Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

The back of Logan’s head stung if he touched it, and throbbed when he didn’t. It felt as if there was a rat gnawing on the back of his eyeballs with sharp little teeth.

He clambered out into the cold, dark night. No point locking the car. A: there was nothing there worth stealing, not even the car. B: the passenger-side window was missing. C: it was a piece of crap, ancient, brown Fiat, and if anyone was stupid enough to nick it, they’d be doing him a favour.

Fat snowflakes drifted down in a slow-motion ballet. When they touched the tarmac they disappeared into off-brown sludge, but it wouldn’t be long before they started to lie and the whole city ground to a standstill.

He turned up his collar and lurched up the street through the snow.

Bucksburn was one of those strange little self-contained areas of Aberdeen, stranded out on the north-east corner of the city, on the end of Auchmill Road. The kind of place people from Blackburn, Kemnay, and Inverurie drove through on their way to a long delay at the Haudagain roundabout.

This side of the dual carriageway was lined with little shops, most of them closed for the evening. The lights flickered off in a newsagents as he passed, the owner rattling down the security grill over the window. A few doors down, the smell of garlic, frying onions and sesame oil wafted out from a Chinese takeaway. Logan’s emptied stomach growled.

A little alleyway led between two of the shops. He lifted the catch on a wrought iron gate and stepped into orange-tainted gloom, feet squelching through puddles of slush. A light was fixed to the wall above his head, but it couldn’t seem to muster much beyond a faint glow.

He skirted a cluster of wheelie bins, past a featureless metal door with reggae music thumping out from somewhere inside, and turned the corner.

The pub sitting at the end of the alleyway wasn’t called Dodgy Pete’s. Not officially anyway. The sign above the chipped red door said ‘THE BURNING BUCK’, complete with a demonic Monarch of the Glen illustration.

Logan pushed through into the muggy interior.

At least it wasn’t one of those places where everyone stopped talking and turned to stare when someone new entered. No one in Dodgy Pete’s cared.

It was a traditional, old-fashioned Scottish pub: cracked vinyl seats; a dart board; a puggy machine in the corner, flickering away to itself; a cigarette machine with an ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign Sellotaped to it; a short wooden bar; and a smell of stale beer and damp dog.

Logan levered himself up onto a barstool. ‘Quiet tonight, Pete?’

The barman looked up from the copy of Private Eye he was reading. Grunted. His chest-length white beard was flecked with little grey streaks of cigarette ash, the hair around his wide mouth stained a dirty yellow. Large nose with red veins capering around the tip, a shock of unruly white hair. Half-moon spectacles. He looked like Santa Claus after a particularly nasty divorce.

‘Usual?’ He was already reaching for the Stella tap.

Logan licked his lips.

Prove it. Go a week without getting hammered every night.

The DIs are fed up with you complaining all the time and stinking of booze.

Maybe you’re angry with her because you think she’s right.

Damn.

‘Make it a fresh orange and lemonade. Pint.’

Pete raised a snowy eyebrow. ‘Oh…you’re on duty.’ He shuffled off to get the drink.

Logan turned his back to the bar, scanning the low room. A couple of old men were slumped over a game of dominos by the fire, a young woman in a Royal Bank of Scotland uniform was getting herself outside a pint of Guinness and a packet of prawn cocktail while a bloke in a soggy hoodie tried to chat her up. No sign of Danny Saunders’s friend.

‘Angus Black about?’

Pete squirted lemonade from the gun into a pint glass. ‘What you reckon to Scotland’s chances in Antigua then? Daz says three nil, but you know what he’s like.’

‘I need to have a word.’

‘Three nil. Pffff. Daz wouldn’t know his cock from a bicycle pump if he didn’t keep yanking the damn thing.’

‘What about two posh-sounding blokes: Gallagher and Yates? Supposed to be new in town?’

‘Caught him having a tug in the ladies’ bog last week.’

Logan swung back round to the bar. ‘Come on Pete, I just want to talk to Angus. Nothing serious, just a quick word.’

The big man stuck the glass in front of Logan, foam dripping down the side. ‘I mean, Daz is OK, you know, for a registered sex offender, but…’ He shrugged.

‘Got anything for a headache?’

Pete stuck his hand under the bartop and came out with a small blue packet, placed it next to the glass.

Logan reached for his wallet, but Pete gave him a broad smile.

‘Nah, on the house, Officer. ’

And in the mirror behind the bar, Logan saw a man framed in the open doorway to the gents freeze — eyes wide — then disappear back into the toilets. Angus Black.

Logan took a sip, then knocked back a couple of Pete’s paracetamol. ‘Bog windows still got bars on them?’

Another shrug.

Logan picked up a beer mat and stuck it on top of his pint glass. Then turned and wandered across the sticky linoleum to the sign marked ‘BUCKS’. Stopped for a moment outside. Then pushed the door open.

The toilet door creaked open on a dark room.

Blink. Bzzzzzzzz. Blink.

The fluorescent lamp never got past the start-up phase, sending out little flashes of dim light.

Bzzzzzzzz. Blink. Blink. Bzzzzzzzz.

A short, stainless steel trough ran along one wall, the tiles beneath them shiny with poor targeting. Two graffiti-scrawled cubicles, one with the door missing. Toilet seat was gone too, and there was no way you’d want to expose your bare bum to whatever lurked in the bowl.

The drip, drip, drip of water in the cistern above the urinal made a dark heartbeat in the gloom.

Blink. Bzzzzzzzz. Blink.

Logan stepped into the eye-biting nip of old urine and let the door swing shut behind him. ‘Jesus, Pete, when did you last clean this place…?’

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Bzzzzzzzz. Blink. Bzzzzzzzz.

It was like standing in the middle of a horror movie.

‘Come on, Angus, I know you’re in here.’

Pale orange light oozed in through dirty windows, slowly bringing the shapes back into focus. The door to the second cubicle was closed. Not wanting to touch anything, Logan raised his foot and gave it a shove.

Locked.

Blink. Bzzzzzzzz. Blink. Blink.

‘Daz?’ He tapped the graffiti-covered chipboard with the toe of his shoe. ‘That better not be you in there having a wank…’

Silence.

Logan pulled back his foot and gave the door a kick, springing the lock. The boom reverberated around the narrow, stinking room. Someone gave a little yelp.

Whoever it was, they’d managed to get their top half out of the narrow window above the toilet, one foot on the cistern, the other waving about in the air, backside wiggling, rucksack stuck in the small opening.

‘Angus?’

The thrashing stopped. Then started again, feet swinging about madly.

Logan crossed his arms and only just stopped himself from settling against the cubicle wall. ‘It’s OK, take your time.’

The legs went limp. Then started up again.

‘Should have taken the backpack off before you tried to sneak out the window.’

A muffled, ‘Fuck…’ One last kick, then everything sagged. ‘I’m stuck.’

‘Really?’

‘Er…How about we cut a deal?’

‘Sorry Angus, it’s against Grampian Police policy to negotiate with people’s backsides. What’s in the rucksack?’