Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

Steel flicked ash into the footwell. ‘What do you think: doing a midnight flit?’

The driver hopped down from the cab, then crunched his way over to the cottage, leaving the engine running.

Logan turned the key in the ignition and the Fiat whined and groaned into life.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘Being proactive…’ He inched the car along the side road with the headlights off, navigating by the faint reflected glow of the snow. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Driver’s back out…got two mates with him…going round the back of the van…’

A whin bush grated along the side of the Fiat, scratching at Logan’s window.

‘They’ve opened the doors on the cattle barn…light’s on…Shite, can’t see anything — could you no’ get the bloody window fixed properly?’ She thumbed the button on the Airwave handset again. ‘What’s going on?’

‘We’re all getting hypothermia.’

‘Donald, you make me come down there and I’ll jam my boot right up-’

‘Looks like they’re unloading stuff from the back of the van.’

Logan had finally turned out onto the main road, the Fiat’s front wheels skittering from side to side, scrabbling for purchase.

‘Get into position.’

‘Finally!’

Bloody brakes weren’t working. Logan stomped his foot hard to the floor, and the car slithered to a halt, overshooting the end of the farm track. A bit of blind reversing, and the thing was pointing the right way again. He eased into the road.

‘Fuck…’ A ditch ran along one side, the verge invisible as the wind picked up, throwing snow against the windscreen.

‘Team One — good to go.’

‘Team Four — aye, we’re ready an’ a’.’

‘Team Three — in position.’

‘Team Two — Bastard, just stepped in something…’

‘Right, listen up.’ Steel took an inspirational sook on her fag. ‘There will be no getting shot. There will be no shooting anyone else. Most importantly, there will be no extra sodding paperwork for me to do, understand?’

There was a replying chorus of, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Who are we no’ at home to?’

‘Mr Fuck-Up!’

‘Right. Russell, they’re all yours.’

Logan could hear the lead firearms officer giving his team instructions as the little Fiat juddered and snaked up the track. When he was roughly halfway to the cottage, Logan tapped the brakes again, grinding to a halt. He hauled on the handbrake. ‘Roadblock.’

Steel shrugged. ‘Good an idea as any.’

Probably unnecessary, but at least now they couldn’t do a runner in the Transit van.

‘All teams, move in on my mark. And…mark!’

The inspector wiped at the windscreen with her sleeve. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘No.’ Just the halo of the van’s headlights and the glow from the cottage. Everything else was swallowed by snow and darkness.

‘Police! Hands where I can see them!’

‘Susan asked if you want to be there.’

‘Where?’ Logan killed the engine.

‘I said, keep your bloody hands where I can see them!’

‘You know, when she…When the baby comes.’

In the dark of the car, Logan grimaced. ‘Never really thought about it.’

‘On the ground. On the ground now!’

‘Well, it’s technically your kid too, so if-’

‘SHITE!’

A bright flash, followed by a hard pop.

‘Live fire! Officer down!’

Three answering flashes, and then the Transit van shot forward, headlights sweeping towards the farm track.

‘Laz…?’

Logan fumbled with his seatbelt. ‘Out!’ He snapped on the hazard lights, hauled open the door and scrambled out into the snow. The van was picking up speed, barrelling down the road towards them.

Oh, crap. No way that was going to stop.

He lunged for the drystane dyke, pulling himself up the slippery stones. The top course gave way and Logan tumbled down the other side into a bank of freezing white, boulders thumping down all around him.

BANG! The sound of shattering glass. The squeal of tortured metal.

Swearing.

Logan hauled himself upright, hands and face stinging with the cold, and peered over the wall. The Fiat was at least six feet back from where he’d abandoned it, wedged across the track — the back end in the ditch, one headlight smashed, front bumper hanging off, the bonnet crumpled into a sneer of metal. The Transit van looked as if nothing had happened.

Behind the steering wheel, the van’s driver blinked and shook his head. A lumpy man with rough features and Lemmy-from-Motorhead stubble.

‘You dick!’ Logan stumbled across the scattered wall stones, through the snow, and round to the driver’s door. ‘That was my car!’ He hauled the door open and dragged the man out into the snow.

Resisting the urge to kick him in the goolies, Logan produced his warrant card and rammed it in Lemmy’s face. ‘POLICE!’ Then flipped him over onto his front and cuffed his hands behind his back. ‘You’re nicked.’

Lemmy just lay there and groaned.

That’ll teach him not to wear a seatbelt…Logan jumped to his feet. Steel — where the hell was Steel? He hurried over to the car. She wasn’t in the passenger seat. She wasn’t in the ditch ether.

Then he heard the swearing again.

‘Inspector?’ Logan waded through the snow in the ditch and peered over the wall into the field beyond. Steel was lying flat on her back with the cigarette sticking straight up out of her mouth, smoke trailing away into the sky. ‘Inspector? You OK?’

She didn’t get up, just raised a hand. ‘Either I’m having one of them sympathetic pregnancies and my water’s just broke, or I’ve peed myself a little.’

Steel slumped back against the barn wall and ran a hand over her face. ‘He going to be OK?’

‘He’s a lucky sod — shotgun wasn’t close enough, so the vest took most of it. Got some pellets in his arms and chin, but other than that, yeah.’ Which was more than could be said for Norman Yates.

‘The other one?’

‘Depends how quickly the ambulance gets here. Did you see the state of my bloody car?’

‘What did I tell them? No getting shot, no shooting anyone. Why does no bastard ever listen?’ She kicked one of the many boxes littering the barn, but instead of the thing sailing off into the shelves that lined the rough stone walls, her foot thumped through the cardboard, leaving her stuck. ‘Arse…’

‘Not like they had any choice, is it? They identified themselves; he opened fire; they took him out.’

‘Get this bloody thing off me!’ She hopped on one foot. ‘And what sort of moron takes a shotgun to a firearms team anyway?’

Logan hauled the box off, then took a look around the barn: shelves on all four walls, stacked with cartons and containers; pallets on the floor, keeping more stuff off the compacted dirt. There was a whole section devoted to Grant’s Vodka. He tore a case open, pulled out a bottle and read the label. ‘Counterfeit.’

‘Bollocks.’

Logan handed it over. ‘See anything suspicious?’

Frown. ‘That’s not how you spell “Distillers”.’

‘Oh…’ She’d got there a lot faster than he had. ‘I’m guessing most of this is dodgy, if not all of it.’

‘Yes, well done Sherlock, I think I might have worked that one out on my own.’ She cracked open another box. ‘Fancy some knock-off Calvin Klein’s Obsession?’

‘No.’

Steel stuck the carton back in the box. ‘Well, one thing’s for certain, Malk the Knife’s no’ going to be too pleased with Mr Gallagher when he finds out he’s lost a whole shipment of dodgy goods. Poor baby.’ She grinned. ‘Want to go rub it in?’