Logan screeched the pool car up onto the kerb and leapt out into the warm afternoon, shouting, ‘POLICE!’
No one paid the slightest bit of attention.
DI Steel hauled herself from the passenger seat and sparked up a cigarette, blowing out a long plume of smoke as she surveyed the scene. Six men were busy trying to beat the crap out of one other. ‘You recognize anyone?’ she asked.
They were dressed in jeans and T-shirts, all swinging punches and kicks with wild abandon. Someone would rush in, throw a fist at someone else, then retreat fast. Amateurs.
The inspector pointed at one of the combatants – an acne-riddled baboon with a bloody lip – as he took a swing at a fat bloke with a bowl haircut. ‘Him: Spotty. I’m sure I’ve done him for dealing.’
Logan tried again: ‘POLICE! BREAK IT UP!’
Someone managed to land a punch and a ragged cheer went up from the spectators.
‘I SAID BREAK IT UP!’
Steel laid a hand on Logan’s arm. ‘No’ really working, is it: the shouting?’
Logan took two steps towards the mass of flying fists and trainers. The inspector tightened her grip. ‘Don’t be an idiot – they might be a bunch of Jessies, but they’d tear you apart.’
‘We can’t just sit back and—’
‘Yes we can.’ Steel hoiked herself up onto the bonnet of the pool car, her shoes dangling a foot off the ground. ‘Come on: none of them’s got any weapons. Sit your backside down and enjoy the show. Uniform will be here soon enough with their Freudian truncheons and batter the lot of them.’ She flicked an inch of ash onto the tatty tarmac. ‘You eat that curry yet?’
‘Yeah… Had it for lunch.’
‘And?’
‘Tell Susan it was very nice. Bit spicy, but nice.’
‘You’re such a wimp. Next time I’ll get her to make you a nice girly korma.’
Another fist hit its target and this time DI Steel joined in the celebration, clapping her hands and shouting, ‘Jolly good! Well done that man! Now kick him in the goolies!’ She checked her watch. ‘Where the hell’s Uniform got to? Bunch of lazy—’
Right on cue a siren wailed in the distance, getting closer.
‘Ahoy, hoy,’ the inspector pointed across the car park at the front door of the Turf ’n Track. A large man stood on the threshold, half in shadow: mid-thirties, face like a bowl of porridge, missing a chunk of one ear, huge shoulders, a lot of muscle just starting to turn into fat. ‘Looks like the guvnor’s in. Shall we go say hello, perchance to partake in a cup of tea and a garibaldi?’
‘You’ll be lucky. Last thing Simon McLeod offered me was a stiff kicking.’
‘Watch and learn…’ She wiggled her way down from the car bonnet, then sauntered around the punch-up, hands in her pockets, whistling a jolly tune, right up to the betting shop’s front door. ‘Afternoon, Simon, how they hanging?’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Do I smell bacon?’
‘No, Chanel Number Five.’ Steel smiled sweetly. ‘Anyway, from the look of things, you smell pies.’ She stopped and poked him in the stomach. ‘Lots and lots of pies.’ She nodded back towards the brawl. ‘These your boyfriends then? Fighting over who gets to take you to the dance?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Lovely offer,’ she said, holding up her left hand with its sparkly wedding ring, ‘but my wife doesn’t like me playing with podgy gangsters.’
The first of the patrol cars appeared, slithering to a halt on the hot tarmac. Simon McLeod uncrossed his huge arms and took a couple of steps forward, shouting, ‘Get out of it, you stupid bastards: police are here!’
Spotty the Baboon turned someone’s nose from flesh and bone to blood and meat paste. The man sat down hard, and got a kick in the head for his trouble. But as soon as the first uniformed officer jumped out – extending her truncheon with a flick of the wrist – the fight started to break up.
The bright ones ran for it: Bowl Haircut and Hippy with a Limp made for the council housing estate. Tattooed Gimp sprinted back towards the roundabout. And Low-Budget Porn Star scarpered down the road, a uniformed officer chasing after him, shouting, ‘Come back here!’
Mr Meat Paste for a Nose lay on the ground, curled up in a ball with his arms protecting his head as Spotty the Baboon tried to kick him to death. The other officer from Alpha One Four waded in with her truncheon.
Logan watched Spotty fight back, before being battered into submission. Steel was right: Uniform could look after themselves.
He turned back to the doorway, expecting to see Simon McLeod still arguing with the inspector, but there was no sign of either of them. Right now McLeod was probably turning DI Steel into lesbian tartare. Logan swore, dug out his little canister of pepper-spray and hurried through the door.
Out of the sunshine and into the heart of darkness.
Inside, the Turf ’n Track was shabbier than it looked from the car park. The only natural light oozed in through the door, and even that was too scared to go more than a couple of feet over the threshold. The woodwork was black as a smoker’s lung, coated in the accumulated tar from countless cigarettes. A pair of televisions were bolted to the wall at either end of the counter, flickering away to themselves: a race meeting in Perthshire, with the sound turned off. The door to the back office was open.
Maybe Simon McLeod had dragged the inspector back there and put her out of everyone’s misery?
The linoleum floor stuck to Logan’s feet as he hurried round behind the counter and – WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?
He froze.
A deep bass growl rumbled up from somewhere to his left. The kind of growl that came with lots of teeth and ripping and tearing and running for your life. Logan turned around slowly, until he was facing an ancient-looking Alsatian, lying in a tartan dog bed. ‘Nice doggy…’ Logan frowned. ‘Wait a minute, is that…?’
Simon’s voice blared out from the back office, ‘Winchester: fuck’s sake, shut up!’
Winchester – Jesus, surely the thing was dead by now? It’d been ancient when Desperate Doug MacDuff had owned it. The dog looked in the vague direction of his new master’s voice, eyes white and rheumy. Then Winchester yawned – showing off a lot of big brown teeth – and rested his grey muzzle back down on his paws.
It wasn’t quite the scene of carnage in the back office that Logan had been expecting. A large desk sat opposite the door, beneath the mounted head of a two-tonne Rottweiler called Killer, the last known resting place of Simon McLeod’s missing half ear. A collection of girly calendars dotted the walls, some going back as far as 1987. DI Steel was flicking through them while Simon McLeod made two mugs of tea.
‘Bloody hell,’ she said, peering at Miss March 1996, ‘this one’s got nipples like champagne corks. Could hang your coat on those.’
Simon handed her a mug. ‘Milk, two sugars.’
‘Ooh, ta.’ She took an experimental sip. ‘So, Simon … why are a bunch of drug dealers having a barney outside your shop?’
‘No idea what you’re talking about.’
‘No?’ Steel scratched her head. ‘What a strange coincidence. You see, a little birdie told me there was a gang of Eastern Europeans trying to muscle in on your territory.’
‘I don’t have a “territory”, I’m a legitimate businessman.’
‘Aye, aye, and Miss Stiff Nipples here is a brain surgeon. I’m no’ having a