Dark Blood

24

Bloody snow.

Logan sat on the upturned milk crate outside the steamed-up caravan and watched the first tiny flakes drifting down from a dark black sky.

He shivered and took another drag on his cigarette, then hissed the smoke out through his teeth. The bag of frozen peas was starting to go all soggy and limp. Logan knew how it felt. He pulled it away from his aching head and probed the lump underneath with his fingertips. Winced. Put the bag back.

All he’d wanted was one little success to prove everyone wrong. Was that really too much to ask for? Just one measly case closed, out of the dozens littering the whiteboard in the CID office. And all he’d ended up with was a bash over the head, a broken car window, and a smashed mobile phone.

He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stared at the glowing orange tip. No point in putting it off any longer. Logan pinged the butt away into the darkness. ‘Right…’

‘Made you a tea.’

He looked up to see Stacy standing over him, clutching a steaming mug. She’d changed into a baggy hooded top that didn’t reek of vomit. She held the mug out. ‘I didn’t spit in it, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

What the hell.

‘Thanks.’ Logan took an experimental sip. Hot. Milk, three sugars. ‘How’s he doing?’

Stacy wrapped her arms around herself. Shuffled her feet. Looked off into the middle distance. ‘Sorry about belting you one.’

‘Me too.’ Logan hauled himself up, handed her the bag of defrosting peas, then pulled out his handcuffs. ‘Time to go.’

Stacy’s mouth fell open. ‘But…We…I thought we’d-’

‘You assaulted a police officer with a frying pan. He did it with a sledgehammer. We’ve been over this.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Stacy…’ Logan stopped. ‘What’s your full name?’

‘Get stuffed.’

‘Fine, we’ll add “giving false details” to the list of charges.’

‘You can’t do that!’

‘Listen, Stacy, right now I’m looking at a buggered phone, a broken car window, and a fucking big lump on the back of my head, OK? You’re under arrest.’

She threw a finger at the ragged-edged hole by the caravan door. ‘What about our bloody wall?’

‘Your boyfriend did it, not me.’

She stomped her foot. ‘But I’m pregnant!’

‘I didn’t do that either.’

Stacy glared down at him for a moment, then dropped her eyes again. ‘We…Maybe we could come to some sort of understanding?’ Twirling her fingers through the ends of her damp hair. ‘You know, as we didn’t have anything to do with that jewellers got knocked over?’

‘Soon as Danny knew I was CID he tried to do a runner, and you tried to cave my head in.’ Logan took another mouthful of hot sweet tea. ‘Doesn’t matter if you raided Henderson’s or not, you’ve been up to something: we’ll find out what down the station. Now, I want your full name and address.’

‘It was…’ She coughed. The snow was getting heavier, beginning to settle on her bleached hair. ‘We had to borrow some money for the roof on the steading. The people…well, they’re not regulated by the FSA, if you know what I mean?’

‘I’ll get your last name when we process you anyway. Might as well save the extra six months on your sentence.’

‘Danny’s a bit behind on his payments, OK? These guys don’t come round and repossess your telly, they repossess your kneecaps.’

Logan looked up at Stacy. Standing there in the snow, with the security light behind her, she had a glowing halo of little sparkly flecks, like an angel who’d forgotten to use a condom. ‘Names.’

‘OK, OK. Jesus…Stacy Gardner. You happy now?’ She folded her arms over her swollen belly, muttering, ‘Fascist Nazi bastard.’

‘No, the people you borrowed money off: what — were — their — names?’

‘Oh…Right. I…ahem…don’t really know.’

‘Fine.’ Logan stood. ‘Stacy Gardner, I’m arresting you for assaulting a police officer-’

‘I don’t know, OK? Danny sorted it all out.’

After being outside in the snow, the caravan was cosy and steamy, the gas heater hissing away to itself. Logan tried to shut the door behind him, struggling to get it into the buckled frame. Danny was hunched over the little kitchen sink, face down in the soapy water.

Stacy pulled off her thick-rimmed glasses and wiped them on the hem of her hoodie. Then slapped her fiance on the back. ‘Danny, tell him about the blokes you got the money off.’

He rose from the basin, dripping wet, his red face covered with soapy bubbles. His eyes were still scrunched up, all pink and swollen, but he did a swift scan around the room before saying anything. ‘You ken whit these guys are like, I can’t-’

She hit him again. ‘Do you want to see me in prison, is that what you want?’

‘But they’ll-’

‘Your pregnant girlfriend, in handcuffs?’

‘Stacy, love, we-’

‘Sharing a cell with some junkie lesbian scumbag?’

‘But-’

‘God, I hate you!’ She turned her back and stomped over to the hole in the wall, making the whole caravan rock on its windy-down legs.

‘Come on, Pooks, don’t be like that…’

Her shoulders came up. ‘Don’t you “Pooks” me.’

Danny turned his swollen squint on Logan. ‘I dinna know their names. Got introduced by a friend of a friend.’

Logan held up the handcuffs again. ‘No deal.’

‘Honest, I dinna remember, it’s-’

‘How’s the face?’ Logan stepped forward and peered at the bright-pink skin. ‘Looks sore.’

Shrug. ‘Soapy water’s helping, but it-’

Logan reached out, placed the back of his thumbnail against Danny’s cheek, then raked it downwards.

‘What the hell was that…?’ Danny’s swollen eyes bugged, he gasped, then went, ‘AAAAAAAAAAGH!’ Clutching his hand over the new scarlet line down his face. Deep breath. ‘AAAAAAAAAAGH!’

He plunged his head back into the sink, sending soap suds spattering up the walls, across the working surface, and out onto the carpet. Gurgling and glubbing.

Stacy turned, sniffed, then thumped herself down on the bench by the table. ‘Serves you right.’

‘Burns, doesn’t it?’ Logan settled back against the wall. ‘That’s why you’re not supposed to rub — it opens up the capillaries and lets the capsicum oil in. Disco inferno.’

Danny surfaced, dragged in a deep breath, then dived in again.

Logan grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him out. ‘Who loaned you the money?’

‘My face…’

‘You’re a Christian, right Danny? Feel like turning the other cheek?’ Logan held his thumb up again.

‘NO! No…I’ll…It was these two new blokes with posh accents, Angus Black put us on till them, they was in the snug at Dodgy Pete’s-’

‘Names, Danny, Mr Thumb’s getting itchy again.’

‘Gallagher and Yates, that’s all I know, I didn’t get first names, please it-’

Logan let go and he splooshed into the sink again, sending another mini tidal wave crashing to the carpet.

Stacy folded her arms under her swollen breasts. ‘And if you think I’m cleaning that up, Danny Saunders, you’ve got another think coming!’

Logan looked around for something to dry his hands on, but all the tea towels smelled of yoghurt. ‘He’d better be telling the truth, or I’ll be back for the pair of you, understand?’

Stacy just stuck her nose in the air.

Logan let himself out.

He hauled the car up onto the pavement behind a dented blue skip overflowing with battered kitchen cabinets, swathes of plaster, and a stained mattress. A streetlight washed the road in sulphur-yellow light. Like God had peed on everything.

The back of Logan’s head stung if he touched it, and throbbed when he didn’t. It felt as if there was a rat gnawing on the back of his eyeballs with sharp little teeth.

He clambered out into the cold, dark night. No point locking the car. A: there was nothing there worth stealing, not even the car. B: the passenger-side window was missing. C: it was a piece of crap, ancient, brown Fiat, and if anyone was stupid enough to nick it, they’d be doing him a favour.

Fat snowflakes drifted down in a slow-motion ballet. When they touched the tarmac they disappeared into off-brown sludge, but it wouldn’t be long before they started to lie and the whole city ground to a standstill.

He turned up his collar and lurched up the street through the snow.

Bucksburn was one of those strange little self-contained areas of Aberdeen, stranded out on the north-east corner of the city, on the end of Auchmill Road. The kind of place people from Blackburn, Kemnay, and Inverurie drove through on their way to a long delay at the Haudagain roundabout.

This side of the dual carriageway was lined with little shops, most of them closed for the evening. The lights flickered off in a newsagents as he passed, the owner rattling down the security grill over the window. A few doors down, the smell of garlic, frying onions and sesame oil wafted out from a Chinese takeaway. Logan’s emptied stomach growled.

A little alleyway led between two of the shops. He lifted the catch on a wrought iron gate and stepped into orange-tainted gloom, feet squelching through puddles of slush. A light was fixed to the wall above his head, but it couldn’t seem to muster much beyond a faint glow.

He skirted a cluster of wheelie bins, past a featureless metal door with reggae music thumping out from somewhere inside, and turned the corner.

The pub sitting at the end of the alleyway wasn’t called Dodgy Pete’s. Not officially anyway. The sign above the chipped red door said ‘THE BURNING BUCK’, complete with a demonic Monarch of the Glen illustration.

Logan pushed through into the muggy interior.

At least it wasn’t one of those places where everyone stopped talking and turned to stare when someone new entered. No one in Dodgy Pete’s cared.

It was a traditional, old-fashioned Scottish pub: cracked vinyl seats; a dart board; a puggy machine in the corner, flickering away to itself; a cigarette machine with an ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign Sellotaped to it; a short wooden bar; and a smell of stale beer and damp dog.

Logan levered himself up onto a barstool. ‘Quiet tonight, Pete?’

The barman looked up from the copy of Private Eye he was reading. Grunted. His chest-length white beard was flecked with little grey streaks of cigarette ash, the hair around his wide mouth stained a dirty yellow. Large nose with red veins capering around the tip, a shock of unruly white hair. Half-moon spectacles. He looked like Santa Claus after a particularly nasty divorce.

‘Usual?’ He was already reaching for the Stella tap.

Logan licked his lips.

Prove it. Go a week without getting hammered every night.

The DIs are fed up with you complaining all the time and stinking of booze.

Maybe you’re angry with her because you think she’s right.

Damn.

‘Make it a fresh orange and lemonade. Pint.’

Pete raised a snowy eyebrow. ‘Oh…you’re on duty.’ He shuffled off to get the drink.

Logan turned his back to the bar, scanning the low room. A couple of old men were slumped over a game of dominos by the fire, a young woman in a Royal Bank of Scotland uniform was getting herself outside a pint of Guinness and a packet of prawn cocktail while a bloke in a soggy hoodie tried to chat her up. No sign of Danny Saunders’s friend.

‘Angus Black about?’

Pete squirted lemonade from the gun into a pint glass. ‘What you reckon to Scotland’s chances in Antigua then? Daz says three nil, but you know what he’s like.’

‘I need to have a word.’

‘Three nil. Pffff. Daz wouldn’t know his cock from a bicycle pump if he didn’t keep yanking the damn thing.’

‘What about two posh-sounding blokes: Gallagher and Yates? Supposed to be new in town?’

‘Caught him having a tug in the ladies’ bog last week.’

Logan swung back round to the bar. ‘Come on Pete, I just want to talk to Angus. Nothing serious, just a quick word.’

The big man stuck the glass in front of Logan, foam dripping down the side. ‘I mean, Daz is OK, you know, for a registered sex offender, but…’ He shrugged.

‘Got anything for a headache?’

Pete stuck his hand under the bartop and came out with a small blue packet, placed it next to the glass.

Logan reached for his wallet, but Pete gave him a broad smile.

‘Nah, on the house, Officer.’

And in the mirror behind the bar, Logan saw a man framed in the open doorway to the gents freeze — eyes wide — then disappear back into the toilets. Angus Black.

Logan took a sip, then knocked back a couple of Pete’s paracetamol. ‘Bog windows still got bars on them?’

Another shrug.

Logan picked up a beer mat and stuck it on top of his pint glass. Then turned and wandered across the sticky linoleum to the sign marked ‘BUCKS’. Stopped for a moment outside. Then pushed the door open.