‘Now what?’ asked Rennie, washing down a couple of Steve’s aspirins with greasy Pepsi.
Jackie checked her watch. ‘Now we have to go sign out.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Steve, ‘I got Big Gary to do it for us. Cost me three Mars Bars, but we’re free for the night.’
They spent a while playing Spits-or-Swallows, Logan steering well clear of the game; it just made him think of Colin’s fingers. Then came a wide-ranging philosophical discussion on thongs versus big pants and after that Rennie’s extended monologue on EastEnders’ villains, past and present. With Steve throwing in the occasional helpful discussion topic like, ‘Who’d win in a nude mud-wrestling match: Marge Simpson or Wilma Flintstone?’ which kicked off yet another round of Spits-or-Swallows. Betty Rubble apparently spits. But eventually silence and boredom descended again.
Half past one and Chib’s lounge was plunged into darkness. Logan stretched in his seat, feeling his back pop and twinge, complaining about sitting here for the last two and a bit hours. His alcohol buzz was long gone, leaving behind a headache and heartburn. The sound of gentle snoring was coming from the back seat, but up front Jackie squinted at Councillor Marshall’s magazine, twisting and turning the page to catch as much of the faint sulphurous street lighting as possible. ‘You know,’ said Logan as the upstairs light flickered on in the house they were watching. ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.’
Jackie looked up from what had to be a faked photograph. ‘Thought you said it was the only way we’d get anything on Chib and his mate?’
Logan shrugged, head resting against the misty passenger window. ‘I don’t know.’ Sigh. ‘To be honest I don’t know anything any more…’ He took a deep breath and told her about Colin Miller and what Isobel said had happened. And how it was all his fault.
‘Oh come on, you’ve got to be kidding me!’ She threw a glance into the back seat – where Rennie and Steve were curled up like a pair of gangly spaniels, sleeping peacefully – and lowered her voice to a soft hiss. ‘How could it be your fault? You didn’t hack Miller’s fingers off, did you? No.’ She reached out and took hold of his hand. ‘You’re a good cop, Logan. You caught Dunbar and that Pirie woman – that old cow Steel would have fucked those cases up like she fucks up everything else. What happened to Miller was just bad luck.’ When he didn’t say anything she gave his hand a squeeze. ‘Tell you what, let’s call it a night: tomorrow we go speak to Insch and get a surveillance op set up. That wrinkly-faced bitch might not give credit where it’s due, but Insch will. Solve the Karl Pearson thing and he’ll get you out of Steel’s team like that.’ She snapped her fingers and the snores from the back seat came to an abrupt, snorking halt.
A bleary-eyed PC Steve poked his head through to the front and asked what was going on. Logan was just about to tell him they were going home when the light clicked on above Chib’s front door and a shadowy figure hurried out into the night, carrying a holdall. ‘Heads up,’ said Logan, ‘something’s happening…’ He squinted, wishing he’d got Steve to lift a pair of night-vision goggles. The figure passed beneath a streetlight: black coat, black jeans, black woolly hat, long black hair and moustache. Chib’s mate – the Gimp – walked down to the far end of the street, turning right onto Countesswells Avenue.
‘OK!’ Jackie sounded excited to be doing something for a change. ‘Buckle up, people!’
Logan stopped her before she could turn the key. ‘We can’t. What about Chib?’
‘What about him? The Gimp is on the go, his mate isn’t. We have to get cracking or we’ll lose him!’
‘OK, OK…’ Logan screwed his face up, running the different scenarios quickly through his head. ‘You take Rennie and follow him, Steve and I stay behind and keep an eye on the house.’
It was Jackie’s turn to frown. ‘How come I get Rennie? Why can’t I take Steve?’
‘Because Rennie and I’ve been drinking, remember? Can’t drive.’
‘Then you come with me.’
‘And leave these two in charge of the house? I’d kinda like at least one sensible person in each team, if it’s OK with you.’
PC Steve’s face fell. ‘Hey, I heard that!’
‘No offence.’ Logan eased his door open and slipped out into the night. ‘Now get your arse in gear.’ Ten seconds later they were huddled in the shadows watching Jackie drive away in pursuit of Chib’s pet Gimp, with Rennie rolling about blearily in the back seat.
‘Er… sir, do you really think they should be going after the child molester on their own?’ asked Steve as they sneaked back to his car.
‘Relax, he’s probably just off for a wank in a playground or something. Anyway,’ Logan pointed at the house, where a shadow moved behind the upstairs window, ‘it’s the bastard up there you’ve got to worry about.’ According to Colin Miller anyway.
The night was dark and quiet, just the way he liked it. Tonight was going to be a special night, one to put in the diary, a red-letter day. Giggling softly, he crossed over the road, picking up the pace as he nipped around the playing fields, enjoying the feeling of light and shadow between the lampposts. Airyhall Avenue was lined with attractive family homes: mother, father, two point four children. Happy, happy families, all snug in bed, dreaming their happy family dreams and waiting for another beautiful family day to dawn. Despite the chill his armpits were already beginning to feel sticky with sweat, and he shifted the heavy holdall from one hand to the other. Tonight was going to be fun; mixing business with pleasure always was. And this time Brendan wouldn’t be angry with him. No more black eyes. Anyway, they were going to be leaving Aberdeen soon, heading back home to Edinburgh. He smiled at the thought. The weather up here was too unpredictable: one minute it was blazing sunshine, the next it was hammering with rain, sometimes both at the same time.
At the bottom of the Avenue he stopped to get his bearings, his heart quickening as he saw the sign on the other side of the road: AIRYHALL CHILDREN’S HOME. He’d come too far, shouldn’t have come down this road. Should have stuck to the road he was on… the home was smaller than the one he’d gone to, where THE MAN had been, the man Brendan had stabbed for him, but that didn’t make it any less frightening.
Shivering slightly, he turned and walked the other way, heading back towards the city centre, getting as far away from the place as possible. Only once did he look back over his shoulder at the bulky home and its slumbering, silent inhabitants.
It took ten minutes to walk up past the cemetery on Springfield Road – whistling the Simpsons theme tune from the moment he saw the sign – right, onto Seafield Road, and all the way along to the roundabout on Anderson Drive. He stopped beneath a streetlight, setting the holdall down on the grass verge. Why did he have to pack so much stuff? He dug out Brendan’s directions – a little map, with a smiley stick figure following the arrows towards a big skull and crossbones surrounded by flames. The house they’d trashed because the old lady wasn’t in. Tonight she wouldn’t be so lucky.
A siren’s wail broke through the quiet rumble of midnight traffic and his heart stopped. A white patrol car roared past, blue lights flashing, taking the roundabout without slowing down and speeding off into the night. Not looking for him.
With a broad smile he picked up the holdall and, looking both ways, crossed the road and hurried towards the centre of town.
‘So,’ said Rennie, scrambling over from the back seat, nearly standing on Jackie’s broken arm twice as she fought with the gear stick. ‘You think he’s up to something?’
‘Get your arse out of my face and sit down!’ Jackie snapped. ‘Jesus, I would have stopped the car, OK? You just had to ask.’
‘Didn’t want you to lose him.’
‘How the hell am I going to lose him? He’s on foot – what’s he going to do, outrun us?’
‘OK, OK, bloody hell, I’m sorry.’ He snapped his seatbelt on and scowled out the windscreen at the figure two hundred yards ahead of them, struggling along the pavement with
a heavy-looking holdall over one shoulder. ‘You know, ever since you broke your arm, you’ve been a right cow.’
‘I didn’t break my arm, OK? Someone else broke it.’
‘Same thing: you’ve still been fucking horrible.’
She opened her mouth, closed it again, sniffed and shrugged. To be brutally honest, he was probably right. ‘Anyway,’ she said at last, ‘of course he’s up to something. We wouldn’t be following him if he wasn’t up to something.’ She drifted the car to a halt at the side of the road and killed the lights, letting their man get a little distance between them.
‘So what d’you think he’s up to then? Dressed in black, holdall: think he’s off on the blag?’
‘Nah – the bag’s too heavy for that, wouldn’t be able to cart anything away afterwards. Making some sort of drugs run? Dropping the stuff off at his resellers?’ When she thought that Chib’s mate was far enough down the road to not notice the car following him, Jackie turned the headlights back on and pulled out into the quiet road, driving slowly past the playing fields and across the roundabout into Union Grove.
‘You know,’ said Rennie, ‘they did an old lady down here today. She was using little kids as runners. PCP and cannabis and crack and all sorts.’
‘Yeah? Well, maybe our boy’s looking to take up where she left off.’
Rennie grinned. ‘Extra, extra, read all about it: Off-Duty Police Foil Edinburgh Drugs Baron!’
Jackie smiled back at him. ‘I can live with that.’
40
The Gimp stopped halfway down Union Grove outside a grubby-looking tenement and scanned the street, making sure no one was watching him. Jackie turned the radio on, cranking up the volume until it was nearly painful – some late-night DJ on Radio One pounding out dance music into the early morning hours, making the car throb – and drove straight past, eyes forward, not paying any attention to the man with the bag full of drugs. It seemed to work: Rennie twisted and slouched, keeping an eye on the Gimp in the passenger-side wing mirror as the man pulled a key out of his pocket and let himself into the building. Rennie slapped the dashboard. ‘He’s in!’
‘Good.’ Jackie killed the radio and swung the car around, driving slowly back towards the tenement, settling for a parking space a couple of doors down. They sat in the dark, watching the front of the building.
‘Now what?’
‘Now we wait.’ Silence settled on the car, punctuated by Rennie humming the theme tune to Emmerdale. ‘Er… Jackie,’ he said, when he’d finished. ‘Should we not be catching him with the stuff on him? I mean, if he’s not got the drugs, how do we arrest him for it?’
Jackie scrunched up her face and swore. Rennie was right. She opened her door and stepped out into the quiet, night-shrouded street, looking very conspicuous in her Grampian Police uniform. ‘Well, come on then: what you waiting for?’
The building was in darkness, not even a hallway light showing through the glass above the grimy communal front door. Not that much of a surprise: after all it was going on for two in the morning, everyone would be in their bed, asleep. Except for the Gimp and whoever it was he was meeting. Jackie frowned up at the filthy granite. ‘That woman who was done for the drugs: you think this is the same building?’ Rennie just shrugged, so she clicked on the radio strapped to her shoulder and asked Control for an address check on the old woman arrested for running a pre-school drugs cartel. A familiar voice crackled out of the speaker and Jackie cranked down the volume, trying not to alert the Gimp. It was Sergeant Eric Mitchell, asking why she wanted to know and how come she was using a police radio: wasn’t she supposed to be off duty? ‘Aye, well…’ said Jackie, trying to think of a diplomatic lie. ‘I was giving DC Rennie a lift home when we saw a suspicious individual entering an address on Union Grove.’ It came out sounding as if she was giving evidence in a shoplifting court case, but it was too late to turn back now. ‘I wanted to know if this was the same address, as I recognized the individual as someone who has previously been arrested on suspicion of drug dealing.’
‘Have you been practising that?’ asked the voice on the other end of the radio. ‘’Cos it needs some bloody work.’
‘Look: he’s a dodgy character, he’s got a huge holdall with him and we think it’s full of drugs. Now you going to give me that address or not?’ It took a minute, but eventually Sergeant Mitchell confirmed that it was the same building they were now standing outside. No way that was a coincidence.
‘You want me to send backup?’
‘No, we got this one. Just get the letters of commendation ready, OK?’
Sergeant Mitchell said he’d see what he could do.
The building’s front door wasn’t locked – the Gimp had left it on the snib – so they pushed through into the building’s tiny airlock lobby, their shoes scuffing on the coconut matting. It was dark in here, getting even darker as Rennie eased the door closed. Now the only light came second-hand through the rippled glass above the door, the streetlight’s yellow glow doing little to lighten the gloom. A second wooden door formed the far side of the airlock, and on the other side of that was nothing but darkness. Something brushed her hair and Jackie nearly yelled, before realizing it was Rennie’s hand, fumbling about. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she hissed.
‘Looking for a light switch,’ he whispered back.
‘Are you fucking mental? Do you want everyone to know we’re here?’
‘I can’t see a bloody thing…’
‘Then shut your cakehole and listen!’
Silence. Then slowly, a low puffing and the occasional grunt became audible from somewhere above. Jackie grabbed Rennie’s shoulder and inched forward to the stairs. They crept their way up the first flight, pausing at the bend, where a large stained-glass window let in a faint smear of light. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. Jackie looked up, trying to judge where the noise was coming from and saw it: torchlight at the very top of the stairs, the outline of a man, hunched over, doing something suspicious.
She crept forward again, almost getting to the middle floor when the banister creaked beneath her hand. The grunting from above stopped. Now the only sound was the blood whumping in her ears. Then the torch’s beam brushed the stairs behind them and swept upwards, catching Rennie full in the face. Someone said ‘Fuck!’ then all hell broke loose.
A glass bottle smashed against the stairs above their heads, showering the wall with what smelled like petrol. Jackie took a deep breath and bellowed at the top of her lungs: ‘POLICE! HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!’ then had to jump out of the way as another bottle crashed into the banister, spewing hydrocarbons across the stairs and carpet.
Rennie cried out in pain and stumbled into her in the dark, sending them both crashing onto the landing. And then the stairs juddered: the Gimp thundering down towards them. Jackie struggled to stand, but Rennie was sprawled on top of her, swearing a blue streak. She slapped at him, shouting, ‘Get off me you moron!’
Thud, thud, thud and the Gimp was on the middle floor, running past at full tilt. Jackie flailed a leg out, her boot connecting with a kneecap. A grunt of pain, swiftly drowned out by the crash, thud, crack of the Gimp tumbling head-first down the stairs.
‘Move!’ Jackie slapped Rennie again and he lurched off her, letting loose another agonized yelp and a fresh bout of foul language. She scrabbled to her feet and threw herself down the stairs, aiming for the rounded, bulky shape silhouetted against the landing window. She slammed into him just as he was getting to his feet, sending them both careering into the corner with a clatter of glass bottles. Bang – hot yellow fireworks burst across Jackie’s vision as her head bounced off the wall. She staggered back, ears ringing, and slipped on the top step, collapsing against the banister as the Gimp lurched to his feet.
Jackie lashed out randomly with a foot and missed, but the Gimp didn’t: a heavy boot connected with her ribs, lifting her clean off the floor, sending her crashing back into the woodwork. Oh Christ that hurt! She te
nsed, ready for the next kick, but it didn’t come: the Gimp was making a run for it.
Harsh light, as if someone had turned on the sun, stinging her eyes, making everything leap painfully into focus. She squinted up to see Rennie leaning against the wall of the first-floor landing, one blood-soaked hand holding on to the light switch, still swearing for all he was worth.
More thudding down the stairs: the Gimp was nearly at the bottom. Jackie struggled upright, then ducked as another bottle exploded against the wall beside her, sending petrol everywhere. ‘BASTARD!’ She charged, stopping dead when she saw what the Gimp had in his hands: a Zippo lighter. Her hair was full of fucking petrol!
Blood oozed from a gash in the Gimp’s forehead, running down the side of his nose and into his moustache. He grinned. Then set the world on fire.
‘Christ I’m bored.’ PC Steve slumped forward in the driver’s seat of his scabby Fiat. Arms crossed over the top of the steering wheel, he let out a theatrical sigh, then said, ‘Spits-or-Swallows?’ Logan said no. ‘If-You-Had-to-or-Die?’ Another no. ‘Shoot-Shag-or-Marry?’
‘No. I don’t want to play anything, OK?’
‘Only trying to pass the time…’ They sat in silence for a whole two minutes before the constable came out with, ‘Did you hear about Karen’s boyfriend?’
Logan frowned. ‘Who the hell is Karen?’
‘You know, Karen Buchan? WPC?’ Bout so tall? She was with me when we found Rosie Williams?’
The frown turned into a scowl. ‘Oh… her.’
‘Aye, well.’ Steve leaned over and dropped his voice into a conspiratorial whisper, even though there were only the two of them in the car and the rest of the street was deserted. ‘Rumour has it her bloke – PC Robert Taylor to you and me – has been playing “non-league fixtures”, if you know what I mean.’
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