Dark Blood

DSI Danby sat at the other end of the long, polished boardroom table, taking notes. DI Steel slouched in her seat, picking her teeth. And DCI Finnie stood in the corner, holding a murmured conversation with someone on his mobile.

Ingram rammed the cap back on his marker pen, and supervised his moustache again. ‘Now, as you can see from the risk assessment matrix, we’ve got several environmental factors against us where Richard Knox is concerned. The house is within easy walking distance of one sheltered living facility, a bowling green, and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. All places we can expect old men to be found on a regular basis…’

Logan tuned him out.

How could anyone complain about his attitude?

This was so bloody typical of-

Someone kicked him under the table.

‘Wh…’

Steel was making less than subtle gestures towards the whiteboard. Mouthing, ‘Pay a-fucking-tention!’

‘…and that’s why,’ DI Ingram had written ‘HMP PETERHEAD’ on the board, ‘we have a disproportionately large number of sex offenders to manage. Of the three hundred and twenty-three currently living in the North East, about half are classed as “indefinite”. So they’re on the list for life…’

Logan tuned him out again. It was all rubbish anyway, background info for a nodding DSI Danby. Now there was someone with an attitude worth complaining about. But did they? No, they had to whinge about Logan instead. Obviously, that cock-weasel Beattie was behind it all. Wanted taking out and-

Steel kicked him again. Then turned and announced to the room, ‘How about DS McRae takes us through the surveillance routine?’

Cow.

Logan scowled at her, then stood and marched to the front of the room, snatched a red marker from the tray beneath the whiteboard and scrawled up a rough outline of the house in Cornhill that Knox had inherited. ‘We can’t put surveillance cameras in the house without Knox’s permission, so we’re going to set one on the lamppost opposite…’ Logan sketched in the street. ‘Here, and another one here. This gives us a coming-and-going view the length of Cairnview Terrace. He’ll get level one surveillance for the first week, then-’

‘Just the one week?’ Danby shifted in his chair. ‘He’s not going to suddenly get better, you know what I’m saying?’

Logan shrugged. ‘Budget constraints. One week of level one surveillance: round the clock with two officers in an unmarked van. After that we have to downgrade it to level two. We’ll try to keep an eye on the live video feed… depending on staffing levels.’

‘You’ll try to keep an eye on it?’

‘He’s going to have someone from Sacro with him round the clock anyway, so it-’

‘A bunch of volunteers? That’s not good enough.’

‘They do more support and monitoring of high-risk offenders than any other-’

‘Knox abducts and rapes old men.’ Danby thumped the table with a huge finger punctuating every word, ‘He — needs — constant — police — supervision.’

‘Yeah, well if you wanted him watched twenty-four-seven you should’ve kept him in Newcastle, shouldn’t you?’

Danby’s eyes bugged in his head. ‘What?’

‘Look, we don’t have bottomless pockets up here, OK? Everyone dumps their sodding sex offenders on us and we’re supposed to just bend over and take it.’ Logan jabbed the whiteboard with his pen. ‘This is the best we can do. You want more? Get Northumbria Police to chip in and pay for it. He’s your pervert.’

Steel buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh bloody hell…’

DSI Danby was on his feet, face flushed, fists resting on the tabletop. Voice a thick, dark rumble. ‘I don’t care if everyone here’s used to your crap, Sergeant, but my warrant card says, “Detective Superintendent”. And if you want someone to bend you over, I bloody well will.’

Silence.

‘Er…yes.’ DI Ingram cleared his throat, straightened his moustache again. ‘Anyway, if we’re done with surveillance, maybe we could move on to response times and contingency planning?’

9

‘Are you out of your bloody mind?’ DI Steel slammed the office door behind her. ‘Did I say you could sit down?’

Logan hauled himself up out of her visitor’s chair. ‘He was being a wanker.’

‘Course he was: he’s a sodding superintendent, it’s his job to be a wanker! But you…you’re making a fucking calling out of it!’ She jabbed Logan in the chest with a red-painted fingernail. ‘What did I tell you outside in the car park?’

‘He started it.’

She threw her hands in the air. ‘That’s it. I give up. You want to screw up your career? Go ahead. Be my sodding guest.’ She barged past and collapsed in her chair, running a hand across her forehead. ‘Get out of my sight. Go on: bugger off and play with the Diddy Men or something. I don’t want to look at you any more.’

Logan let himself out.

The Offender Management Unit offices smelled of new paint and sausages. The walls were papered with mugshots and SOPOs, interspersed with the occasional cartoon clipped out of the Aberdeen Examiner. A whiteboard, mounted above a gurgling radiator, was covered with grey magnetic strips, each one bearing the name of someone on the Sex Offenders’ Register due a trip to court in the not too distant future.

Logan stood at an unwashed window and stared out, past the dead wasps and fly carcasses, at the rainy streets of Bucksburn. Dual carriageway. A roundabout. Some houses. A McDonald’s. Grey clouds…Being on the second floor didn’t help the view any.

‘I hear you went off on one at the MAPPA meeting this morning.’

Logan turned to find PC Hamster from Knox’s house standing in the doorway, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, ginger hair plastered to her head from the rain. What was her name, Irvine? Something like that. ‘It wasn’t-’

‘About time someone stood up to these buggers down south.’ She chucked a folder into someone’s in-tray. ‘Stephen Beech was bad enough — comes up here from Cambridge because he fancies living by the sea, and we have to look after him round the clock. OK, Sacro did the day-to-day stuff, but it still cost a sodding fortune: two hundred grand a year to watch one rapist. You believe that? Now every bastard thinks we’re the perverts’ Butlins of the North.’

She closed her eyes, groaned, then ran a hand through her wet hair. ‘God, what a week…’

Logan knew how she felt.

PC Irvine sighed. ‘Anyway, better get going. I’ll drive. Paul’s meeting us there.’

Logan followed her out through the door. ‘Do you believe Knox when he says he’s found God?’

‘Doesn’t really matter does it? Sex offenders aren’t sex offenders because they think it’s going to be fun, they’re sex offenders because somewhere down the line it’s been ingrained into them.’ She led the way down the corridor, past a mothballed HOLMES suite, heading for the stairs.

She shoved the door to the stairwell open. ‘For Knox, raping old men is normal behaviour. Probably can’t understand why everyone’s not doing it. We’re the perverts in his eyes.’

They passed a couple of uniformed officers, humping a collection of dusty file boxes up the stairs.

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