SYLVESTER backs away. ‘Nah, that’s Colin’s job.’
‘Yeah, but Colin’s no’ here, is he?’
‘Give me the bloody thing.’ DAVID holds out hand. ‘Does it go into a vein or muscle?’
‘Erm…’ He looks at the shiny flat thing again. ‘Either.’ Mummy’s voice wobbles. ‘Please don’t hurt her…’
‘You want another fucking lesson?’
She flinches back. ‘Didn’t think so. Hold the kid’s arm still.’
Jenny watches the shiny needle. It glints and sparkles in the sunshine. Out on the beach. A picnic with egg sandwiches, sausage rolls and Daddy. He lifts her up onto his shoulders and charges into the sea, laughing. Mummy waves from the sand.
The scratchy bee stings.
Chapter 30
The bear crinkled its top lip. ‘What? Do I look like your fuckin’ mother?’ Its face was half fur, half scar tissue, the skin twisted into a permanent sneer.
Logan sneaked a look at the fridge. ‘I don’t know where it is.’
A smile. Not a
The bear’s tummy started singing. ‘Shite…’
‘Jenny’s toe has to go back in the fridge.’ Logan blinked. Darkness. Blink. The pale green glow of the alarm- clock-radio turned the bedroom monochrome. The room had a funky, spice-garlic-and-bleach post-coital smell, socks and pants thrown about the place like a Roman orgy.
‘Urgh…’ Did the Romans wear pants under their togas?
His mobile was ringing.
‘Bloody…’ It took two goes to grab the thing.
Samantha grumbled and shifted in her sleep, mouth open just enough to expose the tip of her tongue and her top teeth. A snort. Smack, smack. Mumble.
Logan stabbed the button. ‘
Yawn. He ground his right fist into his eye socket.
Silence.
Typical — that’s what he got for handing out his CID business card to every smack-head junkie tosspot in the north-east of Scotland.
‘I’m not running a sex line for mimes here. You either say something, or I’m hanging up in: five, four, three, two-’
Logan held the phone out and squinted at the little screen. ‘UNKNOWN NUMBER’.
‘Who is this?’
‘Yeah, very funny. Now who the hell is…’ He frowned. ‘Shuggie Webster. It’s
The line went dead.
‘Please…’ Trisha Brown slumps back against the radiator. ‘Please…’
Just that little movement sends sharp flashes of pain racing up her left leg, like some fucker’s twisting screws into the broken bone.
Don’t look at it.
But it’s like a car crash, you know? Gotta look. Gotta see the blood and that.
Oh Jesus… The bit between her knee and her ankle is one huge fuck-off bruise, a lump, big as a scotch egg, sticking out the side. She wants to reach out and touch it, or pick at the scabbed bite marks on her ghost-white thighs. But she can’t, not with both hands cuffed above her head. Naked and shackled, on display like meat in a butcher’s shop.
She looks away.
It’s a basement, or a garage, something like that. Boiler for the central heating, big chest freezer. Washing machine. Shelves with tins and shit on them. No windows, just that fucking buzzing strip-light that he never turns off.
Her whole body
She blinks back a tear. All that time down Shore Lane, making a bit of cash to keep herself in gear — and her little boy in them wee frozen pizzas he likes so much — and she never felt dirty before. Not like this.
How’s Ricky supposed to manage now? Stuck with his bloody smack-head grandmother. Trisha thumps her head back against the radiator. The cool metal sounds like a muffled bell or something. She does it again. Harder. Grits her teeth. Slamming her head into the thing — at least if she knocks herself out it won’t hurt any more.
It doesn’t work.
‘Maybe I should go off on the sick?’ DS Doreen Taylor stared into her coffee, spreading out the red-and-silver foil wrapper from her Tunnock’s Teacake on the canteen table, smoothing it to a shine with the back of her finger.
‘Ah…’ Bob nodded. ‘Women’s problems, eh?’
She didn’t look up. ‘
Logan smiled. ‘“Git-bag”?’
‘Well, he is.’ The foil square was perfectly mirror smooth. She scrumpled it up into ball. ‘You know that Finnie and Bain are worried SOCA are going to take over the McGregor investigation?’
Bob nodded. ‘They’ll be all over us like Gary Glitter in an orphanage.’
‘Don’t be disgusting.’ She dropped the foil ball in his empty mug. ‘And they’ve no intention of taking over. I heard Green talking on his mobile last night — they won’t touch this case with a bargepole. We’ve got nothing to go on: no leads, no witnesses, no forensics. If they move in they’ll be just as stuck as we are.’
‘Ah…’ Logan stuck his mug back on the table. Winced slightly. His right arm ached — one huge mess of blue and purple and green where Shuggie Webster had pounded his fist into it. ‘So when the deadline comes round on Thursday morning, and we’ve got no choice but to hand over the ransom money, they don’t want to be the ones in charge.’
Doreen slumped over her coffee. ‘Exactly: they point the finger at us for messing everything up, we get the blame, and they take over as soon as we get Alison and Jenny back.’
‘Dirty bastards.’ Bob stabbed the table with a finger. ‘We do all the sodding about, and they swoop in and interview the only witnesses we’re likely to get.’ He raised one cheek off his seat, squinted an eye shut, then sighed. ‘Right, I’m off.’
Bob disappeared, giggling.
The smell, when it hit, was like being battered around the head with a mouldy colostomy bag.
Rennie was waiting for Logan in the little makeshift office, sitting at the borrowed desk peering at the laptop’s screen, his fingers rattling across the keys.
‘You better not be messing about on some porn chat site.’ Logan placed a wax-paper cup next to the mouse. ‘Coffee. For not dumping me in it with Professional Standards.’
‘Ooh, thanks, Sarge.’ He creaked the plastic lid off and nodded at a small stack of paper. ‘Been looking up kidnappings — got seven years’ worth so far.’
Logan picked up the PNC printouts and leafed through them. ‘Anything?’
‘Nothing even
