Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

DI Steel slouched through the door to her office, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a bacon buttie in the other, tomato sauce making a jaunty little goatee on her chin. She froze, staring at the weedy, pointy-nosed bloke digging away at her window lock with a Swiss Army Knife.

‘What the sodding hell do you think you’re doing?’

Angus Black looked up and shrugged. ‘Breaking and exiting.’ The side of his face was a swollen, angry bruise where he’d bounced off the toilet cistern in Dodgy Pete’s.

Logan leant back against the filing cabinet. ‘Call it an early Valentine’s present.’

Angus gave one last grunt, and the window sprang open, letting in a rush of cold air. Snow drifted down in the space between the buildings, big fat flakes that clung to the brickwork and piled up on the window ledge. Five to seven on a dark and freezing Monday morning, and for once Logan actually felt human. No hangover. No feeling queasy. His head didn’t even hurt. Well, as long as nothing touched either of the lumps. Maybe laying off the booze wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Angus creaked the window open and closed a couple of times. ‘Told you. Now, we had a deal…?’

Logan produced a packet of Benson and Hedges.

‘Ace.’ Angus helped himself to one, then frisked through his pockets. ‘Got a light?’

‘Oh no you bloody don’t!’ Steel dumped her coffee on the desk and snatched the packet off Logan. ‘If anyone’s having the first fag in this office, it’s me.’

She lipped one out of the pack, pulled a Zippo from her pocket and sparked it up. The sweet tang of raw petrol was drowned out by the curling smoke. The inspector sighed, eased herself gently into her office chair, and stuck her feet on the desk. ‘Ahhhhhhhhh, Bisto.’ She slumped there, with the cigarette sticking out the corner of her mouth. ‘Laz, make sure the door’s locked, yeah?’

Angus shuffled his feet. ‘Come on, I’m gasping here. He promised…’

Steel took a long drag, aimed smoke at the ceiling tiles, then tossed the pack over. ‘Knock yourself out.’

‘Ta…’ He fired one up, making post-coital noises. ‘Long night in a cell when you’ve got no smokes.’

‘Shouldn’t be a nasty wee drug-dealing turd-burglar then, should you?’

Logan locked the door. ‘Tell the inspector what you told me.’

Angus blew a lazy stream of smoke out into the snow. ‘What’s it worth?’

Steel frowned at Logan. ‘What’s what worth?’

‘Mr Black here wants paid to tell us where he got his drugs from.’

‘Get bent, we’re no’-’

‘I’m saying sod all otherwise. These bastards’ll kill me if they find out — you gotta make it worth the risk.’

Logan pulled out his notebook and flipped back a couple of pages. ‘Dog shit.’

Angus shook his head. ‘No it isn’t, you haven’t seen them, they’re fucking huge. ’

‘No, you idiot — “dog shit”. You said you didn’t want to end your days as a big pile of dog shit.’

‘Oh…right. Yeah, their boss’s got this massive Rottweiler. Thing’d have your hand off like that.’ He snapped his fingers, sending a tumble of ash to the carpet. ‘So it’s cash up front, or no deal.’

Steel waved a hand at Logan. ‘How much we pick him up with?’

‘About a grand’s worth of heroin.’

‘Wasn’t mine — I was just holding it for a friend.’

‘Aye, right.’ Steel took a bite of her buttie. ‘McNab’s on the bench today, Angus, how many times has he done you for dealing? Word is he’s looking to set an example. Only way you’re going to see the sun again in the next seven years is if you dob in your suppliers.’

‘Old ones are the best ones, eh Inspector? What’s next: going to terrify us with poofter cellmate stories?’ Angus grinned. ‘Done my time before, can do it again. At least I’ll still be alive when I get out.’

The phone on Steel’s desk started ringing. She peered at the little LCD display. ‘No one important.’ She hit the disconnect button. ‘Start talking, Angus.’

‘Not till I see some cash.’

Steel took her wallet out and slapped two tenners down on her desktop. ‘Twenty quid, take it or leave it.’

‘Twenty quid? You’re taking the piss, right?’

Logan shifted against the filing cabinet. The smell of Steel’s bacon buttie was making him feel hungry and nauseous, all at the same time. It was getting cold in here too, all the heat disappearing out of the open window, along with the cigarette smoke.

He let them haggle for a bit, then pulled a clear evidence pouch from his pocket and gave it a shoogle. ‘Three hundred pounds.’

‘What?’ Angus curled his lip. ‘Three thousand, maybe. ’

‘That’s how much you had on you when I picked you up: three hundred pounds in counterfeit notes.’

He stood there with his mouth hanging open. It wasn’t a good look. ‘Counterfeit…? I sold my bloody car to buy that stuff! Four and a bit grand that crap cost me.’

‘So where’s the rest of it?’

Pause. ‘Rest of what?’

‘You had a thousand pounds’ worth of heroin in the rucksack, where’s the other three?’

The phone started ringing again. Steel raised an eyebrow. ‘Little Miss Popular today.’ She hit disconnect again, settled back in her seat and stuck the smouldering cigarette between her teeth. ‘Laz, get a search warrant. We’re going to do Angus a favour and tidy his house before he gets out.’

‘Erm…Maybe we could come to some sort of understanding? You like iPods, right?’

Logan clapped a hand down on Angus’s shoulder. ‘Not your day, is it?’

‘You try to do a bit of business, and what happens? Everyone screws-’

A thump at the office door. Then the handle jiggled up and down a bit. Someone outside called, ‘Steel? Inspector? Are you in there?’ DCI Finnie.

Steel sprang upright in her seat. ‘Arse!’ She flicked her cigarette through the open window, grabbed a file off her desk and started fanning like mad. Angus obviously wasn’t as daft as he looked. He followed her lead, hurling his fag out into the snow, then, while she was busy clearing the air, grabbed the remains of her buttie and crammed it into his mouth.

‘Inspector?’

She ripped open a pack of extra strong mints and crunched one down, then waved at Logan. ‘Door, door, door!’

Logan unsnibbed the lock, just in time to catch Finnie turning away. ‘Sir?’

The head of CID stared past Logan into the room. ‘I hope you weren’t indulging in some sort of orgy, Inspector.’

‘Ha-ha, very funny, sir.’ She made a show of rearranging a stack of paper on her desk. ‘Just having a quiet word with Mr Black here. He fancies the glamorous life of a paid informant.’

Finnie sniffed. ‘I would have thought you had other, more pressing matters to attend to today.’

Steel shifted in her seat. Looked from Finnie to Logan and back again. ‘Oh aye?’

‘“Oh aye” indeed.’ He pulled a folded newspaper from under his arm and slapped it against Logan’s chest. ‘Do the honours, Sergeant.’

Logan unruffled the front page. It was a copy of that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner with a photo of Richard Knox on page one — not the old stock photo every other paper was using, but a new one, of Knox kneeling in front of his granny’s grave. ‘Oh no…’ The headline screamed: ‘SEX-BEAST LIVES IN ABERDEEN STREET SHOCK.’

‘Exactly.’ Finnie pulled on a thin smile. ‘Perhaps you’d like to read it out for the inspector.’

‘Ah…er…“When the residents of a quiet Aberdeen street went to sleep on Wednesday night, little did they realize that they’d be getting a new neighbour the next morning. But now the Aberdeen Examiner can exclusively reveal that notorious sex beast Richard Knox is living at Thirty-Five Cairnview Terrace, in Cornhill”…’