Blind Eye

65

Logan slumped back onto the clammy sheets, slapped both hands over his eyes and swore. He lay there until the shaking stopped, then hauled himself out into the kitchen. The vodka bottle was empty, and so was the litre of Bells his brother had given him for Christmas. All he had left was an inch of OVD rum. He swigged it straight from the bottle.

It wasn't even enough for a warm fuzzy feeling. So he made a cup of tea, then sat at the kitchen table, trying to figure out when it was that his life had gone down the crapper.

According to the microwave it was five in the morning. Two hours to go till his bollocking from Professional Standards, and already the sun was up: golden highlights slowly spreading across the old granite buildings outside his kitchen window, pushing the deep blue shadows back into their corners. What was the point of getting fired on a lovely day?

It should have been pouring with rain. 'Where you been? Going to be late for the morning briefing.' Detective Constable Rennie bounced up and down on his heels, grinning like the happy little idiot he was.

Logan had one last go at getting the tip of his vibrating cigarette to meet up with the flame from his lighter.

Success. He pulled in a deep lungful, then coughed it all back out again.

'Anyway,' said Rennie, 'come on: briefing.'

Logan settled back against the wall. Ten to seven and the rear podium car park was still in shadow. High up above, the sky was blue, but down here it was miserable and grey, like his mood. 'Why the hell are you so cheerful?'

'Ah… all will be revealed at the morning briefing!'

'I'm not going.'

'Eh?' The constable deflated a bit. 'But it's the morning briefing.'

'Don't care.' Logan took a long draw on his cigarette. At least this time he didn't bring up a lung. 'I'm off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Professional Fucking Standards.'

'But I've got a thing…'

'Congratulations.'

'No, I really have — I caught the Sperminator. The bloke smearing his spunk on the handrails? Arrested him last night. Had to go through seven gazillion hours of CCTV footage, but I finally got him climbing into a car in the Bon Accord Centre car park. Ran the number plate and: Bob's shagging your mother's sister.' He paused, hands out, obviously waiting for applause.

'I'm actually impressed.' Logan flicked the first flurry of ash from the end of his cigarette. 'Not like you to use your initiative.'

'Yeah, well, now Beattie's made DI, it means there's a Detective Sergeant's job going begging, doesn't it? Emma thinks I can-'

'Emma says, Emma thinks. You're like a broken record.' He stuck his fag back in his mouth and made a pair of naked sock-puppets with his hands. 'Blah, blah, blah, blah.'

Rennie pouted. 'You're getting as bad as Steel, do you know that?'

Logan blew a stream of smoke at the sky. 'Your arse.'

Silence.

'So… you coming to the briefing then?'

'Are you deaf?' He ground his cigarette out against the wall and turned towards the back door. Then stopped. 'And don't worry about that DS's job, there's going to be another one free by lunchtime.' 'You look like shite.' DI Steel collapsed into the uncomfortable chair next to Logan's, outside Superintendent Napier's lair. 07:00 precisely.

Logan raised an eyebrow. 'You can talk.' She was wearing a dark grey trouser suit that wouldn't have looked out of place on Worzel Gummidge. Neither would her hair. Scarecrow chic, if you were feeling generous. The bags under her eyes belonged on an airport carousel.

She punched him in the leg. 'Didn't get any sodding sleep, did I? Susan won't come home, says I'm an "insensitive cow". Says, first I won't give her a baby, and now I'm turning the house into a B &B for perverts.' The inspector pulled out a packet of nicotine gum and popped a couple out of their foil packaging. Stuck them in her mouth and chewed as if they were live wasps. Then offered the pack to Logan.

He shrugged, took two, and discovered why she made that face. 'Urgh! What's this stuff made of?'

'My house is a bombsite, I can't get my wife pregnant, and my career's fucked.'

Logan slumped back in his seat. 'I'm sorry, OK? I am. None of this was… I'm just sorry.'

'So what's the problem?' She stared straight ahead. 'You don't think I'd make a good parent for your sprog? That it?'

'No… I…' He scrubbed his face with his hands, wincing as he touched the fresh bruise where Kravchenko's henchman, Grigor, had punched him. 'I don't know.'

'Yeah, well, what does it matter to you, eh? No' like your relationship's going down the toilet, is it? No' like your life's screwed up beyond all sodding recognition!'

Logan looked at her. Then burst out laughing.

'What the hell is so funny?'

But now he'd started he couldn't stop.

Steel scowled at him. 'What the hell's wrong with you? I'm asking for your help! They won't let us adopt, we can't get IVF on the NHS, and we can't afford to go private. She's going to leave me, I bloody know it.'

There were tears running down Logan's cheeks.

'You are such a cock!' Steel hit him again. 'It's no' some sort of joke, OK? This is my life we're talking about!'

He had to fight to squeeze the words out, bent almost double in the chair: 'I've been blown up; shot at; I can't sleep; I have nightmares, even when I'm awake; all I want to do is drink until I can't… fucking… feel anything; I've started smoking again; I got Rory blinded, and Wiktorja's going to be next; I think I killed someone in Poland; I ruin everything I touch; and I'm about to get fired.' He looked up at her. 'And you think my life's not fucked up?' Logan stood in front of the machine on the third floor, trying to decide if he felt like a coffee, a tea, or a chicken noodle soup. Not that it mattered, they all tasted the same. He punched the buttons and reconstituted brown slurry gurgled into a thin plastic cup.

He picked it up by the rim, trying not to burn his fingers, then wandered upstairs to the CID office. Rennie was there, boring PC Karim with his 'how I caught the Sperminator story'.

'… and I'm piecing together, like, a million hours of CCTV footage, trying to track the guy back from the shopping centre and all the way down Union Street…'

Logan's desk was a disaster area of forms and files. Again. Half of them weren't even his. He stuck his cup of plastic coffee on top of a memo from DI Beattie, and gathered up an armful of witness statements. Then dumped them on the next desk over.

He sat in his creaky swivel chair and stared at the dead computer. Thinking about booting it up and writing his letter of resignation. Dear Bastards,

I quit.

Screw you all. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae

Karim kept glancing at his watch and shuffling towards the exit, but Rennie wouldn't stop droning on, and on, and on. 'Worked in a shoe shop…' Blah, blah. 'Confessed right away…' Blah, blah. 'Wife waited till he was handcuffed, then kneed him in the balls…'

'Yeah, great,' said Karim, when he could finally get a word in. 'Got to go: post mortem in ten minutes.'

'Ooh,' Rennie grabbed his notebook. 'Someone dead?'

'Dirty Bob. They found him yesterday evening in the St Nicholas graveyard, round the back near the shopping centre?' Karim sighed. 'He was pretty broken up about his mate Richard dying… Doc Fraser says sometimes they're like married couples: first one goes, then the other. I suppose it's kind of sweet. Poor sod probably drank himself to death — stank of white spirit.'

Logan's stomach curdled. 'White spirit?'

'His tipple of choice.'

And Logan had given him twenty pounds to go buy booze with. Great, something else for him to feel guilty about. He didn't listen as Karim said his goodbyes and left the office.

Rennie waited for the door to close before rummaging through his desk drawers, then scooted his chair across the CID office floor, until he was sitting next to Logan. 'Got something for you.' He handed over a carrier bag.

There was something heavy in it, a rectangular box — about a foot long and three inches on either side — wrapped in brown paper. Instantly recognizable to every Scotsman over the age of twelve.

The constable nodded. 'Came for you yesterday — didn't want to leave it lying on your desk, you know what a thieving bunch of bastards they are in here.'

Logan tore the paper off, levered opened the cardboard box's top flap, and pulled out the bottle of whisky inside. Thirty-year-old Knockdhu. There was a hand-written note Sellotaped to the bottle: 'DEAR DS MCRAE,

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SORTING OUT THAT WEE MIS UNDERSTANDING WITH COLIN MCLEOD AND HARRY JORDAN. WE ALL APPRECIATE IT.

B EST WISHES,

H.M.'

'H.M.' Hamish Mowat. Brilliant. That was just what Logan needed. A gift from Aberdeen's top crime lord, thanking him for getting Creepy Colin off with attempted murder. Professional Standards were going to love that.

Rennie took one look at the bottle and said, 'Cool! Not your birthday is it?'

Logan slid the bottle back into its box, then locked it in his bottom desk drawer. It could stay there until he figured out what he was going to do with it. 'Don't you have work to be getting on with? People to impress, arses to kiss?'

'Jesus, you're a happy little pixie since you got back from Poland, you know that?' He stuck his feet flat on the floor and pushed, squeaking his chair back to his own desk. 'Anyway, thought you were in with the rubber-heelers this morning.'

'Steel went first: privilege of rank. I get to wait for my bollocking.'

'Oh…'

'Now sod off and leave me alone.' Logan poked away at paperwork for a while, but couldn't work up any enthusiasm. What was the point? They were probably going to suspend him anyway. So he gave up and borrowed an Aberdeen Examiner from the media office, flipping through to the Jobs pages at the back.

Everyone wanted years of experience. No one wanted a failed ex-Detective Sergeant with a crappy track-record and talent for disaster.

He checked his watch. Steel had been in with Superintendent Napier for nearly three hours.

Logan let his head sink forward until it was resting on a pile of uncompleted burglary reports. Sod this. He wasn't just going to sit here and wait for Napier to summon him.

He went to the IB lab instead, hoping to grab a couple of minutes with Samantha, but she was off at a crime scene in Blackburn.

What now? Back to the CID office to sulk some more? Scrounge a cup of tea and some cake from the CCTV room? Or just walk out and never come back. Or he could do what he should have done last night: march into DCS Bain's office and tell him who really tipped off Kravchenko about the Buckie Ballad. Slam the Polish bastard's mobile on Bain's desk and tell him where he could stick it…

Logan dug the phone out of his pocket and stared at. How could he be so stupid? He turned the thing on — Kravchenko called last night, his number would be in the call history. They could run a GSM trace, turn Kravchenko's handset into a homing beacon.

He worked his way through the phone's menus until he got to the right bit. 'Sodding hell…'

It was listed as 'UNKNOWN'. Now he'd have to get a warrant to force the phone company to ignore the Data Protection Act and give him the details of who called. It would take days — maybe weeks — and there was no way Kravchenko's 'copper who bends' wouldn't find out about it.

Back to plan A. He stomped up the stairs to Bain's office, but the head of CID wasn't there, he was having a shouting match with Finnie in the middle of the corridor.

Logan took one look at them and froze.

Finnie: 'I should have been informed-'

Bain: 'It was on a strict need to know basis, and you-'

Finnie: 'I am a senior officer in this-'

Bain: 'Then try acting like one! I do not expect this kind of behaviour from-'

Finnie: 'Oh no, I bet you don't. God forbid anyone should stand up to the Almighty Head Of CID!'

Someone tapped Logan on the shoulder and he flinched. It was DS Pirie, curly ginger hair glowing in a shaft of sunlight. 'I'd stay out of his way this morning, if I was you. Soon as he heard about Operation Creel he went ballistic.'

Bain: 'You're on thin ice Chief Inspector!'

Finnie: 'Oh don't give me that, you know I'm right. This whole disaster was mismanaged from the start.'

There was no way Logan was wading into the middle of that. 'I'll come back later.'

'Ah, it'll blow over. It usually does. Just keep a low profile. And it just so happens I've got something that might get us both back in his good books.' Pirie paused. 'Interested?'

Tempting. 'I'm supposed to wait for a summons from Professional Standards.'

The DS slapped Logan on the back. 'Yeah, I heard. But think how much easier it would go if you had a success under your belt? I got a phone call from a Chiz I use, says he's got a lead on the guys behind that boatload of guns.'

'Did you get an address?'

'I was going to tell the guvnor, but he's mid-rant… If you want to tag along instead?'

Damn right he did. All the pool cars were out, so they took Logan's knackered Fiat. Sometime during the night the seagulls had paid a visit, and now the bonnet and roof were polka-dotted with acrid splatters of white and grey.

Pirie held onto the seatbelt strap as Logan ground his way through the gears. 'Tell me you didn't give someone money for this piece of shite.'

'Very funny.' Logan gave the gearstick one last yank and took them around the roundabout onto Wellington Road, the dirty bulk of Craiginches Prison crawling past on their left as he did his best to accelerate up the hill. 'About Finnie-'

'I told you: it'll blow over. You just gotta give it time.'

'No. I mean him and Wee Hamish Mowat.'

Pirie's left eyebrow shot up so fast it looked as if it was about to break free of his head. 'Oh aye?'

'I saw Finnie take a brown envelope from one of Wee Hamish's boys.'

'Ah…' Pirie ran a hand through his wire-wool hair, watching as a scooter overtook them. 'I can get out and push if you like?'

'I'm serious.'

'Finnie gets brown envelopes from Wee Hamish all the time.'

'What?' Logan stared at him. 'You knew about it?'

Shrug. 'Course I did. Power behind the throne, remember?'

'But… Why…?'

'Why didn't I report it? Because they don't have money in them, they've got information. Look at it from Wee Hamish's point of view: someone tries muscling in on his turf, what's he going to do? Yeah, he can fight back, or whatever, but that costs him time, money, manpower, and there's always the risk something will get connected to him. Never been arrested in his life, think he wants to start now?'

Logan slumped, said, 'Fuck,' then banged his head off the steering wheel.

Pirie's voice jumped up an octave. 'Think you'd like to keep your eyes on the road? Please?'

'He's using us.'

'Where did you learn to bloody drive?'

'He doesn't need bent coppers, he gets us to do his dirty work for free.'

'It's a two-way thing, OK? Wee Hamish sends Finnie a wee brown envelope with all the details. We make the arrest — bad guys are off the streets, and no one gets fed to the pigs. It's win, win…' Pirie frowned. 'Wait a minute, it was you, wasn't it? You set Professional Standards on him: told them about the brown envelopes.'

'I thought he was on the take.'

'Do you have any idea how much pain and extra work you caused him? They crawled all over every inch of his record, picked him apart for two whole days. Made his life a living hell.'

Logan sighed. 'I'm sorry, OK?'

Pirie threw his head back and laughed. 'Sorry my arse — it's been great. I owe you a drink!'