Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

He closes the door. Not that Mandy’s going to interrupt them, just…well, modesty and that.

‘Rohyp…?’

‘AKA: the date rape drug.’

Richard steps towards the bed, unfastening his belt. Then the secret mobile phone he’s not supposed to have bleeps. Got a new text message. All it says is: ‘DOWNSTAIRS.’

He checks his watch. Twenty minutes early.

Richard shuffles to the front window and peers out at the street, four stories below. There’s a big black car sitting in the car park at the back of the flats, its hot exhaust pluming out into the cold night air.

‘Sorry Harry. Love to stay and get better acquainted, like, but me lift’s here.’

Twenty minutes…

Maybe they’ll wait?

‘Fuck.’ This was no way to start a Tuesday morning. Half past eight and the day was already ruined. Logan puffed back up the eight flights of stairs to the fourth floor, then stood at the top, wheezing and dizzy. Got to cut back on the fags.

He straightened up and shambled through the door into the corridor.

Knox’s new flat was part of a huge, ugly development — a long winding terrace that looked more like municipal buildings from the 1970s than modern housing. A developer’s dream: build them cheap, pile them high, and charge a fortune.

There were six flats on the fourth floor, all leading off the main corridor. Alpha Three Nine were second on the scene, so they’d been given the task of going door-to-door, stopping people from getting to work. That and blocking off the elevator with ‘POLICE’ tape.

DI Steel was slouched against the wall outside Knox’s new flat, having a scratch.

Logan waved the plastic packages he’d dug out of the pool car’s boot at her. ‘Smurf time.’

She stuck her hand out. ‘Give.’

They struggled into the white paper oversuits, Logan hopping about like an idiot. Bloody shoes never went down the legs properly, did they? He fought his arms into the sleeves, hauled the hood into place, and zipped the thing up, from groin to chin, then slipped the blue plastic booties on. The elasticated facemask went on over his nose and mouth, he pulled on a pair of purple nitrile gloves, and finished off by sticking a second pair over the top of those.

DI Steel hauled her own zip up and stood there: booted and suited, masked and gloved, just like he was. She sniffed. ‘It’s what all the best-dressed people are wearing this season.’

Logan knocked on the door.

PC Irvine from the Offender Management Unit opened it, wearing the same protective clothing. She made them sign in before she’d let them over the threshold.

Steel picked her way into the hall and Logan followed, avoiding a dark smudge on the oatmeal-coloured carpet in case it was evidence. ‘Any word on the ambulance?’

‘Should’ve been here five minutes ago.’ Irvine pointed a shaky hand at the bathroom. ‘She’s in there.’

Logan peered through the open door. Mandy from Sacro lay on the bathroom floor, her curly brown hair matted to her head with something dark and sticky. A pool of red on the linoleum beneath her. Spatters up the cream tiles, a misting of pink on the underside of the hand basin. ‘Bloody hell…’

Someone had arranged her in the recovery position. And if Logan stared hard, he could just make out her chest rising and falling.

Irvine nodded. ‘Paul and me got here about quarter past eight to run through the matrix again. No answer when we knocked, so we gave it a couple of minutes, tried phoning. Nothing. Paul used the spare key.’

Steel cleared her throat. ‘Where’s the other one?’

‘Second bedroom from the end.’ She glanced down the hall. ‘Can’t believe we bought prawns for him.’

The room was small, a double bed crammed in against the wall, an upturned bedside cabinet, a wicker chair lying cracked and bashed next to it. The eye-nipping, throat-catching, bitter reek of vomit and urine.

‘Oh, Jesus…’

Harry, the other Sacro volunteer, was tied facedown on the bed, a stack of pillows under his groin propping his backside up in the air. Naked. Blood caking the sheets around his ruined face, his back covered in scarlet welts, bite marks, cigarette burns.

Steel blinked. Voice muffled by the mask. ‘Is he…?’

‘He’s alive.’

The inspector turned and smacked PC Irvine on the chest. ‘Then why the bloody hell haven’t you untied him! Fuck is wrong with you?’

‘But we don’t have a camera, and the crime scene-’

‘FUCK THE CRIME SCENE!’ Steel stormed into the room, grabbed the T-shirt tying Harry’s right ankle to the bedpost and hauled.

‘Inspector, I really don’t think this is a good-’

‘He’s been raped, you bloody idiot!’ Steel yanked on the T-shirt again. ‘Laz, into the kitchen: get me a pair of scissors, knife, something.’

‘But-’

‘NOW!’

Logan ran through the house, plastic booties slipping on the vinyl floor. He rummaged through the drawers, grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors and a box of freezer bags. Then hurried back to the bedroom.

Steel was kneeling on the floor next to the bed. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Er…’ Constable Irvine glanced at Logan and back again. ‘Harry. Harry Weaver. He used to be a-’

‘Harry? Can you hear me, Harry?’

Logan stopped at the foot of the bed. ‘Anyone got a camera on their mobile?’

‘Yeah, but it’s not-’

‘Harry? It’s going to be OK.’

‘Better than no photos at all, right?’

Irvine unzipped the front of her oversuit and reached inside, coming out with some sort of fancy touch-screen thing, then zipped herself up again. ‘Right…’

She stepped up and held the phone out, pressed something and it went Click, a little burst of flash. Another click, another flash.

‘Does it do video?’

She nodded. ‘You can upload to Facebook and-’

‘Just video the bloody scene.’

‘Harry? Come on, Harry, you’re safe now.’

‘Oh…Right.’

Logan pointed at the T-shirt with his scissors. ‘Close up.’

Irvine did what she was told, then Logan carefully cut through the shirt where it looped around Harry’s ankle. ‘Other leg.’

‘Harry? Come on, speak to me, Harry!’

‘Wrists…’

Finally the naked man was free.

There was a muffled groan.

‘Harry? Can you hear me? You’re safe now.’

His eyes were swollen shut, the skin around them purple and deformed, his nose crooked, the lower half of his face smeared with dark-red clots.

‘He’s got something in his mouth…’ PC Irvine stuck her phone in his face, till Steel batted her away, leaving scarlet smears on her white oversuit.

The inspector cupped one hand around Harry’s forehead, supporting it while she pulled a matted lump of black from his mouth. Logan popped open one of the freezer bags.

‘What are you playing at?’

‘Didn’t have any evidence ones with me.’

She dropped the gag in, then jerked back from the bed, as Harry retched — blood and bile spattering out across the stained sheets.

‘Fuck.’

Someone knocked on the front door. ‘Hello? Anyone in?’

Logan stepped out into the hall. A pair of sweaty paramedics were puffing and panting in the corridor outside. One wiped a hand across his forehead and scowled. ‘You the funny bastard taped off the lifts?’

‘Erm…’

‘Any idea how much one of these bloody stretcher bed things weighs?’

‘Well…could’ve been worse, I suppose.’ DS Mark MacDonald swivelled his chair back and froth a couple of times. ‘I mean, they’re both still alive, right?’

The Wee Hoose was quiet, just Mark and Logan in the little walled-off area, with the door shut, muting the sounds from the busy CID office. Phones going, people bustling about trying to look busy, the occasional bout of shouting. The predictable aftermath of something going seriously wrong.