Dying Light

42

The ambulance’s cold blue light swept the tarmac, reflecting back off the windows of parked cars and houses lining the bottom end of Holburn Street. Curtains had been twitching ever since the first shot rang out, but now the residents stood with them fully open, silhouetted against their bedroom lights, staring down at the car and the ambulance and the dying policeman.

Jackie sat on the bonnet of the bullet-pockmarked Fiat, slapping a paramedic’s hand away as he waved a finger back and forth in front of her face, trying to figure out if she had concussion or not. ‘I’m fine! Leave me the fuck alone.’

Steve was being hurriedly strapped into a stretcher, drips going into his arm, oxygen mask on his face, a huge wad of compression bandages sticking up from his chest. They hefted him into the back of the ambulance, then the doors slammed shut, the siren yowled into life and the driver put his foot down, taking the quickest route to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

Logan was still on the phone to FHQ, getting them to set up roadblocks on every road south from Aberdeen. Chib would ditch the car first chance he got — a silver Mercedes with a smashed front windscreen was hardly inconspicuous — so the teams were to look for two tall men with Edinburgh accents, one with short blond hair, the other with long dark hair and a moustache. Both to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. That done he hung up and dialled DI Insch’s number — not wanting to face Steel right now. He wanted backup from someone that actually trusted him.

‘Any luck?’ asked Jackie as Logan finished the call.

‘Not happy about being woken up at half two in the morning, but he’s on his way.’ Logan rubbed at his face with tired hands. The adrenaline rush of being shot at was ebbing away, leaving him exhausted and feeling sick. ‘He’s going to call the Chief Constable and let him know about Steve.’ God it was going to be a mess: another policeman shot on the streets of Aberdeen — there would have to be press conferences, briefings, meetings, updates, more meetings... none of which would help PC Steve Jacobs. ‘What did the ambulance crew say?’

‘Not much. Lot of swearing...’ She hung her head and sighed. ‘Bastard.’

Logan had to agree. ‘What we need to...’ He drifted to a halt, as a fresh siren cut through the night. ‘Here we go.’ Alpha Two Seven pulled up on the other side of the road and a pair of uniformed constables clambered out, wanting to know what had happened. They stared in silence at the blood slick on the tarmac, while Logan brought them up to speed then ordered them to seal off the street and call for an IB team. The whole scene would need to be bagged and tagged.

News was travelling fast. Another three patrol cars arrived in as many minutes, the police men and women looking pale and shocked as they heard about PC Steve. All except for WPC Buchan who wore a superior ‘I told you so’ expression, muttering to anyone who’d listen that this was just like what happened to PC Maitland and wasn’t it a HUGE coincidence that DS McRae was in charge both times? But Logan was too tired and too pissed off not to bite: ‘You! Get your arse over here NOW!’

WPC Buchan straightened up and marched across the road, standing in close with cold, ugly eyes. ‘Yes... Sergeant?’

Logan prodded her in the shoulder, speaking through gritted teeth. ‘You got something to say? Have you, Constable? Come on then, let’s hear it! Nice and loud so everyone can hear what you’ve got to say.’ She stared up at him, her whole face tightening around her scrunched-up mouth. Logan let the pause grow before lowering his voice to a growl. ‘Just because your boyfriend is screwing around behind your back you will not take your shit out on me. Understand?’

She went bright red. ‘That’s got nothing... he’s not... I—’

‘Steve Jacobs is my friend and I’ve got enough to worry about trying to catch the bastard that shot him without having to deal with YOU!’

‘But I—’

‘Get your arse back in that patrol car and keep it there.’

WPC Buchan spun around, looking for support, but suddenly everyone was busy doing something else, anything else. She turned back to find Logan looming over her. ‘I am ordering you off my crime scene, Constable. You can expect a written complaint about your behaviour and attitude.’ He leaned forward so their faces were almost touching. ‘Now get out of my sight.’

‘What do you mean there’s no sign of them? There has to be!’ Logan marched back and forth across the road, not paying any attention to his surroundings, forcing the IB team to scuttle around him as they photographed ejected shell casings and bloodstains. ‘Are they stopping every car?’ The harassed woman on the other end of the phone said yes they were, and searching every boot too because, believe it or not, they had actually done this kind of thing before! Logan apologized and hung up. They were getting nowhere fast. Every major road was blocked, and most of the little side routes too. Not an easy task in farming country where minor roads criss-crossed the landscape, knitting tiny clusters of farm and residential buildings together. There were hundreds of possible routes south, as long as you knew where you were going. But the chances of a big-city Edinburgh boy like Chib being familiar with the road layout of Lower Deeside were slim. He would be a dual carriageway kind of guy.

‘Where the hell are they?’ Logan stopped pacing and stood looking down at Jackie — curled up in the passenger seat of an empty patrol car, mouth open, snoring softly. She was filthy, her face black with soot, smears of Steve’s blood on her cheeks, more on her uniform, an egg-sized lump above her left eye where she’d banged her head on the wall. Logan sighed: there wasn’t anything else they could do tonight. The roadblocks would either catch Chib and his mate or they wouldn’t. And if they made it as far as Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders Police would pick the pair of them up and return them to Aberdeen for questioning and trial. Chib had screwed up big time: he’d been involved in the shooting of a police officer and left witnesses. Not even Malk the Knife could make that disappear.

‘What the hell happened?’ Chib was shouting, gripping the steering wheel in both hands, trembling with rage. ‘I give you one simple fucking task...’ He let go of the wheel and slapped the cowering figure in the passenger seat who squealed in pain. ‘Where the fuck did the police come from?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ Greg wrapped his arms around his head, crying, but Chib hit him again anyway, knowing he’d feel bad about it afterwards. He always did. Swearing, he dragged the van into a quiet-looking cul-de-sac and killed the engine, sitting in furious silence as it pinged and clunked. He’d really loved that Mercedes, but by now it was little more than a burning hulk, abandoned and torched on a dirt track on the South Deeside Road.

Gritting his teeth, Chib took a deep, deep breath and counted to ten. This wasn’t Greg’s fault... ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘I’m sorry I hit you. That was wrong of me. I was upset, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’ He reached over and patted his passenger on the arm. ‘Now, can you tell me what happened?’

Greg shifted in his seat, wiping his runny nose on the back of his sleeve. ‘I was... I was in the house and everything was going great: I did the old woman’s front door with the screws and I poured in the petrol and I heard something on the stairs! There was two of them and they shouted at me and I tried to get away, but one of them hit me in the knee and it really hurt and she was all over me and hitting and kicking and biting and I kicked her back and ran away and set fire to the stairs and ran outside and called you...’

Chib patted him on the knee. ‘You did good, Greg, you did good.’ And Greg’s whole face lit up, happy that Chib wasn’t angry at him any more. ‘How did they know you were there? Did they follow you to the building?’

‘I looked! I did! But there wasn’t anyone I could see.’

Chib scowled. It was that bastard DS McRae again — he’d recognized him jumping out of the car, just before that grubby bitch broke the Merc’s windscreen. Bloody DS McRae. A small smile fluttered across his lips. The police would expect him to go south: get out of Aberdeen and back to his home turf as quickly as possible. But instead they were going to head north, go up round Inverness then down the west coast, past Oban, through Glasgow and back to Edinburgh. If he put his foot down they could be back home before the pubs shut tomorrow. But there was something he wanted to do first.

Get even.