Irvine smiled. ‘Careful there, Jim, don’t want people to see you working.’
‘Screw you, Barbara.’ But he was grinning when he said it.
‘And that’s kinda the problem.’ She pushed out through the back door and into the dreich afternoon. Drizzle drifted down from a slate-grey sky, cold and damp. The rear car park was virtually empty, just a pair of battered patrol cars — front bumpers buckled, side panels a mix of scrapes, dents and rust; a grubby white van with the council logo on the side; a brand-new Volvo estate; and Logan’s manky brown Fiat. ‘Deep down Knox doesn’t really believe he’s done anything wrong.’
Irvine pointed a key fob at the council van. Stopped. Gave the fob a jiggle. Tried again. Swore. Marched over and rammed the key in the door lock. ‘Bloody thing.’
Logan shifted a stack of paperwork from the passenger seat into the footwell, then clambered in. He hauled on his seatbelt as Irvine started the van up. A rumbling diesel rattle, the gearstick vibrating like an over-sized sex toy.
She wrestled with the wheel and the van inched out of the car park. ‘God I miss power steering…’
They circled the Bucksburn roundabout, heading along the dual carriageway back towards town.
‘So,’ Irvine dragged the steering wheel to the left, juddering them around one of Aberdeen City Council’s world-beating collection of potholes, ‘what’s the story? You with us full time now? Just paying a flying visit? Seeing how the other half lives?’
Logan shrugged. ‘Let’s just say I’m not flavour of the month with my guv’nor.’
‘Ah,’ her voice was monotone, ‘so you’re here as punishment.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘No, no, it’s OK. I mean, what sort of loser wants to spend all day dealing with rapists, flashers, and paedophiles, right?’
‘It was Steel’s idea, I’m just-’
‘Slumming it with the Diddy Men?’
‘It’s not-’
She grinned at him. ‘I’m pulling your leg. It’s OK, I like what I do. Might sound weird, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of keeping people’s kids, and wives, and girlfriends-’
‘And grandads.’
‘-and grandads safe. Someone has to do it, right? And I happen to be good at it.’
‘No pervert left behind.’
Irvine shrugged. ‘Something like that, yeah.’
‘How’s it going, Richard?’ Constable Irvine settled on the dusty couch, dumped her bag on the floor, and dug out a bundle of badly photocopied forms, held together with a pair of green treasury tags. The blotchy cover read ‘ACCUTE-2007 SCORING GUIDE’.
The dusty lounge was silent for a moment, just the tick…tick…tick of the carriage clock and the creak of floorboards from a room above.
Logan leant back against the windowsill. The place still had that oppressive, throat-clogging taint of mildew, the air cold enough to make his breath steam.
Knox had taken the armchair nearest the broken electric fire. Knees together, arms wrapped around that same tatty carrier bag from Asda. He sniffed. ‘OK, I suppose.’
‘Good. That’s good.’
More silence.
Knox coughed.
Logan checked his watch. God this was exciting.
Finally the front door banged and someone shouted, ‘Hello?’
PC Irvine called back, ‘In here.’
A short, beefy man poked his head into the room. ‘Sorry I’m late. Benny tried tae dee hisself in again last nicht. You ken fit he’s like.’
Irvine nodded. ‘Slit his wrists again?’
‘No, thought he’d gie hanging a go. Neck’s one big bruise this morning.’ The newcomer stepped forward and held his hand out for Logan to shake. ‘Paul Leggett. I’m Barbara’s partner. Well, not partner-partner, we work together, like.’ He grinned. ‘You the boy told that fat prick fae Newcastle tae awa bile his heid?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Good stuff.’ PC Leggett slapped his hands together then settled in the seat opposite Knox, looking him up and down for almost a whole minute before asking much the same question Irvine had. ‘Fit like ‘i day, Richard?’
Knox straightened the seam on his trousers. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to get this over with.’
‘Fair enough.’
Irvine flipped to the first page of the treasury-tagged sheets. From where Logan was standing, he could see a little printed table, headed ‘VICTIM ACCESS’. She cleared her throat. ‘So, Richard, have you been out and about yet? Or are you sticking to home for now?’
He shrugged, the plastic bag in his arms rustling as he moved. ‘Home.’
Irvine scrawled a zero in the box at the bottom of the sheet, then turned to the next page. ‘Must be a bit claustrophobic, just rattling about in the house on your own…’
‘Not on me own, am I? Got Harry and Mandy to keep us company. ‘Sides,’ he picked at a loose thread on the armchair, ‘house is a hell of a lot bigger than me cell back at Frankland.’
‘Hmm…’ Irvine made a note. ‘And is there anyone you’d like to spend more time with. You know, if you could?’
‘God. I’d like to spend more time with God.’
Sitting on the other side of the room, Paul raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
Knox sighed. ‘I’ve been through all these tests before, like. Used to do them two, three times a week with this fat bird from Social Services when I got out of prison. “Is there anyone you’d like to spend more time with?”, “Has anything made you angry since we last met?”, “How did you handle it?” Same questions every time.’
Irvine shifted in her seat. ‘I’m only trying to help, Richard.’
‘Next up’s “Sexual Preoccupations”.’ Knox clutched his carrier bag tighter. ‘Am I masturbating within normal limits? Am I having deviant sexual fantasies?’
She nodded. ‘How important is sex to you these days?’
He slumped back in his seat, then ran a hand over his eyes. ‘I can save you the trouble of quizzing us. My score’s going to be “Moderate”. Should be “Low”, but you probably think I’m being all defensive about it.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Wouldn’t you be? Someone comes into your home and reads out questions like you’re on some sick game show?’
PC Irvine’s partner laughed. ‘Like Blankety Blank for perverts? Wankety Wank?’
Knox looked at him for a moment, then smiled. ‘I’ll have a “P” please Bob.’
Wrong show.
Logan shifted on the windowsill. Knox was right — this was a waste of everyone’s time. He’d just tell them what they wanted to hear. Work the system. Screw with the results.
Worthless.
Knox gave a small, humourless laugh. ‘You know, it’s funny really. All this time and I’m finally at peace. Let God into me heart, chased away me demons. And we’re still going through the same questions they was asking us in prison.’ The weedy little man went back to picking at the arm of his chair. ‘God’s forgiven us, surely that’s what matters. The minister told us all about His forgiveness and love, like. We’re all made in His image, aren’t we? Even someone like me.’ A smile crept across Knox’s pointy face. ‘God is just like me.’
Now there was a creepy thought.
Logan checked his watch. Nearly half two. If they didn’t get moving soon, by the time he got back to Bucksburn and picked up his car the Friday afternoon rush-hour would be grinding everything to a halt. And there was no way he was doing any more unpaid overtime for Steel, Finnie, or anyone else.
Logan waited in the hall with PC Paul Leggett, while Irvine was upstairs checking on the two people from Sacro. Knox was still in the lounge, on his knees on the hearthrug, praying to a broken electric fire.
Logan turned his back on the open doorway. ‘Ever taken the test yourself?’
A lopsided smile pulled Leggett’s face out of shape. ‘Apparently I’m a “High Risk” offender.’
&nb
sp; ‘Yeah?’
‘Chronic masturbation means mair than fifteen times a month. I’m off the bloody scale on that one.’
Uncomfortable silence.
Logan fidgeted.
‘Anyway…’
Constable Irvine appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘All set.’
Leggett opened the front door, motioning them out into the cold, drizzly afternoon. ‘Fit’s the live-in help saying till it?’
‘He’s not been out of the house. Keeps himself to himself. Does a lot of praying.’
‘Aye, weel, going to take a lot mair than that.’
They hurried down the path towards the grubby van parked at the kerb. By the time they clambered inside Irvine’s glasses were opaque with tiny water droplets. She turned the key in the ignition, pumping the accelerator until the engine caught.
PC Leggett cranked up the blowers. ‘Fit did you think, Babs?’
Irvine took off her glasses and dried them on a corner of her tartan-tea-towel shirt. ‘He’s hiding something.’
Logan scooted around in his seat. ‘Do I need to up the surveillance?’
She shrugged, then pointed through the slowly clearing windscreen at a black box mounted on a streetlight a couple of houses away, then at another rusty van in the old Aberdeen City Council burgundy livery. It was sitting beside a coned-off rectangle of tarmac and looked at least ten years older than the one they were currently sitting in. ‘Got level one surveillance, CCTV both ends of the street, two people staying with him full time, regular visits from Paul and me…What else can we do?’
Richard Knox stands at the living room window, watching the grimy white van drive off into the damp afternoon.
He checks the lounge doorway — no one there — then pulls the mobile phone from his pocket. The phone he’s not supposed to have, just in case he uses it to make contact with other perverts.
Like he’d want to speak to those filthy bastards.
He scrolls down through the address book until he comes to the number of a certain gentleman in Newcastle. A very influential gentleman who’s not in the least bit gentle. It rings for a while, then the voicemail picks up and Richard leaves a message.
‘Hi, Aunty Maggie, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Yer present’s in the post, like.’ Pause. ‘It’s all going good here, you know? Settlin’ in and that. Speak to you later.’ And then he hangs up.
Checks the doorway again.
Slides the phone back into its dark hiding place.
Happy birthday.
The police aren’t the only ones who’ve got an exit strategy.
10
The manky little Fiat made a horrible grinding noise every time Logan tried to put it into third. He mashed the clutch to the floor and shoved the gearstick into place, pretending he couldn’t smell something burning. Heading back along the dual carriageway towards the Horrible Haudagain roundabout, next stop: FHQ, to find somewhere quiet to hide until his shift was over.
The radio hissed and crackled, never latching onto any station for more than three or four minutes at a time. It gave a burst of static, then music — Katrina and the Waves, ‘Walking on Sunshine’. Logan’s stomach lurched, his mouth filling with warm saliva. Heart pounding. He stabbed the off button and the radio was silent.
Jesus…
He rolled down the window. Cold air, laced with drizzle and exhaust fumes.
Deep breaths.
Just a song. Nothing to worry about. Just a song.
When his mobile phone rang he flinched. Logan checked the display: DI Steel. His thumb hovered over the off button…then he hit pick up, holding it to his ear as he pulled into a little layby off the dual carriageway with half a dozen small industrial units in it. Majestic Wines, Pizza Hut, that kind of thing.
‘Where the hell are you?’
Logan killed the engine. ‘You said get out of your sight.’
‘Just…bloody…’ A pause, then, ‘I want you back at the ranch; we’re going round to Steve Polmont’s place.’
‘I’m stuck in Bucksburn.’ Which was a lie. ‘Can’t you take somebody-’
‘Bucksburn? What the cock-flavoured buggery are you doing in Bucksburn?’
‘You told me to go see the Diddy Men, remember?’
Another pause.
‘Just get your scarred arse back here and pick me up. Now!’
‘You’re a bloody idiot, you know that, don’t you?’
Logan just shrugged. Outside the car windows, King Street was a study in miserable grey. People clomped along through the drizzle, collars up, mouths down. A few of the more optimistic ones huddled beneath umbrellas: the misty rain just soaked them from the shoulders down.
DI Steel wrestled with the passenger door, winding her window down. ‘And could you no’ have got a decent pool car?’
‘You said come pick you up, I picked you up.’
‘Smells like old lady farts.’ She dug out a cigarette and lit it, then shoogled the pack at Logan.
‘Danby still throwing a wobbly?’
‘What do you think? Lucky he didn’t have you kicked you off the case.’ She dug a sat-nav out of her bag and fiddled some sort of clip thing onto the back, then huffed a smoky breath onto the suction cup and stuck it to the windshield. Where it promptly fell off again. ‘Buggering hell…you ever clean this thing?’
She breathed on the windscreen, fogging up a patch, then scrubbed at it with the sleeve of her jacket. This time, the sat-nav stuck. ‘Nicked it out of lost-and-found.’
‘Would a map not have been-’
‘Bloody GSM trace on Polmont’s mobile came back with latitude and longitude, OK?’ She switched the thing on and poked away at the screen, pale-yellow tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. ‘Straight on at the roundabout.’
Logan drove them through the Bridge of Don and out past the Exhibition and Conference Centre, rain shimmering on its bizarre curvy glass bridge and fake airport control tower. Following the green arrow on the sat-nav’s screen.
‘So, what do we know about Polmont?’
Steel pulled a face. ‘Came to me through a DI in Edinburgh who owes me a couple of favours. Polmont was his chiz on another Malk the Knife building site — got themselves half a million in cocaine, twenty illegal immigrants, and one thousand cartons of smuggled cigarettes.’
‘Well.’ Logan shrugged. ‘At least you know he’s sound.’
‘Aye…’ Steel picked a flake of ash off her trousers. ‘Sort of.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘Polmont’s got a bit of a drink problem.’
‘He’s a bloody alki, isn’t he?’
Scowl. ‘What, you want to swap tips?’
Logan ignored that. ‘He’s probably off on a bender somewhere. That’s why you can’t get him — too pissed to answer the phone.’
‘Oh, don’t be so-’
‘This is another wild bloody goose chase, isn’t it?’
‘Just shut up and drive.’
Logan put his foot down and the manky Fiat rumbled and rattled up to fifty along the dual carriageway.
All the way out to Balmedie the fields were a soggy patchwork of green-brown, bordered by pale-grey drystane dykes. The occasional flock of sheep breathing clouds of steam into the cold, damp air. And then they got to the signs saying, ‘WORKS ENTRANCE AHEAD’, ‘SLOW VEHICLES TURNING’, ‘NO ACCESS TO BEACH’.
It hadn’t taken the local press long to nickname Donald Trump’s development ‘Trumpton’. A vast swathe of coast was due to disappear under the bulldozers: two golf courses, five hundred houses, a four-star hotel, and nearly a thousand holiday villas. Which kind of put McLennan Homes’ four hundred semi-detacheds into perspective.
Three hundred yards further on a huge billboard sat at the side of the road — ‘MCLENNAN HOMES, BUILDING A BETTER TOMORROW FOR YOU’. Photo of a smiling nuclear family holding hands and staring mistily off into the distance. Very aspirational. Or it would have been if someone hadn’t spraypainted a big
blue penis onto one of the kids.
Logan slowed the car. According to the sat-nav, Steel’s map coordinates were off to the left. The Fiat juddered to a halt on the grass verge.
He peered across and through the passenger window at the site entrance — a high chainlink fence, the gates held open with dented oil drums. ‘SITE PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’, ‘NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL’, ‘DANGER OF DEATH’, ‘WARNING: RAZOR WIRE’. A rutted mud track led away into Malk the Knife’s development.
Logan checked the sat-nav again. ‘You sure you got those coordinates right?’
‘Course I’m sure.’ She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. ‘Maybe they’ve got caravans for people living on site?’
‘Maybe…’
Logan eased the car through the gates. The muddy track bumped and slithered under the Fiat’s wheels, taking them closer to the rumble of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of something backing up.
Steel pointed through the windscreen. ‘Over there.’
He pulled up beside a long Portakabin with ‘SITE OFFICE’ stencilled on the side, trying to aim for a bit that didn’t look like the battle of the Somme.
‘Right.’ Steel flicked her cigarette butt out of the window. ‘If anyone asks, you and me are debt collectors. I’m the boss, you’re the hired muscle. Still a chance we can salvage this cock-up, so no telling anyone you’re a cop, understand?’
She pulled the sat-nav off the windscreen and they clambered out into the drizzle.
‘Which way?’
She frowned at the little screen, trying to shield it from the rain with her coat, then did a slow three-sixty. Stopped. And pointed out across the churned-up earth.
No caravans, no Portakabins, not so much as a three-man tent.
Steel took a step forwards, but Logan grabbed her arm.
‘Maybe we should call for a search team. IB. Pathologist. If Polmont’s-’
‘Don’t be so wet.’ She shook herself free and stomped off into the mud.
Logan swore, then followed her.
The going was tough, thick clogs of brown-black earth sucking at his shoes, dirty water oozing in through the lace holes, soaking into his socks. And then his foot disappeared into a puddle, right up to the shin. ‘Fuck…’ Cold and wet, the trouser leg sticking to his skin. He limped after Steel, cursing all the way.
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