22 Dead Little Bodies and Other Stories

‘Sodding hell.’ Logan peered out through the rain-slicked glass of what passed for a passenger lounge — a bus-stop-style shelter squeezed in at the side of the car deck. Just big enough for Logan, his wheelie case, and a stack of vegetables in wooden boxes — their paper labels bloated and peeling off in the downpour.

The dock looked as if it’d been hacked out of a quarry: a bowl of slate-grey rock with a couple of dented pick-up trucks huddling together for warmth. No sign of an MX-5.

Typical.

The tiny ferry shook and rattled, lurched... then clanged against the concrete slipway. Another gust of frigid water rattled the glass.

She was late.

‘You bloody promised.’

The ramp groaned down and a dripping wee man in a high-viz jacket waved at the rust-flecked blue Transit van taking up most of the car deck. It spluttered into life and inched forwards.

Logan stuck out his thumb and smiled at the driver... He looked familiar. That was good right? Made him more likely to give Logan a lift? But the rotten sod didn’t even glance at him, just drove off the Port Askaig ferry and away onto Jura.

Logan yanked out the wheelie case’s handle. ‘Thanks, mate. Thanks a bloody heap!’ And stomped off into the rain.

The minibus bounced through yet another minefield of potholes, then purred to a halt on the grass at the side of the track.

‘Here we go: Inverlussa.’ The driver coughed, peering out through the windscreen as the wipers squealed across the glass. ‘Are you sure?’

No. Not even vaguely.

The sea was a heaving mass of granite-coloured water, white spray sparking like fireworks in the wind. A thin curve of yellow-brown sand separated the crashing waves from the land. A wee house squatted on the other side of a bridge over a river, the hills rising behind it, dark and glistening.

The minibus rocked and whistled with each gale-force blast.

A small table sat on the sliver of grass overhanging the beach, with a couple of chairs facing out to sea. Someone was sitting in one of them, bundled up in a heavy red padded jacket, a blue bobble hat pulled down low over their ears, a yellow Rupert-the-Bear scarf whipping out behind them.

Logan hauled his case out into the storm, dragging the thing through the wet grass towards the table. The rain had faded to a stinging drizzle and the air had that salt-and-iron smell of the sea, the dirty-iodine whiff of churned seaweed.

Christ it was cold, leaching through his damp trousers, making his legs ache.

He stopped at the table. Loomed over the sod responsible.

DI Steel sniffed. ‘About time you got here.’ She was only visible from the nose up — the bottom half of her face wrapped in the scarf, wrinkles making eagle’s feet around her narrow eyes, grey hair poking out from beneath her woolly hat. ‘Park your arse.’

Logan stared down at her, put on a throaty cigarette-growl. ‘“Don’t worry Laz, I’ll pick you up at the ferry terminal.”’

She shrugged. ‘Someone got out the bed on the wrong side.’

‘Wrong side of the...? I had to sleep in the bloody car last night!’

A figure in bright-orange waterproofs lurched along the path towards them, carrying a tray of tea things, struggling to keep it level in the wind.

Logan dumped his case under the table. ‘Took me six bastarding hours to drive to Tarbert yesterday: all the hotels and B&Bs were full. You got any idea what it’s like sleeping in a car in the middle of a bloody hurricane? Bloody freezing, that’s what it’s like.’

‘Oh don’t be so wet.’

The figure in the waterproofs leaned into a gust of wind, took two steps to the side, then made a final dash for the table. She smiled at them from beneath the dripping brim of her sou-wester. She couldn’t have been much over eighteen. ‘Right, that’s a pot of tea for two, one lemon drizzle cake...’ She placed them on the tabletop. ‘And a toffee brownie. If you want a refill,’ she pointed at a little walkie-talkie in a clear Tupperware box, ‘just give me a buzz.’

‘Ta.’ Steel poured herself a china mug of tea from the stainless steel teapot as the girl headed back towards the house and sanity.

Logan looked out at the bay — the howling wind, the breakers, the heaving dark sea, the heavy clouds. ‘You’ve gone mental, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve finally gone stark—’

‘Just park your arse and have some cake.’

He lowered himself into the folding wooden chair. Clenched his knees together. Hunched his shoulders up around his ears, stuck his dead-fish hands into his armpits. ‘Bloody freezing...’

Steel clunked a mug down in front of him, steam whipping off the beige surface. ‘You bring that fancy fingerprint stuff?’

‘Catch my death. And then what? Sitting out here in the wind and the rain like a pair of idiots.’

‘Moan, moan, bloody moan.’ She sipped her tea; had a bite of cake, crumbs going the same way as the steam. ‘Now: where’s my fingerprint stuff?’

‘Not till you tell me why I drove all the way across the bloody country, slept in a car, took two ferries, tromped half a mile in the hammering rain, then sat in a bus for half an hour to watch you stuff your face with tea and cake.’ He grabbed the brownie and ripped a bite out of it, chewing and scowling. ‘I’m cold, I’m wet, and I’m pissed off.’

‘Jasmine doesn’t moan this much, and she’s no’ even two yet.’ Another bite of lemon drizzle. ‘We’re sitting here in a howling gale, because we’re watching someone.’ She pointed out into the storm, where a small white fishing boat with a red wheelhouse roller-coastered up-and-down and side-to-side on the angry water.

‘Wouldn’t have been so bad if I could’ve got the car on the Islay ferry, but every idiot in the whole—’

‘Can you no’ give it a rest for five minutes? Look.’

Logan wrapped his hands around the mug, leaching the heat. ‘At what?’

Sigh. Her voice took on the kind of high-pitched sing-song tone usually reserved for small children. ‘At the wee fishing boat, bobbity-bobbing on the ocean blue.’

‘I was right: you are mental. It’s a fishing boat, that’s what they do. Can we go inside now before I catch bloody pneumonia?’

She hit him on the arm. ‘Don’t be a dick.’ Then passed him a pair of heavy black binoculars. ‘Less whinging, more looking.’

The eyepieces were cold against his skin, the focussing knob rough beneath his fingertips as he unblurred the little boat. The wheelhouse was just big enough for a grown man to stand up in, but whoever was in charge of the boat was hunched over, wearing one of those waistcoat-style life jackets, holding a Spar carrier-bag to their mouth, shoulders heaving in time with the sea.

Finally the man straightened and wiped a hand across his purple slash of a mouth. His skin was pale, tinged with yellow and green. Sticky-out ears, woolly hat, pug nose, puffed out cheeks... And he was vomiting again.

‘Not exactly the best sailor in the world.’

‘If you spent more time reading our beloved leader’s inter-force memos and less time moaning about everything, you’d know that was Jimmy Weasdale.’

Logan squinted through the binoculars again. ‘Jimmy the Weasel? Thought he retired to the Costa Del Sol. Did a runner when Strathclyde CID fingered him for cutting Barney McGlashin into bite-sized chunks...’ More squinting. ‘You sure it’s him?’

‘What do you think the fingerprint stuff’s for? Saw him in the hotel bar last night drinking with this hairy wee bastard wearing a number seven Dundee United football shirt...’

Logan lowered the binoculars, leaving Jimmy to puke in peace. ‘Not Badger McLean?’

‘The very man. Jimmy the Weasel and Badger the Tadger: together again. No’ exactly Mother Nature’s finest hour.’

‘So where’s Badger?’

‘Squeezed himself into a rubber drysuit half an hour ago. Thought he was going to get his kinky on, but nope — scuba gear. He’s down there now.’

Logan went back to the binoculars. ‘What are they after?’

A gust of wind rattled the stainless steel teapot on the little table.

Steel made slurping noises. ‘Tell you what, I’ll activate my X-ray vision and take a peek below the waves, shall I? Then we can all sod off down the pub for a game of Twister and some chocolate cake.’ She hit him again. ‘How the hell am I supposed to know? That’s why we’re here — watching.’

Fifteen minutes later an ungainly deformed seal surfaced next to the fishing boat. It thrashed its arms for a moment, before a hump of charcoal-coloured water slammed it into the hull. More thrashing.

Logan shifted his grip on the binoculars. ‘Silly sod’s going to get himself killed.’

Jimmy the Weasel lurched out of the wheelhouse and threw a line to the diver. More thrashing. Then some hauling — and what looked through the binoculars like swearing — and finally the seal was dragged over the boat’s railing, bum in the air, little legs kicking out. Then gone: hidden from sight by the bulwark.

Steel poked Logan in the shoulder. ‘What’s happening? He drowned?’

‘Almost.’

A couple of minutes passed, then a cloud of exhaust fumes burst from the back end of the boat before being torn away by the wind. The tiny vessel swung around and puttered away into the heaving sea, leaving behind a bright-orange buoy bobbing in the angry water.

Logan passed the binoculars back to Steel. ‘Before you ask: no. I am not going to swim out there and find out what they’ve been up to.’

She puffed out her cheeks, then tipped the dregs of tea from her mug. ‘Fancy a wee walk down by the beach?’

‘No.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ Steel stood, stuck her hands in her pockets and lurch-staggered through the storm along the edge of the grass verge.

A quick shove and she probably wouldn’t wash ashore till she reached Ireland... Logan sighed, swallowed the last of his tea, and hurried after her, shivering as the gale snatched away the little body heat he had left. Hypothermia was bloody overrated.

By the time he’d caught up she was standing beside a large rock, frowning down at a knot of liquorish-coloured seaweed — the kind that looked as if it had boils. Steel nudged it with her toe. ‘What’s that look like to you?’

‘Seaweed. Can we just...’ Something was tangled up in the glistening coils, something rectangular — about the size of a house brick, only wrapped in clear plastic and brown parcel tape. He squatted down, damp trousers clinging to his legs, and levered the package out of the seaweed. ‘About a kilo.’ There was another one, three or four feet further down the thin strip of sand, and another just past it. ‘Bloody hell.’

She patted him on the shoulder. ‘Don’t know about you, but I’m gasping for a pint.’

DI Steel froze in the doorway. Her eyes bugged, mouth pinched into a chicken’s-bum-pout as she stomped towards Logan. ‘I told you to wait outside!’

The Jura Hotel’s bar was a sort of elongated bay-window-shape. A handful of people sat around small circular tables, eating crisps and drinking beer, while an old woman in a grey twinset hustled her grandson at pool.

Logan paid for his pint of Eighty Shilling. ‘It’s raining.’

‘Go!’ She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the exit. ‘Out: before Susan sees you.’

‘I’ve ordered food!’

‘I don’t care if you’ve ordered three strippers and a tub of cottage cheese — if Susan sees you she’ll chew me a new hole. Aye, and no’ in a good way. Supposed to be here on a jolly, no’ police business.’ She gave him a shove. ‘Out, out. Go sit in the car.’

‘I’m bloody freezing, and there’s—’

‘Laz: it’s her work’s team-building, OK? She thinks I’m off reading books and scratching my bumhole in quiet contemplation of nature’s island splendour. You want to upset her? That what you want? You want to ruin the only time we’ve had off together since Jasmine was born?’

‘You dragged me all the way across the bloody country! I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m hungry, and I’m having my bloody lunch inside in the warm, whether you like it or not.’

DI Steel knocked on the steamed-up car window.

Logan scowled at her from the passenger seat, then took a mouthful of Eighty from his half-empty glass. The MX-5’s cloth roof buckled and groaned, rain bouncing off the bonnet, making a noise like a thousand angry ants playing a thousand angry drums, fighting against the background drone of the engine and the roar of the blow heaters.

Craighouse was a tiny village, strung out along a single-track road. A mini stone-walled harbour, a community hall, a restaurant, a wee Spar shop, and an old-fashioned red telephone box. A collection of whitewashed buildings loomed in the rain — opposite the hotel — ‘ISLE OF JURA’ painted in big black letters on the distillery wall. Steel’s MX-5 sat in a roped off car park marked ‘STAFF ONLY’.

She clambered in behind the wheel and handed Logan a plate piled high with langoustines, some salad, and little curled red things that looked worryingly like oversized boiled woodlice.

He poked one of them. ‘I ordered the steak pie.’

‘Seafood platter. Good for the brain. And don’t get fishy fingerprints all over my car.’ She turned off the engine and the heaters went quiet.

‘Hey!’

‘I’m no’ made of bloody petrol.’

Logan twisted the tail off a langoustine and clicked it out of its pale pink carapace. Dipped it in the mayonnaise. ‘Did you get me a room?’

‘Course I did. Got you one right next door to Susan and me, that way you can bump into her and let her know I’m hunting down villains when I’m supposed to be on holiday.’ Steel pulled out a glass tumbler wrapped in a paper napkin. The smoky scent of malt whisky curled through the car. ‘Badger and Weasel are in there playing pool like good little woodland animals, so I nabbed the bugger’s glass. Where’s the fingerprint thing?’

‘Don’t you think Susan might just notice something’s up when she tries to get her bags back in the car and finds the boot full of drugs?’

‘Oh...’ Steel’s eyebrows drooped, taking the corners of her mouth with them. ‘Sod. Well... er... Fine: we solve everything today, you bugger off back to Aberdeen with our druggie friends, and Susan never needs to know.’ A nod. ‘Right — that’s officially the plan.’ Steel pointed at the tumbler. ‘So come on, fingerprints.’

The beer slipped down, cool and dark. ‘Don’t nag.’

‘You know, if it really is Jimmy Weasdale then we’ve just caught Scotland’s eighth most wanted man, and turned up a massive stash of drugs. They’ll probably want to give me an OBE.’

Logan sooked his fingers clean, dug the plastic case from his pocket, and dumped it in her lap. The iPrint kit was about the same size as a paperback book. Steel cracked it open as Logan broke his way into one of the woodlice.

She sniffed. ‘You got any idea how to work it?’

‘Instructions are inside.’ He held up a little curl of white meat. ‘What is this, exactly?’

‘God’s sake... Who wrote these instructions? Sodding handwriting’s appalling.’

‘Put your glasses on.’

‘I don’t need glasses. And it’s a squat lobster. Eat it, it’s good for you.’ She laid the contents of the kit out along the dashboard: a scratched iPhone; a length of curly black cable; a plastic thing — like a matchbox with a metal strip down the middle; a soft-bristled blusher brush; a little plastic tub of Aluminium powder, and one of Amido Black.

Steel squinted at the sheet of paper for a while. ‘Nah, it’s no good — you’ll have to do it.’

‘I’m eating.’

‘Aye, and while you’re out here stuffing your face, there’s a murderer in there playing pool and...’ She stared out of the driver’s window, then scrubbed at it with her sleeve, clearing away the fog. ‘Him! There — look, look, look!’

‘I can’t even have lunch, can I? OK, OK: I’ll do your bloody fingerprints.’ Logan wiped his hands on a napkin, then reached into his jacket for a pair of nitrile gloves.

‘No, you divvy — look!’ She tapped at the window. ‘Big bloke, tartan bunnet, parking the van.’

Couldn’t keep her mind on one thing for more than two minutes...

Logan leaned across the car and peered through the clean patch. It was the rusty Transit van from the ferry this morning, driven by the same rotten sod who wouldn’t give him a lift.

The man clambered out into the rain. He was wearing orange overalls, stained brown and black around the cuffs and knees. Clunky work boots. Big. Broad. Hands like dinner-plates. He pulled the tartan cap firmly down over his ears as another gust of wind shook the van, driving him back a step.

Steel whistled. ‘Kevin McGregor. Thought he was dead...’ A frown. ‘I’m sure he’s dead.’

‘Doesn’t look dead.’

McGregor grabbed a holdall from the passenger seat, and lumbered off into the bar.

‘Oh, he’s dead all right: burned to a crisp in a house fire five years ago. Post mortem said he’d been shot twice in the back of the head, execution-style. Had to ID him from dental records.’ She shrugged. ‘I crashed the funeral and the wake. Tried to cop off with his sister, but she was having none of it.’

The legendary Kevin McGregor — no wonder he looked familiar.

And was that...? Logan pointed through the clear bit at two hard-looking women with ginger crewcuts and black-rimmed glasses, struggling to origami an OS map back into shape. ‘Camper van, four o’clock. That’s the Riley Sisters: Brigid and Niamh. Belfast drug dealers. You name it, they’ll blow it up; knees capped while you wait.’

Steel sat back in her seat. ‘What is this, a sodding conference for toerags and gangsters? Scumfest?’

‘Wait a minute...’ Logan stuck his plate on the dashboard. ‘Did Kevin McGregor not beat old Liam Riley to death six years ago because he tried to move in on his turf? Think they’re here to kiss and make up with the bloke who murdered their dad?’

Steel closed her eyes, pursed her lips, then banged her forehead off the steering wheel. ‘Susan’s going to kill me.’

‘You got any of that sticky toffee pudding left?’ DI Steel clambered back into the little MX-5.

‘Bugger off — first hot thing I’ve had today.’

‘Ungrateful sod.’ She fidgeted with her left boob, hauling at the underwire. ‘That’s another four turned up. So far we’ve got three scheemie toe-rags from Glasgow, Badger and Weasel, a pair of scary bitches kicked out of the provisional IRA for being too violent, two Scouse wideboys, a dead gangster, four of Malk the Knife’s goons, and the spotty ginger kid that works for Wee Hamish Mowat. Sodding hotel bar’s like the United Nations for drug-dealers.’ She reached over and poked a finger into Logan’s toffee sauce.

‘Hey!’

Steel sooked her finger. ‘And you want to know the weirdest thing? They’re all playing nice. Even Kevin McGregor and the Riley Sisters: in there, quietly sipping their pints. You’d think they’d at least chib each other for old time’s sake.’ Pause. ‘Give us a go of your spoon.’

Logan turned away, shielding the pudding with his arm. ‘Get your own.’

She stared back towards the bar. ‘Never mind a paddle: if this kicks off, we’re up shite creek without a canoe. According to the guidebook, Jura’s got two special constables and that’s it. No firearms team, no black maria, nothing.’

‘So call Strathclyde — get them to send a helicopter.’

‘And let those Weegie soap-dodgers take all the credit? No thanks.’

‘No, of course not — silly me. It’s much better if this lot tear the hotel apart and murder each other in the lounge bar. What was I thinking?’

She stared at him. ‘No one likes a smart arse, you know that, don’t you?’

Logan finished his sticky toffee pudding. Licked the bowl clean so there’d be nothing left for Steel. ‘Only one thing for it then: we pick them off one-by-one like Rambo.’

Mid-afternoon and the sky was like boiling tar, rain battering down — bouncing off the road and a handful of parked cars. DI Steel curled her lip, buzzed down the window and spat out into the storm. ‘“We’ll pick them off one-by-one like Rambo,” he says.’

‘Not my fault they all go to the toilet in pairs, is it? Who knew drug dealers were like girlies on a hen night?’

‘Prat. They go to the bogs in pairs so the opposition doesn’t chib them in the ribs while they’re having a slash. Puts them off their aim — blood and pee everywhere.’

Badger McLean shuffled out through the bar’s main door onto a raised stone patio with a handrail around it to keep anyone from falling into the bustling rush-hour traffic. Which probably consisted of a Post Office van and a sheep. If it was a really busy day.

‘Did you tell the hotel owners that their bar was full of drug dealers?’

‘Course I sodding didn’t. What they don’t know won’t kneecap them.’

The wee hairy man huddled in the hotel doorway and winkled a hand-rolled cigarette out of a tin of tobacco. He lit up, shifting from foot to foot, puffing away in the torrential rain. Shivering.

Steel sighed. ‘I miss fags.’ She pulled out a silver hip flask, twisted the top off, took a swig, then waggled it at Logan. ‘Snifter?’

‘You really think that’s a good idea?’

‘It’s no’ drink driving, it’s drink parking.’

Over in front of the hotel, Badger fought with his lighter again. Then looked over his shoulder back into the bar, before limping down the steps and across to an ancient maroon Peugeot with a deep gouge all the way down the passenger side. He hauled open the back door and lowered himself inside with slow stiff movements, as if his spine was made of broken glass. The hot blue-and-yellow flare of a lighter. The dull orange glow of a cigarette. The pale-grey smoke drifting against the glass.

Logan stuck his pudding bowl on the dashboard next to the iPrint kit. ‘One-by-one, just like Rambo.’

Badger McLean squealed as Logan wrenched open the Peugeot’s door and jumped into the back seat beside him.

‘I didn’t—’

Then another squeal as Steel slid in on the other side, trapping him in the middle.

Silence.

Outside, the wind howled.

Steel stretched her arm along the back of the seat, behind Badger’s shoulders, as if she was about to put the first-date moves on him in a darkened cinema. ‘Aye, aye Badger. Badge. Badge the Tadge. Long time eh?’

He licked his lips, eyes flicking from the car door to the hotel and back again.

She pouted. ‘Badger, I’m hurt — you don’t remember me?’

Still nothing.

‘Aberdeen, 2003: I did you for flogging aspirin round that nightclub down the beach, telling boozed-up teenagers it was E. Got you eighteen months, didn’t it?’

His mouth fell open an inch. Then everything came out in a machine-gunned Fife accent, the words going up and down like the boats in the harbour. ‘Oh thank God, I thought for a minute you were — ayabugger!’ He dropped the cigarette, shaking and blowing on his fingers, sending ash spiralling through the car. ‘Ow...’

‘Here’s the deal, Badge my boy: you tell me what I want to know, and my associate here won’t frogmarch you back in there and let everyone know how you’ve been cooperating with the police like a good little boy.’

He sneaked a glance at Logan.

Logan grinned back at him.

Badger slouched, then ran a hand across his face. ‘Aw... shite.’

‘How much?’ Steel stared, mouth hanging open like an empty pink sock.

Badger shrugged, then winced, clutching his chest on the left-hand-side — where the wave slammed him into the boat. ‘No one knows for sure, but that’s what they’re saying: nearly a ton of Afghanistan’s finest. Grade-A. Uncut. In four submersible pods.’

‘Bloody hell... A ton.’

‘Silly bastards’ yacht got caught in that big storm, had to cut the pods loose or get dragged down with them. Managed to limp into Oban three days ago. All the pods’ve got GPS, but one of them cracked open and it’s kinda... well, you know? Like driftwood, only kilo blocks of heroin.’

Steel pointed back at the bar. ‘And young Jimmy the Weasel?’

‘Turns out his son-in-law was one of the aforementioned silly bastards. The idiot got pished in Oban — you know, celebrating not being dead — and kinda let it slip... So now every dealer from Aberdeen to Belfast’s turning up to do a bit of fishing.’ Badger cleared his throat. ‘Now that I’ve cooperated, there’s no real need to tell anyone, is there? Why don’t I just get out of your hair and head back to the mainland? It’s not like you can actually do me for anything, is it? I’m not even in possession or anything.’

‘Funny you should say that...’ Logan dipped into his pocket, pulled out a block of heroin and tossed it at him. ‘Catch.’

‘Aagh...’ Badger caught the thing before it hit him in the face.

‘Your fingerprints are all over it now. That’s eight years for possession with intent.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Our word against yours.’

Steel licked her teeth, mouth open, making sticky noises with a pale-yellow tongue. ‘Nearly a ton of uncut grade-A drugs washing up on the shores of a wee Scottish Hebridean island. It’s sodding Heroin Galore.’

‘Jimmy’s going to kill me. He’s going to hack me up into little pieces like poor old Barney McGlashin. He’s going to—’

‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll hack you into little bits.’ Logan shifted in his seat. They’d parked Badger’s dented Peugeot down the main road, in front of the Antlers restaurant, tucked in behind a soft-top Land Rover with an expired tax disk. The hotel bar was just visible through a knot of bushes.

Two minutes later Jimmy the Weasel stormed out of the bar into the rain, head going left and right like a pasty-faced searchlight, scanning the car park.

Logan adjusted the binoculars, focussing through the hotel windows to where DI Steel was leaning back against the pool table, grinning.

The Weasel shook his fists at the sky. ‘THIEVING LITTLE BASTARD!’ It echoed back from the distillery buildings, before being swallowed by the downpour.

‘Oh, God.’ Badger buried his face in his hands. ‘That’s it: I’m dead.’

And then the Weasel was off, running down the road towards them. But before he got there he took a sharp right, around the back of the village shop. Making for the tiny stone pier that curled around a miniature harbour.

‘Keep your head down.’ Logan turned the key in the ignition and the Peugeot made a high-pitched retching noise. Then clunked. He tried again. Got the same result. ‘Come on, come on, come on...’ More retching. ‘COME ON!’

Clunk.

‘Bloody thing.’ Logan undid his seatbelt and jumped out into the rain, running after Jimmy the Weasel: between the shop and the village hall.

The little white fishing boat with the tiny red wheelhouse rocked against the harbour wall. Light bloomed through the wheelhouse windows, then a cloud of pale-grey exhaust sputtered out around the stern. The boat backed out, turned, and lurched away into the waves.

Run. Run fast. Leap. Sail through the air between the end of the pier and the fishing boat. Crash into the deck and wrestle Jimmy the Weasel into submission. Handcuff him. Say something pithy about boats and fish. Just like in the movies.

Three, two, one...

Bugger that. Knowing Logan’s luck he’d probably drown.

He scrabbled to a halt at the end of the pier, sending a pair of lobster creels splashing into the iron-coloured waves.

The wee boat puttered away, bow dipping and rearing more and more violently the further it got from shore.

The sound of another engine roared from somewhere off to the right. Logan turned. A little concrete slipway reached down from the road — between the distillery car park and the hotel beer garden — to the rolling sea. A man in dirty orange overalls was wrestling a rigid inflatable dingy out into the swell.

Kevin McGregor.

So much for Plan A.

DI Steel stared at him, rain dripping from her flattened grey fringe. ‘What do you mean, “He got away”? How could he get away? You were right sodding there!’

‘The car wouldn’t start.’

‘Well, that’s not—’

‘It’s not even my car!’ Logan pointed at the terminally ill Peugot, with Badger sitting in the back. ‘It’s this moron’s.’

The wee man waved.

Steel stuck up two fingers at him. ‘Sodding cheese-flavoured arse-monkeys... And Kevin McGregor went after him?’

‘It’s not my fault the plan was rubbish.’

‘Hey, my bit of the plan went perfect, OK? I go in; I make a song and dance about some idiot in a dented Peugeot nearly running me off the road, grabbing a fishing boat and sodding off into the storm; and pop goes the Weasel — right out the front door. It’s your bit that went bum-shaped.’

‘The bloody — car — wouldn’t — start!’

‘Shiteholes...’ She chewed at her finger for a moment. ‘We need a boat, or something.’

Screw that.

‘Could we not just drive back up the road to where we had tea? That’s where the—’

‘And then what? You want to swim out to the boat and arrest them? Cos I’m no’ bloody doing it. We need a boat.’

‘Will you hurry up?’ Steel marched up and down the pontoon attached to the tiny harbour’s wall. ‘They’ll be miles away by now!’

Badger sat up and scowled at her from the wheelhouse of a small rust-streaked fishing boat with ‘CATRIONA’S HARVEST’ painted along the side. Creels made a smelly pyramid in the back, coils of dirty rope and scuffed pink buoys piled alongside them. ‘I’ve never hotwired one of these things before. A Ford Cortina I could do you in three minutes flat, this...’ He waved a hand. ‘This is a pain in the backside.’

‘My boot’ll be a pain in your backside if you don’t—’

The engine growled and puttered into life. Badger gave himself a round of applause. ‘Ha!’

‘About bloody time.’ Steel scrambled aboard, then turned and waved at Logan. ‘Get a move on!’

‘Can’t get through.’ Logan slipped the phone back in his pocket. ‘Mobile signal keeps cutting out.’

Badger pointed through the wheelhouse window. ‘Untie the rope thing at the pointy end and chuck it in the boat. Do the one at the back too.’

Logan stared at him. ‘“Pointy end”? Thought you said you knew what you’re doing.’

Steel wrapped her scarf around her head, until only her eyes and nose were visible. ‘Laz, get your arse on this boat right now, or I swear to God...’

He untied the ‘pointy end’ then did the same with the line at the stern, before half jumping, half falling into the back of the boat. Up close the creels stank of stale fish and rotting onion.

Badger fiddled with the controls. Nothing happened. A bit more fiddling, and the boat thumped backwards into the pontoon with a loud crunch.

Steel grabbed the wheelhouse wall. ‘Other way, you daft sod!’

‘Right...’ The boat surged forwards this time, then around to the left as he twirled the wheel, heading out into the bay. ‘Like riding a bike.’

The sea churned like a hangover — up and down, left and right, the boat making a wobbly corkscrew path through the concrete-coloured waves. Logan tightened the padded orange lifejacket he’d found in a little locker. The deck was cold and damp beneath his bum as he sat with his back to the railing, holding on with both hands as the tiny Catriona’s Harvest juddered through the storm.

Steel sat opposite, eyes closed, legs splayed, teeth gritted. ‘Urgh...’

He narrowed his eyes at her, having to shout over the roar of the engine. ‘You and your bloody Plan B!’

Standing in the wheelhouse, Badger turned and grinned at them. ‘Course, you’ve got to watch these waters like a hawk. Reefs and rocks everywhere. Normal charts cover about a hundred miles — here you’re lucky if you get twenty. No wonder Jimmy’s son-in-law got into trouble. Got to keep your—’ The whole boat juddered, as if a big underwater fist had slammed into it. ‘Oops.’ And then they were going straight again.

Steel kept her face screwed tight shut. ‘If we sink I’ll sodding kill you.’

‘Not much further.’

‘You said that twenty minutes ago!’

And the sea raged on.

‘There! Told you we’d make it.’ Badger clung onto the wheel with one hand, pointing with the other. To the left, Jura rose in hilly bumps of green and brown; to the right the Sound of Jura was a heaving mass of grey water; and straight ahead was the little fishing boat with the red wheelhouse, moored just off Inverlussa beach. Kevin McGregor’s rigid inflatable was tied up alongside, bobbing and dipping.

Jimmy the Weasel cowered in the back of the fishing boat, arms over his head, staggering as the vessel lurched from one trough to the other. Kevin McGregor clambered over the side, back into the inflatable. Raised his arm, as if he was about to give the Weasel a telling off.

A hard pop broke across the waves.

The back of Jimmy’s head puffed out in a cloud of bright red, shining against the dark afternoon, before the wind whipped it away.

Badger squealed, then ducked down behind the wheel.

Jimmy’s body rocked with the next wave, then crashed forward onto the deck.

‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit...’

Logan hauled out the binoculars and focussed on the bobbing fishing boat. ‘Think he’s dead?’

‘Well...’ Steel made a little humming noise. ‘If no’ he’ll save a fortune on hats.’

Kevin McGregor leaned over the side of his inflatable and did something with the bright-orange buoy.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘We should board him. Ram the inflatable.’

Badger peered out from the wheelhouse. ‘He’s got a gun!’

‘Don’t be such a Jessie.’ Steel fiddled with her lifejacket. ‘Long as we stay down, we’ll be OK, right?’

Logan rapped his knuckles against the Catriona’s Harvest’s hull. Might be thick enough to stop a bullet. Probably. Maybe. ‘Erm...’

The outboard roar of Kevin McGregor’s engine cut through the storm, and the rigid inflatable eased away from Lussa Bay. Going a lot slower than it had leaving Craighouse harbour.

Badger knelt in the wheelhouse, peeking over the bulwark. ‘Boat’s weighted down... He’s got the two full pods. That’s why he was following Jimmy — the thieving git’s nabbed our drugs!’

Even towing two-thirds of a ton of underwater heroin, Kevin McGregor’s inflatable was still faster than Catriona’s Harvest. When they finally puttered back into Craighouse harbour, the inflatable was abandoned on the slipway. The rust-flecked blue Transit sat in front of it, the back doors open as Kevin McDonald winched the second pod inside.

He creaked the doors shut, dragging his left leg. The orange overalls were stained scarlet from knee to ankle.

Logan scrambled onto the jetty, not bothering to tie the boat up.

Steel clambered out after him, turned and pointed back into the wheelhouse. ‘You, Badger Boy: stay. If I have to come looking for you, you’ll bloody well know about it.’

The wind whipped spray off the curling waves, throwing it in Logan’s face as he hurried ashore.

Streetlights made golden spheres in the driving rain. The road was deserted, except for a couple of parked cars and a mob of grumpy seagulls — hunkered down on the guttering of the distillery buildings, watching the world with glittering eyes.

Logan turned the corner of the village shop and skidded to a halt. Staring. Someone was lying face down on the road between the hotel and the distillery. Arms and legs splayed out in a broken starfish. A pair of thick-rimmed glasses lying just out of reach. Face pale and slack. A slick of dark red oozing downhill towards the sea.

The other Riley sister was crumpled in front of the distillery shop, the back of her head gone the same way as Jimmy the Weasel’s.

Maybe that’s why all the gulls were there — waiting for an early dinner?

No wonder the bloody street was deserted.

Steel puffed to a halt beside Logan. ‘What? Why have we stopped?’

He pointed.

‘Oh... arse. Do you think anyone noticed?’

Logan stared at her. ‘Yes, I think someone might just have noticed a bloody gunfight in the middle of the street, right outside the hotel bar.’

‘Susan’s going to kill me...’

Kevin McGregor hobbled around to the side of the Transit van.

Logan took a deep breath and stepped onto the road. Pulled out his warrant card and walked towards the van. ‘Police! Put your weapon down and keep your hands where I can see them.’

McGregor froze, halfway through hauling the driver’s door open. Then turned. ‘Sling your hook, before you get hurt.’

‘Come on Kevin, it’s over. You know it’s over.’

McGregor slammed his hand on the side of the van. Logan flinched. The seagulls stirred. Probably wondering if they’d get police officer for starters.

‘I came back from the dead for this. It’s not over till I say so.’ He pointed at DI Steel’s little MX-5. ‘That’s your car, right? Saw you sitting in it, watching the hotel.’

‘Kevin McGregor, I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of James Weasdale, Brigid Riley, and Niamh Riley, you— Oh God!’

McGregor’s gun barked twice and the MX-5’s front tyres exploded in shreds of black rubber. Then he turned and blew out the tyres of the Rileys’ camper van, and the Toyota pick-up parked opposite. The noise was deafening, the smell of fireworks seeping away into the rain.

‘Like I said: it’s not over till I say it is.’ He dragged himself up into the Transit van, heaving his leg over the seat, teeth gritted. Then slammed the door.

Steel appeared at Logan’s shoulder. ‘My car... The... He shot my sodding car!’

Kevin McGregor grinned, gave them a wave, then put the van in gear.

A moment of utter silence. Then it was as if the whole world bellowed. The Transit van bucked, riding a mushroom of boiling orange flame, the cab expanding — a balloon of rusty blue metal and safety glass. And then the noise: it was like being smacked in the chest with a sledgehammer, followed by a blast of hot air that tore the ground from under Logan’s feet and sent him crashing sideways against DI Steel.

The van clattered back to the blackened tarmac, bounced, fell onto its side, the rear doors twenty yards away.

A pall of white dust filled the air above it, drifting in the wind as the seagulls leapt shrieking from the distillery roof. The cloud caught them above the shop. They lurched, swooped, bumped into each other, and the walls, and the slates, then tumbled to the road. Lying on their backs, legs and wings twitching as the Transit van burned. Doped out of their tiny little minds.

Logan rolled onto his front and levered himself to his knees, ears ringing.

Steel coughed, spluttered, groaned. ‘SODDING HELL...’

‘WHAT?’

‘THINK I BROKE MY ARSE...’ She dug a finger into her ear and jiggled it about. ‘CAN YOU HEAR THAT?’

The Transit van’s front bumper clanged back down against the road, lying amongst the stoned seagulls.

Logan clutched at the ancient red telephone box, pulling himself up on wobbly feet. ‘That’s what happens when you mess with a pair of paramilitary nut-jobs who’ve got a thing for explosives.’

‘HELP ME UP.’

He hauled her to her feet. ‘Stop yelling at me.’

‘WHAT?’

Christ. ‘Never mind.’

‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU.’

The door to the hotel bar swung open and a figure in jeans and a hooded top stepped out onto the stone balcony, her caramel-coloured hair pulled back in a ponytail: Susan. She stared at the burning wreckage in the middle of the road, then at the MX-5 with its two blown-out front tyres. Then at DI Steel: standing next to Logan with her legs planted wide apart, one hand holding onto his arm, as if the tarmac was bobbing about on rough seas.

Susan’s eyes narrowed. She stuck her fists on her hips. ‘Roberta Steel, what the bloody hell have you been up to?’