Dark Blood

Logan clumped through the snow towards her. ‘Stacy Gardner?’

‘You know fine well it is. What do you want?’

‘I had a very interesting chat with your dad, Stacy. Says he’s sorry he hasn’t come up with more money, but he kind of got arrested doing over a jewellery shop on Huntly Street. He hopes your dealer,’ Logan nodded at the man balancing on the roof, ‘will give him a bit more time before hurting you.’

Stacy throttled the dishcloth in her hands. ‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

Danny sighed. ‘Stacy, love, it’s not-’

‘You shut up, Danny Saunders, I’m dealing with this.’ She took a step out onto the snowy ground. ‘The old man can’t cope since he got mum killed. Lives in a little world of his own.’

‘Stacy, we-’

‘I said I’m dealing with it!’ She turned a cold smile in Logan’s direction. ‘So you see, you can’t trust a word he says. He’s lost it.’

Logan nodded. ‘But you still trust him to look after Nicole, don’t you? What is she, two, three? We had to put her into care.’

The pregnant woman stiffened. ‘She’s not my daughter any more. I’m making a new life.’

‘He’s sold everything for you, you know that don’t you? Car, furniture, telly, cashed in his pension — even the house is up for sale, because he thinks you’re in trouble.’

Stacy turned and reached back into the caravan for something, keeping whatever it was hidden by her pregnant bulge. ‘So he sends me money every now and then. Not like I don’t deserve it, is it? Just my share of mum’s inheritance.’

‘It’s extortion.’

She swivelled round, both hands behind her back, and sniffed as if fighting back a tear. ‘It wasn’t my idea. Danny made me do it!’

Up on the roof, her fiance’s mouth fell open. ‘You lying cow!’

‘Where do you think Daddy got the idea to use a sledgehammer? That was Danny’s trick.’

‘I was the one tried to talk you out of it!’

Stacy took a step forward, biting her bottom lip. ‘Sorry, Danny, but I can’t cover for you any more. It was all his fault, Officer. He made me do it.’

Logan looked back at the roof.

Mistake.

Stacy lunged, hands coming out from behind her back — eight inch carving knife in one hand, steaming kettle in the other. The kettle lashed past, close enough for Logan to feel the heat on his cheek.

He staggered back, arms over his head as the knife slashed down, the point tearing through the sleeve of his jacket.

Logan’s heel caught something buried in the snow and he went crashing down on his backside for the second time in two days. Looking up at someone who wanted him dead.

And then a blur of black and fluorescent yellow: PC Butler charged across the rutted ground, her peaked cap flying off. Stacy snarled and swung the knife again in a huge overhead slash.

Butler darted in, arm up. She blocked Stacy’s stab, reached through with her other hand in some sort of weird jujitsu limb origami, and pulled, forcing the pregnant women’s arm to bend in ways it really wasn’t designed to.

Stacy’s eyes bulged, then she screamed and lurched back into the wall of the caravan. ‘You’re breaking my arm!’

‘Drop the knife, or I’ll pop it right out of the socket!’

‘Get off me you bitch!’

One more twist and the knife thudded into the snow, blade first, the handle sticking up into the air.

‘Danny! Danny, help me! They’re hurting the baby!’

But Danny just sat on the roof of his house and stared at her.

There was a gunshot sound and Logan’s manky little Fiat puttered to a halt on the rear podium car park, leaving a cloud of grey smoke behind. Should probably get that seen to.

PC Butler killed the engine, before it died on its own. ‘Everyone out. Now!’

‘If my baby’s damaged by carbon monoxide poisoning, I’ll sue!’

Butler turned and stared at her. ‘Shut up. For once in your life. All the way into bloody town!’

Stacy Gardner pouted. ‘You can’t talk to me like that! I-’

‘For God’s sake!’ Sitting next to her, on the threadbare back seat, Danny Saunders gritted his teeth. ‘Give it a rest, Stacy.’

‘That’s right — shout at the pregnant woman in handcuffs! Oh yes, you’re such a big man, aren’t you Danny? Such a big-’

Logan climbed out and slammed the car door shut, cutting off the rest.

PC Butler stood on the other side of the dented Fiat, massaging her temples. ‘Why are we not allowed to gag prisoners any more?’

‘Just get them processed and we’ll head out to Cove. Let someone else listen to her bitch and moan for a while.’

Butler glared at the sky for a moment, sighed, pulled on her peaked cap, then wrenched open the car door and folded the driver’s seat forward. ‘I said everyone out!’

Logan left them to it.

Logan had the Wee Hoose to himself while he waited for PC Butler to get Danny Saunders and his poisonous fiancee photographed, fingerprinted, DNA-sampled, and checked into separate cells.

He spread Danby’s cases out across the desk. The PNC printouts weren’t exactly heavy on detail, more summaries and status reports. A couple of unsolved murders: one drug addict found with a bullet hole in the back of his head; one prostitute kicked to death behind the bins at a nightclub. One Post Office job where the gang had got away with a pathetically small amount of cash after putting a pensioner in intensive care — solved. One blackmail: a bank manager with a thing for Filipino ladyboys — solved. A couple of demanding money with menaces…

Something started ringing. It took Logan a minute to realize it was his new phone. ‘McRae.’

‘LoganDaveGoulding, Just heard back from your CSI boys about the old man who was attacked last night.’ Might have known the psychologist wouldn’t mind using the wanky Americanism.

‘What about him?’ Logan kept on reading.

The last report in Danby’s file was a drug seizure: a shipment of heroin and cocaine, smuggled in through the international ferry terminal in North Shields. Estimated street value of one-point-six million.

‘Knox didn’t rape him. He bit him, he tortured him, he beat him, but there’s no sign of penetration.’

According to the summary three men were due up in court in four weeks’ time, all of them connected to Michael ‘Mental Mikey’ Maitland’s operation.

God rest his soul.

‘So it’s exactly the same as the Sacro handler…Harry Weaver. I thought it might be because Weaver wasn’t old enough, didn’t fit the victim profile, but I’m beginning to wonder if Knox might be impotent.’

Logan skimmed a list of charges. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Causing pain is how Knox achieves arousal, it’s what gets him off. If he can’t get an erection, he’s just going to try harder. The next victim’s probably going to end up dead. And it won’t be quick either.’

Logan stopped reading. Not so good after all.

‘Any ideas where he’s heading?’

There was a pause.

‘Well…Aberdeen’s been highly traumatic for him, completely out of his comfort zone. He’ll want