She clambered in behind the wheel and handed Logan a plate piled high with langoustines, some salad, and little curled red things that looked worryingly like oversized boiled woodlice.
He poked one of them. ‘I ordered the steak pie.’
‘Seafood platter. Good for the brain. And don’t get fishy fingerprints all over my car.’ She turned off the engine and the heaters went quiet.
‘Hey!’
‘I’m no’ made of bloody petrol.’
Logan twisted the tail off a langoustine and clicked it out of its pale pink carapace. Dipped it in the mayonnaise. ‘Did you get me a room?’
‘Course I did. Got you one right next door to Susan and me, that way you can bump into her and let her know I’m hunting down villains when I’m supposed to be on holiday.’ Steel pulled out a glass tumbler wrapped in a paper napkin. The smoky scent of malt whisky curled through the car. ‘Badger and Weasel are in there playing pool like good little woodland animals, so I nabbed the bugger’s glass. Where’s the fingerprint thing?’
‘Don’t you think Susan might just notice something’s up when she tries to get her bags back in the car and finds the boot full of drugs?’
‘Oh...’ Steel’s eyebrows drooped, taking the corners of her mouth with them. ‘Sod. Well ... er... Fine: we solve everything today, you bugger off back to Aberdeen with our druggie friends, and Susan never needs to know.’ A nod. ‘Right – that’s officially the plan.’ Steel pointed at the tumbler. ‘So come on, fingerprints.’
The beer slipped down, cool and dark. ‘Don’t nag.’
‘You know, if it really is Jimmy Weasdale then we’ve just caught Scotland’s eighth most wanted man, and turned up a massive stash of drugs. They’ll probably want to give me an OBE.’
Logan sooked his fingers clean, dug the plastic case from his pocket, and dumped it in her lap. The iPrint kit was about the same size as a paperback book. Steel cracked it open as Logan broke his way into one of the woodlice.
She sniffed. ‘You got any idea how to work it?’
‘Instructions are inside.’ He held up a little curl of white meat. ‘What is this, exactly?’
‘God’s sake... Who wrote these instructions? Sodding handwriting’s appalling.’
‘Put your glasses on.’
‘I don’t need glasses. And it’s a squat lobster. Eat it, it’s good for you.’ She laid the contents of the kit out along the dashboard: a scratched iPhone; a length of curly black cable; a plastic thing – like a matchbox with a metal strip down the middle; a soft-bristled blusher brush; a little plastic tub of Aluminium powder, and one of Amido Black.
Steel squinted at the sheet of paper for a while. ‘Nah, it’s no good – you’ll have to do it.’
‘I’m eating.’
‘Aye, and while you’re out here stuffing your face, there’s a murderer in there playing pool and...’ She stared out of the driver’s window, then scrubbed at it with her sleeve, clearing away the fog. ‘Him! There – look, look, look!’
‘I can’t even have lunch, can I? OK, OK: I’ll do your bloody fingerprints.’ Logan wiped his hands on a napkin, then reached into his jacket for a pair of nitrile gloves.
‘No, you divvy – look!’ She tapped at the window. ‘Big bloke, tartan bunnet, parking the van.’
Couldn’t keep her mind on one thing for more than two minutes...
Logan leaned across the car and peered through the clean patch. It was the rusty Transit van from the ferry this morning, driven by the same rotten sod who wouldn’t give him a lift.
The man clambered out into the rain. He was wearing orange overalls, stained brown and black around the cuffs and knees. Clunky work boots. Big. Broad. Hands like dinner-plates. He pulled the tartan cap firmly down over his ears as another gust of wind shook the van, driving him back a step.
Steel whistled. ‘Kevin McGregor. Thought he was dead...’ A frown. ‘I’m sure he’s dead.’
‘Doesn’t look dead.’
McGregor grabbed a holdall from the passenger seat, and lumbered off into the bar.
‘Oh, he’s dead all right: burned to a crisp in a house fire five years ago. Post mortem said he’d been shot twice in the back of the head, execution-style. Had to ID him from dental records.’ She shrugged. ‘I crashed the funeral and the wake. Tried to cop off with his sister, but she was having none of it.’
The legendary Kevin McGregor – no wonder he looked familiar.
And was that...? Logan pointed through the clear bit at two hard-looking women with ginger crewcuts and black-rimmed glasses, struggling to origami an OS map back into shape. ‘Camper van, four o’clock. That’s the Riley Sisters: Brigid and Niamh. Belfast drug dealers. You name it, they’ll blow it up; knees capped while you wait.’
Steel sat back in her seat. ‘What is this, a sodding conference for toerags and gangsters? Scumfest?’
‘Wait a minute...’ Logan stuck his plate on the dashboard. ‘Did Kevin McGregor not beat old Liam Riley to death six years ago because he tried to move in on his turf? Think they’re here to kiss and make up with the bloke who murdered their dad?’
Steel closed her eyes, pursed her lips, then banged her forehead off the steering wheel. ‘Susan’s going to kill me.’
‘You got any of that sticky toffee pudding left?’ DI Steel clambered back into the little MX-5.
‘Bugger off – first hot thing I’ve had today.’
‘Ungrateful sod.’ She fidgeted with her left boob, hauling at the underwire. ‘That’s another four turned up. So far we’ve got three scheemie toe-rags from Glasgow, Badger and Weasel, a pair of scary bitches kicked out of the provisional IRA for being too violent, two Scouse wideboys, a dead gangster, four of Malk the Knife’s goons, and the spotty ginger kid that works for Wee Hamish Mowat. Sodding hotel bar’s like the United Nations for drug-dealers.’ She reached over and poked a finger into Logan’s toffee sauce.
‘Hey!’
Steel sooked her finger. ‘And you want to know the weirdest thing? They’re all playing nice. Even Kevin McGregor and the Riley Sisters: in there, quietly sipping their pints. You’d think they’d at least chib each other for old time’s sake.’ Pause. ‘Give us a go of your spoon.’
Logan turned away, shielding the pudding with his arm. ‘Get your own.’
She stared back towards the bar. ‘Never mind a paddle: if this kicks off, we’re up shite creek without a canoe. According to the guidebook, Jura’s got two special constables and that’s it. No firearms team, no black maria, nothing.’
‘So call Strathclyde – get them to send a helicopter.’
‘And let those Weegie soap-dodgers take all the credit? No thanks.’
‘No, of course not – silly me. It’s much better if this lot tear the hotel apart and murder each other in the lounge bar. What was I thinking?’
She stared at him. ‘No one likes a smart arse, you know that, don’t you?’
Logan finished his sticky toffee pudding. Licked the bowl clean so there’d be nothing left for Steel. ‘Only one thing for it then: we pick them off one-by-one like Rambo.’
Mid-afternoon and the sky was like boiling tar, rain battering down – bouncing off the road and a handful of parked cars. DI Steel curled her lip, buzzed down the window and spat out into the storm. ‘“We’ll pick them off one-by-one like Rambo,” he says.’
‘Not my fault they all go to the toilet in pairs, is it? Who knew drug dealers were like girlies on a hen night?’
‘Prat. They go to the bogs in pairs so the opposition doesn’t chib them in the ribs while they’re having a slash. Puts them off their aim – blood and pee everywhere.’
Badger McLean shuffled out through the bar’s main door onto a raised stone patio with a handrail around it to keep anyone from falling into the bustling rush-hour traffic. Which probably consisted of a Post Office van and a sheep. If it was a really busy day.
‘Did you tell the hotel owners that their bar was full of drug dealers?’
‘
Course I sodding didn’t. What they don’t know won’t kneecap them.’
The wee hairy man huddled in the hotel doorway and winkled a hand-rolled cigarette out of a tin of tobacco. He lit up, shifting from foot to foot, puffing away in the torrential rain. Shivering.
Steel sighed. ‘I miss fags.’ She pulled out a silver hip flask, twisted the top off, took a swig, then waggled it at Logan. ‘Snifter?’
‘You really think that’s a good idea?’
‘It’s no’ drink driving, it’s drink parking.’
Over in front of the hotel, Badger fought with his lighter again. Then looked over his shoulder back into the bar, before limping down the steps and across to an ancient maroon Peugeot with a deep gouge all the way down the passenger side. He hauled open the back door and lowered himself inside with slow stiff movements, as if his spine was made of broken glass. The hot blue-and-yellow flare of a lighter. The dull orange glow of a cigarette. The pale-grey smoke drifting against the glass.
Logan stuck his pudding bowl on the dashboard next to the iPrint kit. ‘One-by-one, just like Rambo.’
Badger McLean squealed as Logan wrenched open the Peugeot’s door and jumped into the back seat beside him.
‘I didn’t—’
Then another squeal as Steel slid in on the other side, trapping him in the middle.
Silence.
Outside, the wind howled.
Steel stretched her arm along the back of the seat, behind Badger’s shoulders, as if she was about to put the first-date moves on him in a darkened cinema. ‘Aye, aye Badger. Badge. Badge the Tadge. Long time eh?’
He licked his lips, eyes flicking from the car door to the hotel and back again.
She pouted. ‘Badger, I’m hurt – you don’t remember me?’
Still nothing.
‘Aberdeen, 2003: I did you for flogging aspirin round that nightclub down the beach, telling boozed-up teenagers it was E. Got you eighteen months, didn’t it?’
His mouth fell open an inch. Then everything came out in a machine-gunned Fife accent, the words going up and down like the boats in the harbour. ‘Oh thank God, I thought for a minute you were— ayabugger!’ He dropped the cigarette, shaking and blowing on his fingers, sending ash spiralling through the car. ‘Ow...’
‘Here’s the deal, Badge my boy: you tell me what I want to know, and my associate here won’t frogmarch you back in there and let everyone know how you’ve been cooperating with the police like a good little boy.’
He sneaked a glance at Logan.
Logan grinned back at him.
Badger slouched, then ran a hand across his face. ‘Aw ... shite.’
‘How much?’ Steel stared, mouth hanging open like an empty pink sock.
Badger shrugged, then winced, clutching his chest on the left-hand-side – where the wave slammed him into the boat. ‘No one knows for sure, but that’s what they’re saying: nearly a ton of Afghanistan’s finest. Grade-A. Uncut. In four submersible pods.’
‘Bloody hell... A ton.’
‘Silly bastards’ yacht got caught in that big storm, had to cut the pods loose or get dragged down with them. Managed to limp into Oban three days ago. All the pods’ve got GPS, but one of them cracked open and it’s kinda ... well, you know? Like driftwood, only kilo blocks of heroin.’
Steel pointed back at the bar. ‘And young Jimmy the Weasel?’
‘Turns out his son-in-law was one of the aforementioned silly bastards. The idiot got pished in Oban – you know, celebrating not being dead – and kinda let it slip... So now every dealer from Aberdeen to Belfast’s turning up to do a bit of fishing.’ Badger cleared his throat. ‘Now that I’ve cooperated, there’s no real need to tell anyone, is there? Why don’t I just get out of your hair and head back to the mainland? It’s not like you can actually do me for anything, is it? I’m not even in possession or anything.’
‘Funny you should say that...’ Logan dipped into his pocket, pulled out a block of heroin and tossed it at him. ‘Catch.’
‘Aagh...’ Badger caught the thing before it hit him in the face.
‘Your fingerprints are all over it now. That’s eight years for possession with intent.’
‘That’s not fair!’
‘Our word against yours.’
Steel licked her teeth, mouth open, making sticky noises with a pale-yellow tongue. ‘Nearly a ton of uncut grade-A drugs washing up on the shores of a wee Scottish Hebridean island. It’s sodding Heroin Galore.’
‘Jimmy’s going to kill me. He’s going to hack me up into little pieces like poor old Barney McGlashin. He’s going to—’
‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll hack you into little bits.’ Logan shifted in his seat. They’d parked Badger’s dented Peugeot down the main road, in front of the Antlers restaurant, tucked in behind a soft-top Land Rover with an expired tax disk. The hotel bar was just visible through a knot of bushes.
Two minutes later Jimmy the Weasel stormed out of the bar into the rain, head going left and right like a pasty-faced searchlight, scanning the car park.
Logan adjusted the binoculars, focussing through the hotel windows to where DI Steel was leaning back against the pool table, grinning.
The Weasel shook his fists at the sky. ‘THIEVING LITTLE BASTARD!’ It echoed back from the distillery buildings, before being swallowed by the downpour.
‘Oh, God.’ Badger buried his face in his hands. ‘That’s it: I’m dead.’
And then the Weasel was off, running down the road towards them. But before he got there he took a sharp right, around the back of the village shop. Making for the tiny stone pier that curled around a miniature harbour.
‘Keep your head down.’ Logan turned the key in the ignition and the Peugeot made a high-pitched retching noise. Then clunked. He tried again. Got the same result. ‘Come on, come on, come on...’ More retching. ‘COME ON!’
Clunk.
‘Bloody thing.’ Logan undid his seatbelt and jumped out into the rain, running after Jimmy the Weasel: between the shop and the village hall.
The little white fishing boat with the tiny red wheelhouse rocked against the harbour wall. Light bloomed through the wheelhouse windows, then a cloud of pale-grey exhaust sputtered out around the stern. The boat backed out, turned, and lurched away into the waves.
Run. Run fast. Leap. Sail through the air between the end of the pier and the fishing boat. Crash into the deck and wrestle Jimmy the Weasel into submission. Handcuff him. Say something pithy about boats and fish. Just like in the movies.
Three, two, one...
Bugger that. Knowing Logan’s luck he’d probably drown.
He scrabbled to a halt at the end of the pier, sending a pair of lobster creels splashing into the iron-coloured waves.
The wee boat puttered away, bow dipping and rearing more and more violently the further it got from shore.
The sound of another engine roared from somewhere off to the right. Logan turned. A little concrete slipway reached down from the road – between the distillery car park and the hotel beer garden – to the rolling sea. A man in dirty orange overalls was wrestling a rigid inflatable dingy out into the swell.
Kevin McGregor.
So much for Plan A.
DI Steel stared at him, rain dripping from her flattened grey fringe. ‘What do you mean, “He got away”? How could he get away? You were right sodding there!’
‘The car wouldn’t start.’
‘Well, that’s not—’
‘It’s not even my car!’ Logan pointed at the terminally ill Peugot, with Badger sitting in the back. ‘It’s this moron’s.’
The wee man waved.
Steel stuck up two fingers at him. ‘Sodding cheese-flavoured arse-monkeys... And Kevin McGregregor went after him?’
‘It’s not my fault the plan was rubbish.’
‘Hey, my bit of the plan went perfect, OK? I go in; I make a song and dance about some idiot in a dented Peugeot nearly running me off the road, grabbing a fi
shing boat and sodding off into the storm; and pop goes the Weasel – right out the front door. It’s your bit that went bum-shaped.’
‘The bloody – car – wouldn’t – start!’
‘Shiteholes...’ She chewed at her finger for a moment. ‘We need a boat, or something.’
Screw that.
‘Could we not just drive back up the road to where we had tea? That’s where the—’
‘And then what? You want to swim out to the boat and arrest them? Cos I’m no’ bloody doing it. We need a boat.’
‘Will you hurry up?’ Steel marched up and down the pontoon attached to the tiny harbour’s wall. ‘They’ll be miles away by now!’
Badger sat up and scowled at her from the wheelhouse of a small rust-streaked fishing boat with ‘CATRIONA’S HARVEST’ painted along the side. Creels made a smelly pyramid in the back, coils of dirty rope and scuffed pink buoys piled alongside them. ‘I’ve never hotwired one of these things before. A Ford Cortina I could do you in three minutes flat, this...’ He waved a hand. ‘This is a pain in the backside.’
‘My boot’ll be a pain in your backside if you don’t—’
The engine growled and puttered into life. Badger gave himself a round of applause. ‘Ha!’
‘About bloody time.’ Steel scrambled aboard, then turned and waved at Logan. ‘Get a move on!’
‘Can’t get through.’ Logan slipped the phone back in his pocket. ‘Mobile signal keeps cutting out.’
Badger pointed through the wheelhouse window. ‘Untie the rope thing at the pointy end and chuck it in the boat. Do the one at the back too.’
Logan stared at him. ‘“Pointy end”? Thought you said you knew what you’re doing.’
Steel wrapped her scarf around her head, until only her eyes and nose were visible. ‘Laz, get your arse on this boat right now, or I swear to God...’
He untied the ‘pointy end’ then did the same with the line at the stern, before half jumping, half falling into the back of the boat. Up close the creels stank of stale fish and rotting onion.
Badger fiddled with the controls. Nothing happened. A bit more fiddling, and the boat thumped backwards into the pontoon with a loud crunch.
Partners in Crime: Two Logan and Steel Short Stories Page 4