Stuart Macbride - Blind Eye

As soon as the plastic snapped she gritted her teeth and hissed out a stream of Polish obscenities. Her right arm — the one that used to be in a sling — made a disturbing sideways bow half way between her elbow and her wrist where Grigor had broken it. She clutched it to her chest.

'Are you OK?'

'You let… you let… him shoot me…' Each word squeezed out and painful.

'Why didn't you tell me?' He knelt beside her, cold blood soaking through the knees of his trousers. 'How could you be working for Ehrlichmann?'

She looked up at him. 'So I can find… Kravchenko… and… make him… pay…'

Logan had never seen anyone so pale in his life.

'You're going to be OK.'

Or maybe not.

She blinked a couple of times, as if trying to get the empty warehouse into focus. And then she saw the man lying next to her, his pale linen suit gradually turning dark red. Wiktorja screwed up her face and spat, but the bloody spittle didn't get that far, it just dribbled down her chin. 'I am… I am glad… you are dead… you old… bastard.'

Her left leg twitched in Kravchenko's direction. Trying to kick him. Not getting anywhere near. And then her head slumped forwards.

Logan checked for a pulse.

She was still alive, just, but if the ambulance didn't get here soon, she probably wouldn't be for long. Still, there was one thing he could do for her: Logan stood, walked over to Kravchenko's body, and kicked it in the ribs. Hard.

The old man groaned.

Logan stared at him. 'Oh you have got to be kidding…'

Kravchenko was trying to lever himself onto his side, the front of his baggy linen suit tattered from the shotgun blast, drenched in blood.

How the hell did he survive that?

Logan placed his foot against the old man's shoulder and shoved him over onto his back. Kravchenko's head hit the ground with a dull THUNK and he grunted.

Logan looked down at the ruined suit, the ripped shirt, all the holes from the shotgun pellets. And the guy was still moving. 'You're as bad as bloody Grigor!'

Kravchenko reached for his tattered chest with trembling hands, and fumbled with the buttons on his blood-soaked shirt. And that's when Logan saw the bulletproof vest. The old man coughed, then swore in Polish.

Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out Grigor's gun. His latex gloves stuck to the handgrip, leaving bloody smears on the black barrel.

'Everyone thinks you're already dead.' He racked the slide back and a brass-jacketed 9mm bullet pinged out into the warm afternoon air, landing with a plop in the blood — sending out slow-motion ripples. 'Do you have any idea how much shite I've gone through, because of you?'

The old man rolled onto his side again, then struggled to his knees.

Logan kicked him between the shoulder blades, sending him crashing back to the ground.

'Thanks to you I've been blown up, shot at, I'm probably going to get fired, maybe sent to bloody prison…' He kicked the old man in the bullet-proof ribs. 'And I've started smoking again! You know how stupid that is? I don't even like the bloody things any more!'

Once more for luck, this time hard enough to hurt his own foot. Logan limped away, then back again, pointing the gun at Kravchenko's face. 'Right, first: the Buckie Ballad, where is it?'

'Go… make fuck with yourself.'

He jabbed the gun barrel up under Kravchenko's chin.

'Tell me where that fishing boat's going to unload the guns, or I'm going to blow your head off.'

The old man made a noise. It took Logan a moment to realize it was laughter. 'What the hell's so damn funny?'

'You are. Is big act. You are policja, you must to have rules. It make you weak.'

Logan took a step back. Kravchenko was right: there were rules.

'You know what? Fuck it.' Logan shot him in the chest.

Kravchenko slammed back into the concrete, mouth open on a silent scream, fingers scrabbling at the new shiny lump on the front of his bulletproof vest.

Logan watched him writhe. 'Hurts, doesn't it? Bet it's like being cracked in the ribs with a crowbar. Where's the Buckie Ballad?'

'Ffffuck… you… kurwa…'

'Want another go?'

Logan shot him again, this time in the stomach — right in the middle of the vest's abdominal panel. Kravchenko nearly folded in half, hissing in pain.

'You really think I'm going to let you bring a boatload of automatic weapons into my city?' He kicked the old man over onto his back and shot him in the ribs again. 'Where is it?'

'Aaaaaaagh! Cholernik… Odpierdol sie!' Swearing, and groaning, and swearing some more.

'OK, fine. Let's make it more interesting.' Logan swung the gun around and blew a hole in the old bastard's leg. 'Now where's that bloody boat?

CAULFLEG FARM, 35 MILES FROM ABERDEEN — FOUR HOURS LATER

'Now then,' Wee Hamish stepped into the barn, 'are we ready?'

A fat man in stained overalls hauled the metal door shut, locking out the sunny afternoon. He flipped a switch and the lights flickered on, just bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling, making the wet concrete floor glow.

Sties ran down either side of the building, full of big pink bodies, snouts poking through metal bars. It stank in here. A deep, savoury reek of raw sewage, sweat and terror. A dusty hint of dry straw bedding. The grunt and squeal of the pigs.

Hilary Brander looked at her husband. 'We're ready.'

'Good, good.' Wee Hamish held out a brand-new claw hammer. 'Well, there's no rush, so take your time. You want me and Reuben to wait outside?' He pointed at the fat man, who waved back, his face a deformed mass of scar tissue and patchy beard.

'No, no, you're OK.' She accepted the hammer and Wee Hamish nodded.

'Right, well, he's all ready for you.'

They'd laid out a couple of wooden pallets on a bed of straw in the middle of the concrete walkway. There was a man tied to the wood, spread-eagled. One side of his head was swollen and torn, covered in a red-brown mask of dried blood. He was big. Going bald at the front, the long hair at the back matted and glistening.

He mumbled something behind the gag, glaring at them with one eye as Hilary led Simon across the concrete floor, the scars where his eyes used to be hidden behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses.

Wee Hamish coughed. 'I'm sorry we couldn't get the other one. I'm afraid the police officer involved was… Well, never mind. I'm sure we can take care of that later.'

Hilary pressed the hammer into Simon's hand. 'He's all yours.'

Simon bared his teeth, feeling his way along the battered man's leg until he came to the knee.

The victim thrashed, jerking back and forth, but the ropes were nice and tight. He wasn't going anywhere.

Simon's first three goes with the hammer missed, thunking into the wooden pallets. The fourth clipped the edge of the man's leg, and the fifth crunched down on the back of his own hand. 'FUCK! FUCKING, FUCKING FUCK!' He hurled the hammer away and sat back on his haunches, sucking his knuckles.

'Are you OK, honey?'

'No I'm not O-fucking-K! I'm blind! I can't even cripple someone!'

Hilary stood, walked over to the hammer and picked it up. There were bits of straw stuck between the forks of the claw. She picked them free and let them fall to the floor. 'I'll do it.'

Wee Hamish laid a hand on her shoulder. 'It's all right, Hilary love, Reuben will take care of everything. Won't you Reuben?'

'Be my pleasure, Miss Brander.'

'You go inside and tell Mrs Williamson I said to give you a nice cup of tea.'

Hilary hefted the hammer in her hand. 'Thanks, but it should be one of the family. And Colin can't do it — not with the police watching him all the time. I owe it to Simon…'