Shatter the Bones

Chapter 50

Every step’s like someone’s jamming burning ice into her feet, but she grits her teeth and swallows the screams down, keeping them deep inside where they can boil and shake.

Mummy holds a finger up to her lips and makes a ssssssssshing noise. Then opens the door slow and quiet. It’s another room, all covered in scribbles and paint like the one they had to stay in, but there’s no bed, just a bunch more doors. She marches over to one on the far side.

Jenny wipes her damp eyes with her grubby sleeve, takes a deep wobbly breath and shuffles after her. The bandage on her left foot’s soggy, like she’s stepped in a puddle of tomato sauce, every step leaving a smeared footprint on the dirty carpet.

And it hurts.

‘Come on, baby; nearly there; who’s Mummy’s good little girl?’

Good Little Girl. She’s a Good Little Girl.

Jenny stops for a moment, breath hissing in and out between her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Mummy tries the door, then says a bad word. She grabs the handle and twists it left and right, pulls, snarls, shakes it back and forward. Then steps back and gives the door a kick with her bare foot.

She tries another door. Locked. And another. It’s locked too. ‘You BASTARD!’ Mummy slams her hand into the wood and it BOOMs around the dark, smelly room.

Then a cold metal voice rattles in the shadows. ‘Come on, I mean: you’ve got to be fucking kidding, right?’ A monster steps out of the gloom, his white suit glowing as he moves into a beam of sunlight. His name badge says ROGER. ‘Like I’m going to leave the place unlocked so you can just walk out? How thick do you think I am, Alison?’

Mummy turns and flattens herself against the door. ‘You have to let us go.’

‘I have to do fuck all.’ He holds up a shiny thing. It takes Jenny a moment to realize it’s a big knife. ‘Now, are you going to get back in your room like a good little girl, or do I have to drag you back there in bits?’

Logan grabbed the handle above the passenger door as Rennie threw the car into a hard left, the Vauxhall’s back end drifting out as they jumped the lights onto George Street. A white van blared its horn, an old lady in a Mini made wanking gestures.

‘Repeat, we need a firearms team out at Farburn Industrial Estate, Stoneywood ASAP.’

‘Hud oan…’

There was a click, a pause, and then Finnie’s voice boomed out of the Airwave handset. ‘What’s going on?’

Logan told him about the photograph from Davina Pearce’s wall.

‘And you think that’s enough to get a fi rearms team scurrying-’

‘I’m telling you, it’s the exact same room from the video- Watch out for the bus!’

‘You sure I can’t use the siren?’ The car jerked out into the middle of the road and back again. Shops and taxis and lorries and people blurred past the passenger window.

‘Look, it’s half-seven: we’ve got less than five hours till the deadline. If they’re-’

‘Hold on.’ The line went quiet. And then Finnie was back: ‘This better not be another wild goose chase like Stephen Clayton.’

‘Tell you what: if it is you’ve got my resignation on your desk first thing tomorrow.’ Not as if he was throwing much away with that one.

Another pause. ‘Deal. A fi rearms team is on its way.’

‘How about that one?’ Rennie pointed through the wind-screen at a disused mini-warehouse.

Logan compared it to the photograph. ‘Keep going.’

The pool car kerb-crawled its way through the industrial estate. That was the trouble with somewhere like this at quarter to eight on a Wednesday evening — almost every single building looked deserted: everything closed up and dark, chain-link fences and padlocked gates.

The purple-black clouds had spread across the sky, a faint drizzle specked the car windows, a rainbow arcing over the massive, ugly, abandoned 1970s-style complex of concrete and glass that used to house BP.

‘Charlie Delta Twelve, this is Foxtrot Tango Two … where the hell are you?’

Logan thumbed the button. ‘Wellheads Road. Still looking for the target unit.’

‘Turning onto Riverview Drive now.’ The voice on the other end dropped to a whisper. ‘Word to the wise: we’ve got that SOCA tosser following in a car with DS Taylor, Steel, and Finnie. Just so you know.’

Steel and Green in a car together — poor bloody Doreen, there was no way that would end well.

Rennie took a left, down a little road between two hulking warehouses. ‘You know, Guv, we could always engineer a wee incident where someone accidentally shoots Green in the bollocks. In all the confusion.’

‘Don’t tempt me… There!’ Logan smacked his hand on the dashboard. ‘There: the one with the green roof!’

It even had the tree growing through the fence.

A big faded sign was bolted to the front of the building, ‘CAMBERTOOLS? THE DOWNHOLE E.O.R. SOLUTION SPECIALISTS’. The bottom floor was harled in dirty grey; a couple of boarded-up windows stared blindly out into the rubbish-strewn car park. The upper floor was clad in the same green corrugated iron as the roof, the paint chipped and peeling in places, stained with seagull droppings. The big warehouse door wore a dirt-streaked sign, ‘CONDEMNED BUILDING. NO ENTRY’. The one on the fence read, ‘WARNING: THIS SITE PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’.

‘Foxtrot Tango Two, we have a winner.’ Logan gave the firearms team directions then told Rennie to park fifty yards down the street, behind a locked-up burger van.

‘What now?’ Rennie massaged the steering wheel. ‘We go charging in like the A-team, beat up all the bad guys, rescue Alison and Jenny.’

He sat up straight, eyes shining. ‘Cool! We can-’

Logan hit him. ‘Don’t be a prick. We wait for the firearms team, we set up a perimeter, and we figure out how to get the hostages out without killing anyone. What’s wrong with you?’

‘Well, it… Ahem…’ He turned off the engine. ‘Yes, Guv.’ Three minutes later a filthy, unmarked Transit van growled into sight. It drifted to a halt in front of the pool car and a plainclothes officer grinned and waved through the wind-shield at Logan. ‘Aye, aye. Nice day for a shoot-out?’

‘You know what’s going to happen if Finnie hears you, don’t you, Brian?’

An unmarked Vauxhall pulled up on the other side of the road. The grin disappeared from Brian’s face. ‘Speak of the Devil.’

Logan climbed out of the pool car and hurried over to the back of the Transit van, keeping the burger van between himself and the Cambertools industrial unit. Finnie, Green, and Steel got out of the other car. Doreen stayed behind, waiting until her passengers weren’t looking before bouncing her head off the steering wheel.

The man from SOCA stuck his chest out, then snapped his fingers. ‘Situation Report?’

You’re a wanker. Logan pointed at the industrial unit. ‘We think that’s where they shot the video after amputating Jenny McGregor’s toes.’

‘I see. And you haven’t ascertained if the suspects are in the building yet?’

Steel twisted her e-cigarette on and set it dangling from the corner of her mouth. ‘When exactly were they meant to do that? They only got here a minute before us. Want to whinge about how we’re no’ psychic enough now?’

‘I’m getting pretty bloody tired of your attitude, Inspector.’

‘You’ve moaned about everything else.’ She sent a plume of fake cigarette smoke his way.

‘Was fi ve minutes too much to ask for?’ Finnie looked at the sky for a moment, then back to earth. ‘DI McRae, I want a risk analysis: what’s the layout of the building, where are the points of entry and exit, where are our victims likely to be held, how many targets are we looking at, what kind of weapons are they likely to-’

‘We don’t have time for this.’ Green unbuttoned his jacket, slipped it off, and thrust it at Logan. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest underneath, and a shoulder holster.

‘Shouldn’t we-’

‘Cover me!’ The superintendent pulled a snub-nosed semi-automatic from his holster and ran in a crouch towards the padlocked gates.

‘Come back here!’ Finnie’s eyes bugged, his mouth crimped into an angry cat’s bum as Green kept on going. ‘Who gave him a bloody gun?’

A clink and Green was through the gates, heading for the main doors.

‘Oh you silly bastard…’ Logan dumped the tailored jacket on the damp road and banged on the side of the Transit van. ‘OPEN UP!’ He stuck his head around the side. ‘RENNIE!’

‘On it, Guv.’

The van’s back doors popped open and a sweaty fire-arms-trained officer wheezed out into the light drizzle. He was dressed from head to toe in black, from his heavy-duty steel-toecapped boots to his thick bulletproof vest and crash helmet, a submachine gun dangling on a strap around his neck. ‘Bloody roasting in there.’

‘Give me your sidearm.’ Logan stuck his hand out.

The man in black backed off a step. ‘What?’

‘Give me your gun!’

He unholstered his Glock, a chunky rectangular thing that smelled of warm oil and plastic, holding it close to his chest. ‘Erm… Actually, I had to sign for this, so-’

Logan grabbed it. Ejected the clip. It was full, so he slid it back into the handgrip and hauled the slide back, racking the first round into the breach.

Finnie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘DI McRae, what exactly do you think you’re doing? We need a plan, a strategy!’

Rennie puffed his way around the side of Foxtrot Tango Two, holding a pair of heavy black vests covered in pockets. ‘Only got stab-proof, that OK?’

‘It’ll have to be…’

‘DI McRae!’

Logan pulled one of the vests on over his suit jacket. ‘If he goes in on his own he’ll get killed. If we’re lucky. If we’re not, he’ll take Alison and Jenny with him.’

‘We’re not in the business of throwing good idiots after bad! You can’t-’

‘You! Give Rennie your MP5.’

The firearms officer pouted. ‘But then I won’t have any-’

‘Now!’

He held out his submachine gun and Rennie snatched it from his hands. ‘You’ve cleaned this, right? Better not jam.’

‘Inspector McRae, do you actually think this-’

‘What choice have we got? We go in, we grab him, and we drag him back out here before he sods everything up. We don’t engage the targets, we don’t pull any heroics — we stop Green.’ Logan looked around the side of the Transit. Green was flattening himself against the wall beside the industrial unit’s front door. ‘Oh, Christ: the moron really does think he’s on telly…’

Rennie hauled back the slide on his Heckler amp; Koch MP5. ‘Ready when you are, Guv.’

The head of CID shook his head, then turned and marched back towards his car. ‘Sergeant McIver: I want a tactical briefing, and I want it now!’

Logan ran for the abandoned industrial unit, Rennie clattering along behind him.