Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

Leaning back against the black BMW, Grigor grinned.

'And please to remember I have, as you say, the "copper who bends", and if you try fuck me, I will know.' Kravchenko pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and placed it on the ground by Logan's head. 'If I need you, I call, yes?'

Logan squinted up at the clear blue sky, trying to gauge how much time had passed since they'd left the warehouse. Half an hour? Forty minutes? 'You have to get Rory to a hospital.'

'Why do you care? He is children rapist, yes?' The old man opened his arms wide. 'But you are alive, you have still both eyes. This is happy day for you.'

Logan struggled on the ground for a moment, tugging against his bonds.

'You want perhaps I should untie you, yes?' Kravchenko's smile was back. 'But you are resourceful man. You can manage I am thinking.' And then he climbed back into the car. 'I will to be in touch. Grigor?'

The car door slammed, and the engine roared, wheels spinning on the dry earth, sending grit and pebbles flying as the BMW shot out onto the road. Logan waited for it to dis appear from view, then rolled over and threw up. He limped and hobbled along the side of the road in his bare feet. He'd tried walking on the verge, but the grass was full of sharp stones and broken bottles. And Logan really didn't need another serious laceration.

He sucked at the heel of his left hand. Probably going to need a tetanus shot. That's what happened when you had to saw through a set of cable-ties with the rusty lid from a tin of baked beans.

Lucky he didn't lose a finger.

He dug out the mobile phone Kravchenko had given him, and fiddled with the buttons again, like he'd done a dozen times since getting himself free. Still no luck. Somehow they'd managed to lock the handset so it would only accept incoming calls. Kravchenko could call in, but Logan couldn't call out.

He kept on walking.

It was a quiet road, somewhere north of the city, judging by the helicopters that occasionally droned by, far overhead, going to and from the offshore oil platforms.

And then there was a new noise: a car's engine, getting closer. About time too. He limped into the middle of the road and started waving his arms.

A red hatchback roared around the corner, doing at least sixty. No intention of stopping. Logan jumped back onto the verge as it flew past, the driver leaning on the horn. 'Brrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeep!'

Logan gave it the two-finger farewell. 'Bastard!'

Five minutes later a tractor rumbled up the road, huge heavy tyres churning up the grass on one side of the road, the farmer too busy blethering away on his mobile phone to notice Logan standing there waving at him. He looked up at the last moment and his eyes went wide.

The tractor lurched to a halt in a squeal of air-brakes and foul language.

Logan marched up to the cab, hands up in the universal sign for stop. 'I need you to-'

'You bloody idiot!' The farmer yanked his door open and shouted down at Logan, 'Trying to get yourself killed?'

'Police — give me your phone.'

'What? Do you lot have nothing better to do than harass innocent motorists?'

Logan stuck out his hand. 'Phone. Now.'

'I was only listening to my messages!'

'I don't care if you're having phone sex with the Duke of sodding Edinburgh, give me your bloody mobile!'

The farmer scowled. 'Bunch of bastards. If it was up to me-'

'You want let off with a warning, or locked up?'

He shut his mouth. Shifted in his seat. 'Sorry, Officer.' He tossed the phone out of the cab and Logan grabbed it before it hit the dirt, then dialled DI Steel's number from memory.

She picked up on the second ring. 'Who's this?'

'I need you to-'

'YOU!'

Logan flinched, holding the phone away from his ear as the inspector shouted and swore.

'What did you do to my bloody house? I leave you in charge for five bloody minutes and it looks like a bloody bomb went off! That TV cost thousands, you-'

'They've got Wiktorja. Kravchenko and his sidekick… they gouged Rory's eyes out.'

There was a pause.

'Inspector?'

More swearing. 'You sure they did Rory? We've no' had a phone call or anything, so maybe he's just-'

'I was there: I watched them do it.'

'You WHAT?'

'It's not like I had any choice, is it? I was tied up. The point is they've got Wiktorja.'

'Where are you?'

'Are you listening to me?'

'Just answer the bloody question.'

'Oh for God's sake…' Logan did a slow turn, but he still couldn't recognize anything. 'Hold on.' He walked back to the tractor and shouted up at the driver, 'Where's the nearest town?'

The man pointed out of the cab. 'Whitecairns is about two miles that way.' Then he harrumphed. 'This phone call… not long distance is it? I've only got five quid credit left and-'

Logan turned his back on him and limped down the road a bit. 'They dumped me north of the city. You need to get the tracking thing on Rory Simpson's ankle bracelet turned on. Wiktorja might still be with him.'

'Sodding hell, Bain's going to do his nut when he finds out… Why did I let you talk me into this?'

'It's not my fault! They broke in and-'

'I don't care: get your arse back here, ASAP.'

Logan said he'd see what he could do. The farmer gave him a lift as far as the industrial estate on Denmore Road, Bridge of Don. Then Logan flagged down a taxi. He'd given Steel the number of the anonymous mobile phone Kravchenko had left, and now Logan held it clutched in his hand, unsure if he wanted the thing to ring or not.

Outside the taxi windows the sky had faded to a pale blue-grey, the sunset already gone from a fiery pink to a faint yellow haze on the horizon, soon lost behind the dark hulks of buildings and tower blocks. They were most of the way down King Street before the sinister mobile started making irritating bleeping noises.

He checked the display — DI Steel.

'… look like a sodding mind reader? Get your finger out and-'

'Hello?'

'-hold on a minute. Laz? Where are you?'

'Almost at the station: two minutes tops.'

'Change of plan. We got a location for Rory's — I don't care. Do I look like I sodding care? Just do it! — Hello?'

'Hello?'

'Playing fields, other side of the river from Duthie Park. And when you get here you can tell me how the sodding hell I'm supposed to organize a search party without telling anyone!'

The grass was cool beneath Logan's bare feet as he picked his way down the slope from Abbotswell Road, trying not to step in anything nasty in the growing gloom. A high, chain-link fence ran down the right-hand edge of the park, the skeletal frame of a building behind it just visible against the darkening sky.

A couple of people were walking dogs on the other side of the park. They didn't seem to notice the small clump of flashlights working their way through the scrub and bushes at the water's edge.

Logan hobbled on.

DI Steel was standing with her hands in her pockets twenty feet from the river bank, cigarette dangling from the corner of her downturned mouth, staring out at the water. 'They wrecked my house.'

A car horn blared from the road above.

Logan glanced back. 'Can someone lend me a twenty? I've got to pay the taxi and-'

'How could you let them blind him?'

'I didn't let-'

'He was a sodding prisoner in your sodding care!'

'They broke in! I didn't have a-'

She poked Logan in the chest. 'If he's dead I'm no' taking the blame, understand?'

Logan looked up at the sky, then back down at the inspector. 'What was I supposed to do? I was tied up, dumped miles out of town.' He held up his palm, showing off the jagged dark red line where the can lid had sliced into the skin. 'I nearly cut my bloody hand off getting free!'