Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

DI Steel was almost invisible in the darkness, but he could hear her shifting in the passenger seat of his manky brown Fiat. ‘You were snoring.’

The inspector stabbed her thumb on the button for the cigarette lighter, waited for it to pop up, then pulled it out of the dashboard and sparked up a Silk Cut. The orange glow turned her face into a topographical map of wrinkles and shadow. Train-wreck hair hidden beneath a furry hat.

‘Bloody freezing…’ Logan peered at the fogged-up windscreen, then cleared a porthole with his sleeve, looking out at the moonlit countryside. They’d parked down a small lane overlooking a sprawling building site, just off the A90 — Aberdeen to Ellon road. He yawned. ‘Need a pee.’

‘Shouldn’t have drunk all that coffee then, should you?’

‘Knew he wouldn’t show.’

‘I mean, what sort of idiot takes decaf on a stakeout?’

‘So where is he then?’

‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this crappy car listening to your bloody snoring, would I?’

‘Fine, be like that.’ Logan helped himself to one of the inspector’s cigarettes, lighting it with a Zippo as he climbed out into the freezing night.

‘Close the sodding door!’

SLAM.

He stood there for a second, shivering, drew in a deep lungful of smoke, then started down the lane towards a clump of trees. The ground crackled beneath his feet, grass coated in a thick rime of frost, everything turned monochrome in the light of a nearly full moon. Bright as day.

Logan stepped off the lane and into the undergrowth.

God it was cold. Bloody Steel and her bloody CHIS. What was the point of having a Covert Human Intelligence Source if the sodding ‘Source’ was so ‘Covert’ you couldn’t bloody see him?

Zip, rummage, grimace…ahhhhh. Oh yeah…that was better.

He stood there, in a growing cloud of bitter-sweet steam, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Twelve days straight without a single day off. No wonder he was knackered.

You could see the whole development from here: a swathe of frozen mud surrounded by chainlink fencing; piles of bulldozed earth; a cluster of pale concrete foundations. Twenty or thirty houses looked almost finished, another half dozen were at the scaffolding and brick stage. Eventually there’d be four hundred of the damn things, courtesy McLennan Homes. Nasty, boxy, rabbit hutches for people with more money than sense.

Christ knew how the bastard got planning permission.

The site office was a little Portakabin and as Logan watched, someone opened the door spilling pale yellow light across the churned-up earth. A dog barked. The sound of a radio. Then the door swung shut and the light was gone, replaced by the faint circle of a torch, working its way around the perimeter fence. You’d have to be desperate, taking a night watchman’s job on a building site in the middle of winter. Knowing that if anything went missing Malcolm McLennan would have your balls.

Literally.

Logan zipped himself up then hurried back to the car, out of the cold. He clunked the door shut behind him. ‘Baltic out there…’ He cranked the key in the ignition and turned the heater up full, holding his hands over the vents.

DI Steel sat and scowled at the windscreen as it started to clear. ‘Sod this, he’s two hours late. I’m no’ buggering about any longer; some of us got pregnant wives to get home to.’

Logan wrestled the gearstick into reverse, getting a loud grinding noise, then turned in his seat and peered out of the rear window, navigating by the light of the moon. The manky Fiat shuddered backwards up the lane. ‘Told you he wasn’t going to show.’

‘Blah, blah, blah.’

‘I’m just saying: no one’s daft enough to rat out Malk the Knife.’ Logan backed out onto the slip road, flicked on the headlights, then stuck his foot down. Hoping for a bit of wheel-spin, getting nothing but a dull groan as the car slowly dragged its rusty backside towards fifty.

‘Stop past Asda on the way home, we’re out of ice-cream.’

‘In this weather?’

‘Cravings. Susan wants double chocolate chip, and cheese Doritos. In the same bowl. And before you say anything, I know: I have to watch her eating it.’ Steel scooted down in her seat. ‘Doesn’t this thing go any faster?’

‘No.’

They sat in silence as the moonlit countryside rumbled past. Fields of frost-whitened grass, ploughed up earth, miserable-looking sheep, big round bales of hay wrapped in black plastic.

Logan slowed for the roundabout on the outskirts of Bridge of Don. ‘Fancy a pint — celebrate my finally getting some time off? Dodgy Pete’s’ll still be open.’

‘Pregnant wife, remember?’ Steel pulled out her cigarettes again. ‘And I want you back at the ranch seven o’clock Thursday morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Don’t want Mr Knox thinking we’re no’ pleased to see him, do we? Christ knows what the nasty wee sod would get up to.’

The Eastern Airways Jetstream 41 was tiny compared to the British Midlands 737 at the next stand. Logan stood in the shelter of a plastic-roofed walkway outside the terminal building, watching as the little blue-and-white plane edged in from the runway, twin propellers roaring in the drizzly rain, navigation lights winking in the gloom.

The sky it had dropped from was the colour of wet clay, a solid blanket of dark grey that stretched from horizon to horizon, thin slivers of pre-dawn light barely visible around the edges.

‘Bang on time.’ DI Steel dragged her hands out of her armpits for long enough to produce a packet of cigarettes, stick one in her mouth, and light up. ‘Mind you, bet we’ll still be farting about-’

‘Hey! You!’ A little man in a high-visibility vest was scurrying down the walkway towards them. ‘You can’t smoke here. The whole airport’s a no smoking zone!’

Steel took the fag out of her mouth and told him to bugger off. ‘Police.’

‘I don’t care if you’re the sodding Pope: no smoking!’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ She took one last defiant drag and dropped the cigarette on the concrete walkway, grinding it out with a scuffed shoe. ‘There, you happy?’

‘Don’t let it happen again.’ He stuck his nose in the air, turned on his heel and stalked off.

Steel stuck two fingers up at his departing back, muttering, ‘Little Hitler dick.’

The Jetstream’s engines gave one last roar and the plane rocked to a halt, windscreen wipers slowly squeaking back and forth across the cockpit windows as the propeller blades whined down. Then men in grubby blue boilersuits and ear protectors hauled luggage out of the hold and stacked it onto a buggy.

There was a clunk and the forward door popped open, hinged on the bottom edge, the steps built into the back. One of the cabin crew stuck her head out into the cold morning and a gust of wind whipped her long brown hair into a headbanger’s halo. Her expression soured, she ducked back inside. Welcome to Aberdeen.

Logan leaned back against the walkway’s cold plastic wall and stifled a yawn.

Steel wrinkled her nose at him. ‘How much you have to drink last night?’

Shrug. ‘Couple glasses of wine.’

‘Aye and the rest. You smell like a tramp’s Y-fronts.’

‘I was on holiday.’ Two blissful days of sleeping in and not having to worry about Aberdeen’s assorted criminal tosspots.

‘On the batter more like.’ She dug in her pocket and came out with a packet of extra strong mints. ‘Eat.’

Logan did what he was told, crunching away as the ground crew finished with the baggage.

A uniformed PC appeared at Logan’s elbow, carrying three big wax-paper cups, the bitter smell of roasted coffee beans mingling with the fading tang of exhaust and hot metal. PC Guthrie puffed out his cheeks and stared at the rain, pale ginger eyebrows almost invisible beneath the peak of his cap. ‘Maybe he’ll take one look at the weather and bugger off back to Newcastle?’ Guthrie grinned. It made him look like a happy potato.