Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

‘Hmm? Oh…Cove: got to help DI Steel search for signs of Knox.’

Butler wilted slightly. ‘Oh God, not more tramping about in the snow.’

‘Might have to make a little diversion on the way…Nip upstairs and get us a pool car, will you?’

She stomped off as he worked his way backwards through the notebook, looking for his visit to Danny Saunders’s caravan. Then Logan went into his other pocket for the pilfered CV he’d been scribbling notes on since yesterday afternoon, and compared the two.

He closed his eyes and groaned. What a bloody idiot.

Logan’s rusty Fiat bumped to a halt outside the part-completed steading. PC Butler hauled on the handbrake and killed the engine, then sat there, looking at the peeling steering wheel, the dented dashboard, the passenger-side window covered in a patchwork of black plastic bag and duct tape, the buckled bonnet. ‘Bet you pull all the girls in this thing.’

‘Should have tried harder for a pool car then, shouldn’t you?’

‘I was doing fine till I told Big Gary it was for you.’

Logan peered out through the chipped windscreen. Danny Saunders had managed to cover all the roof joists with a skin of marine-ply. Right now he was balancing at the top of a long ladder, nailing batons down over some sort of black material.

‘Like driving an oil tanker. You never heard of power steering?’

‘Lucky the damn thing’s still going at all.’ Especially after being shunted into a ditch by a dirty big Transit van. At least the duct tape and string was still holding the bonnet in place…though the engine had developed a worrying burning smell to go with the growling exhaust.

Logan clambered out onto the crunchy snow. The sky was a bright blue lid with dark-grey clouds massing over the North Sea. Probably going to be another horrible night.

Especially if DCI Finnie had anything to do with it. The lecture on not attacking your colleagues from Chief Inspector Young had been bad enough, but the one from the head of CID would be a lot worse.

Logan slammed the car door.

Standing on top of the ladder, Danny flinched, the hammer and a plastic pouch of nails skittering down across the marine-ply, then off the edge of the roof. ‘Ah, shite!’

He turned, the expression freezing on his face when he saw who it was.

Logan picked his way through the snowy tufts. ‘Morning, Danny.’

‘I didn’t rob that jewellers on Huntly Street!’

‘Yeah, I know. I arrested someone for that yesterday.’

Behind him Logan could hear PC Butler climbing out of the car, scrunching over to back him up.

‘Oh aye?’

‘Funniest thing, but the guy was called “Alan Gardner”. Ring any bells?’

Danny coughed, then glanced over the ridge of the steading roof at the moss-streaked caravan, just visible around the corner. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘You told him you’d break his daughter’s legs if she didn’t pay off her drug debt.’

‘Got to get back to work. The roof gets all warped if it’s not-’

‘Danny? Why can’t I hear hammering?’ A woman’s voice, coming from the caravan. Logan turned to see the pregnant fiancee standing there with her hands on her hips, face flushed, mouth a hard line. ‘You know we need that roof waterproofed before it snows again. Don’t make me come up there!’

‘Oh Jesus…’ He straightened up and shouted back. ‘It’s the police.’

Logan clumped through the snow towards her. ‘Stacy Gardner?’

‘You know fine well it is. What do you want?’

‘I had a very interesting chat with your dad, Stacy. Says he’s sorry he hasn’t come up with more money, but he kind of got arrested doing over a jewellery shop on Huntly Street. He hopes your dealer,’ Logan nodded at the man balancing on the roof, ‘will give him a bit more time before hurting you.’

Stacy throttled the dishcloth in her hands. ‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

Danny sighed. ‘Stacy, love, it’s not-’

‘You shut up, Danny Saunders, I’m dealing with this.’ She took a step out onto the snowy ground. ‘The old man can’t cope since he got mum killed. Lives in a little world of his own.’

‘Stacy, we-’

‘I said I’m dealing with it!’ She turned a cold smile in Logan’s direction. ‘So you see, you can’t trust a word he says. He’s lost it.’

Logan nodded. ‘But you still trust him to look after Nicole, don’t you? What is she, two, three? We had to put her into care.’

The pregnant woman stiffened. ‘She’s not my daughter any more. I’m making a new life.’

‘He’s sold everything for you, you know that don’t you? Car, furniture, telly, cashed in his pension — even the house is up for sale, because he thinks you’re in trouble.’

Stacy turned and reached back into the caravan for something, keeping whatever it was hidden by her pregnant bulge. ‘So he sends me money every now and then. Not like I don’t deserve it, is it? Just my share of mum’s inheritance.’

‘It’s extortion.’

She swivelled round, both hands behind her back, and sniffed as if fighting back a tear. ‘It wasn’t my idea. Danny made me do it!’

Up on the roof, her fiance’s mouth fell open. ‘You lying cow!’

‘Where do you think Daddy got the idea to use a sledgehammer? That was Danny’s trick.’

‘I was the one tried to talk you out of it!’

Stacy took a step forward, biting her bottom lip. ‘Sorry, Danny, but I can’t cover for you any more. It was all his fault, Officer. He made me do it.’

Logan looked back at the roof.

Mistake.

Stacy lunged, hands coming out from behind her back — eight inch carving knife in one hand, steaming kettle in the other. The kettle lashed past, close enough for Logan to feel the heat on his cheek.

He staggered back, arms over his head as the knife slashed down, the point tearing through the sleeve of his jacket.

Logan’s heel caught something buried in the snow and he went crashing down on his backside for the second time in two days. Looking up at someone who wanted him dead.

And then a blur of black and fluorescent yellow: PC Butler charged across the rutted ground, her peaked cap flying off. Stacy snarled and swung the knife again in a huge overhead slash.

Butler darted in, arm up. She blocked Stacy’s stab, reached through with her other hand in some sort of weird jujitsu limb origami, and pulled, forcing the pregnant women’s arm to bend in ways it really wasn’t designed to.

Stacy’s eyes bulged, then she screamed and lurched back into the wall of the caravan. ‘You’re breaking my arm!’

‘Drop the knife, or I’ll pop it right out of the socket!’

‘Get off me you bitch !’

One more twist and the knife thudded into the snow, blade first, the handle sticking up into the air.

‘Danny! Danny, help me! They’re hurting the baby!’

But Danny just sat on the roof of his house and stared at her.

There was a gunshot sound and Logan’s manky little Fiat puttered to a halt on the rear podium car park, leaving a cloud of grey smoke behind. Should probably get that seen to.

PC Butler killed the engine, before it died on its own. ‘Everyone out. Now!’

‘If my baby’s damaged by carbon monoxide poisoning, I’ll sue!’

Butler turned and stared at her. ‘Shut up. For once in your life. All the way into bloody town!’

Stacy Gardner pouted. ‘You can’t talk to me like that! I-’

‘For God’s sake!’ Sitting next to her, on the threadbare back seat, Danny Saunders gritted his teeth. ‘Give it a rest, Stacy.’

‘That’s right — shout at the pregnant woman in handcuffs ! Oh yes, you’re such a big man, aren’t you Danny? Such a big-’