The constable stared at his boots. ‘Operational difficulties?’
‘Greg, you’re a disaster, you know that, don’t you?’
He grinned. ‘Thanks, Sarge.’
‘Must be bloody mad.’ Logan turned and looked down over the balustrade.
The flocked wallpaper was torn and baggy, a patchy coat of magnolia doing little to make it look any classier. Scuffed carpet dotted with brown stains and clumps of animal hair. Bare light bulbs. A bedroom door with a deep gouge out of the wood, showing off the hollow interior.
The familiar bitter-sweet-sweaty taint of cannabis hung in the warm, stale air. Which explained the size of Billy’s pupils.
‘Where’s the rest of them?’
Ferguson pointed at the bedroom with the dented door. ‘Got two in there; one in the kitchen — fell over and split his head open on the worktop, stoned out his tits; one in the other bedroom… Well, two if you count the kid; and-’
‘One flat on his face in the middle of the front garden?’
‘I
Logan made for the nearest bedroom. ‘Well bring him in then.’
‘Ah…’
He stopped, one hand on the doorknob. ‘Greg: what did you do?’
‘It wasn’t me! It was just … well we caught him trying to do a runner over the back fence, and Ellen was handcuffing him, when the biggest dog you’ve ever seen in your
‘In the name of…’ Logan closed his eyes. Counted to ten.
‘Sarge?’
‘Whirlies aren’t fixed to the ground, Greg: the metal pole goes into a little hole. All he has to do is lift the thing up and he’ll be off!’ Logan wrenched the bedroom door open.
A woman crouched in the corner wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of ripped jeans. Stick thin, all elbows and ribs, sunken eyes glittering like polished coal. Hands cuffed behind her back. Chapped and faded lips, pulled back over yellowing teeth. ‘We didn’t do nothing!’
A small child — couldn’t have been more than three-years-old — was perched in her lap, wearing a filthy pair of Ben 10 pyjamas. Snot silvered the wee boy’s top lip, something brown smeared around his mouth.
One of the forced entry team was standing over them, fiddling with a mobile phone.
Logan brushed past, making for the window. ‘You better not be updating your bloody Twitter account, Archie.’
The pudding-faced constable blushed and stuck the phone in his pocket.
Logan stared into the back garden. There was a man in the middle of the wilderness, fighting with a rotary washing line while a black dog patrolled the knee-high grass around him. Shuggie Webster.
At least Ellen had been bright enough to cuff him to the complicated lever joint that attached the four arms to the pole.
He was getting a bit
Logan opened the bedroom window. ‘He’s going to dislocate his wrist if he isn’t careful.’
PC Ferguson sidled up. ‘Don’t get any brighter, do they?’
‘Hoy! Shuggie!’
The man froze, still dangling upside down.
‘Cut it out. You’ve been caught.’
The dog stopped its patrolling and turned to bark and snarl up at them.
The constable with the mobile phone appeared at Logan’s shoulder. ‘Bugger me… That’s a big dog.’
The stick-thin woman shoulder-charged Archie, hands still cuffed behind her back, sending him stumbling into Ferguson. Both officers went crashing to the bedroom floor in a tangle of limbs and swearing.
She shoved past Logan to the open window. ‘Shuggie! Pull the thing out the ground, you daft fuck!’
Logan grabbed her, tried to haul her back, but she lashed out with a knee.
Boiling oil flared out from his groin, curdling in the pit of his stomach, making his knees buckle. He steadied himself against the tatty wallpaper. Oh
‘Shuggie! PULL THE FUCKING WHIRLY OUT THE GROUND!’
Outside, Shuggie finally seemed to understand. He squatted down as far as he could with one wrist cuffed to the articulated joint, wrapped his other hand around the pole, and hauled the whole thing out of the ground. He teetered for a moment, turned through a hundred and eighty degrees, then fell on his bum, tangled in the yellow plastic washing line again.
‘GET UP YOU DAFT CUNT!’
Logan cleared his throat, gritted his teeth, grabbed the skeletal woman again and threw her onto the bed — she bounced off the mattress and went spinning over the other side, disappearing from view with a thud.
The little boy wailed, tears and snot running down his puffy pink face.
PC Ferguson was back on his feet, leaning out of the window. ‘COME BACK HERE YOU WEE SHITE: YOU’RE STILL UNDER ARREST!’
‘Fucking police bastards!’ The woman crawled upright, eyes thin slits, graveyard teeth bared, a smear of blood from her cracked lips. Then she charged, head down, like a greasy battering ram.
Logan lurched out of the way … or tried to.
She slammed into his stomach. Pain ripped across his scars, digging deep into his guts, tearing all the breath from his throat as they thudded into the bedroom wall, then down to the carpet. All he could do was curl up around the fire and try not to throw up. Barely feeling the harsh nip of her teeth sinking into his arm through his suit jacket. The dull thunk of her forehead battering into his right ear.
And then she was gone. Screaming. ‘Let me go you bastard! Let me fucking go! RAPE! Fucking … RAPE!’
Logan peeled open one watering eye to see her a foot-anda-half off the ground, legs flailing about. Archie was standing behind her, arms wrapped around her waist, holding her up.
‘Calm down!’
‘RAPE! RAPE!’
And all the way through it, the kid kept on screaming.
Chapter 6
‘How’s the balls?’ PC Ferguson handed Logan another packet of frozen chips from the gurgling freezer. The kitchen reeked of cannabis and stale fat, the extractor hood above the cooker covered in a dark-brown greasy film.
Leaning back against the working surface, Logan pressed the bag of frozen chips against his aching stomach. ‘You found him yet?’
‘We should maybe take you to the hospital?’
‘Greg: have — you — found — him?’
The constable pinched his face into a painful chicken’s bum. ‘Well, there’s a funny story, and-’
‘You let him get away, didn’t you?’
‘It wasn’t-’
‘Why the hell didn’t you have anyone watching the back? I
‘But it-’
‘For God’s sake, Greg, did you sleep through the bloody risk assessment and planning meeting? Two out
