Steel was still grumbling away, ‘Bloody Finnie; not his sodding messenger boy; I’ll give him “no’ competent”; frog-faced, arsehole-licking spunk-bucket…’
Logan tried the door again. ‘Maybe no one’s in?’
‘Aye, typical Finnie: send us all the way over here on a wild bloody goose chase. “Make yourself useful, Inspector, go check on Harry Jordan, Inspector.”’ She made the universal hand-gesture for ‘wanker’. ‘Give it one more try then we’re sodding off for lunch.’
Logan did, and a voice sounded on the other side – female, afraid, ‘Who is it?’
‘Police. Can you open the door please?’
‘I… I’m not… What’s it about?’
Steel stopped swearing and kicked the door, making the whole thing rattle. ‘Tell Harry to get his crippled arse out here. I’m having a shitty day and I’m in no mood to piss about!’
Two minutes later they were standing in the living room. Inside, the place was surprisingly spacious – three bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen, and the heart of Harry Jordan’s little criminal empire.
The lounge was shrouded in darkness, curtains closed against the sunshine, just a tatty standard lamp to break the gloom. Three painfully thin women in various stages of undress hovered in the background. Dark circles lurked beneath their eyes; it was about the only colour on their emaciated frames. Can’t be a pimp without merchandise.
Harry Jordan sat in a wheelchair in the middle of the room, both legs sticking straight out: encased in fibreglass casts from hip to ankle. The rest of him didn’t look much better – his nose looked like a squashed prune, and the purple-yellow stain of fresh bruises covered the whole left-hand side of his face. According to his police record he was only twenty-nine, but with the lank hair and spreading bald spot he looked at least forty.
‘Harry!’ Steel beamed at him. ‘A wee birdy tells me you had a falling out with Creepy Colin McLeod.’
A joint smouldered between Harry’s lips, the smell filling the lounge: a cross between sweat, herbs, and chocolate. He squinted, then let out a huge lungful of smoke. His pupils were dark and wide. ‘It’s medicinal, OK? I’m in a lot of pain…’
‘Serves you right.’ Steel settled herself down on the huge grey couch, and stuck her feet up on the coffee table.
Logan got the feeling it was his turn to play ‘Good Cop’ again. ‘We need to speak to you about Colin McLeod.’
The joint fell from Harry’s lips. ‘Aye… W…’ He looked down at the hand-rolled parcel, smouldering away on the burgundy carpet, then up at one of the stick-thin women. ‘Fuck’s wrong with you? PICK IT UP!’
She hurried forward, track marks standing out against the pale skin on her arms as she grabbed the joint and returned it to its rightful place in Harry’s trembling fingers.
Steel tutted. ‘Can’t even pick up your own spliff, Harry. Creepy really did you over, didn’t he?’
Another deep drag. Harry closed his eyes, letting the delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol ooze its way into his bloodstream. ‘Girls,’ he said, on a wave of sweet-smelling smoke, ‘leave us…’
Steel grinned. ‘What’s the matter, Harry, scared the poor cows’ll find out you’re no’ invincible after all?’ She pointed at the wheelchair. ‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’
Harry slammed his hand down on the armrest. ‘I SAID LEAVE!’
The girls hurried out and closed the door behind them. Now the only sound was Harry’s laboured breathing and some halfwit playing Whitney Houston’s Greatest Hits in the flat downstairs.
‘So,’ the inspector stretched out, knocking a pile of hardcore Swedish pornography off the coffee table with her feet, ‘Colin McLeod came round and battered the crap out your knees with a claw hammer last night? That’s gotta hurt!’
Harry just went on nursing his joint, so Logan had a go: ‘You should be in hospital where they can look after you.’
‘Fucking hospitals do my head in, Man. Checked myself out.’ Another toke. ‘’Sides, got me some painkillers and vodka, know what I mean?’ He scowled at the closed door. ‘Bitches think I’m not up to it any more. Fucking showed them though, didn’t I? Nobody screws with Harry Jordan.’
‘Except Creepy Colin McLeod.’ Steel smiled at him. ‘Why’d he do it? That tart of yours give him a dose of something? Path of true love, and all that.’
‘You want to know what happened?’ Harry finished the joint and crushed the remains out with his fingers. ‘OK… Here’s what happened. Creepy barges in here, acting the big man, ranting on about his brother’s eyes. Like I’m supposed to know something about it—’
‘Do you?’
‘Do I fuck, but try telling Creepy that. Bastard starts screaming at me and my bitches, like.’ Harry jerked his chin up, bruised face pulled into a defiant pout. ‘Couldn’t have that, could I? So I twat him one. Bang!’ He threw a right hook at thin air, then followed it up with a left. ‘Bang! Creepy goes down and he’s begging me to let him be, you know? So I says to him, I says, “You learn your lesson, Man, you don’t disrespect a guy in his own home.”’ Sniff. ‘That’s just bad manners.’
Steel applauded. ‘Bravo! God, that was better than Harry Potter that was.’
Harry shifted in his wheelchair, the whole thing squeaking as he moved. ‘You calling me a liar?’
‘Hurrah! Got it in one! You’re on fire today, Harry.’ She stuck her feet on the floor, rested her elbows on her knees, then her chin in her hands. ‘So come on then, dazzle me with your fictional prowess. If you gave Colin McLeod a spanking, how come you’re the one with two smashed knees?’
‘Gave as good as I got, OK?’ But Harry wouldn’t look at them.
‘Shhhhhure you did.’
Logan pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket – faxed over from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary that morning. ‘The orthopaedic surgeon who put your legs back together says you’re never going to be able to walk properly again. Even if they give you a pair of artificial knees, you’re always going to limp.’
Shrug. ‘Fucking doctors, what do they know?’
Steel picked up one of the fallen porno mags, flicking through it. ‘Here’s the deal, Harry: my governor’s a sarcastic frog-faced tit, with a serious stiffy for putting the McLeods behind bars. So I want you to press charges against—’
‘No!’ Harry sat bolt-upright in his wheelchair. ‘No! I’m not pressing anything!’ A shudder ran through his battered body. ‘It was an accident. I fell down the stairs. Told you – I gave Creepy a hiding, then we had a drink. Yeah, a drink. And I got wankered, fell right down the stairs.’
‘He took a hammer to your knees, Harry. Crippled you for life.’
‘I told you, it was a fucking accident.’ Harry fumbled a little metal tin from his pocket – rolling papers, loose tobacco, and a chunk of resin as big as his thumb. ‘That’s all it was, an accident.’ His fingers wouldn’t stay still long enough – a thin sheet of Rizla wafted to the carpet, little shreds of brown going everywhere as the tobacco refused to cooperate. ‘Fucking thing…’
‘Here,’ Steel stood and took the tin from him, balancing it on her knee as she laid out a couple of papers, put down a line of Old Virginia, then took a lighter to the lump of resin. A tiny curl of black smoke made its way into the expectant silence. ‘I want you to have a good hard think about who your friends are, Harry.’
She crumbled in the little dark flakes, then rolled the whole thing up, sealing the papers with her yellowy tongue. ‘Creepy