Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

‘ What the fuck is wrong with you? ’

Logan pulled the thing away from his ear and frowned at the illuminated display, looking to see if he recognized the caller’s badge number, as the voice on the other end went into a full-blown rant about teamwork and loyalty and what would happen to them if they didn’t turn round and get the hell away from that bloody house!

‘Sir,’ he said, tapping Insch on the shoulder before the big man could start pounding on the front door, ‘I think it’s for you.’

Insch took the handset and mashed the off button with a huge thumb, passed it back, then started knocking so hard it felt as if the whole front of the house was vibrating. ‘OPEN UP!’

Logan closed his eyes and swore quietly to himself — the inspector might not give a toss about his own career, but Logan really didn’t want to get hauled up in front of Professional Standards yet again.

Finally the door opened a crack and a sliver of face peered out at them. ‘What?’ Not a local accent, somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool.

‘Jimmy Duff.’

‘Do I look like a fucking haggis-muncher?’

‘Where is he?’

‘How should I know?’

Insch pulled a sheet of paper from his inside pocket. ‘I’ve got a warrant here for his arrest. You can hand him over, or I can force entry and have a good look round. Up to you.’

‘Hold on.’ The face disappeared and the door closed. Two minutes later it opened again, and a battered and dazed figure was unceremoniously thrust out into the sunshine: tall, brown hair, sideburns, but the nose wasn’t just squint any more: it’d been flattened. Dried blood outlined the nostrils in crumbling black; mouth and cheeks swollen; bruises hiding the man’s natural pallor. Duff’s right leg was encased in fresh plaster, and so was his left arm, all the fingers splinted together on that hand. Someone had given him a proper going over, but Jimmy Duff felt no pain.

He stood, wobbling on the top step, pupils constricted to tiny black pinpricks. Insch grabbed him by the collar, dragged him back to the Range Rover, and climbed in after him, shouting at Logan to get a bloody move on.

Sighing, Logan climbed in behind the wheel. This would all end in tears, he just knew it.

DI Steel was standing outside interview room one when Logan came back from the canteen with a tray of black coffees. ‘You know the DCS is going mental, don’t you?’

Logan groaned. ‘Don’t look at me, I’m-’

‘You’ve got about half an hour before it all hits the fan.’ She sniffed, then nodded her head at the interview-room door. ‘Going to get a confession by then?’

‘Doubt it: Duff’s smacked off his tits.’

The inspector nodded sagely. ‘Right, well, let me know when he’s back on his tits again. If we’re lucky they’ll have suspended DI Fat And Grumpy by then and we can all get on with our lives.’ She tipped him a wink, then helped herself to one of his coffees, said, ‘Cheers,’ and wandered off.

Through in the interview room, Insch was wasting his time. There was no way Jimmy Duff was going to say anything coherent in the state he was in, and whatever he did say wasn’t going to be admissible in court.

Duff rocked back and forth in his seat, clutching his broken arm to his chest, trembling and sweating, mumbling about the walls being too loud while the inspector kept hammering on about Jason Fettes. Not surprisingly, four black coffees did nothing to straighten Duff out, they just made him twitch faster.

Steel had underestimated the Detective Chief Superintendent — it was only twelve minutes before the knock came on the interview-room door and the DCS barged in without waiting for a reply. ‘DI Insch,’ he said, voice like a sharpened knife, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at the corridor outside, ‘suspend your interview and join me out here, please. Now .’

When the door was closed, Logan sat back in his seat and swore. Insch had really done it this time. The head of CID had looked apoplectic. DI Finnie would be screaming blue murder about his operation being ruined, and all so they could drag a doped-up halfwit in to drink coffee, twitch, and complain about the decor trying to kill him.

Jimmy Duff leaned across the table, his one good hand scratching at the Formica, as if it was itchy, and stared Logan straight in the eye. ‘I wanted to be a fireman.’

Yesterday it had been Macintyre’s mother shouting the odds in the cell block: today it was Jimmy Duff, screaming about snakes and policemen made of broken glass. Logan left him to it. There was some sort of ‘who can tell the filthiest anecdote’ competition going on in the CID office, with DI Steel adjudicating: giving points for originality, creativity, and pure smut. Which probably meant she was avoiding paperwork and Logan would be lumbered with it instead.

DS Beattie was in the middle of his ‘two pokes of chips for a blowjob’ story when a familiar polyphonic ring tone sounded in the room. Groans of ‘Not a-bloody-gain!’ and everyone patted their pockets, pulling out various phones and declaring it not to be them. It took Logan nearly eight rings to find his mobile, buried in the nest of wires, plugs and rechargers piled up on the desk by the window. ‘McRae.’

‘ Logan, hi .’ It was Rachel. ‘ I’ve been onto the bank’s legal people. Took some doing, but they’ve come back with names. I can email them? ’

‘Please.’ He wandered over to the window, looking down on the rear podium car park, watching a pair of seagulls fighting over what looked like a discarded sandwich as she read out a list of names. A large, familiar figure burst out of the rear door, stormed across to a filth-encrusted Range Rover and threw itself in behind the steering wheel. Logan could actually hear the squeal of tyres through the double glazing as DI Insch put his foot down and roared out of the parking lot, nearly flattening a couple of uniforms enjoying a cigarette in the small square of sunlight at the top of the ramp down to Queen Street. The pair stood in the middle of the road, watching the inspector’s car long after it had disappeared from Logan’s line of sight. Then, shaking their heads, they went back to their fags.

‘… OK? ’

‘Mmm? Oh, yes, sure.’ He’d not been able to see from this distance, but Logan was pretty sure Insch’s face would have been a bright, scary purple.

‘ Good. Oh buggering hell, that’s my other line. Don’t forget: seven sharp! ’

Fuck! ‘Wait — seven? What’s …’ But she was already gone. Logan pulled the dead phone from his ear and stared at it, horrified.

‘You look like someone’s hidden a jobbie in your sock.’ DI Steel stood right behind him, one hand hauling her trousers up, nearly under her armpits. ‘Better watch that: the wind might change and you’ll end up with a face like Fat Boy Insch.’ She nodded her head in the direction of the corridor. ‘Speaking of whom: my office, five minutes. Bring tea and bacon butties. I’m wasting away here.’

Logan sat in the inspector’s spare chair fidgeting, distracted, wondering what the hell he’d just agreed to do at seven tonight with the Deputy Procurator Fiscal. Steel’s news was … mixed. DI Insch might be a huge pain in the neck right now, but you couldn’t deny that he put a lot of people behind bars.

‘Two weeks?’ asked Logan as Steel wiped a blob of tomato sauce from her chin.

‘Yup. CC didn’t think a slap on the wrist covered it this time. Who knows: maybe he’ll come back a better person? But my money’s on an even grumpier fuck than usual. And in the meantime, guess who has to carry his bloody caseload?’ She stuck a hand up, just in case Logan had lost all grasp of irony. ‘And guess who gets to help me?’