A small bout of schadenfreude made Logan smile. ‘Serves her right.’
‘Yeah, she is a bit of a cow. Anyway, he’s been seen down the docks doing it! Actually doing it! Can you believe it? I said to Jackie, I said…’ There was more, but Logan tuned it out, staring through the window at the dark, silent house. It was nice of everyone to help out, but basically, this was a monumental waste of time. Another half hour and he was calling it quits. Tomorrow he’d talk to Insch and— The light above Chib’s front door blossomed into life.
‘… and then she’s like all, “could he be any balder?” and I said—’ Steve was still babbling away to himself so Logan jabbed him one in the ribs. ‘Ow! What was that for?’
‘Something’s up.’ He pointed at the house where Chib Sutherland was hurrying out of the front door, a mobile phone clamped to his ear. He went straight to the silver Mercedes sitting outside and jumped in behind the wheel. The car roared out of the driveway, speeding away from the house. Cursing, PC Steve coaxed his grubby Fiat into life and hurried after Chib, trying not to make it too obvious he was following him.
‘What d’you think’s got into him?’ asked Steve, as Chib jumped the red lights on Springfield Road.
‘No idea…’ But whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good.
Blue flames raced up the stairs, leaping from step to step on the petrol-soaked carpet. Jackie turned and ran, trying to stay ahead of the blaze. The wall behind her burst into flickering yellow where the last petrol bomb had hit, tendrils of black smoke curling around the next flight of stairs, spiralling upwards to the ceiling. She slithered to a halt on the first-floor landing where Rennie was banging on the door to the nearest flat and shouting, ‘Open up for God’s sake!’
‘Kick it in!’ yelled Jackie. Rennie took two steps back and slammed his boot into the wood: the whole frame juddered, but the door stayed shut. ‘Again!’ This time the door exploded inwards, taking half the surround with it. A sudden blast of heat from upstairs and the paint began to blister on the underside of the landing, drips of molten carpet oozing down from above. Smoke was rapidly filling the stairwell – thick, black, lung-searing clouds that reeked of petrol and burning nylon. They charged into the flat. Inside someone was screaming the word ‘burglars’ over and over again. And then the smoke detector picked up on the inferno and added its shrill bleeping to the shouting and swearing and the roar of the flames.
Jackie snatched the radio off her shoulder and yelled for a fire engine and ambulances, following Rennie through the nearest door. The screaming became an incoherent shriek. A double bedroom: old woman in bed, clutching the blanket to her chest, teeth on the bedside cabinet next to her; old man already on his feet, wrinkled willy poking out the front of his stripy pyjamas, brandishing a walking cane, snarling.
Rennie slammed the bedroom door closed. ‘We’re the police, you silly bugger! Is there anyone else in the house?’ The old man lowered his makeshift cudgel and shook his head. ‘What about next door?’
‘Mr and Mrs Scott.’ He coughed; smoke was already beginning to find its way into the bedroom. ‘They have a young daughter and a dog…’
Rennie swore. ‘I want you to get that window open!’ he said, pointing. ‘Chuck the mattress out and lower your wife and yourself down. WPC Watson will help you.’ He turned – catching Jackie’s eye as she rattled off a description of their attacker to Control, telling them to pick the bastard up and kick the shit out of him – then Rennie wrenched the bedroom door open and charged out into the hall, slamming it shut behind him.
Jackie didn’t figure out what he was up to till it was too late. ‘Rennie! Rennie, you daft bastard!’ They were out of time: just have to hope he knew what he was doing. She joined the old man at the painted-shut window, yanking and hauling on the frame until it creaked open like an arthritic joint. The double mattress tumbled out, spinning as it fell, leaving the duvet caught on a little oval satellite dish. The old man peered out uncertainly at the rectangle of foam and springs. Even if it was just a first-floor flat, it was still a long way down. Jackie grabbed him by the arm and shoved him towards the open window. ‘Come on: you have to go first. I’ll lower your wife, you catch her, OK?’ She was having to shout now, the roar of the fire drowning out everything but the incessant squealing of the smoke detector. He hesitated and she cast another glance over the lip of the window to the crumpled remains of a mattress fifteen feet below. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ she lied, ‘you’ll be fine!’
‘Don’t bloody patronize me…’ Gingerly he inched out of the window, lowering himself as far as possible before plummeting the last eight feet onto the mattress, landing in a tangle of limbs and foul language. The old woman was a lot more nervous, and a lot heavier, but Jackie still managed to force her out the window, even if she did come close to crushing her husband when she crashed down on top of him.
Something burst inside the building, making the bedroom door rattle. From outside came the faint wail of sirens. Jackie took a deep breath and jumped.
41
Brendan ‘Chib’ Sutherland’s driving became a lot less erratic when he hit Union Grove. The silver Mercedes slowed until it was well below the speed limit, almost as if the driver was looking for something. PC Steve slowed down as well, keeping the distance between the two cars constant. A siren was sounding from somewhere up ahead. Then they saw the orange glow in the sky. Something was burning.
The Mercedes jerked to a halt in the middle of the road and a figure lurched out from the pavement, bent over, limping, a sagging holdall in his hands. He clambered into the car, there was a short pause, and then Chib drove off. ‘Damn…’ Logan dug out his mobile and dialled Jackie’s number. Worried. She’d been following the Gimp and now there he was, looking as if he’d been in a fight, and there was no sign of either Jackie or Rennie. ‘Come on, pick up the bloody phone!’ Twelve rings later it cut to voicemail and he cursed, hung up and hit redial.
Steve was still on Chib’s tail, following him up Union Grove towards the junction with Holburn Street. ‘Holy shite!’ He stared agog out of the windscreen: up ahead flames leapt from a tenement rooftop, neon-yellow sparks spiralling into the night, a pall of thick, black smoke spreading like a bruise across the sky – the top two floors were ablaze. Chib drove calmly past.
Logan swore again as Jackie’s recorded message told him she was just too damn special to come to the phone right now, so leave a message. Hang up. Redial. He grabbed the radio off PC Steve’s shoulder, clicked it on and demanded to be put through to WPC Watson, only to be told to wait his turn: she’d called in from a serious fire and wasn’t answering her radio any more. Logan shouted, ‘Stop the car!’ and PC Steve slammed on the brakes. Logan wrenched open the door and sprinted towards the burning building, shouting for Jackie at the top of his lungs. The howl of sirens was getting stronger.
A small knot of people were gathered around a fallen figure on the pavement, one of them performing CPR, while others cried and moaned.
‘JACKIE?’
A grubby, soot-stained face looked up at him. It was DC Rennie; he was the one doing the mouth-to-mouth. The victim was a middleaged woman in an oversize Aberdeen University T-shirt, the fabric riding up to show off a pair of grey pants and a mealie-pudding stomach. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a figure hunched by the front of the building, while embers fell from the sky like incandescent snow.
‘Jackie?’
She was bent over the still body of a golden retriever lying on its side with a pool of something dark oozing slowly out of its head, gently stroking its fur. A spark drifted down, landing on the dog’s flank, producing the bitter smell of burning hair. Logan dropped down beside her, gently touching her arm. ‘Jackie? Are you OK?’ Her face was filthy, and so was her once-white uniform shirt. She didn’t look up at him, just brushed the smouldering ember away.
‘He wriggled when Rennie was lowering him out of the window,’ was all she said. A newish-looking double mattress lay o
n the ground less than two feet away.
‘Come on,’ he said, helping her to her feet. ‘It’s not safe.’
She gazed back at the dog as he led her out to the pavement, only snapping back to earth when Alpha Three Six screeched to a halt right in front of her. A huge neon-orange fire engine was next, disgorging its occupants and reams of equipment out into the road, the braying honk of another engine not far behind. ‘He got away!’ she shouted over the din. ‘It was Chib’s mate. He covered the whole place in petrol!’ A fireman charged past, spooling out a length of hose behind him. ‘He got away!’
‘I know: Chib picked him up. We were following him and—’
‘You can’t let him get away! The bastards’ll do a runner!’ She grabbed him by the collar and dragged him towards PC Steve’s fusty old Fiat, abandoning Rennie to deal with the fire scene. ‘You,’ she shouted, jumping in beside Steve while Logan clambered into the back. ‘Drive!’
Steve put his foot down and the car raced to the end of the street, passing an ambulance going just as fast the other way. ‘Left or right?’ Logan had no idea and said so. ‘OK,’ said Steve, squinting in concentration. ‘Right…’ He raced out into the box junction, heading down Holburn Street. A pair of red tail-lights glowed in the distance; no sign of any other vehicle. Steve put his foot down. The Mercedes was almost at the Garthdee roundabout, doing a sensible thirty miles an hour, when they caught up with it. Steve sped past on the wrong side of the road – the Fiat’s ancient engine sounding like an angry hairdryer – and slammed on the brakes. The car squealed round in a fairground pirouette, stopping sideways-on as the Mercedes screeched and juddered to a halt, its ABS kicking in, leaving Morse-code trails of rubber behind. Jackie was first out of the car, with Logan and Steve close behind. She swung her truncheon like a baseball bat at the windscreen, shattering a vast spider’s web into the glass. She was reaching back for another swing when the passenger door exploded open and the Gimp leapt out. There was something in his hands – Logan got as far as shouting, ‘GUN!’ before a harsh crack rang out and PC Steve went down like he’d been hit by a bus. Screaming.
Logan and Jackie hit the deck. Another shot dug a hole out of the tarmac by Logan’s leg and he scrabbled backwards, getting the tiny Fiat between him and the shooter. Another shot clanged into the bonnet and a fourth into the bodywork, all punctuated by PC Steve’s high-pitched wailing. A squeal of rubber and the Merc shot backwards, paused and roared forwards, sending up a cloud of grey smoke, nearly flattening Jackie on the way past. A final bark from the gun, forcing Logan to scramble out of the way, and the car was gone. Its brake lights flashed hard on and it slithered sideways into the Garthdee roundabout, rear alloy wheels bouncing off the barrier in a flurry of sparks, before the Mercedes fishtailed out onto the Bridge of Dee and raced away into the night.
PC Steve was lying on his back in the middle of the road, already white as a sheet, a huge dark stain spreading out from the right side of his chest, blood bubbles popping and frothing from between his lips. Jackie ran over to him, peered at the hole in his chest, swore silently, then leaned on it hard: trying to staunch the bleeding. Logan called for an ambulance. If they were lucky he’d still be alive by the time it got here.
Jackie looked up from Steve’s pale face. ‘What the fuck just happened?’ The constable’s screaming had died away to shallow, gasping pants, each one bringing up more blood to spill down his chin.
Logan knelt down next to Jackie. ‘How is he?’
She stared at him, dark red soaking its way up her sleeve. ‘How the hell do you think he is?’ Steve moaned and a cascade of blood rolled down the sides of his face. She tried to wipe the worst of it off, but more kept coming.
‘Come on, Steve: don’t you dare fucking die on me! If you leave me stuck with that bastard Simon Rennie, I’ll kill you!’
‘Did you…’ Logan drifted to a halt then swore.
‘What?’
‘I just figured it out. All of this: it’s a turf war. Malk the Knife making his play for Aberdeen. He sends Chib up here to break into the local market – they find out Karl Pearson’s a dealer so they grab him and torture the poor bastard until he gives up his mates. Then the Gimp burns them alive. Same with Kennedy’s Grandmother.’ He pointed up Holborn Street where the sky glowed a fiery orange. ‘They try to scare her off, but it doesn’t work, so she’s next. Christ knows where the second house fits in – maybe they’re in on the deal, so they get burnt too. Chib and his mate have been getting rid of the competition.’ He pulled out his mobile and called Control, telling them to get a couple of patrol cars down here pronto.
Jackie shifted her grip on Steve’s heaving chest, trying to find purchase on the blood-slicked fabric. ‘Where the hell’s that ambulance?’
‘They’ll be here soon. Everything will be OK,’ he lied, trying to sound confident – this whole thing was a complete fucking disaster.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘You’re doing great, aren’t you, Steve?’ The jollity was as forced as the smile. Steve just shuddered and bled.
The wailing cry of an ambulance made Logan’s head snap round. ‘About bloody time!’ He grabbed one of Steve’s cold, blood-soaked, trembling hands. ‘Come on, not long now: you’ll be fine.’ But Steve’s eyes were unfocused and his breathing was becoming more laboured and painful. The bloody froth wasn’t just coming out of his mouth any more: it was bubbling out between Jackie’s fingers.
42
The ambulance’s cold blue light swept the tarmac, reflecting back off the windows of parked cars and houses lining the bottom end of Holburn Street. Curtains had been twitching ever since the first shot rang out, but now the residents stood with them fully open, silhouetted against their bedroom lights, staring down at the car and the ambulance and the dying policeman.
Jackie sat on the bonnet of the bullet-pockmarked Fiat, slapping a paramedic’s hand away as he waved a finger back and forth in front of her face, trying to figure out if she had concussion or not. ‘I’m fine! Leave me the fuck alone.’
Steve was being hurriedly strapped into a stretcher, drips going into his arm, oxygen mask on his face, a huge wad of compression bandages sticking up from his chest. They hefted him into the back of the ambulance, then the doors slammed shut, the siren yowled into life and the driver put his foot down, taking the quickest route to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
Logan was still on the phone to FHQ, getting them to set up roadblocks on every road south from Aberdeen. Chib would ditch the car first chance he got – a silver Mercedes with a smashed front windscreen was hardly inconspicuous – so the teams were to look for two tall men with Edinburgh accents, one with short blond hair, the other with long dark hair and a moustache. Both to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. That done he hung up and dialled DI Insch’s number – not wanting to face Steel right now. He wanted backup from someone that actually trusted him.
‘Any luck?’ asked Jackie as Logan finished the call.
‘Not happy about being woken up at half two in the morning, but he’s on his way.’ Logan rubbed at his face with tired hands. The adrenaline rush of being shot at was ebbing away, leaving him exhausted and feeling sick. ‘He’s going to call the Chief Constable and let him know about Steve.’ God it was going to be a mess: another policeman shot on the streets of Aberdeen – there would have to be press conferences, briefings, meetings, updates, more meetings… none of which would help PC Steve Jacobs. ‘What did the ambulance crew say?’
‘Not much. Lot of swearing…’ She hung her head and sighed. ‘Bastard.’
Logan had to agree. ‘What we need to…’ He drifted to a halt, as a fresh siren cut through the night. ‘Here we go.’ Alpha Two Seven pulled up on the other side of the road and a pair of uniformed constables clambered out, wanting to know what had happened. They stared in silence at the blood slick on the tarmac, while Logan brought them up to speed then ordered them to seal off the street and call for an IB team. The whole scene woul
d need to be bagged and tagged.
News was travelling fast. Another three patrol cars arrived in as many minutes, the police men and women looking pale and shocked as they heard about PC Steve. All except for WPC Buchan who wore a superior ‘I told you so’ expression, muttering to anyone who’d listen that this was just like what happened to PC Maitland and wasn’t it a HUGE coincidence that DS McRae was in charge both times? But Logan was too tired and too pissed off not to bite: ‘You! Get your arse over here NOW!’
WPC Buchan straightened up and marched across the road, standing in close with cold, ugly eyes. ‘Yes… Sergeant?’
Logan prodded her in the shoulder, speaking through gritted teeth. ‘You got something to say? Have you, Constable? Come on then, let’s hear it! Nice and loud so everyone can hear what you’ve got to say.’ She stared up at him, her whole face tightening around her scrunched-up mouth. Logan let the pause grow before lowering his voice to a growl. ‘Just because your boyfriend is screwing around behind your back you will not take your shit out on me. Understand?’
She went bright red. ‘That’s got nothing… he’s not… I—’
‘Steve Jacobs is my friend and I’ve got enough to worry about trying to catch the bastard that shot him without having to deal with YOU!’
‘But I—’
‘Get your arse back in that patrol car and keep it there.’
WPC Buchan spun around, looking for support, but suddenly everyone was busy doing something else, anything else. She turned back to find Logan looming over her. ‘I am ordering you off my crime scene, Constable. You can expect a written complaint about your behaviour and attitude.’ He leaned forward so their faces were almost touching. ‘Now get out of my sight.’
‘What do you mean there’s no sign of them? There has to be!’ Logan marched back and forth across the road, not paying any attention to his surroundings, forcing the IB team to scuttle around him as they photographed ejected shell casings and bloodstains. ‘Are they stopping every car?’ The harassed woman on the other end of the phone said yes they were, and searching every boot too because, believe it or not, they had actually done this kind of thing before! Logan apologized and hung up. They were getting nowhere fast. Every major road was blocked, and most of the little side routes too. Not an easy task in farming country where minor roads crisscrossed the landscape, knitting tiny clusters of farm and residential buildings together. There were hundreds of possible routes south, as long as you knew where you were going. But the chances of a big-city Edinburgh boy like Chib being familiar with the road layout of Lower Deeside were slim. He would be a dual carriageway kind of guy.
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