‘All right, that’s enough.’ Detective Chief Inspector Finnie slammed his hand down on the table at the front of the little briefing room, then glared at the assembled officers, waiting for quiet. With his floppy hair, jowls, and wide rubbery lips he looked like a frog caught in the act of turning into a not particularly attractive prince.
‘Thanks to last night’s sterling work by Team Three,’ he said, ‘the press have somehow got the idea that we’re all a bunch of bloody idiots.’ He held up a copy of that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner, the headline ‘POLICE SHOOT UNARMED WOMAN IN BUNGLED RAID’ was stretched across the front page.
Sitting at the back of the room, Logan shifted uneasily in his chair. The first operation he’d been involved in for six months and it was ‘Bungled’. A cock-up. Fiasco. Complete and utter sodding disaster. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault – he wasn’t even the Lead Firearms Officer.
He let his eyes drift to the clock on the wall behind DCI Finnie. Twenty to eight. He’d spent half the night up at the hospital, and the other half filling in paperwork: trying to explain how they’d accidentally managed to shoot a civilian. Right now he was operating on two hours’ sleep and three cups of coffee.
Finnie slapped the newspaper down on the desk. ‘I had the Chief Constable on the phone for two hours this morning, wanting to know why my oh-so-professional officers are incapable of carrying out a simple forced entry without casualties.’ He paused for an unpleasant smile. ‘Was I too vague at the briefing? Did I have a senior moment and say you could shoot anyone you felt like? Did I? Because the only other alternative I can think of is that you’re all a bunch of useless morons, and that can’t be right, can it?’
No one answered.
Finnie nodded. ‘Thought so. Well, you’ll all be delighted to know that we’ll be getting an internal enquiry from Professional Standards. Starting soon as we’ve finished here.’
That got a collective groan from the whole team, all twelve of them.
‘Oh shut up. You think you’ve got it bad? What about the poor woman lying in intensive care with a bullet in her?’ He glanced in Logan’s direction. ‘DS McRae: Superintendent Napier wants you first. Please, do us all a favour and make-believe you’re a policeman for once. OK? Can you do that for me? Pretty please?’
There was a moment’s silence as everyone looked the other way. Logan could feel his face going pink. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘And when you’re finished there, you’re on chauffeur duty. Maybe that’ll keep you out of trouble for a while. Next slide.’ Finnie nodded at his sidekick – a stick-thin detective sergeant with ginger hair like rusty wire wool – and the image on screen changed. An unremarkable man’s face: mid-twenties, grinning at the camera in a pub somewhere. ‘This is victim number five: Lubomir Podwojski.’
Another nod and the photo changed. Nearly everyone in the room swore. The happy face was gone, replaced by the battered nightmare Logan had seen last night. The eyes just two tattered holes ringed with scorched tissue.
Someone said, ‘Jesus…’
Finnie tapped the screen. ‘Take a good, long look, ladies and gentlemen – because this is going to happen again, and again, until we catch the bastard doing it.’ He left the man’s ruined face up there for a whole minute. ‘Next slide.’
Podwojski disappeared, replaced by a letter with lots of different fonts in lots of different colours. ‘It arrived this morning.’
You let them in!!! YOU let them in and they RUN WILD LIKE DOGS. These Polish animals take our jobs. They take our women. They have even taken our God! And you do nothing.
Someone must fight for what is right.
I will do what I have to. I will BLIND them all, like I BLINDED the last one! And YOU will WADE in the burning blood of wild dogs!!!
Finnie held up a collection of clear plastic evidence bags, each one containing its own little laser-printed message of hate. ‘Five victims; five phone calls; eight notes. I want you all to read the profile again. I’ve got Doctor Goulding coming in at three to update it with the new victim, and it might be nice if we can give him some input that makes us sound like we actually have a clue what we’re doing. Don’t you think?’
Meeting with Professional Standards was about as much fun as getting a tooth removed without anaesthetic. Superintendent Napier – the man in charge of screwing over his fellow officers the minute anything went wrong – droned on and on and on and on, letting Logan know exactly how half-baked and unprofessional Team Three had been during last night’s raid. And somehow that was all Logan’s fault … just because he was a Detective Sergeant and Guthrie was a mere Police Constable with a staple in his newly broken nose.
After two hours of having to explain every mistake he’d made for the last seven months, Logan was free to go. He stomped down the stairs, muttering and swearing his way out through the back doors and into the morning. Going to pick up a car so he could enjoy the privilege of ferrying DCI Finnie about.
The rear podium car park behind FHQ was a little sun-trap full of banished smokers sucking enough nicotine into their lungs to keep them going for another half hour. Logan worked his way through the crowd, making for the fleet of CID pool cars.
Bloody Finnie.
Bloody Finnie and Bloody Superintendent Napier.
And Bloody Grampian Bloody Police.
Maybe Napier was right? Maybe it was time to ‘consider alternative career options’. Anything had to be better than this.
‘Hoy, Laz, where do you think you’re going?’
Damn.
He turned to find Detective Inspector Steel slouched against the Chief Constable’s brand-new Audi, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, big wax-paper cup of coffee resting on the car’s bonnet. Her hair looked as if it had been styled by a drunken gorilla – which was an improvement on yesterday. She tilted her face to the sun, letting her wrinkles bask in the glow of a glorious summer’s morning. ‘Hear you had a spot of bother last night…?’
‘Don’t start, OK? I got enough of that from Napier this morning.’
‘And how is everyone’s favourite champion of Professional Standards?’
‘He’s a ginger-haired cock.’ Logan stared at the shiny blue Audi. ‘Chief Constable’s going to kill you if he finds out you’re using his pride and joy as a coffee table.’
‘Don’t change the subject. What did Napier say?’
‘The usual: I’m crap. My performance is crap. And everything I touch turns to crap.’
DI Steel took a long draw on her cigarette and produced her own private smokescreen. ‘Have to admit he’s got a point with the “turning to crap” thing. No offence, like.’
‘Thanks. Thanks a lot. That’s really nice.’
‘Ah, don’t be so sensitive. You’re having a bad patch, it happens. No’ the end of the world, is it?’
‘Seven months isn’t a “bad patch”, it’s a—’
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s your lucky day: you get to accompany me on a tour of local primary schools. Some dirty old git’s been trying to lure kiddies into his car with the promise of puppies and assorted sweeties.’
‘Can’t today,’ said Logan, backing away, ‘got to go visit the hospital and speak to our latest Oedipus victim, and that woman we—’
‘Shot?’
‘It was an accident,