Logan McRae Crime Series Books 7 and 8

by Stuart MacBride

  He shoved the picture of Davina posing in the graffiti-covered room into Rennie’s hands. ‘Recognize the backdrop?’

  The constable leaned forward, squinting. ‘Yeah … Erm, no. Kinda …?’

  ‘Here’s a clue for you: it was in the video where they cut off Jenny McGregor’s toes.’

  50

  Every step’s like someone’s jamming burning ice into her feet, but she grits her teeth and swallows the screams down, keeping them deep inside where they can boil and shake.

  Mummy holds a finger up to her lips and makes a ssssssssshing noise. Then opens the door slow and quiet. It’s another room, all covered in scribbles and paint like the one they had to stay in, but there’s no bed, just a bunch more doors. She marches over to one on the far side.

  Jenny wipes her damp eyes with her grubby sleeve, takes a deep wobbly breath and shuffles after her. The bandage on her left foot’s soggy, like she’s stepped in a puddle of tomato sauce, every step leaving a smeared footprint on the dirty carpet.

  And it hurts.

  ‘Come on, baby; nearly there; who’s Mummy’s good little girl?’

  Good Little Girl. She’s a Good Little Girl.

  Jenny stops for a moment, breath hissing in and out between her teeth, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Mummy tries the door, then says a bad word. She grabs the handle and twists it left and right, pulls, snarls, shakes it back and forward. Then steps back and gives the door a kick with her bare foot.

  She tries another door. Locked. And another. It’s locked too. ‘You BASTARD!’ Mummy slams her hand into the wood and it BOOMs around the dark, smelly room.

  Then a cold metal voice rattles in the shadows. ‘Come on, I mean: you’ve got to be fucking kidding, right?’ A monster steps out of the gloom, his white suit glowing as he moves into a beam of sunlight. His name badge says ROGER. ‘Like I’m going to leave the place unlocked so you can just walk out? How thick do you think I am, Alison?’

  Mummy turns and flattens herself against the door. ‘You have to let us go.’

  ‘I have to do fuck all.’ He holds up a shiny thing. It takes Jenny a moment to realize it’s a big knife. ‘Now, are you going to get back in your room like a good little girl, or do I have to drag you back there in bits?’

  Logan grabbed the handle above the passenger door as Rennie threw the car into a hard left, the Vauxhall’s back end drifting out as they jumped the lights onto George Street. A white van blared its horn, an old lady in a Mini made wanking gestures.

  ‘Repeat, we need a firearms team out at Farburn Industrial Estate, Stoneywood ASAP.’

  ‘Hud oan …’

  There was a click, a pause, and then Finnie’s voice boomed out of the Airwave handset. ‘What’s going on?’

  Logan told him about the photograph from Davina Pearce’s wall.

  ‘And you think that’s enough to get a firearms team scurrying—’

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s the exact same room from the video – Watch out for the bus!’

  ‘You sure I can’t use the siren?’ The car jerked out into the middle of the road and back again. Shops and taxis and lorries and people blurred past the passenger window.

  ‘Look, it’s half-seven: we’ve got less than five hours till the deadline. If they’re—’

  ‘Hold on.’ The line went quiet. And then Finnie was back: ‘This better not be another wild goose chase like Stephen Clayton.’

  Tell you what: if it is you’ve got my resignation on your desk first thing tomorrow.’ Not as if he was throwing much away with that one.

  Another pause. ‘Deal. A firearms team is on its way.’

  ‘How about that one?’ Rennie pointed through the windscreen at a disused mini-warehouse.

  Logan compared it to the photograph. ‘Keep going.’

  The pool car kerb-crawled its way through the industrial estate. That was the trouble with somewhere like this at quarter to eight on a Wednesday evening – almost every single building looked deserted: everything closed up and dark, chain-link fences and padlocked gates.

  The purple-black clouds had spread across the sky a faint drizzle specked the car windows, a rainbow arcing over the massive, ugly, abandoned 1970s-style complex of concrete and glass that used to house BP.

  ‘Charlie Delta Twelve, this is Foxtrot Tango Two … where the hell are you?’

  Logan thumbed the button. ‘Wellheads Road. Still looking for the target unit.’

  ‘Turning onto Riverview Drive now.’ The voice on the other end dropped to a whisper. ‘Word to the wise: we’ve got that SOCA tosser following in a car with DS Taylor, Steel, and Finnie. Just so you know.’

  Steel and Green in a car together – poor bloody Doreen, there was no way that would end well.

  Rennie took a left, down a little road between two hulking warehouses. ‘You know, Guv, we could always engineer a wee incident where someone accidentally shoots Green in the bollocks. In all the confusion.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me … There!’ Logan smacked his hand on the dashboard. ‘There: the one with the green roof!’

  It even had the tree growing through the fence.

  A big faded sign was bolted to the front of the building, ‘CAMBERTOOLS ~ THE DOWNHOLE E.O.R. SOLUTION SPECIALISTS’. The bottom floor was harled in dirty grey; a couple of boarded-up windows stared blindly out into the rubbish-strewn car park. The upper floor was clad in the same green corrugated iron as the roof, the paint chipped and peeling in places, stained with seagull droppings. The big warehouse door wore a dirt-streaked sign, ‘CONDEMNED BUILDING. NO ENTRY’. The one on the fence read, ‘WARNING: THIS SITE PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’.

  ‘Foxtrot Tango Two, we have a winner.’ Logan gave the firearms team directions then told Rennie to park fifty yards down the street, behind a locked-up burger van.

  ‘What now?’ Rennie massaged the steering wheel.

  ‘We go charging in like the A-team, beat up all the bad guys, rescue Alison and Jenny.’

  He sat up straight, eyes shining. ‘Cool! We can—’

  Logan hit him. ‘Don’t be a prick. We wait for the firearms team, we set up a perimeter, and we figure out how to get the hostages out without killing anyone. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Well, it … Ahem …’ He turned off the engine. ‘Yes, Guv’

  Three minutes later a filthy, unmarked Transit van growled into sight. It drifted to a halt in front of the pool car and a plainclothes officer grinned and waved through the windshield at Logan. ‘Aye, aye. Nice day for a shoot-out?’

  ‘You know what’s going to happen if Finnie hears you, don’t you, Brian?’

  An unmarked Vauxhall pulled up on the other side of the road. The grin disappeared from Brian’s face. ‘Speak of the Devil.’

  Logan climbed out of the pool car and hurried over to the back of the Transit van, keeping the burger van between himself and the Cambertools industrial unit. Finnie, Green, and Steel got out of the other car. Doreen stayed behind, waiting until her passengers weren’t looking before bouncing her head off the steering wheel.

  The man from SOCA stuck his chest out, then snapped his fingers. ‘Situation Report?’

  You’re a wanker. Logan pointed at the industrial unit. ‘We think that’s where they shot the video after amputating Jenny McGregor’s toes.’

  ‘I see. And you haven’t ascertained if the suspects are in the building yet?’

  Steel twisted her e-cigarette on and set it dangling from the corner of her mouth. ‘When exactly were they meant to do that? They only got here a minute before us. Want to whinge about how we’re no’ psychic enough now?’

  ‘I’m getting pretty bloody tired of your attitude, Inspector.’

  ‘You’ve moaned about everything else.’ She sent a plume of fake cigarette smoke his way.

  Was five minutes too much to ask for?’ Finnie looked at the sky for a moment, then back to earth. ‘DI McRae, I want a risk analysi
s: what’s the layout of the building, where are the points of entry and exit, where are our victims likely to be held, how many targets are we looking at, what kind of weapons are they likely to—’

  ‘We don’t have time for this.’ Green unbuttoned his jacket, slipped it off, and thrust it at Logan. He was wearing a bulletproof vest underneath, and a shoulder holster.

  ‘Shouldn’t we—’

  ‘Cover me!’ The superintendent pulled a snub-nosed semiautomatic from his holster and ran in a crouch towards the padlocked gates.

  ‘Come back here!’ Finnie’s eyes bugged, his mouth crimped into an angry cat’s bum as Green kept on going. ‘Who gave him a bloody gun?’

  A clink and Green was through the gates, heading for the main doors.

  ‘Oh you silly bastard …’ Logan dumped the tailored jacket on the damp road and banged on the side of the Transit van. ‘OPEN UP!’ He stuck his head around the side. ‘RENNIE!’

  ‘On it, Guv.’

  The van’s back doors popped open and a sweaty firearms-trained officer wheezed out into the light drizzle. He was dressed from head to toe in black, from his heavy-duty steel-toecapped boots to his thick bulletproof vest and crash helmet, a submachine gun dangling on a strap around his neck. ‘Bloody roasting in there.’

  ‘Give me your sidearm.’ Logan stuck his hand out.

  The man in black backed off a step. ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your gun!’

  He unholstered his Glock, a chunky rectangular thing that smelled of warm oil and plastic, holding it close to his chest. ‘Erm … Actually, I had to sign for this, so—’

  Logan grabbed it. Ejected the clip. It was full, so he slid it back into the handgrip and hauled the slide back, racking the first round into the breach.

  Finnie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘DI McRae, what exactly do you think you’re doing? We need a plan, a strategy!’

  Rennie puffed his way around the side of Foxtrot Tango Two, holding a pair of heavy black vests covered in pockets. ‘Only got stab-proof, that OK?’

  ‘It’ll have to be …’

  ‘DI McRae!’

  Logan pulled one of the vests on over his suit jacket. ‘If he goes in on his own he’ll get killed. If we’re lucky. If we’re not, he’ll take Alison and Jenny with him.’

  We’re not in the business of throwing good idiots after bad! You can’t—’

  ‘You! Give Rennie your MP5.’

  The firearms officer pouted. ‘But then I won’t have any—’

  ‘Now!’

  He held out his submachine gun and Rennie snatched it from his hands. ‘You’ve cleaned this, right? Better not jam.’

  ‘Inspector McRae, do you actually think this—’

  ‘What choice have we got? We go in, we grab him, and we drag him back out here before he sods everything up. We don’t engage the targets, we don’t pull any heroics – we stop Green.’ Logan looked around the side of the Transit. Green was flattening himself against the wall beside the industrial unit’s front door. ‘Oh, Christ: the moron really does think he’s on telly …’

  Rennie hauled back the slide on his Heckler & Koch MP5. ‘Ready when you are, Guv’

  The head of CID shook his head, then turned and marched back towards his car. ‘Sergeant McIver: I want a tactical briefing, and I want it now!’

  Logan ran for the abandoned industrial unit, Rennie clattering along behind him.

  51

  Rennie stopped beside the open front door to the abandoned Cambertools industrial unit. ‘I still say we should shoot him in the balls, you know, by accident?’

  Logan glanced back towards Foxtrot Tango Two, where the firearms team were all thumping out into the drizzle. ‘We go in on three.’

  ‘How did someone like Green get promoted to superintendent?’

  ‘Maybe they had a raffle. Two, one …’ Logan gave the nod and Rennie ducked through the open door, MP5 held at half-mast.

  ‘Clear.’

  Logan followed him into a boxy corridor covered with graffiti. Four doors off it, all closed.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Logan nodded towards the nearest door, raised his borrowed gun, and took up a firing stance.

  Rennie tried the handle. ‘Locked.’ So was the next one, and the one after that.

  Last door.

  Rennie hauled open the door and charged in, bent double, Logan behind him, swinging his Glock above the constable’s back. It was the room from the video; the room in Davina Pearce’s self portrait – a graffiti-scrawled office with a single, wrought-iron bed against one wall, a low table in the middle of the room. One door on the opposite wall.

  Blood made a scuffed track across the wooden floorboards.

  Superintendent Green was slumped against the bed, both hands clutching his right thigh – a dark red stain spread out across his trouser leg. His Glock lay on the floor by his knee. The silly sod hadn’t even got off a single shot. ‘Oh God, oh Christ, oh fuck …’

  Alison McGregor was standing, very still and silent, in front of the boarded-up window, arms by her sides. Trembling. There was someone behind her, dressed in full SOC gear and a plastic mask. He had a six-inch knife pressed to Alison’s throat, the shiny blade speckled with crimson. The other hand was wrapped in Jenny McGregor’s blonde curly hair, holding her close.

  Logan inched to the side. ‘Armed police officers: drop the knife.’

  The man in the SOC suit shrugged, his speech distorted by some sort of filter in the mask into an electronic pseudo-robot: ‘Now why would I do something like that?’

  ‘Oh God,’ Green’s voice had jumped an octave, ‘he cut me!’

  Logan kept his eyes on the knife. ‘Well what the hell did you expect, charging in here like an idiot?’

  ‘You have to get me to a hospital!’

  ‘Drop – the – knife.’

  ‘No.’ The man in the SOC suit tilted his head to one side. ‘Here’s how it’s going to work: you’re going to take your moron and fuck off. You’re going to clear the road north. You’re going to get me a car and you’re not going to follow it. If you do that Alison and Jenny will live. If you don’t they will die.’

  ‘I’m bleeding …’

  ‘It’s over.’ Logan shifted his grip on the gun. ‘The building’s surrounded by armed police. You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘Then they’re both going to die.’

  ‘No they’re not.’

  ‘Oh God, I need an ambulance …’

  ‘WILL YOU SHUT UP?’ Logan nodded and Rennie shuffled the other way, MP5 up to his shoulder like a sniper. ‘Now put the knife down and no one else needs to get hurt.’

  ‘You’re familiar with the concept of IEDs, aren’t you, Sergeant? Well, I’m wearing an improvised explosive device right now, and all it takes is one little twitch and we all end up spread across the fucking walls, ceiling, floor … You get the picture. Now be good little officers and do what you’re told.’

  Sergeant: the man in the SOC suit recognized him. He’d been right, it was Peterson.

  ‘Can’t do that, Craig. Put the knife down.’

  ‘Ah …’ He stared at the floor for a moment. ‘I’m not “Craig”, my name’s Roger. And if you don’t do what I tell you, everyone’s going to die.’ He rocked the bloody knife back and forth, leaving a red line across Alison’s throat. ‘Starting with Goldilocks here.’

  She bared her teeth. ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a bomb.’

  Craig/ROGER laughed. ‘Believe me, you can’t trust a single word she says.’

  ‘Shoot him. He wasn’t going to let us go, he was always going to kill us both!’

  ‘I really, really need an ambulance …’

  ‘Guv?’ Rennie shifted right another pace. ‘Got a firing solution.’

  ‘Come on Craig, give it up. No one has to die.’

  The white SOC
suit rustled. ‘You spoke to Vicious Vikki, right? She tell you the squirrel story? When she was ten, Alison here made some squirrel traps, caught about six of them in the woods behind her house. Know what she did with them?’

  ‘Just put the knife down and we can all walk out of here.’

  ‘She drowned them in a bucket. One by one. Lined the traps up so they could watch their mates dying. That’s the kind of person she is – a complete fucking psycho.’

  ‘He’s lying.’

  ‘Think that’s bad? Ask her what happened to Doddy’s parents. They hated her: who wants a gold-digging sociopath marrying their son?’

  ‘It was an accident!’

  ‘Sure it was. Come on, Sergeant, who do you think told David to torch your flat.’

  Logan stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You heard.’ ROGER tilted his head to one side. ‘Now back – the fuck – up, both of you, and get me that car, or I slit her throat and we go through the whole thing again with the brat.’

  He jiggled the knife again and blood seeped down Alison’s neck.

  ‘Aaagh …’

  ‘DON’T HURT MY MUMMY!’ Jenny grabbed the hand wrapped in her hair and yanked. Then sank her teeth into ROGER’s leg.

  ‘Fucking bitch!’

  He must have loosened his grip, because Alison twisted to the side, driving her elbow into his stomach. A grunt.

  ROGER slashed the knife at her, but she was out of reach.

  Rennie lunged forward, going for Jenny, but ROGER hauled her back – off her feet, the two of them thumping back into the boarded-up window. Now the SOC suited figure was cornered, the knife glinting in a slice of golden sunlight.

  Logan pushed Alison behind him, keeping the gun pointing straight at ROGER’s face. ‘On your knees, now.’

  ROGER cleared his throat, then lowered the blade. ‘It was her idea. All of it. She—’

  A loud boom reverberated around the room. Logan flinched. Jenny screamed. Rennie swore.