Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

Logan looked around at the wreckage, then rubbed at his gritty eyes. ‘You want to tell me what the hell this was about then?’

She pointed at a tattered copy of the Aberdeen Examiner lying against the skirting board. Half the pages were sprawled across the carpet, but the lead story was clearly visible from where Logan stood: ‘SEX-BEAST STRIKES FEAR INTO COMMUNITY’. The photo of Knox was more up to date than the last one the papers used. Someone had been digging.

Logan bent and picked up the front page, letting the rest of it fall back to the floor.

Exclusive by Colin Miller

Everyone knows a leopard can’t change his spots: once a dangerous animal, always a dangerous animal, but the people of Aberdeenshire are being expected to believe that convicted serial rapist Richard Knox can live amongst them without posing a serious risk to the population. Knox (39), a vicious sexual predator, served eight years in a high-security prison for the brutal abduction and rape of Newcastle grandfather William Brucklay (68)…

It wasn’t exactly the journalist’s best work. Sensationalist, melodramatic, and obviously designed to whip up outrage and panic. Further in it got even worse, with quotes from people in Newcastle, and William Brucklay’s grandchildren: teenagers more than happy to share the family’s anger. Castration’s too good for him, they should bring back hanging. That kind of thing.

And in Richard Knox’s case, they were probably right.

Logan folded the page up, then dumped it on the coffee table.

Knox was clutching his carrier bag again, the thing rustling as he rocked back and forth in his seat, muttering. ‘It’s all lies.’

‘All of it?’

‘“Convicted serial rapist”.’ He scowled at the TV. ‘Was convicted of one rape. One. Not a series. Served me time. Found God, didn’t I?’

‘Well…’ Logan looked at the chunky woman from Sacro — Margaret, Marge? Something like that. ‘Maybe you’d be better off trying your luck somewhere else? We could organize a midnight flit: get you somewhere further away, where they don’t know you. Devon, Cornwall, something like that?’

Get you the hell out of Aberdeen before you cause any more trouble, you creepy little bastard.

‘This is me home!’ Knox drew back his foot, then lashed out, crashing his heel into the TV screen, shattering it, sending the whole thing clattering over backwards to the floor.

Marge/Margaret flinched. Swore.

PC Guthrie loomed over Knox. ‘All right, on your feet.’

The man didn’t even look up at him, just sat there, clutching his foot. ‘What you going to do, like, arrest me for smashing me own telly? Bloody thing didn’t work anyway.’

The constable flopped his hands about for a moment. ‘Sarge?’

Logan shrugged. ‘He’s got a point.’

Knox closed his eyes, lips pinched tight, breathing in and out through his pointy nose. Then stood, and knelt in front of the ancient electric fire, head bowed, hands clasped together. Mouth moving silently.

They left him to it.

‘Tell you.’ Margaret/Marge filled a new-looking kettle in the sink, and plugged it in. ‘He’s really starting to creep me out.’

Logan shrugged. ‘Sex offenders can be a bit-’

‘Trust me, I know sex offenders. Did six years as a prison officer in Peterhead, I’ve seen every flavour of mong and stot you can think of and none of them weirded me out like Knox.’ She picked four mugs off the draining board and sniffed them, then plopped a teabag in each. ‘There was this one guy done for snatching women off the streets — blondes usually — bundled them into the back of an old van with the windows blacked out. Liked to rape them while he burned them with the cigarette lighter. Apparently nipples were a particular favourite. Never looked you in the eye when he spoke, always stared right here…’ She pointed at her not inconsiderable breasts. ‘You just knew he was thinking about it: the smell, the sizzling sound. The screams.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yeah, and even he wasn’t as creepy as Knox.’

She rinsed a teaspoon under the tap, peering at Logan out the corner of her eye. ‘So…what happened to your face?’

Logan reached up and touched his right cheek. The skin was all swollen and tender. ‘Cut myself shaving.’

‘Right…’

The sound of flushing came from upstairs.

Marge/Margaret looked up and smiled. ‘Harry’s arse must be in tatters by now.’

She was fishing the teabags out of the mugs when a balding, middle-aged man groaned in through the door, clutching both sides of his little pot belly. Face all pale and sweaty. ‘I think I might have died…’

‘You want tea?’ She pointed at the greasy paper bags, sitting on the work surface. ‘The nice policemen brought doughnuts.’

He grimaced. ‘Mandy, please, just dig a hole in the back garden and bury me.’

‘Told you that chow mein looked dodgy.’

‘Bloody thing wasn’t even past its sell-by date.’ He forced a smile, then held his hand out to Logan. ‘Hi, I’m Harry-’ Something deep inside him gurgled, and he grimaced. ‘Oh God, not again…’

And then he was off, scurrying back up the stairs, moaning and swearing.

Logan leant back against the cooker. ‘If you’re worried about Knox, maybe-’

‘It’s not like I’m scared of him, or anything. I mean, come on.’ She pointed at her breasts again. ‘These are “get out of jail free” cards, far as he’s concerned. He’s just…not right, you know?’

‘Yeah, but he’s going to-bugger.’ Logan dragged out his warbling phone. ‘McRae?’

DI Steel’s voice came through from the other end. ‘Did you chase up that cadaver dog like I told you?’

‘Did it first thing. Should be here round about eleven.’

‘Believe it when I see it. Tell you, those Strathclyde bobbies -’

Logan put his hand over the mouthpiece, mimed smoking a cigarette, and pointed towards the back door. Mandy nodded and offered him a doughnut.

The handle turned, but the door wouldn’t budge. Logan balanced his tea on the windowsill and gave the wood a bump with his shoulder. It bounced, but didn’t open.

‘What about that fat tit Danby, you manage to dig up any dirt on him?’

‘No. You told me to look into his mate, Billy Adams.’

Another shove and the door creaked in its frame. One more and it popped open. The back garden was a riot of dead thistles and knee-high yellowy grass, the broken brown spears of docken flowers jabbing up into the grey morning. A holly bush sprawled out from the back corner, beside a bloated and crumbling shed.

‘You have actually heard of the word “initiative”, right?’

Logan stepped out onto a patio made up of cracked concrete slabs, wet grass poking up through the joins. ‘There’s no way Danby came all the way up here just to hold Knox’s hand: he’s a superintendent, they don’t babysit rapists, doesn’t matter how well known they are. Something’s up.’

He balanced the doughnut on top of his tea and lit a cigarette, the smoke spiralling away into the cold air.

‘You thought about what I said yesterday? The attitude, the drinking, the being a pain in the arse?’

‘I am not a pain in the arse.’

‘It’s my arse and you’re in it. Being a pain.’ There was a pause. ‘Case in point: Douglas Walker’s brief’s downstairs right now, kicking up shite about his client being denied his human rights.’

Logan closed his eyes and massaged his pounding forehead. ‘Sodding hell — please tell me you didn’t just leave him in the interview room!’