Bloody hell.
Logan glanced at her, then back at the road.
Some people should watch what they wish for.
‘You sure this is a good idea?’ Logan looked around the living room, trying to find somewhere even vaguely clean to sit.
The sound of a dog scrabbling at the kitchen door, claws raking the other side of the wood. Deep growls and the occasional outraged bark.
‘I’m not supposed to take a kid into care unless there’s no other option.’ Lucy Woods picked a CD from the littered coffee table, the shiny surface glittering in the overhead light. ‘If we can place them with a member of the family we will. Means the kid doesn’t get dragged through the system.’
‘Yeah, but…’ Logan lifted his foot, but the carpet didn’t want to let go.
‘Trisha’s mum might not be perfect, but at least she’s blood.’ The social worker wrinkled her nose and dropped the CD back into the mess. ‘Fleetwood Mac.’
A voice at the door behind them: ‘What the fuck’s wrong with Fleetwood Mac?’
Lucy Woods snapped on a smile. ‘Hi Helen. He go off to sleep OK?’
‘What she do this time?’ Helen Brown lurched into the room, swigging from a tin of Tennent’s Super, one leg stiff at the knee. Her face was every bit as thin as her daughter’s, the same dark hollows under her bloodshot eyes, the same yellowy teeth spaced wide in pale gums. Pupils the size of pinpricks.
She was wearing a pale-grey long-sleeved T-shirt, tugging the cuffs down every time she looked in Logan’s direction. Probably hiding the trackmarks.
He shifted away from the sticky patch. ‘She’s just helping us with an investigation.’
Trisha’s mum howched, picked up a scummy mug and spat into it. ‘Hooring, or drugs?’
‘I can’t—’
‘You fucks is all the same.’ Another swig of extra-strong lager. ‘Hassling folk doing no harm to no one.’ A dribble of liquid ran down her chin, dripped and made a clay-coloured stain on the long-sleeved T-shirt. ‘Fuck is it to you if she’s making a few quid down the docks? Not like she’s robbing auld wifies’ pensions, is it?’
The social worker cleared her throat. ‘So, Helen, how are you coping? Doing OK?’
‘You fuckers should be out there!’ She jabbed a finger at the closed curtains. ‘Looking for that wee girl and her mum. Not arresting my Trisha for giving someone a blowjob!’
‘There was a drugs raid and—’
‘What, she wouldn’t give you a freebie, so you banged her up? You make me sick! Fucking country’s going to shit and it’s bastards like you dragging it there!’ She tipped the tin of lager to her mouth, glugging it down.
‘—in accident and emergency for observation.’
Helen Brown scrunched the can up and threw it across the room. It bounced off Logan’s chest. ‘What, you going to arrest me too? That’s about your fucking speed, isn’t it? Arrest the victims, when there’s illegal Paki bastards living two doors up, shitting in the street and stealing my fucking washing!’
Logan brushed the droplets of pale yellow liquid from his jacket. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’
7
‘Mmph…?’ Logan peered out from beneath the duvet. The alarm clock radio stared back at him. He fumbled with the buttons on the top, but it didn’t stop the noise.
Sat up.
Phone.
It was his mobile, in his jacket pocket, hanging on the back of the chair in the corner, warbling the Danse macabre at him.
God’s sake … He hauled it out and squinted at the glowing screen: ‘DI STEEL’
Logan stabbed his thumb onto the button. ‘What the hell do you want?’
There was a pause. ‘You know what costs sod-all in this life, Laz? A smile; a thank you; and my boot up your arse, you rude little—’
‘What – do – you – want?’
‘Well seeing as the little hand is on the nine, and the big hand is on the twelve, what I want is you at bloody work!’
He slumped back on the bed, spreadeagled like a pasty starfish, the scars on his chest and stomach puckered and angry. ‘I only just got home from bloody work.’ A yawn drowned out whatever the inspector said next. Logan shuddered.
‘—round like a sodding mentalist. When—’
‘Had to pull an all-nighter. Finnie lumbered me with McPherson’s drug busts; was stuck interviewing a smackhead called Shaky Jake till nearly eight this morning. So I’m going back to bed.’
‘You’ve no’ seen the papers this morning, have you.’ Not a question.
‘I don’t care.’ He dragged the duvet back into place, covering himself. ‘It’s my day off.’
‘Your mate Hudson’s a no show.’
‘Who the hell is … Oh.’ Dr Hudson – the pathologist. ‘How’s that my fault?’
‘Finnie’s going mental – he’s had three PCs in tears already, and it’s no’ even lunchtime.’
‘So get a pathologist up from Edinburgh.’ Logan nestled down into his pillow, soft and cool. Yawned again.
‘Already tried it – going to be six hours before he gets here. Meanwhile some tosser from SOCA’s turned up to “review the situation,”, and you know what that means…’
He draped an arm across his eyes. ‘It’s my day off!’
‘Now’s no’ the time to be missing in action, Laz. No’ if you don’t fancy working fraud cases for the rest of your natural. I’m serious: spreadsheets and accountants from here till retirement.’
‘But I’ve got a thing on this—’
‘Pick up something tasty on the way in, eh? And some decent coffee for a change.’
The line went dead.
The sun glared down from a pale blue sky, a few thin wisps of white making sod all difference to the harsh light. Logan trudged up Marischal Street, hands in his pockets.
Bunch of bastards. An hour: was that too much to ask for? An hour in his own bloody bed. Never mind actually getting to take some bloody time off.
High above, fat seagulls screamed and swore, spattering a rusty hatchback with stinking polka dots.
Logan came to a halt at the top of the hill, where the road joined onto the tail end of Union Street, and stared across the road. Lodge Walk – the little alley that ran between the Town House and the Sheriff Court – was choked with journalists, photographers, and TV crews. DI Bell was caught in the middle of them, a little hairy island in a sea of bastards, all shouting questions and waving cameras. Poor sod had probably been caught trying to sneak out of Force Headquarters’ secret side door.
Well, he was on his own, because there was no way Logan was wading in to help.
A newsagents lurked on one side of the Mercat Cross, the windows dulled by a thin film of dust. One of those red-and-white sandwich boards was parked out on the cobbled pedestrian area in front of the shop: ‘TORTURED JENNY LOSES TOE – POLICE POWERLESS’ printed in thick black lettering above the Aberdeen Examiner logo.
Logan hesitated for a moment, then went in. Every tabloid newspaper in the place had something similar screaming from the front page. The Sport had gone