Blind Eye

37

The alarm went off at six fifteen — as usual. Logan slammed his hand down on the off button, rolled over, and burrowed deeper into the duvet. A Saturday off was something to be treasured. He only dragged himself out of bed when the double call of headache and straining bladder ganged up on him. They'd finished off the champagne, then hit the Light of Bengal: king prawn jalfrezi and four pints of Cobra beer. Filthy McNasties: two pints of Stella. The Bells: another two pints, and a whisky chaser… After that things started to get a little fuzzy.

Did they go to the Howff next, or the Grill? Probably both from the feel of things: a pair of overweight rhinoceroses were skateboarding around the inside of Logan's skull to very loud rap music, and his stomach wasn't much better.

Two aspirin, a carton of orange juice, two paracetamol and an unsuccessful rummage in the fridge later, Logan winced his way out of the front door, heading up to Archibald Simpson for breakfast.

The pub was relatively quiet, just a few old men in for their Saturday-morning pint. Logan ordered the vegetarian fry-up and a huge mug of tea.

He was wiping up the last remnants of egg yolk with a chunk of veggie sausage when PC Karim crumpled into the seat opposite.

'God, it's murder out there…'

He wasn't in uniform, so Logan didn't tell him to sod off. 'Shopping?'

Karim grimaced. 'Wedding present for Her Indoor's sister. "Oh," she says, "why don't you hit the shops when you get off night shift?"' He sighed. 'Tell you, never get married. I thought I was getting a life partner to love and cherish, she thought she was getting a taxi driver, private bank, and personal shopper.' He hauled a plastic bag from John Lewis onto the table. 'Keep an eye on that while I go for a slash, eh?'

Logan thought about taking a peek, but pulled his phone out instead. He switched it on and called Samantha. Listened to it ring for a bit. And then a muzzy voice came on the other end.

'Emmmph?'

'Did I wake you?'

'Wmmmm?' Yawn. 'What time is… oh Christ…'

'Sorry. I can call back later if you-'

'It's not you. I'm supposed to be at the sodding lab in twenty-five minutes. Didn't get home till three. Urrrgh, sambuca…' Another yawn crackled through the phone. 'What happened to you last night? Tried to call.'

'Teambuilding with Finnie and Pirie. How about tonight? I've got the day off and-'

'Done… Oh God, look at the time!' And she was gone.

Karim came back to the table, carrying two mugs of coffee. 'Here.' He handed one over. 'Look like you need it.'

'Ta.'

The constable sank back into his chair. 'God what a night. Bloody Union Street's like Beirut after the pubs shut.' He shuddered, then dunked his biscuit in his coffee. 'Oh, and by the way, word to the wise: if you see Steel coming, run. She's in a bloody horrible mood. That bloke she was after? He turned up last night with his arms, legs, and jaw broken.'

Logan rattled his mug back in the saucer, stood, said thank you for the coffee and legged it for the station. Sergeant Eric Mitchell was on the front desk, slumped over a copy of that morning's Aberdeen Examiner with a ballpoint pen, drawing moustaches on people. But however much ink he used, it was never going to come close to the huge furry creature lurking on his own top lip: a full-blown Joseph Stalin job.

He looked up as Logan puffed and panted to a halt.

'Thought you were supposed to be off this weekend?'

Logan grabbed the edge of the reception desk and tried to get some oxygen back into his lungs. 'I… ahh… it…'

'Jesus. Where did you run from, Inverness?'

'Arch… Archies.'

'That's just round the corner! How unfit do you have to be to-'

'Karim told me… Rory Simpson… turned up… last night.'

Blank look.

Logan tried again, 'Beaten up? Broken arms… and legs?'

Sergeant Mitchell pulled out the day book and flicked through it. Frowning. 'Nope… No one's seen your child-molester friend since he did a runner.'

That bastard Karim had been winding him up.

'What we do have,' said Mitchell, running a finger across his facial topiary, 'is a Duane Cowie. Anonymous call from a pub payphone: said they'd seen a man being assaulted on the Kings Links, down by the beach. Alpha Sixteen found him about two hundred yards from the petrol station.'

'Duane Cowie? Who the hell is Duane Cowie?'

'No idea.' Sergeant Mitchell punched away at a keyboard beneath the level of desk. 'Says here Steel had a lookout request on him. Something about a Polish girl getting raped in a porn film?'

'Damn. Knew it was too good to be true.'

'Aye, well I'm sure Duane Cowie shares your disappointment.' He went back to vandalizing the paper. 'And speaking of Steel: she wants a word, if you're about?'

'I'm not. You've not seen me.' Logan turned to leave. Stopped. Then went back to the desk. 'What's the book at now for the new DI's position?'

Sergeant Mitchell smiled. 'You should've put money on when you were eighteen to one. Steel did.' He raised an eyebrow. 'Speaking of which…'

The side door banged open and DI Steel marched into reception with a face on her that would curdle linoleum. 'Where the hell have you been?'

Logan sidled towards the exit. 'It's my day off. I just came in to-'

'My office. NOW!' Steel slumped behind her desk and glowered at Logan. 'This is all your fault.'

'What? How is it my-'

'Don't interrupt. You sodded off yesterday and I had to take DS Beardy Sodding Beattie! Continental drift moves faster than that fat git. Duane Cowie did a runner.'

'Yes, but Eric said he was-'

'Which part of "don't interrupt" are you having problems with?'

Logan shut his mouth.

'If you'd sodding well been there, Duane Cowie wouldn't have got away, someone wouldn't have battered the crap out of him, and I'd have another suspect to sodding question!' She dug a folder out from her in-tray and tossed it across the desk at him. 'Read it.'

Inside was an interview transcript: present DI Steel, DS Beattie, and Allan Rait. The other dog-mask rapist. Logan skimmed through it. 'That's one pound fifty: "sodding" still counts as a swearword.'

'No it sodding doesn't.'

According to Allan Rait's statement, Krystka Gorzalkowska was acting. There was no rape. It was all make-believe. The magic of cinema. Logan stuck the transcript back in the folder. 'What does Krystka say?'

'What the hell do you think? Like interviewing Marcel Marceau.' Steel slumped back in her chair. 'If she made a complaint I could nail them to the wall, but right now we've got fff… sod all.'

She scowled for a bit, drumming her fingers against her forehead. Then: 'What about the company who hired her out?'

'Kostchey International Holdings Limited.'

'Aye, you got that address yet?'

'Er…' Logan dragged his phone out and checked for messages from Zander Clark. 'No.'

'Oh for God's sake! You're now officially in my bad books.'

'Oh, come on. That's not fair-'

'Boo-hoo. Life's not fair.'

'It's my day off-'

'Want to know how you can get back in my good books?' She pulled out the empty plastic cup and stuck it on her desk.

Logan groaned. 'Not again with the sperm!'

'Aye, again with the sperm. You've got millions of the wriggly little buggers, you'll no' miss a couple of tablespoons, will you?'

'Tablespoons?'

'Oh don't be such a drama queen.' She dug a hand into her shirt and started hauling on her bra strap. 'Susan's being a complete nightmare. Now she wants to cash in all our savings, sell my car, and go pay for artificial insemination in the States.'

'Well, maybe that's not a bad-'

'If I don't want Rennie's sperm, why the hell would I want some American tosser's? Gene pool's bad enough as it is.'

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Logan stood. 'Well, I'd better get going, you know: day off and-'

'Not so fast. What else we got on Kostchey International Whosit?'

Shrug. 'Nothing.'

'What about that mobile number we got from Gary the Toilet Diver?'

'Pay-as-you-go — no registered details.'

She hauled at her bra for a bit. 'What did the Polish police say?'

'Eh?'

'You were supposed to chase them up! You forgot, didn't you?'

'Well… McPherson's the liaison officer, and he's still off on the sick…'

Steel spoke very slowly and very clearly. 'And it never occurred to you to phone them yourself?'

'Er… well, I-'

'For God's sake, you're supposed to be a Detective Sergeant!'

'But if Krystka Gorzalkowska won't make a complaint, how does it-'

'Don't be an idiot: half the girls they import are probably from Christ-knows-where-istan. Illegal immigrants. People trafficking. And the mucky film industry's no' exactly booming in Aberdeenshire, is it? So what happens to the poor cows who can't be porn stars?' She tapped her desk with a finger. 'Do the words "forced into prostitution" mean anything to you?'

Logan opened his mouth, but the inspector got there first: 'And before you say anything, you'll phone them because I sodding well told you to. Me: organ grinder, you: monkey, remember?'

Silence.

'Now get the hell out of my office.' Detective Inspector McPherson's room was a mess of file boxes, sandwich wrappers, and random bits of paper. Coffee mugs lurked on various surfaces, full of brown-green scum, evolving their own life forms in the heat of the radiator: turned up to full. The whole room smelled musty and stale.

Logan cleared a copy of Monday's Aberdeen Examiner off the chair and settled — carefully — behind the desk, looking at McPherson's piles of paperwork and plague of Post-it notes. The contact details for the Polish Liaison Officer had to be in here somewhere.

Not that Logan really wanted to touch anything.

There was a half-eaten Mars Bar in the top drawer and a stack of ancient receipts. Next drawer: notebook, paperclips, pens, hundreds of random business cards. He dragged open the bottom drawer. It was meant to be for files, but McPherson seemed to be using it as a paperwork glory hole.

On top of the pile was the same memo Logan had seen on Steel's desk: the one asking for nominations for a new Detective Inspector. Blah, blah, blah, regret to inform you that DI Gray has tendered his resignation; blah, blah, blah; opportunity to reward performance; blah, blah, blah; suggestions by next Wednesday.

McPherson had scribbled, 'BEATTIE?' in the margin in red biro.

Idiot.

Logan stuck the memo back in the drawer. Detective Sergeant Beattie couldn't arrest his own backside with three patrol cars and a search warrant.

The Polish contact details were nowhere to be found, so Logan fired up McPherson's computer. Hacking into the inspector's email wasn't that difficult — the idiot had left his password on a Post-it stuck to the monitor. DI Gray wasn't the only one who needed replacing.

McPherson's computer files were every bit as disorganized as his real ones, but eventually Logan found one marked 'Staff Sergeant Cyrek Lukaszewski ~ Warsaw FHQ'. Telephone number and email address.

He was tempted to fire off a quick email and escape, but that would just give Steel another excuse to whinge. So he picked up the phone, made sure there was nothing sticky on the mouth or earpiece, then dialled Poland.

Strange foreign bleeps, that went on and on and on and- a bored voice: 'Posterunek Policji, Kryminalne Biuro Sledcze, slucham.'

Logan did his best. 'Hello? I mean: dzien dobry, czy pan mowi po angielsku?'

'Yes, I speak English.'

Thank God. 'I need to speak to a Staff Sergeant Cyrek…' He had a stab at the surname, 'Wookas-view-ski?'

'Lukaszewski?'

'Yes, that's right: Lukaszewski.' Hurrah.

'No: is Saturday. Try again Monday.' Not Hurrah.

'Oh… Can I leave a message? I need details on a "Kostchey International Holdings Ltd."'

The officer on the other end laughed. 'You are joking, yes?'

'No. Why would I be-'

'In Poland, Kostchey is lord of the underworld. Kostchey the Deathless.'

'You don't have anyone called Kostchey over there?'

More laughter. 'Criminals and gang-people all want to be Kostchey the Deathless. Think it make them sound tough. Is not real name.'

Another dead end. Logan put his hand over the mouthpiece and swore. Steel wasn't going to be pleased.

'Hello?'

'Give me a minute…' There was a memo on the cluttered desk from Finnie, telling McPherson to get his finger out and chase up the list of Oedipus victims with the Polish police. McPherson had scrawled 'DO THIS FIRST THING MONDAY!!!' at the top of the sheet. And then 'MONDAY' had been crossed out and replaced with 'TUESDAY'. By which time the silly sod would have been flat on his back in the hospital, sleeping off a concussion. Which probably meant it still hadn't been done.

'Hello? You are still there?'

'Yeah, sorry. Look, we've had a bunch of blindings recently-'

'Blin-dings?'

'Blindings: eyes cut out and burnt?'

Logan could almost hear him shrugging.

'All the victims are Polish, we need to know if there was any connection between them. Can you get someone to do a background check for me?' Then he went through the names, making the man on the other end repeat them back to him.

'OK, I tell Lukaszewski when he come in on Monday.' And then the officer hung up.

So much for that. Logan shut down McPherson's computer, switched off the lights, and closed the door on the inspector's pigsty. Now he'd have to go tell Steel the bad news. Thankfully she wasn't in her office, so he scribbled a note and left it on her desk: 'POLISH POLICE THINK "KOSTCHEY" IS A JOKE NAME. THEY'LL PHONE BACK MONDAY.'

And escape.