Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

Logan struggled with the cap again. Bastarding thing still wouldn’t budge.

He stuck it between his teeth and twisted — the plastic tasted bitter and biley.

‘Aaaaaaaagh!’ Danny dragged the sledgehammer up and round, swinging one-handed, putting all his weight behind it.

Logan flinched back and the hammer caught the edge of his coat, slamming it through the passenger window in a hard crash of fractured glass. Little cubes of shining diamond sprayed out across the vinyl seats.

He spat the canister’s lid out and pointed the pepper-spray right between Danny’s eyes. ‘Drop it!’

‘Fit did you dee to Stacy, you bast-’

Logan pressed the trigger.

There was a brief moment of stunned silence, then Danny started screaming, fell to the gravel driveway, both hands over his face, legs kicking out in random directions. Leaving the sledgehammer sticking out of Logan’s passenger window like a jaunty wooden erection.

They sat at the caravan table, Logan on one side, Danny Saunders slumped on the other. The windows were all fogged up from the kettle being boiled, emptied, filled, and boiled again, the steam permeating the small space, even thought there was a brand-new hole in the wall and the door wouldn’t close properly any more.

The cloying, bitter stench of sick hung thick in the muggy air.

‘You feeling any better?’ The woman — Stacy — peeled the soggy tea towel off Danny’s face. His skin was almost scarlet, eyes scrunched shut, tears dribbling down his cheeks, snot oozing out of his nose. He raised a hand to his eyes.

Logan grabbed his sleeve. ‘Told you not to rub it. You’ll only make it worse.’

‘Hurts…’

Got to love pepper-spray.

Stacy scowled. One side of her hair was sticking out in random directions, little things stuck in the blonde mess. Whatever perfume she used, it wasn’t up to hiding Eau de Vomi. ‘Look what you’ve done.’

Logan scowled back, keeping the bag of frozen peas pressed against the back of his skull. ‘You tried to bash my head in with a frying pan, and he tried to take it off with a bloody sledgehammer. Remember?’

She turned and stomped back to the fridge, pulled a carton of whole fat milk out, and sploshed some into the tea towel. ‘It was an accident.’

‘How? Exactly?’

Silence.

‘Gave you the peas, didn’t I?’ She put the milk back in the fridge, then draped the wet towel over Danny’s face again. ‘You sure this’ll help?’

‘Positive.’

Stacy wrinkled her nose, pulling a chunk of regurgitated something from her hair. ‘Urgh…’ The kettle whistled to the boil. She took it off the gas and poured it straight into a steaming bucket, then checked the temperature with her little finger. ‘I wanted a caravan with a shower, but no, that would’ve been too expensive …’

She peeled off her jumper then the T-shirt underneath, revealing a none-too-sensible bra and her stretch-mark-rippled pregnant bulge. She sniffed at the stained T-shirt, grimaced, then dumped it in the corner with the spattered jumper. Logan didn’t watch her washing her puke-matted hair in the bucket.

He leaned across the tabletop and lifted the edge of the milky tea towel. ‘Feeling any better?’

‘It burns…’

‘It’s pepper-spray, it’s meant to burn.’ Logan let the towel slap back against the angry skin. ‘You’re a silly bastard, Danny, you know that, don’t you?’

The man on the other side of the table coughed. His voice was all wheezy, slightly muffled by the tea towel. ‘Thought you were here about that…’ He drifted into silence.

Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘Where were you at nine fifteen yesterday morning?’

Stacy took her head out of the bucket, shampoo froth clinging like candyfloss. ‘Don’t you tell him anything. Didn’t read you your rights, did he?’

‘But-’

‘But nothing, Danny.’ She raised her chin and stared at Logan. ‘Why you want to know?’

‘Just answer the question: Saturday morning, quarter past nine.’

Silence.

Danny coughed again. ‘We were-’

‘Danny Saunders, don’t you dare!’

‘Fit dis it matter? We werenae up tae anything, were we?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘We were doon the Oldmachar Church, OK?’

Logan laughed. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Aye we were!’ Danny sat upright, and the cloth fell off his face, splatting onto the Formica tabletop in a little eruption of warm milk. It was working, he was actually able to open his eyes a crack, just enough to glare at Logan. ‘You ask the minister, we were there bang on ten till aboot eleven.’

Logan looked around the cramped caravan with its sledgehammer hole in the wall. ‘You went to church?’

‘You can gie the minister a call if you dinna believe me.’

‘I don’t.’ He reached into his coat pocket and…Fuck. Fucking…fuck. He came out with a handful of broken plastic and circuit board shrapnel. All that was left of his phone — caught between Danny’s hammer and the car window. ‘Oh that’s just…’ He thumped it down on the tabletop. ‘That was you and your bloody sledgehammer!’

‘It’s only a phone. You broke my wrist!’

Logan took a deep breath, tried really hard not to lunge across the table and punch Danny in the throat, then stuck out his hand. ‘Give me your mobile.’

Stacy: ‘We don’t have to do any-’

‘GIVE ME YOUR BLOODY MOBILE PHONE, or so help me…’ He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. ‘Please, may I borrow your phone?’

Danny handed over a cheap-looking handset. Logan called the Control room. ‘I want a number for whoever the minister is at Oldmachar Church, Bridge of Don…Yeah, I’ll wait.’

Danny picked the milky tea towel off the tabletop and flopped it back across his face. ‘Reverend Williams. He’s helpin’ us get the wain baptised, you know, when he pops oot?’

Logan dialled the number Control gave him, then sat there, staring at the shattered remains of his phone. He’d only just learned how to programme the damn thing and now he’d have to buy a new one. And would they let him claim it back on expenses? Would they-

‘… Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?’

‘Can I speak to the minister?’

‘That’d be me. Fit can I dee for you?’

Logan glanced up at Danny’s towel-covered face. ‘What’s your name?’

‘If we’re being formal, it’s Reverend Williams, if not, you can call me Charley.’

‘This is Detective Sergeant Logan McRae: Grampian Police. I need to know if you met with a Danny Saunders and his…’ he looked at the shiny bauble covered with soap on Stacy’s ring finger, ‘fiancee any time in the last week?’

There was a pause. ‘Can I ask fit this is aboot?’

‘Trying to establish their whereabouts.’

‘Oh aye, and why’s that?’

Danny leant forwards, face still making yoghurt underneath the cloth. ‘It’s a-right, Charley, you can tell him.’

So the minister did. Logan told him someone would be round to take a formal statement, thanked him for his time and hung up. Then swore.

Danny held out his hand for the phone. ‘See: told you. We wis doon the church.’

Today just…fucking wonderful.

‘So you don’t know anything about the jewellers that got knocked over on Crown Street, yesterday?’

Stacy patted her swollen belly. ‘Danny doesn’t do that kind of thing any more, he’s got responsibilities now.’

‘We wis taking care of my wee loon’s spiritual upbringing. Nowhere near Henderson’s.’

Logan smiled. ‘I never said anything about Henderson’s.’

Stacy squirted more shampoo into her hand. ‘Nice try, Inspector Rebus, but it’s been on the radio all day.’