Stuart MacBride - Broken Skin

The phone rang in the living room and everyone jumped. Steel took the latest cigarette from her mouth, and lit the next one in the chain before dropping the dog end onto the carpet with its friends. ‘That’ll be them now.’ So much for five or ten minutes, it’d taken the response team nearly twenty to get here.

Tina nodded. ‘What will they do? The firearms people?’

‘Well,’ Steel blew a long column of smoke at the ceiling, ‘first they’ll try to negotiate. Then they’ll try negotiating some more. And if that fails, they’ll go in for a bit of the old negotiation.’

‘They won’t shoot me?’

‘Only if they have to. It makes a shite heap of paperwork.’

Tina bit her bottom lip, still working away at Rickards’ erection, keeping him on the brink without ever letting him fall over. ‘What if I kill him?’

‘You really, really don’t want to do that. Seriously, it’s a crap idea.’

Ring, ring. Ring, ring …

‘You might want to get that.’

‘You,’ she took her hand off Rickard’s cock long enough to point at Logan, ‘answer it. Tell them I’m not coming out.’

‘You’ve got to some time, Tina. You can’t stay in here forever.’

‘Answer the fucking phone!’ She twisted the knife and Rickards yelped, the slow dribble of blood from his neck turning into a steady trickle.

‘OK! OK, I’m going!’ Logan hurried through into the lounge and grabbed the phone out of its cradle — it was one of those little cordless ones so he carried it back to the kitchen, listening as the negotiator launched into his opening speech about how he was just here to help and nobody needed to get hurt. ‘Yeah, hang on a second, Jim,’ said Logan, stopping the man before he got too far into the whole empathising thing, ‘she’s right here.’ He held the phone out to Tina. She’d have to put the knife down, or stop playing with Rickards. Either would be a result in Logan’s book.

‘I look stupid?’ She asked. ‘You talk to him.’

‘OK. What you want me to say?’

‘I don’t fucking know, do I?’

‘Well … how about we start with what you want? Your demands? What do you want to get out of …’ Logan paused, watching as a single red dot of light blossomed on Tina’s knife arm, then jittered up to the middle of her forehead. Another one joined it, then a third, like tiny neon ladybirds.

‘What?’

‘I …’ He turned to look at the inspector who sighed, took a deep drag on her cigarette, then blew a cloud of smoke into the air between them. Red laser-sight lines glowed like sparkling threads.

‘Time to put the knife down.’

Tina put her lips to Rickards ear, whispered something, opened her mouth wide and sank her teeth into the cartilage, tearing her head back and forth till a chunk came free in a spurt of blood. The constable screamed. Someone yelled on the other end of the phone in Logan’s hand. Tina spat out the mouthful of Rickards’ ear, pounding away on his erection. Steel yelled, ‘NO!’ and lunged forwards. Something sizzled past Logan and a small black dot appeared above Tina’s left eye. Perfectly round. Dark.

And then the back of her head exploded.

Opening night and DI Insch’s band of merry troubadours were doing their best to murder Gilbert and Sullivan in front of a crowd of friends and relatives. Logan sat on his own in the darkness of the Arts Centre, surrounded by strangers. Brooding. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thing he’d found in Jackie’s bedside cabinet, twisting it back and forth between his fingers for the umpteenth time that evening. Even in the muted light it glittered. He’d been hunting for the spare set of flat keys — the ones Jackie always borrowed because she kept losing her own — and there it was …

The noise coming from the front of the theatre grew to a crescendo, dragging him back to the land of the living. They’d finally made it to the finale. Two curtain calls, one encore, a short speech from DI Insch about how hard everyone had worked, flowers for the leading ladies, round of applause, and off to the bar.

The little space was crowded, thespians spilling in from the changing rooms, beaming with pride as their nearest and dearest told them how wonderful they’d been. Even the crap ones.

Logan jostled his way through to a small clearing, clutching a bottle of Newcastle Brown and wishing he hadn’t said he’d go out for a curry after the show. He really wasn’t in the mood.

Someone slapped him on the back and he turned to find Rennie beaming at him: face all polished and shiny, traces of stage makeup still hiding in his hairline. ‘Well, was we brilliant or what?’

Logan lied and said he’d enjoyed it.

‘Can you believe we got Debs back? Insch had to do some serious grovelling, but-’

‘You heard anything from Rickards?’

‘Not a peep. Went up there this afternoon, nurse said he wasn’t having visitors. Oh, ta …’ he accepted a bottle of beer from one of the three little maids from school — Logan couldn’t remember which one — and took a hearty swig. ‘Mind you, don’t blame him, poor bastard. Breakdown is what I heard.’

Logan wasn’t surprised: if he closed his eyes he could still see the back of Tina’s head splattering all over the kitchen window in slow motion. Scarlet drops and grey chunks as she falls lifeless to the floor, still clutching Rickards, showering him with blood and brain and little shards of bone as he screams and screams and screams … And she’d been his friend. No wonder he couldn’t cope.

‘Just between you and me,’ said Rennie, leaning in to whisper over the hubbub, ‘I think he’ll be going off on the stress. A dead woman clutching your dick can’t be good for you. You know: mentally. I think …’ he stopped, staring off through the crowd. DI Insch was glad-handing his way towards them, accepting compliments left, right, and centre. ‘Whatever you do, don’t mention Finnie, OK? He’s got a right bee in his- Inspector: look who I found!’

Insch looked like a vast, overstuffed penguin in his dinner jacket and bow tie. ‘Can you believe that bastard Finnie?’ he asked, then took a swig from his Guinness. ‘What the hell did they think they were doing, making a tit like that Detective Chief Inspector?’

Rennie groaned, rolling his eyes when Insch wasn’t looking.

Logan ignored him. ‘Well, he did bring in half a million quid’s worth of cocaine, they probably-’

The inspector’s face darkened. ‘Four hundred thousand. Not half a million.’ He cast an eye over the assembled crowd. ‘Where’s Watson?’

‘Back shift.’ And then Logan changed the subject, steering them round to the Mikado again, listening to them bang on about what a great show it was. Not wanting to talk about Jackie, or think about the thing in his pocket. And then Insch had to go be congratulated by someone else, Rennie was dragged off for a photograph, and Logan was alone again. He finished off his beer and wandered out into the cold night, standing on the top step of the Arts Centre, watching the slow-fire blink of tail lights the length of King Street.

He pulled the thing from his pocket once more — the thing he’d found in Jackie’s bedside cabinet — holding it up so it sparkled in the city’s sodium glow. A large ruby stud earring, just like the one stolen from Rob Macintyre when he was battered into a coma.

Red, the colour of Aberdeen Football Club.

The colour of fresh blood.