Stuart MacBride - Shatter the Bones

‘Foxtrot Tango Two, we have a winner.’ Logan gave the firearms team directions then told Rennie to park fifty yards down the street, behind a locked-up burger van.

‘What now?’ Rennie massaged the steering wheel. ‘We go charging in like the A-team, beat up all the bad guys, rescue Alison and Jenny.’

He sat up straight, eyes shining. ‘Cool! We can-’

Logan hit him. ‘Don’t be a prick. We wait for the firearms team, we set up a perimeter, and we figure out how to get the hostages out without killing anyone. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Well, it… Ahem…’ He turned off the engine. ‘Yes, Guv.’ Three minutes later a filthy, unmarked Transit van growled into sight. It drifted to a halt in front of the pool car and a plainclothes officer grinned and waved through the wind-shield at Logan. ‘Aye, aye. Nice day for a shoot-out?’

‘You know what’s going to happen if Finnie hears you, don’t you, Brian?’

An unmarked Vauxhall pulled up on the other side of the road. The grin disappeared from Brian’s face. ‘Speak of the Devil.’

Logan climbed out of the pool car and hurried over to the back of the Transit van, keeping the burger van between himself and the Cambertools industrial unit. Finnie, Green, and Steel got out of the other car. Doreen stayed behind, waiting until her passengers weren’t looking before bouncing her head off the steering wheel.

The man from SOCA stuck his chest out, then snapped his fingers. ‘Situation Report?’

You’re a wanker. Logan pointed at the industrial unit. ‘We think that’s where they shot the video after amputating Jenny McGregor’s toes.’

‘I see. And you haven’t ascertained if the suspects are in the building yet?’

Steel twisted her e-cigarette on and set it dangling from the corner of her mouth. ‘When exactly were they meant to do that? They only got here a minute before us. Want to whinge about how we’re no’ psychic enough now?’

‘I’m getting pretty bloody tired of your attitude, Inspector.’

‘You’ve moaned about everything else.’ She sent a plume of fake cigarette smoke his way.

‘Was fi ve minutes too much to ask for?’ Finnie looked at the sky for a moment, then back to earth. ‘DI McRae, I want a risk analysis: what’s the layout of the building, where are the points of entry and exit, where are our victims likely to be held, how many targets are we looking at, what kind of weapons are they likely to-’

‘We don’t have time for this.’ Green unbuttoned his jacket, slipped it off, and thrust it at Logan. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest underneath, and a shoulder holster.

‘Shouldn’t we-’

‘Cover me!’ The superintendent pulled a snub-nosed semi-automatic from his holster and ran in a crouch towards the padlocked gates.

‘Come back here!’ Finnie’s eyes bugged, his mouth crimped into an angry cat’s bum as Green kept on going. ‘Who gave him a bloody gun?’

A clink and Green was through the gates, heading for the main doors.

‘Oh you silly bastard…’ Logan dumped the tailored jacket on the damp road and banged on the side of the Transit van. ‘OPEN UP!’ He stuck his head around the side. ‘RENNIE!’

‘On it, Guv.’

The van’s back doors popped open and a sweaty fire-arms-trained officer wheezed out into the light drizzle. He was dressed from head to toe in black, from his heavy-duty steel-toecapped boots to his thick bulletproof vest and crash helmet, a submachine gun dangling on a strap around his neck. ‘Bloody roasting in there.’

‘Give me your sidearm.’ Logan stuck his hand out.

The man in black backed off a step. ‘What?’

‘Give me your gun!’

He unholstered his Glock, a chunky rectangular thing that smelled of warm oil and plastic, holding it close to his chest. ‘Erm… Actually, I had to sign for this, so-’

Logan grabbed it. Ejected the clip. It was full, so he slid it back into the handgrip and hauled the slide back, racking the first round into the breach.

Finnie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘DI McRae, what exactly do you think you’re doing? We need a plan, a strategy!’

Rennie puffed his way around the side of Foxtrot Tango Two, holding a pair of heavy black vests covered in pockets. ‘Only got stab-proof, that OK?’

‘It’ll have to be…’

‘DI McRae!’

Logan pulled one of the vests on over his suit jacket. ‘If he goes in on his own he’ll get killed. If we’re lucky . If we’re not, he’ll take Alison and Jenny with him.’

‘We’re not in the business of throwing good idiots after bad! You can’t-’

‘You! Give Rennie your MP5.’

The firearms officer pouted. ‘But then I won’t have any-’

‘ Now !’

He held out his submachine gun and Rennie snatched it from his hands. ‘You’ve cleaned this, right? Better not jam.’

‘Inspector McRae, do you actually think this-’

‘What choice have we got? We go in, we grab him, and we drag him back out here before he sods everything up. We don’t engage the targets, we don’t pull any heroics — we stop Green.’ Logan looked around the side of the Transit. Green was flattening himself against the wall beside the industrial unit’s front door. ‘Oh, Christ: the moron really does think he’s on telly…’

Rennie hauled back the slide on his Heckler amp; Koch MP5. ‘Ready when you are, Guv.’

The head of CID shook his head, then turned and marched back towards his car. ‘Sergeant McIver: I want a tactical briefing, and I want it now !’

Logan ran for the abandoned industrial unit, Rennie clattering along behind him.

Rennie stopped beside the open front door to the abandoned Cambertools industrial unit. ‘I still say we should shoot him in the balls, you know, by accident ?’

Logan glanced back towards Foxtrot Tango Two, where the firearms team were all thumping out into the drizzle. ‘We go in on three.’

‘How did someone like Green get promoted to superintendent?’

‘Maybe they had a raffle. Two, one…’ Logan gave the nod and Rennie ducked through the open door, MP5 held at half-mast.

‘Clear.’

Logan followed him into a boxy corridor covered with graffiti. Four doors off it, all closed.

‘What do you think?’

Logan nodded towards the nearest door, raised his borrowed gun, and took up a firing stance.

Rennie tried the handle. ‘Locked.’ So was the next one, and the one after that.

Last door.

Rennie hauled open the door and charged in, bent double, Logan behind him, swinging his Glock above the constable’s back. It was the room from the video; the room in Davina Pearce’s self portrait — a graffiti-scrawled office with a single, wrought-iron bed against one wall, a low table in the middle of the room. One door on the opposite wall.

Blood made a scuffed track across the wooden floorboards.

Superintendent Green was slumped against the bed, both hands clutching his right thigh — a dark red stain spread out across his trouser leg. His Glock lay on the floor by his knee. The silly sod hadn’t even got off a single shot. ‘Oh God, oh Christ, oh fuck…’

Alison McGregor was standing, very still and silent, in front of the boarded-up window, arms by her sides. Trembling. There was someone behind her, dressed in full SOC gear and a plastic mask. He had a six-inch knife pressed to Alison’s throat, the shiny blade speckled with crimson. The other hand was wrapped in Jenny McGregor’s blonde curly hair, holding her close.

Logan inched to the side. ‘Armed police officers: drop the knife.’

The man in the SOC suit shrugged, his speech distorted by some sort of filter in the mask into an electronic pseudo-robot: ‘Now why would I do something like that?’