Stuart MacBride - Dark Blood

Fuck.

Another blast sent Logan lurch-stepping, driving icy daggers into the back of his head. The big man glaring at PC Butler didn’t even wobble.

‘Where is he?’

‘Sorry, Babe, that’s need to-’

‘Answer the fucking question!’

Her eyes narrowed, lips thinning over bared teeth.

The man in the passenger seat buried his head in his hands. ‘Oh Christ, here we go…’

The gun had drifted away, now it was back pointing at Logan’s face. ‘I don’t like your-’

‘Julie…’ The passenger leant over and touched her shoulder. ‘Don’t. Last thing we need is local plod on a mission, getting in the way, you know what I’m saying?’

‘Nobody talks to me like that.’

‘I know, I know.’ He licked his lips. ‘Look, we can’t tie Danby to Mental Mikey’s money, can we? Not if Knox has given the bloody stuff away. We’ve got nothing on him, like.’

‘This Sweaty-’

‘We’re going to have to let him go anyway, know what I’m saying? It’s not worth the aggro.’

There was a pause.

She pulled her face into a tight smile, eyes narrow slits as she stared at Logan. ‘You want Danby?’ The driver’s door popped open and she climbed down, stomped through the whipping snow past Angry Elvis and around to the Range Rover’s boot. She hauled the hatch up with one hand — the other still wrapped around the gun — reached in and dragged something out.

It hit the ground with a thud and a grunt. Just as Logan turned the corner.

‘You want him? You can have him.’

Detective Superintendent Danby lay on his side in the snow, dirty-white bath robe rucked up around his middle, the skin on his legs and buttocks worryingly pale.

‘What did you do?’

‘When he wakes up, tell the corrupt bastard he’s mine.’ She slammed the boot shut again. ‘Neil, get your arse back in the car. We’re leaving.’

Elvis flexed his shoulders again. Curled his hands into fists. ‘We going to let these Jock bastards-’

‘Maybe you didn’t hear me, Babe?’

The big man froze, eyes darting back towards the Range Rover. ‘I…’ He cleared his throat. Spat. The wind snatched it away before it got anywhere near the ground. He got back in the car.

She marched back to the driver’s door and climbed inside. Buzzed the window up. Then put her foot down. The huge four-by-four’s wheels span, sending a spray of snow and ice across Danby’s pale, crumpled body. And then it was off, swinging around the police Land Rover, over one of the road flares and away into the distance.

Logan let out the breath he’d been holding in, then bent over and clutched his knees. Dear God…

PC Butler appeared at his shoulder. ‘Shame. I was looking forward to tearing that big bastard’s head off.’

He looked at her. It was official — he was surrounded by nutjobs.

‘Help me get Danby back to the car.’

They cleared a space on the back seat, then bundled the DSI inside. There was an electric blanket thing in a box in the boot with its own heavy battery pack. They draped it over him, then wrapped him in layers of space blankets, the crackly silver and gold sheets making him look like a baked potato.

Butler strapped the detective superintendent into place. ‘Hospital?’

‘Building site.’

‘Damn.’

They left the road flares burning, and Butler did another slithering three-point-turn to get the Land Rover facing the right way. Then Logan told her to kill the blue flashing lights as they drove deeper into the development.

‘You sure about this, Sarge?’

‘Nope.’ Logan pulled out his phone. No signal. He reached over and plucked the Airwave handset from Butler’s shoulder.

Control still didn’t have an ETA for the firearms team. The whole Bridge of Don was gridlocked after a bendy-bus slid sideways across all four carriageways between the bridge and Balgownie Road, trying to avoid a three-car pile-up. They were having to divert via Grantham in snow-laden rush-hour.

The message from DCI Finnie was to sit tight and not do anything stupid.

Logan hit the disconnect button.

PC Butler looked at him. ‘We’re going to do something stupid, aren’t we?’

‘Yup.’

The development loomed out of the blizzard — skeleton houses, the hunched shapes of machinery. First stop the site office.

The lights were on, but when Logan sent Butler out to try the door it was locked. No one inside.

A little after five and the sun was long gone, now everything beyond the reach of the headlights was enveloped in darkness.

The Police Land Rover bumped over something in the snow, the front end rearing up, then the back. Behind them, Danby groaned again. At least he was still alive. Probably more than they could say for Richard Knox.

Butler let the four-by-four rumble to a halt. ‘Think we’ve run out of road.’

Logan peered into the whirling white and inky black. Last time he was here with PC Martin and her cadaver dog, Wardrobe, the further away from the site office they got, the more complete the houses were. Assuming they hadn’t just staked Knox out to freeze to death in the great outdoors, he’d be in something that at least had a roof on it.

The Land Rover was fitted with a roof-mounted spotlight. Logan grabbed the handle and flicked the switch. A crack sounded above his head and the harsh white beam leapt out through the snow.

He fiddled with the handle, swinging the spotlight about, trying to get a feel for it, then did a slow sweep left to right. Didn’t matter how strong the light was, it could only penetrate so far before the whirling flakes consumed everything.

He pointed towards the nearest property with a roof. ‘That way.’

The Land Rover bumped and rolled its way slowly through the drift-covered landscape. The first house was dark. So was the second one, blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape snapping and writhing outside it. The third was dark too. But a pale glow oozed out from the downstairs window of house number four.

‘There.’

Logan snapped off the spotlight. Butler killed the engine and the headlights. Darkness. Now the only sound was the howling wind and the creak of springs as the Land Rover rocked with each blast.

‘Right.’

They both stayed where they were, in the dark, watching the house through the windscreen.

Butler cleared her throat. ‘We got any sort of plan?’

No.

Logan licked his lips. Melting snow plastered his hair to his head, trickling down the back of his neck and into his collar. ‘I’ll take the front, you go round the back.’ He pulled his damp sleeve back, exposing his watch. ‘What time have you got?’

She checked. ‘Quarter past.’

‘Right, we go in at twenty past. Quietly, understand?’

Butler nodded and they synchronized watches. ‘You sure about this, Sarge?’

‘Nope. You?’

The constable pulled out her extendible baton, undid her seatbelt. Took three deep breaths. Opened the door, and jumped out into the night.

Logan gave her a couple of minutes to get into place, then climbed into the darkness, sinking up to his knees in a drift of soft grey.

He waded his way forward, clambering upwards until the snow only came as far as his ankles, leaching the heat from his damp socks, making his trouser legs stick to his skin. His whole head burning with the cold.

The front door was painted some dark colour, indistinguishable in the gloom, but the little portico offered a little shelter from the whipping snow.

Logan checked his watch. Twenty past in: three, two, one…He grabbed the handle.

Thank God it wasn’t locked.

He threw the door open and stumbled into the house.