the affair, the other claw hammer, and the call to Kylie's sister Tracey.

Finnie stopped eating, his voice a strangled whisper: 'Why the bloody hell didn't you call me? You knew how important this was!'

'I…' Logan scanned the rows of breakfasting police officers, but no one seemed to be looking in their direction. 'I thought Brander was just taking the piss. How was I supposed to know it would pan out?'

'So now you're exempt from the chain of command, is that it? You're too damn special to tell me when there's a major screw-up on my investigation?'

'What was I supposed to do, stick the hammer back where I found it? Pretend it never happened, just because we can't get Colin McLeod for anything else?'