Blind Eye lm-5

by Stuart MacBride

  He stood there, staring at her wrist. It was circled with a thin line of purple bruises, about a centimetre wide. The left one was the same. 'Bloody hell…'

  Logan put the glass back where he'd got it. 'Help me untuck the sheets. I want to check her ankles.'

  'Oh no you don't. I'll just have to make the bed again. I do have other patients to look after, you know.'

  But Logan wasn't listening, he was pulling the sheets out, exposing a pair of pale legs. The ankles had the same ring of bruises. 'Has she had a rape test?'

  'What? No, why would we-'

  'The bruises round her wrists and ankles — she's been tied up and beaten. Pretty girl like that, do you think they just stopped there?'

  'I'll get a doctor.'

  3

  'And what exactly did you think you were doing?' DCI Finnie stood in the hospital corridor, scowling at Logan as the nurse drew the curtain around their mystery woman's bed. 'Did I miss a memo? Did you suddenly get promoted to Senior Investigating Officer on this case?'

  'I just thought it would save-'

  Finnie poked Logan in the chest. 'You run everything through me before you do it. Understand?'

  'But-'

  'Do you secretly yearn to spend every day from now till you retire giving road safety lectures to sticky little children? Is that it?'

  'No, sir. I just-'

  'I don't know what kind of slapdash methods you're used to, but when you work for me you will follow the chain of command, or so help me I'll send you right back where I found you.'

  'But-'

  'After your performance last year, you're lucky to still have a job, never mind be involved in a major enquiry. What, did you think the magic career pixies put you on the Oedipus case? Because they didn't.' Finnie poked him again. 'You had experience with serial weirdoes and I thought, I actually thought you might take this opportunity to get your head out your backside and turn your train-wreck life around. Was I wrong? Are you the complete cock-up everyone says you are?'

  Logan ground his teeth, took a deep breath, and said, 'No, sir. Thank you, sir.'

  'And?'

  'It won't happen again?'

  'That's not what I meant — when are they going to get the results back from the rape kit…' He stopped and frowned at the evidence bag in Logan's hand. 'Is that a glass?' Finnie grabbed the bag and held it up to the light. 'Why have you got a glass?'

  'We don't have an ID for the victim, and I didn't have a fingerprint kit with me, so I thought-'

  'You see? That's exactly the kind of nonsense I'm talking about. We have officers posted here twenty-four-seven, do you think they might — just — have a fingerprint kit? Hmm? Do you think?' He stared at Logan for a beat. 'Well, go get it then.' He held out the evidence bag. 'And take your Junior Detective Set with you.' By the time the fingerprint results came back from the lab, it was nearly half past two and Logan was back at his desk in CID, crunching on an indigestion tablet. That's what he got for microwaving vegetable curry for lunch. And now he had to go tell Finnie they still had no idea who the woman was. He'd love that.

  Frog-faced git.

  No wonder Logan had indigestion.

  It took a while to track Finnie down, but he finally found the DCI in one of the small incident rooms — just big enough for two cluttered desks, three seats, and a strange eggy smell. He was sitting on the edge of a desk, deep in conversation with a gangly admin officer.

  Logan settled back to wait.

  Finnie didn't even look round. 'Did you want something, Sergeant, or are you just worried that wall's going to fall down with out you leaning on it?'

  'We couldn't find her prints in the database.'

  'And?'

  'And nothing.'

  'Have you told the Media Office to make up "have you seen this woman" posters?'

  'Well… no.'

  And at that, Finnie did turn round. 'Why not? Use your initiative, for goodness sake.'

  'You told me not to do anything without clearing it through you first.'

  'What are you, twelve? You sound like my niece.' The DCI held his hand out. 'Photograph.'

  Logan handed over the eight-by-ten glossy showing their Jane Doe lying in her hospital bed, complete with ventilation tube and drips. It wasn't exactly the best head-and-shoulders shot in the world.

  Finnie threw it back. 'This is useless. Get it up to Photographic. Tell them to edit out all the tubes and lines, give her skin a bit of colour, lose the panda eyes… Make her look like a person someone might actually recognize.'

  'Yes sir.'

  'Sometime today would be nice, Sergeant. You know, if you're not too busy?' The technician in the 'BARNEY THE DINOSAUR FOR PRESIDENT' T-shirt made some disparaging comments about the quality of the photograph, then said she'd see what she could do. No promises though.

  Logan left her to it and headed back down to the CID office for a cup of tea and a bit of a skive. Not that he got any peace there — his in-box was overflowing with new directives, memos, reminders about getting paperwork completed on time, and right at the top — marked with a little red exclamation mark — yet another summons from Professional Standards. Apparently there were some discrepancies between his version of events and PC Guthrie's — would he care to discuss them at half ten tomorrow morning?

  No he wouldn't. But he didn't exactly have any choice, did he?

  There was a little fridge in the corner of the CID office. Logan helped himself to the carton marked 'DUNCAN'S MILK ~ HANDS OFF YOU THIEVING BASTARDS!' and made himself a cup of tea, taking it back to his desk, where he sat staring out of the window: watching a pair of seagulls rip the windscreen wiper blades off a Porsche parked on the street below. Wishing he'd been able to dig up a couple of biscuits.

  '…the labs yet?'

  'Hmm?' Logan swivelled his seat round till he was facing the newcomer — Detective Sergeant Pirie, back from the Sheriff Court, swaggered across the room.

  'I said, "do you have that photo back from the labs yet"?'

  'What's with the smug face?'

  'Richard Banks got eight years. Bastard tried to plea-bargain it down, but the PF stuck him with the whole thing.'

  'Congratulations.'

  'Photo?'

  'They're still working on it.'

  'Rape kit?'

  'Same answer.'

  'Ah…' Pirie ran a hand through his ginger, Brillo-Pad hair. 'The boss isn't going to like that.'

  'Really? That'll make a change.'

  'Yes, well… email me everything you've got on our Jane Doe then you can go back to running about after that wrinkly disaster area Steel.'

  Logan stared at him. 'Do you really want a "whose DI is the biggest arsehole" competition?'

  'Fair point.' Pirie settled onto the edge of Logan's desk. 'Finnie tells me you tried to take our victim's prints with a water glass…' His eyes roved across the piles of paperwork and then locked onto the plastic evidence bag with the glass in it. 'And here it is! I thought he was just taking the piss.' He picked up the bag and grinned. 'What are you, Nancy Drew?'

  'Ha bloody ha.' Logan snatched it back and stuffed it into his bottom drawer, burying it under a pile of Police Review magazines, then slammed the drawer shut.

  'I don't get it: why's he got it in for me? All he ever does is… moan.'

  'That's easy,' Pirie stood, turned, and sauntered out the door, 'he doesn't like you.'

  The phone on Logan's desk started ringing, cutting off his opinion on what DS Pirie could do with his foreskin and a cheese grater.

  'McRae?'

  'You still working for Frog-Face Finnie?' DI Steel, sounding out of breath.

  'Not any more, Pirie's taken over the-'

  'Then get your arse downstairs. We've got a riot on our hands!' The Turf 'n Track wasn't the sort of place you'd put on a tourist map. Unless it was accompanied by a big sticker saying, 'AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!' It sat in a small row of four grubby shops in the heart of Sandilands, surrounded by suicidally depressed co
uncil flats. A pockmarked car park sulked in front of the little retail compound, complete with burnt-out litter bin, the vitrified plastic oozing out across the greying tarmac. There was a grocers on one side, the dusty corpse of a video store on the other — its windows boarded up with plywood — and a kebab shop on the end. Everything was covered in layer upon layer of graffiti, except for the Turf 'n Track. Its blacked-out windows and green-and-yellow signage were pristine. Nobody messed with the McLeods. Not more than once, anyway.

  The whole area had a rundown, neglected air to it, even the handful of kids clustered on the borders of the car park, watching the fight.

  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 turf war in my city, Simon.'

  'You're not listening, Inspector. I don't know anything about it.'

  Steel nodded. 'Well, hypothetically speaking, if you or your brother did know anything about it —
say you were both into protection, loan sharking, prostitution, supplying class A drugs… hypothetically speaking, would you tell your Auntie Roberta who these Eastern Europeans were?'

  There was a pause.

  'Like I said, Inspector, I'm a legitimate businessman. Now if you've finished your tea, you can fuck off. I've got work to do.'

  4

  'That went well,' said Steel, sauntering back out into the sunshine. 'No biscuits though… You'd think a "legitimate businessman" could rustle up a chocolate digestive, wouldn't you?'

  Logan looked back in through the Turf 'n Track's front door at the dark interior. 'How the hell did you manage that? I thought he hated the police?'

  'The McLeod brothers like to think they're old-school gangsters… Well, Simon does, Colin's just a bloody thug. You ever met their mum? She'd tan their arses if she found out they'd hit a woman.'

  'You remembering what happened to Gabrielle Christie? Broken jaw, cracked ribs, fractured leg-'

  'Aye, but she wasn't a woman, was she? She was a hoor.' Out came the inspector's cigarettes, the smoke spiralling up into the bright blue sky. 'It's no' the same to these people. Prostitutes aren't women, they're property. And before you say anything, I know, OK? It's just the way they think.'

  Outside the bookmakers, the pre-pubescent mob had dispersed. Now there was just a single grubby child, watching as Mr Meat Paste for a Nose was loaded into Alpha One Four.

  Another two patrol cars had arrived, their white paintwork sparkling in the sunshine. Spotty the Baboon was in the back of one, looking woozy and bruised from all that resisting arrest.

  The other officer from Alpha One Four was limping back up the road, his black uniform trousers all torn at the knee. It looked as if Low Budget Porn Star had got away.

  'Two out of six,' said Steel, leaning on the roof of the empty patrol car, 'no' exactly a brilliant arrest rate.' She smoked in silence for a moment, staring at Spotty and his swollen face. 'Right,' she said at last, pinging her fag end away, 'let's go see what the Clearasil Kid has to say for himself.'