The kid with the green hair grabbed Pirie by the back of the collar and hauled him to his knees. Then ground the revolver into the side of the Detective Sergeant's head. 'Put your fuckin' gun down or I kill the pig!'
Kravchenko sighed. 'We have already done the "who is make a bluff" talk.' The silvered automatic barked once. A small plume of blood burst from Pirie's stomach, a much bigger one spraying out of his back as the bullet tore straight through.
'SHIT!' Green-Hair let go and danced back, hands and feet high in the air. Pirie slumped back onto the concrete, screaming.
'Now is easier, yes? Now we-'
The fat man in the pink polo shirt said, 'Bugger this,' then shot Kravchenko in the chest with his shotgun.
70
The old man flew backwards, bounced off the stack of I-beams and crumpled to the floor, face-down in the pool of Wiktorja's blood.
The BOOM seemed to take forever to fade away.
Logan stared at Kravchenko's body, then back at the huge man in the pink polo shirt. 'You just-'
Reuben shook his head. 'No I didn't.' He glanced over his shoulder at his green-haired sidekick. 'That bastard Pirie still alive?'
The DS had stopped screaming, instead he was clutching onto the small hole in his stomach, face pale, mouth open, shallow breaths.
'Yeah, he's still alive.' Green-Hair kicked him again. 'Two-timing cock. Oh yeah, we know you been playin' both sides, Pirie; been followin' you for days, man. What you think Wee Hamish is gonnae do to you, eh? You're gonnae be pig food, you-'
'Jonny! Shut the fuck up, OK? We got a policeman present.' Then he smiled at Logan. 'Ignore him: this ain't got nothing to do with Mr Mowat. This is strictly personal. Understand? Now Jonny and me are gonnae take Pirie and that Polish dickhead, and get out of your hair, OK?'
'What makes you think I'm going to just let you take them?'
Reuben turned the sawn-off shotgun until it was pointing at Logan's chest.
Logan looked down at the twin barrels. 'You've fired it twice already. No shells left.'
'You think?' The big man smiled. 'Jonny, you help Mr Pirie to his feet and see him out to the car, eh? We'll… ah… drop him off at the hospital on the way home.'
'Aye, right… hospital.' The green-haired youth hauled Pirie away by the armpits, leaving a smear of bright red on the concrete.
'Good boy.' The fat man lowered his shotgun, and pointed at Kravchenko's motionless body. 'Now, I'll just take that wee shite and-'
'No. You leave him where he is.'
A short laugh. 'I'm no' leaving any-'
Logan stepped forward and stuck the barrel of his gun in the middle of the fat man's forehead. 'Yes you are.'
Pause.
'Aye, fair enough.' He waited till the door slammed shut, then hurried across the concrete to Wiktorja. She was pale, sweating, shivering, lying in an ever-expanding pool of her own blood. Logan dug out his phone, switched it back on and called for an ambulance, trying to figure out how long it had been since he'd spoken to DI Steel — how long it would be until the firearms team got here. Now that it was too sodding late for them to do anything. Maybe they'd be just in time to stop Reuben and his little green-haired friend from getting away with Pirie?
Drop him off at the hospital. Yeah, right.
But somehow Logan didn't care — the two-faced bastard deserved everything coming to him. Besides, Logan had more than enough to feel guilty about already. Whatever happened to Pirie was his own fault.
Wiktorja lay on her side, making little pedalling motions with her legs, smearing them round and round in the dark red slick. Logan picked up Kravchenko's Swiss Army knife, unfolded a serrated blade, then sawed through the cable-ties holding her wrists behind her back.
As soon as the plastic snapped she gritted her teeth and hissed out a stream of Polish obscenities. Her right arm — the one that used to be in a sling — made a disturbing sideways bow half way between her elbow and her wrist where Grigor had broken it. She clutched it to her chest.
'Are you OK?'
'You let… you let… him shoot me…' Each word squeezed out and painful.
'Why didn't you tell me?' He knelt beside her, cold blood soaking through the knees of his trousers. 'How could you be working for Ehrlichmann?'
She looked up at him. 'So I can find… Kravchenko… and… make him… pay…'
Logan had never seen anyone so pale in his life.
'You're going to be OK.'
Or maybe not.
She blinked a couple of times, as if trying to get the empty warehouse into focus. And then she saw the man lying next to her, his pale linen suit gradually turning dark red. Wiktorja screwed up her face and spat, but the bloody spittle didn't get that far, it just dribbled down her chin. 'I am… I am glad… you are dead… you old… bastard.'
Her left leg twitched in Kravchenko's direction. Trying to kick him. Not getting anywhere near. And then her head slumped forwards.
Logan checked for a pulse.
71
She was still alive, just, but if the ambulance didn't get here soon, she probably wouldn't be for long. Still, there was one thing he could do for her: Logan stood, walked over to Kravchenko's body, and kicked it in the ribs. Hard.
The old man groaned.
Logan stared at him. 'Oh you have got to be kidding…'
Kravchenko was trying to lever himself onto his side, the front of his baggy linen suit tattered from the shotgun blast, drenched in blood.
How the hell did he survive that?
Logan placed his foot against the old man's shoulder and shoved him over onto his back. Kravchenko's head hit the ground with a dull THUNK and he grunted.
Logan looked down at the ruined suit, the ripped shirt, all the holes from the shotgun pellets. And the guy was still moving. 'You're as bad as bloody Grigor!'
Kravchenko reached for his tattered chest with trembling hands, and fumbled with the buttons on his blood-soaked shirt. And that's when Logan saw the bulletproof vest. The old man coughed, then swore in Polish.
Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out Grigor's gun. His latex gloves stuck to the handgrip, leaving bloody smears on the black barrel.
'Everyone thinks you're already dead.' He racked the slide back and a brass-jacketed 9mm bullet pinged out into the warm afternoon air, landing with a plop in the blood — sending out slow-motion ripples. 'Do you have any idea how much shite I've gone through, because of you?'
The old man rolled onto his side again, then struggled to his knees.
Logan kicked him between the shoulder blades, sending him crashing back to the ground.
'Thanks to you I've been blown up, shot at, I'm probably going to get fired, maybe sent to bloody prison…' He kicked the old man in the bullet-proof ribs. 'And I've started smoking again! You know how stupid that is? I don't even like the bloody things any more!'
Once more for luck, this time hard enough to hurt his own foot. Logan limped away, then back again, pointing the gun at Kravchenko's face. 'Right, first: the Buckie Ballad, where is it?'
'Go… make fuck with yourself.'
He jabbed the gun barrel up under Kravchenko's chin.
'Tell me where that fishing boat's going to unload the guns, or I'm going to blow your head off.'
The old man made a noise. It took Logan a moment to realize it was laughter. 'What the hell's so damn funny?'
'You are. Is big act. You are policja, you must to have rules. It make you weak.'
Logan took a step back. Kravchenko was right: there were rules.
'You know what? Fuck it.' Logan shot him in the chest.
Kravchenko slammed back into the concrete, mouth open on a silent scream, fingers scrabbling at the new shiny lump on the front of his bulletproof vest.
Logan watched him writhe. 'Hurts, doesn't it? Bet it's like being cracked in the ribs with a crowbar. Where's the Buckie Ballad?'
'Ffffuck… you… kurwa…'
'Want another go?'
Lo
gan shot him again, this time in the stomach — right in the middle of the vest's abdominal panel. Kravchenko nearly folded in half, hissing in pain.
'You really think I'm going to let you bring a boatload of automatic weapons into my city?' He kicked the old man over onto his back and shot him in the ribs again. 'Where is it?'
'Aaaaaaagh! Cholernik… Odpierdol sie!' Swearing, and groaning, and swearing some more.
'OK, fine. Let's make it more interesting.' Logan swung the gun around and blew a hole in the old bastard's leg. 'Now where's that bloody boat?
Aftermath
I
CAULFLEG FARM, 35 MILES FROM ABERDEEN — FOUR HOURS LATER
'Now then,' Wee Hamish stepped into the barn, 'are we ready?'
A fat man in stained overalls hauled the metal door shut, locking out the sunny afternoon. He flipped a switch and the lights flickered on, just bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling, making the wet concrete floor glow.
Sties ran down either side of the building, full of big pink bodies, snouts poking through metal bars. It stank in here. A deep, savoury reek of raw sewage, sweat and terror. A dusty hint of dry straw bedding. The grunt and squeal of the pigs.
Hilary Brander looked at her husband. 'We're ready.'
'Good, good.' Wee Hamish held out a brand-new claw hammer. 'Well, there's no rush, so take your time. You want me and Reuben to wait outside?' He pointed at the fat man, who waved back, his face a deformed mass of scar tissue and patchy beard.
'No, no, you're OK.' She accepted the hammer and Wee Hamish nodded.
'Right, well, he's all ready for you.'
They'd laid out a couple of wooden pallets on a bed of straw in the middle of the concrete walkway. There was a man tied to the wood, spread-eagled. One side of his head was swollen and torn, covered in a red-brown mask of dried blood. He was big. Going bald at the front, the long hair at the back matted and glistening.
He mumbled something behind the gag, glaring at them with one eye as Hilary led Simon across the concrete floor, the scars where his eyes used to be hidden behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses.
Wee Hamish coughed. 'I'm sorry we couldn't get the other one. I'm afraid the police officer involved was… Well, never mind. I'm sure we can take care of that later.'
Hilary pressed the hammer into Simon's hand. 'He's all yours.'
Simon bared his teeth, feeling his way along the battered man's leg until he came to the knee.
The victim thrashed, jerking back and forth, but the ropes were nice and tight. He wasn't going anywhere.
Simon's first three goes with the hammer missed, thunking into the wooden pallets. The fourth clipped the edge of the man's leg, and the fifth crunched down on the back of his own hand. 'FUCK! FUCKING, FUCKING FUCK!' He hurled the hammer away and sat back on his haunches, sucking his knuckles.
'Are you OK, honey?'
'No I'm not O-fucking-K! I'm blind! I can't even cripple someone!'
Hilary stood, walked over to the hammer and picked it up. There were bits of straw stuck between the forks of the claw. She picked them free and let them fall to the floor. 'I'll do it.'
Wee Hamish laid a hand on her shoulder. 'It's all right, Hilary love, Reuben will take care of everything. Won't you Reuben?'
'Be my pleasure, Miss Brander.'
'You go inside and tell Mrs Williamson I said to give you a nice cup of tea.'
Hilary hefted the hammer in her hand. 'Thanks, but it should be one of the family. And Colin can't do it — not with the police watching him all the time. I owe it to Simon…'
The first blow was tentative. The second harder. The third strong enough to make the cartilage snap and the big man scream behind the gag. On and on, pounding away at the knee joint, spatters of blood flying as the noise got wetter and wetter. Hammering right down into the bone. Then it was time for knee number two.
She looked up. Wiped a hand across her face, trying to get rid of the little red drops on her cheeks and forehead, but probably just making a smeary mess.
Simon was smiling his bedroom smile, listening as the crunching started up again. She could see the bulge in his trousers. First time in years…
Tonight was going to be very special.
She grinned, then went to work on the big Pole's elbows. Detective Sergeant Pirie screwed his eyes shut and tried to pretend he was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Anywhere other than lying on his side in an empty pig pen, drenched in his own blood. Handcuffed and gagged. Cold and shivering. Lapsing in and out of consciousness. Crying, and praying.
Then the sound of hammering stopped, and the big Polish guy was dragged away.
The barn door grated open.
Pirie could hear the pigs squealing as they fought over something. And then Reuben was back, his big scarred face twisted into a smile.
'Your turn.'
II
GRAMPIAN POLICE FORCE HEADQUARTERS — MONDAY
DI Steel was waiting for him outside DCI Finnie's office, lounging back against the wall, hands jammed deep into her armpits. She raised an eyebrow as Logan closed the door. 'Well, they going to throw the book at you?'
'Depends if the Buckie Ballad turns up where it's supposed to.' He grimaced and started down the corridor. 'There's still no sign of Kravchenko's thug, Grigor: ferries, bus stations, airports, nothing. Right now Finnie and Bain are in there fighting about who gets blamed for DS Pirie being bent. I've got a two o'clock with Professional Standards, so it'll probably end up being my fault.'
'Oh, come on, don't be such a grumpy monkey.' She slapped him on the back, then linked her arm in his. 'If you're nice to Aunty Roberta, she'll put in a good word for you.'
'Yeah, because that worked so well when they were looking for a new DI.'
'Don't start with that again.' She pushed open the door and they were in the stairwell. 'Anyway, you owe me for upsetting Susan with that paedophile thing. She's still sulking.'
Steel stopped him on the stairs, dug about in her pocket and came out with a little plastic specimen jar.
Logan groaned. 'Like things aren't bad enough?'
'Oh come on, it's the least you can do! Get your tattooed gothfriend to-'
'Inspector?' DI Beattie was coming up from the third floor, a cup of tea in one hand and a chocolate digestive in the other.
Steel didn't even turn around. 'What?'
'I think I've found out who stole the money from your swear tin!'
'Come on then, which thieving git's backside do I have to jam my foot up?'
Beattie cast a sneaky look left, then right. 'It was Detective Sergeant Pirie.'
Steel stood there, mouth hanging open. Then she slapped her cheeks, leaving her hands there for dramatic effect. 'Oh, my God, why didn't I think of that?'
'Well, don't be too hard on yourself, Inspector, it did take me-'
'You bloody idiot.' She shoved past Beattie and stomped down the stairs. 'Since it got out Pirie was taking backhanders, he's been blamed for everything. My money's gone missing? Blame Pirie. The milk's gone off? Blame Pirie. They promoted a bearded-sodding-halfwit to Detective Inspector? Blame Pirie.'
'But I-'
'You were a lousy DS and you're an even worse DI!'
She disappeared around the next flight of stairs, her voice echoing up from below. 'Lazarus, we're no' getting any younger here. Move your backside!'
He hurried after her, shrugging at a spluttering DI Beattie on the way past.
Logan caught up with the inspector in the corridor outside her office. She stopped with one hand on her door handle, and grinned. 'Think that's going to be my new hobby — winding Beattie up till he cries.'
She turned the handle and the door swung open behind her, which was why she couldn't see a startled-looking DC Rennie jumping up from behind her desk. He scrambled over to the window, pretending to be watching something outside as Steel turned round and sauntered into the room.
'What you doing here?'
Rennie went into a pantomime, 'Oh I didn't se
e you there…' act. 'I was… erm… looking for DS McRae. You know how they let Ricky Gilchrist out on psychiatric licence, coz he was only pretending to be Oedipus?'
'And?'
'Attacked a Polish barman last night, right in the middle of the pub. Managed to gouge one of the poor sod's eyes out with his thumb before the doormen dragged him off.'
'Wonderful — that's all I need.'
'Apparently, he was screaming about how the Polish were all rabid dogs, and how the police should never've let him go.'
'Aye,' said Steel, 'that's right, rub it in. Do you no' think Laz has got enough to worry about: half-dead Polish bint, a missing DS, escaped Polish henchman, and a blind paedophile who's suing our arses off.'
Logan collapsed into one of the visitor's chairs. 'I still don't know how Kravchenko found out we had Rory Simpson at your place. Wiktorja sure as hell didn't tell him.'
'Ah…' Rennie went brick red. 'Actually…' He coughed. 'That might've been my fault.'
'What?'
'Well… Pirie asked me what I was doing Thursday and I kind of… you know.'
'You told him.' Logan slumped even further down his chair, hands over his face. 'Oh for God's sake.'
'Sorry?'
Steel's voice was worryingly calm and level. 'Laz, do you have ten quid I can borrow?'
Logan peered out through his fingers. 'You told Pirie?'
'It wasn't my fault!'
'Someone lend me a tenner!'
Rennie dug a ten pound note from his pocket and handed it over. 'I really didn't mean to-'
Steel poked him in the chest. 'People nearly died! Rory Simpson got his eyes gouged out! You stupid, idiotic, halfwit, son-of-a-bitching, useless, bloody tosser!' That was just the warm up — once she got into her stride Rennie was subjected to a tidal wave of abuse. And then the rant came to a sudden and unexpected halt.
'Ten quid.' She turned her back on the constable and thrust the money she'd borrowed into Logan's hand. 'Stick that in the swear tin. And while you're at it…' She chucked the plastic specimen tub at him as well.
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