They stood there, in silence.
Then Logan turned his back and walked to the edge of the car park, where an eight-foot-high chain-link fence separated Ravendale Sheltered Living Facility from the airport.
A Puma helicopter taxied into position, readying for takeoff. Ferrying those still lucky enough to have a job offshore, away for another stint on the rigs. Which, let’s face it, had to be easier than trying to hunt down violent Alt-Nat nutjobs.
Logan pulled out his phone and scrolled through the contacts till—
What the buggering hell?
The person he’d been looking for was now listed as, ‘THE TERRIFYING TUFTYSAURUS REX!’
Rotten little … He stabbed the button and listened to it ring.
‘Sarge? Got another name for you. He was going as “Inde-pun-dancer”, but his real—’
‘What the hell did you do to my phone?’
‘Your phone?’ If that was meant to be an innocent voice, it needed work. ‘Why would I have done something to your—’
‘You know what, I’ll bollock you later. Right now I want you to look up Gary Lochhead’s wife. Where is she?’
‘Aha, so, we’re playing “Hunt the wife”, are we? Let’s see what we can see …’ The sound of a keyboard being punished rattled down the line. ‘Aha: Tufty wins! You want me to text you the address?’
‘Is it near?’
‘Two miles outside Fyvie: Clovery Woods of Rest. They buried her there six years ago.’
So much for that.
‘OK: give me Gary Lochhead’s known associates. Not just the recent ones – go all the way back about thirty years.’
‘Yes, Sergeant, my Sergeant.’ More keyboard noises. ‘Did you know someone stole my KitKat butty and hazelnut latte? Bloody police station is full of … Got it.’
‘I want someone called Geoff, could be either spelling.’
‘No Gee-offs or Jeffs. But I have a Jeffrey, if that helps?’
Might do. ‘Does he own property in Cruden Bay?’
‘Let’s have a look.’ He bashed his keyboard again. ‘Jeffrey Moncrief. Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, wherefore art thou Jeffery …? Oh. He’s currently doing life in Barlinnie for stabbing an English shopkeeper sixteen times then setting fire to the remains. This was in Argyll and Bute. No chance of parole, because he keeps attacking prisoners born south of the border, down Englandshire way.’ A pause. ‘He’s what we, in the law-enforcement trade, call “a total dickhead”.’
There was a shock.
‘What about property? Does he own something in Cruden Bay?’
‘No mention on the Police National Computer.’
Sod.
‘Well … can we get the Land Registry to rush through a search?’
‘Maybe. Or …’ More keyboarding, this time accompanied by a hummed version of the Countdown clock theme tune. ‘Woot! We’re in luck! But only because I has a genius.’
Whatever came next was drowned out as the helicopter’s engines roared. It pulled forward, gathering speed, then heaved itself into the air on a rib-shaking clatter of blades – the whump-whump-whump fading as it climbed and turned, heading out over Dyce towards the sea.
‘Sarge? Hello? I said, “Aren’t you going to ask what flavour of genius I has?”’
‘Is it my-boot-up-your-bum flavour?’
A sigh. ‘You get more like her every day, you know that, don’t you? No, it’s searching-for-incident-reports-involving-Jeffrey-Moncrief flavour. And amongst the hundreds of entries, there’s sixteen call-outs to the same address in Cruden Bay. And yes, you may compliment the chef.’
‘You, my little fiend, have earned your bum a reprieve and a bag of Skittles too.’
‘Woot!’
‘KING!’ Logan ran for the Audi. ‘GET YOUR BACKSIDE IN THE CAR – WE’VE GOT SOMETHING!’
37
Fields and fences flashed by the Audi’s windows as Logan roared along the back road towards Balmedie. Lights flickering, siren wailing. He yanked the car out onto the wrong side of the road, changed down a gear, and stuck his foot hard to the floor, overtaking a little grey Skoda with what looked like nuns inside it.
Sitting in the passenger seat, King grabbed the handle above his door, phone in his other hand – pinned to his ear. Belting it out: ‘What? … Heather? … No, I can’t hear you!’
Logan slowed for a sharp bend, throwing King against the door with the change of direction, then hit the accelerator again.
Flames of broom and whin crackled along the drystane dykes. A flickering strobe of fluorescent yellow and dark green.
‘What?’ He stuck the phone against his chest and grimaced at Logan. ‘Can we switch the siren off? Can’t hear myself think!’
‘You want to end up dead? Because if you do I can switch the lights off as well.’ They flew past a couple of tiny cottages.
‘Told you we should’ve taken the bypass!’
‘Eastbound’s closed for a three-vehicle RTC, remember?’ He slammed on the brakes at the T-junction, slithering to a halt on the double dotted lines. Then nipped out ahead of a muck-encrusted Transit, shifting through the gears like a rally driver. Slammed on the brakes again for a hard left, almost bouncing King out of his seat.
‘Gah!’ King braced his legs in the footwell. ‘Speak up H … No … I know I said that, but I need every hand we’ve got out to Cruden Bay.’ He glanced across the car. ‘ETA …?’
‘Twenty, twenty-five minutes.’
A nice long straight bit – the needle hitting ninety-six as Logan floored it. Swathes of barley whipping past. Nipping out to overtake a tractor.
‘Call it twenty-five minutes, H. But sooner you lot get there the better.’
A farmyard lunged up on the left – a huge eighteen-wheeler was in the process of pulling on to the road, the driver’s eyes going wide as he spotted them, his lorry juddering to a halt, air brakes squealing.
Logan jerked the Audi around it.
‘Car. Car! CAR!’ King scrunched his eyes shut and had a wee scream to himself.
He jinked the Audi back onto their own side of the road, about six foot away from ploughing straight through the Range Rover coming the other way.
A deep, shuddering sigh from the passenger seat. ‘OK, leave the siren on.’
‘We need to do a risk assessment. And see if DS Gallacher can get us a canine unit, OSU, firearms team: the works.’
‘There isn’t time for that!’ A frown. ‘Do you think there’s time for that?’
‘No, but we need to ask for all that stuff so at least we can say we tried if everything goes horribly wrong.’
‘Sodding hell …’ King switched his phone to the other ear. ‘Heather? I need you to see about backup: Dogs, Thugs, Guns, and anything else you can think of … Uh-huh … Uh-huh … Hold on.’ He stuck it against his chest again. ‘How sure are we?’
Cows stopped doing cow things to stare at the car as it howled past.
‘Eighty percent. Maybe seventy.’
Yeah, King didn’t look convinced by that.
Have another go: ‘OK, fifty / fifty?’
Another conflagration of gorse, the flowers a searing shade of molten gold.
King nodded, then stuck the phone to his ear again. ‘Call it forty / sixty, H. But it’s the best lead we’ve got … Yes, I know it’s the only lead we’ve got. Heather, get it done, OK? … Thanks.’ He hung up and bared his teeth in a pained wince as they wheeched through an avenue of trees. ‘It’s more like thirty / seventy, isn’t it?’
‘Better than nothing.’
A short row of bungalows on the left as they flew into Belhelvie – Logan standing on the brakes to take them down to a more sedate forty. In case someone’s cat had a death wish. Or child. Or grandparent.
Another T-junction, this one marked with a set of signposts. Left: ‘POTTERTON’, right: ‘BALMEDIE B977 1½’, a huge green and white CLAAS tractor rumbled across in front of them, hauling a trailer behind it. Soon as it’d passed, Logan nipp
ed out, overtook it, then put his foot down again. ‘Maybe twenty / eighty.’
The A90 should’ve been quicker: after all, it was nowhere near as twisty-turny as the wee side roads, but there were a hell of a lot more vehicles on it. Some of which were clearly being driven by morons WHO WOULDN’T GET OUT OF THE BLOODY WAY!
Like the one right in front of them. And it wasn’t as if Logan could overtake them, not with all the traffic coming the other way.
He stuck his hand on the horn and held it there – blaring away in addition to the siren – until the moron in question finally took the hint and pulled their manky BMW over to the side of the road.
King took a deep breath as Logan hammered the speed up again. ‘OK, so what’s the plan?’
‘We get there, we wait for backup.’
‘And what if Professor Wilson, or Matt Lansdale, or Scotty Meyrick dies while we’re sitting on our thumbs?’
Good question.
Logan overtook a removal van. ‘Yes, but what if we barge in there, getting them and ourselves killed?’
‘Suppose.’ King looked over his shoulder, at the back seat. ‘What kit have you got in the car?’
‘What do you mean, “kit”?’
‘Taser, stabproof vests, extendable baton, pepper spray?’
‘It’s my car, not the Batmobile!’ Using the opposite lane to leapfrog a Citroën, a Kia, a Vauxhall, and a Transit with ‘EAT MAIR FISH!’ on the side.
‘You’ve got blues-and-twos.’
‘A couple of LED lights and a siren don’t make this an assault vehicle. And they only fitted them because it was cheaper than buying another pool car for Professional Standards.’ He roared past a filthy Toyota Hilux. ‘I’ve got a couple of high-viz vests, if that helps?’
‘What are we going to do, Health-and-Safety Mhari and Haiden to death?’ He scrunched his face up. ‘Come on, Frank: think.’ A pause as they slowed for another bout of traffic coming the other way. ‘OK. OK. No equipment. What about … a crowbar: something we could lever a door open or hit people with?’
‘Probably a wheel brace in the boot.’
‘OK, so that’s—’ His phone launched into something upbeat. He pulled it out and answered it. ‘Heather! Talk to me, H, what’s—’ A wince. ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ He turned to Logan. ‘Firearms team are stuck at the Bridge of Don – eighteen-wheeler from Peterhead hit a builder’s truck. Smoked haddock and scaffolding pipe all over the bridge. Fire Brigade and Air Ambulance on the way. Our Guns are backtracking round to Gordon Brae.’
‘What about our Operational Support Unit?’
‘H: what about our Thugs?’ He sagged a good three inches. ‘Couldn’t get any. Or Dogs. They’re all busy dunting in a dealer’s door outside Stonehaven.’
Of course they were.
‘Remember that risk assessment we should’ve done?’
‘Well it’s too late now, isn’t it?’ King turned away and focussed on his phone. ‘Where are the rest of you? … Uh-huh … Uh-huh …’ A sigh. ‘Well, do your best, OK?’ He hung up and slumped in his seat. ‘You want the bad news, or the worse?’
‘Gah …’
‘The only ones that made it across the bridge before the crash were Steel and Tufty. And they’re about as much use as a Plasticine bicycle.’
The traffic thinned out a bit and the speedometer needle crept up to ninety again.
Right, no way they could do this without backup. They’d have to find bodies from somewhere else and hope they’d be enough.
Logan poked at the dashboard’s console – bringing up the address book from his phone. ‘Scroll through that lot till you get to “Stubby”.’
King did, then poked the call button.
Ringing belted out through the speakers, competing with the siren’s din.
Until, finally: ‘Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.’
‘Stubby? It’s Logan.’
‘I know who it is: the name “Sinister Bastard” came up on my—’
‘I need backup, ASAP. My firearms team is stuck in Bridge of Don behind twenty tons of smoked haddock and a mangled builder’s truck.’
‘Firearms? Can’t give you Guns, but I can give you Thugs. Where and when?’
Logan hauled the brakes on, slithering to a halt at a junction marked ‘BRIDGEND ¼ ~ CRUDEN BAY 2’. More morons on the other side of the road, heading south, completely ignorant of the fact that flashing lights and a bloody siren meant GET OUT OF THE WAY.
He looked at King. ‘How do you pronounce the cottage?’
‘“Kee-ow-nn-tri-ey.” Ceann is “head” in Gaelic, and tràigh is “sand”, or “beach”. So Beachhead, give or take.’ King checked his phone. ‘GPS is showing three point one miles.’
‘You get that, Stubby? Ceanntràigh Cottage, south end of Cruden Bay. ASAFBCWP!’
Finally, a minibus coming the other way slammed on its brakes and flashed its lights. Logan held up a hand in thanks and roared across the junction, picking up speed.
‘FB and CW? Wow. OK, we’re on our way.’
‘Thanks, Stubby!’
‘Glen: grab Ted and the wee loon, we’re—’ She hung up.
The Audi shot past not so much a village as a tiny collection of houses, then out through the limits into open countryside. Yellowy grass in parched fields, miserable sheep lolling about in the morning sun. All very flat and open.
Logan overtook a fat man on a scooter. ‘Peterhead station’s about … fifteen minutes north? Ten if they really go for it.’
King looked up from his phone and pointed. ‘Right, there!’
He wrenched the car into the turn, the rear end skittering out on the dusty tarmac, and onto a single-track road. The sign said ‘WEAK BRIDGE’, the narrow road hemmed in on both sides by waist-high stone walls. The Audi got some air in the middle … bumping down on the other side.
King bounced in his seat. ‘You want to wait for this “Stubby” person to show up?’
A hard ninety-degree left, between what looked like a school and a farmyard.
‘We’d be insane to go charging in without backup. Haiden’s built like a pit bull, only without the winning personality. And they’re armed.’
A graveyard, its serried ranks of granite headstones glittering in the sunshine.
King shrugged. ‘Just knives.’
‘Trust me: knives are bad enough. I should know.’
‘Fair enough. Left, here.’
Another ninety-degree turn, swiftly followed by a hard right.
King checked his phone again. ‘Not far now.’
They flashed across a junction, and onto another single-track road. Golden swathes of wheat pressed in on the tarmac. A sliver of North Sea visible on the left where the land dropped away.
Logan accelerated up the hill. ‘So, it’s agreed: we get there, we block the road and we wait for Stubby.’
‘OK.’ A nod. Then King’s eyes bugged, free hand grabbing at the dashboard. ‘Sheep! Sheep!’
Logan stamped on the brakes, wheeching around the big fat ewe wandering down the side of the road.
‘Jesus, that was close.’
The words, ‘NELSON ST. LAB’ appeared on the dashboard screen a second before the Audi’s hands-free kit rang.
King let go of the dashboard to press the green button. ‘Hello?’
‘Inspector McRae?’ Jeffers, their three-quarters-useless DNA analyst.
‘He’s driving.’
Logan shook his head. ‘We’re a bit busy, Jeffers!’
The car crested the brow of a small hill, and the jagged boundary between land and sea was laid out before them. Sunlight sparkling on the bright blue water.
‘I lifted a perfect thumb and forefinger off that coffee cup, but there’s no corresponding prints in the system.’
‘Literally right in the middle of something.’
King pointed through the windscreen at a tiny bungalow perched on the headland near the cliffs, down a dead-end dirt track. ‘Ceanntràigh Cottage. That’s us!
’ It sat near the end of Cruden Bay beach, well away from anything else. Isolated. The perfect location for laying low and hiding the people you’d abducted and mutilated. A rusty Mini was parked out front.
Logan slowed to a crawl. ‘You sure?’
‘Look, there’s a car.’ King licked his lips. ‘Do you think it’s them? I think it’s them.’ A grin. ‘We’ve got them!’
The dirt track petered out in front of the cottage, with its grey slate roof and dirty harling walls. A whirly washing line with no clothes on it. What probably used to be a garden, but had turned into a wobbly rectangle of parched grass and dandelions. No other way in or out.
‘Anyway,’ Jeffers’s voice crackled out of the speakers again, ‘so I had a word with Dr McEvoy about the DNA, and she showed me how to expand the search parameters against the national database.’
Blah, blah, blah.
Logan pulled on the handbrake. ‘Can this wait?’
‘Well, it could, I suppose, but thing is: now we know who Mhari Powell really is. Well, we do and we don’t, but it’s a result, isn’t it?’
Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘Come on, then: who is she?
There was a pause. Then, ‘You’re probably not going to like this …’
38
Oh man …
Haiden rolls off Mhari and lies there, breathing hard, sweat cooling in the air.
Jesus. Yes. Hoo …
Wow.
He grins at the ceiling.
Aye, the room’s a bit twee, but then what do you expect? Place is ancient. With its lace doilies, old-fashioned furniture, wooden walls in need of a paint – chipped and scarred from, like, decades of use. Bed’s good, though.
He reaches out a hand and pats Mhari on her naked stomach. ‘That was … that was … bloody great!’
‘You’re welcome.’ She wipes between her legs with his T-shirt. To be honest, it needed a wash anyway. And let’s face it, no way he could grudge her, not after that.
‘Wow …’
She climbs out of bed and pads over to the window, looking up the hill. You could never get tired of ogling that pert round arse, or the firm high tits, or that wee tufty triangle between her legs. Where the magic happens.
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