Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

‘Oh no you don’t: he was your bloody arrest! Why didn’t you charge him?’

Bloody typical.

‘Because you ordered me to go supervise the Perv Patrol after the MAPPA meeting! Then you dragged me off to the building site and Polmont’s flat…’ He let his head fall back until he was staring straight up into the low grey sky. ‘Walker was only in on a volley, his lawyer’s going to have a field day.’

Steel let the awkward silence drag out for a couple of beats. ‘Don’t be so sodding daft: course I didn’t just leave him there. What do you think I am, an amateur? Interviewed him, charged him, packed him off to a cell for the night.’

‘Oh…OK.’

‘Point is, you should’ve bloody well checked first thing this morning, shouldn’t you? ‘Stead of waltzing off with no’ a care in the world.’

‘I didn’t waltz anywhere! You told me to go check up on Knox, so I checked up on Knox. How am I supposed to sodding do everything?’ Logan flicked the ash off the tip of his cigarette. ‘And in case you’re interested, Knox threw a wobbly when he saw the morning paper.’

‘Aw, boo-hoo. Is the widdle wapist upset? Diddums. Tell him I’ll come over and kiss it all better with the toe of my boot.’

‘You know, you could help for a change: get the Press Office to tell the media to back off Knox for a bit.’ Logan dropped his cigarette and ground it out against the wet paving slab with his foot.

‘Fuck him.’ Steel sniffed. ‘Get your arse back to the ranch and deal with Walker’s bloody bum-faced brief. I want it all sorted out by the time I’m finished at Polmont’s flat.’

Logan hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket. The doughnut had left a greasy film on the surface of his tea. He poured it out onto the waterlogged grass, not in the mood any more.

Bloody DI Steel — why did everything always have to be his fault?

Back inside, he dumped the mug on the draining board, said thank you for the tea, then made for the front door. He glanced in through the lounge door on the way past, and stopped. Knox was standing in the bay window, looking out at the dreich clay-coloured sky, hugging that carrier bag of his like a hot water bottle for the soul.

He turned, saw Logan watching him, and looked away. ‘I’m sorry about acting the spaz, like. Just gets a bit much sometimes, everyone hating us, you know?’

Logan did. ‘It’s…Don’t worry about it.’

Knox nodded, and turned back to the grimy glass. ‘Do you have a guardian angel, Sergeant?’

Logan laughed. ‘If I do he’s shite at his job.’

‘I’ve got one. God sent someone to look after us. Even when I was in prison he kept an eye out. Kept us safe so I could learn me lesson.’

Logan took his car keys from his pocket. ‘Yeah, well-’

‘See, God’s always testing us, isn’t He? Getting caught, going to prison, that was all part of His plan for us. If He hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have found Him, would I?’ Knox reached out a hand and drew something on the dirty window with a fingertip. ‘He’s made us the man I am, like.’

Now there was something to be proud of.

The snow’s coming. Richard can feel it in his bones. His arm aches where they broke it at that first group therapy session. Doing all the STOP programme bollocks: everyone sitting about like a bunch of fannies, whinging on about how their mummies and daddies didn’t love them. Didn’t like him taking the piss, did they? No. And ever since then, his arm aches when it’s cold.

The first lesson from God: know when to keep your mouth shut.

Course, then they all had little accidents, didn’t they? And God said unto them, never fuck with a man who works for Mental Mikey — the holy word delivered by a couple of screws who owed the big man a favour.

Guardian angel, see?

Richard watches the policeman hunch his way down the garden path, through the rusty gate, and into a little brown Fiat that looks like a motorized turd.

Stared at him like he was mad, didn’t he? Didn’t believe Richard was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So. Help. Him. God.

It’s all a test. It’s all a lesson. How you deal with things is important to Him, isn’t it? Stands to reason. Otherwise He wouldn’t make things happen the way He does.

And God loves Richard Knox.

Richard places his hand against the glass and scrubs away the picture he drew in the grime. Smiles to himself.

Soon. Very, very soon…

It was nearly half ten by the time Logan got back to the CID room. The place was packed — plainclothes and uniformed constables sitting in every seat, working the phones. The almost constant murmur of conversation and electronic ringing.

‘Yes, sir, I know you’re worried about your father but-’

‘In Kincorth? I see…And what makes you believe it was Richard Knox?’

A constable stuck her hand over the mouthpiece and offered the phone to Logan. ‘Sarge, there’s a bloke on the phone says he was attacked by Knox last night, do you want to deal?’

Logan looked out across the crowded, noisy room. ‘Is every nutjob in the city calling in?’

‘Pretty much. So, you want it?’

‘Do I buggery.’ He hurried through into the little sergeants’ alcove, before anyone else tried to lumber him with their loony, closed the door — shutting out the babble — and collapsed into his seat. Rubbed at his thumping forehead.

He had the little office to himself, no one to see him rummaging through everyone’s desks on the hunt for painkillers. OK, so he was a bit hungover but after Reuben and everything he’d deserved a drink, hadn’t he? Even if the late night vodka hadn’t been the best of ideas.

DS Mark MacDonald had a packet of ibuprofen hidden in a drawer. Logan helped himself to two, washing them down with the pint of orange juice he’d bought on the way back to the station. His stomach gurgled as the liquid hit, bitter acid at the bottom of his throat.

There was a Post-it note stuck right in the middle of Logan’s computer screen: a summons in block capitals. ‘MY OFFICE AS SOON AS YOU GET BACK!!!’ Signed, ‘DI BEATTIE!’ just like that, with an exclamation mark. Just in case Logan didn’t know he was a dickhead.

Logan peeled it off, scrunched it up, and hurled it at the bin.

Someone shouted, ‘Shop?’ and Logan looked around to find PC Butler standing in the doorway. She wasn’t exactly the tallest officer in Grampian Police: petite, with cropped blonde hair, Butler looked like the kind of person who helped little old ladies across the road; raised money for underprivileged kittens; couldn’t pull the skin off a boiled tattie. Which just went to show how wrong you could be.

She waggled a manila folder at him. ‘You in for an armed robbery?’

‘Dump it on Doreen’s desk.’ He jerked his thumb towards a neatly ordered workstation, with law books alphabetically arranged on a shelf above the computer.

Constable Butler pulled a face, wrinkling her nose, and puckering her mouth. ‘You sure you don’t want it?’

‘Positive.’

‘Oh come on.’ She settled onto the only clear patch on Biohazard Bob’s desk. ‘DS Taylor’s being a right cow at the moment. Ever since her husband ran off with that accounts assistant, you can’t do anything right.’

‘Give it to Bob then.’

Butler shuddered. ‘I’d have to drive him about, and it’s too bloody cold to have the windows open all the time.’ She batted her eyelashes. ‘Please?’

‘DS MacDonald?’

‘Wandering hands. He does it again I’ll have to castrate him. Don’t want that on your conscience, do you?’