There was a Post-it note stuck right in the middle of Logan’s computer screen: a summons in block capitals. ‘MY OFFICE AS SOON AS YOU GET BACK!!!’ Signed, ‘DI BEATTIE!’ just like that, with an exclamation mark. Just in case Logan didn’t know he was a dickhead.
Logan peeled it off, scrunched it up, and hurled it at the bin.
Someone shouted, ‘Shop?’ and Logan looked around to find PC Butler standing in the doorway. She wasn’t exactly the tallest officer in Grampian Police: petite, with cropped blonde hair, Butler looked like the kind of person who helped little old ladies across the road; raised money for underprivileged kittens; couldn’t pull the skin off a boiled tattie. Which just went to show how wrong you could be.
She waggled a manila folder at him. ‘You in for an armed robbery?’
‘Dump it on Doreen’s desk.’ He jerked his thumb towards a neatly ordered workstation, with law books alphabetically arranged on a shelf above the computer.
Constable Butler pulled a face, wrinkling her nose, and puckering her mouth. ‘You sure you don’t want it?’
‘Positive.’
‘Oh come on.’ She settled onto the only clear patch on Biohazard Bob’s desk. ‘DS Taylor’s being a right cow at the moment. Ever since her husband ran off with that accounts assistant, you can’t do anything right.’
‘Give it to Bob then.’
Butler shuddered. ‘I’d have to drive him about, and it’s too bloody cold to have the windows open all the time.’ She batted her eyelashes. ‘Please?’
‘DS MacDonald?’
‘Wandering hands. He does it again I’ll have to castrate him. Don’t want that on your conscience, do you?’
Logan turned away and jabbed the power button on his computer. ‘Thought you lot in uniform were all whinging about me being shouty and sarcastic.’
He could hear her shifting on the desk behind him. ‘Yeah, but you’re kinda the lesser of four evils. So…armed robbery?’
Logan slumped back in his seat and swore at the ceiling tiles. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘Great.’ She slapped the folder down on the desk in front of him. ‘Henderson’s the Jewellers, on Crown Street. Bloke wanders in with a wee kid in a pushchair, asks to see the engagement rings, and when the assistant hauls them out, our boy produces a sawn-off sledgehammer.’
‘Who the hell holds up a jewellers with a sawn-off sledgehammer? You sure it wasn’t a shotgun?’
‘Positive.’
Logan flicked through the file. ‘Time?’
‘Nine fifteen this morning.’
‘Anyone hurt?’
‘One witness peed herself, that count? Said she was only in to pick up her husband’s watch.’
Logan pulled out the witness statements, skimming them as PC Butler waited. At the back was a list of items the jewellers claimed their mystery shopper had got away with. It had an estimated value of just under five hundred pounds. Not exactly worth getting banged up for. ‘Is that all?’
Butler shrugged. ‘Apparently. Went on a bit of a rampage, smashed open display cabinets, stuffed his pockets with shiny tat, then legged it.’ She paused. ‘Got the security camera footage upstairs if you want to see it?’
‘What the hell.’ Logan thumped the folder on top of his heaped in-tray. ‘Fingerprints?’
‘Gloves.’ Butler smiled. ‘Thanks, Sarge.’
Logan checked his watch. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes, then I’m out of here.’
‘But Sa-arge-’
‘Got an appointment with a cadaver dog. Take it or leave it.’
‘Done.’
They’d got as far as the corridor outside the CID room when Beattie appeared. Face pink and shiny, nose red, all bundled up in a duvet-style puffy jacket. There were droplets glittering in his moustache and as he saw PC Butler and Logan he wiped them away with the back of his hand. ‘DS McRae, I need to see you in my office.’
Logan didn’t move. ‘Got an armed robbery to look into.’
Beattie frowned. Looked at PC Butler. Sniffed. Rubbed at his beard. ‘Constable, will you excuse us for a moment?’
She made herself scarce.
‘You were supposed to help me with the knock-off merchandise enquiry.’
Logan slumped back against the wall. ‘Did you phone Trading Standards yet?’ Knowing full well that there was no way the beardy tosser-
‘I did it yesterday.’
‘Oh…Right.’ Pause. ‘And?’
‘It’s getting worse. We’ve had fifteen complaints about dodgy DVD players this week, then there’s the hair straighteners, and the vodka, and the perfume, and the iPods. Whole city’s awash with counterfeit goods.’ Beattie sniffed, then hauled out a lumpy grey hankie and blew his nose into it. Paused to check the contents. ‘Talking of which: Big Gary tells me you’ve got a lead on those dodgy twenties?’
Logan shrugged. ‘We arrested someone, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Still in custody?’
‘Far as I know.’ Because he hadn’t bothered to check. Sod DI Steel, there was no way he was running about just to keep some jumped-up solicitor happy. Whoever Douglas Walker’s lawyer was, he could bloody well wait.
Beattie chewed on the edge of his moustache for a bit. ‘Right, about these fake handbags and things…’
There was more, but Logan wasn’t really listening. DI Steel had just limped through the double doors at the end of the corridor, legs bowed, face all pinched up on one side, showing gritted, yellowy teeth as she hobbled towards them.
‘…do you understand?’ Beattie paused, obviously waiting for a response.
‘Erm.’ Logan frowned. ‘In what way?’
Beattie rolled his eyes. It made him look even more of a tit than usual. ‘Will you sort it out or not?’
Steel was getting closer. Limping and wincing all the way.
‘Erm, yeah, sure.’
‘Monday. Don’t forget.’
She hissed to a halt and scowled at Beattie blocking the corridor. ‘Move it or lose it, beardy boy.’
Beattie stiffened. ‘There’s no need to-’
‘Blah, blah, blah. Out the way before I introduce Mrs Boot to Mr Testicles.’ She winced, paused, hauled at the crotch of her grey trouser suit. ‘Second thoughts: McRae, kick his knackers into orbit. Then get your scarred backside down to Interview room three, Douglas Walker’s brief’s waiting for you.’
‘Actually,’ Beattie stuck his hairy chin out, ‘Sergeant McRae already
Steel limped closer. ‘Aye, he has: working for
Beattie glowered. ‘I’m not some wee DS for you to push around any more, I’m a
Logan groaned. It didn’t matter how this went, he’d be the one who’d end up getting the blame. He turned and looked back towards the CID room.
Steel and Beattie were shouting at each other, nose to nose in the middle of the corridor, so Logan crept back through the door, leaving them to it. With a bit of luck he could sneak out the other side of the CID room, down the bare concrete stairwell and away before they even noticed he was gone.
Logan swore, told PC Butler to pause the tape, and dragged out his phone. ‘McRae.’
DI Steel’s gravelly voice crackled in his ear,
The review suite was a tiny room on the ground floor of Force Headquarters: two creaky plastic chairs, a storage cabinet for the police van CCTV hard drives, and the rancid-fatty smell of stale chips coming from
