Partners in Crime

He poked one of them. ‘I ordered the steak pie.’

‘Seafood platter. Good for the brain. And don’t get fishy fingerprints all over my car.’ She turned off the engine and the heaters went quiet.

‘Hey!’

‘I’m no’ made of bloody petrol.’

Logan twisted the tail off a langoustine and clicked it out of its pale pink carapace. Dipped it in the mayonnaise. ‘Did you get me a room?’

‘Course I did. Got you one right next door to Susan and me, that way you can bump into her and let her know I’m hunting down villains when I’m supposed to be on holiday.’ Steel pulled out a glass tumbler wrapped in a paper napkin. The smoky scent of malt whisky curled through the car. ‘Badger and Weasel are in there playing pool like good little woodland animals, so I nabbed the bugger’s glass. Where’s the fingerprint thing?’

‘Don’t you think Susan might just notice something’s up when she tries to get her bags back in the car and finds the boot full of drugs?’

‘Oh…’ Steel’s eyebrows drooped, taking the corners of her mouth with them. ‘Sod. Well … er… Fine: we solve everything today, you bugger off back to Aberdeen with our druggie friends, and Susan never needs to know.’ A nod. ‘Right — that’s officially the plan.’ Steel pointed at the tumbler. ‘So come on, fingerprints.’

The beer slipped down, cool and dark. ‘Don’t nag.’

‘You know, if it really is Jimmy Weasdale then we’ve just caught Scotland’s eighth most wanted man, and turned up a massive stash of drugs. They’ll probably want to give me an OBE.’

Logan sooked his fingers clean, dug the plastic case from his pocket, and dumped it in her lap. The iPrint kit was about the same size as a paperback book. Steel cracked it open as Logan broke his way into one of the woodlice.

She sniffed. ‘You got any idea how to work it?’

‘Instructions are inside.’ He held up a little curl of white meat. ‘What is this, exactly?’

‘God’s sake… Who wrote these instructions? Sodding handwriting’s appalling.’

‘Put your glasses on.’

‘I don’t need glasses. And it’s a squat lobster. Eat it, it’s good for you.’ She laid the contents of the kit out along the dashboard: a scratched iPhone; a length of curly black cable; a plastic thing — like a matchbox with a metal strip down the middle; a soft-bristled blusher brush; a little plastic tub of Aluminium powder, and one of Amido Black.

Steel squinted at the sheet of paper for a while. ‘Nah, it’s no good — you’ll have to do it.’

‘I’m eating.’

‘Aye, and while you’re out here stuffing your face, there’s a murderer in there playing pool and…’ She stared out of the driver’s window, then scrubbed at it with her sleeve, clearing away the fog. ‘Him! There — look, look, look!’

‘I can’t even have lunch, can I? OK, OK: I’ll do your bloody fingerprints.’ Logan wiped his hands on a napkin, then reached into his jacket for a pair of nitrile gloves.

‘No, you divvy — look!’ She tapped at the window. ‘Big bloke, tartan bunnet, parking the van.’

Couldn’t keep her mind on one thing for more than two minutes…

Logan leaned across the car and peered through the clean patch. It was the rusty Transit van from the ferry this morning, driven by the same rotten sod who wouldn’t give him a lift.

The man clambered out into the rain. He was wearing orange overalls, stained brown and black around the cuffs and knees. Clunky work boots. Big. Broad. Hands like dinner-plates. He pulled the tartan cap firmly down over his ears as another gust of wind shook the van, driving him back a step.

Steel whistled. ‘Kevin McGregor. Thought he was dead…’ A frown. ‘I’m sure he’s dead.’

‘Doesn’t look dead.’

McGregor grabbed a holdall from the passenger seat, and lumbered off into the bar.

‘Oh, he’s dead all right: burned to a crisp in a house fire five years ago. Post mortem said he’d been shot twice in the back of the head, execution-style. Had to ID him from dental records.’ She shrugged. ‘I crashed the funeral and the wake. Tried to cop off with his sister, but she was having none of it.’

The legendary Kevin McGregor — no wonder he looked familiar.

And was that…? Logan pointed through the clear bit at two hard-looking women with ginger crewcuts and black-rimmed glasses, struggling to origami an OS map back into shape. ‘Camper van, four o’clock. That’s the Riley Sisters: Brigid and Niamh. Belfast drug dealers. You name it, they’ll blow it up; knees capped while you wait.’

Steel sat back in her seat. ‘What is this, a sodding conference for toerags and gangsters? Scumfest?’

‘Wait a minute…’ Logan stuck his plate on the dashboard. ‘Did Kevin McGregor not beat old Liam Riley to death six years ago because he tried to move in on his turf? Think they’re here to kiss and make up with the bloke who murdered their dad?’

Steel closed her eyes, pursed her lips, then banged her forehead off the steering wheel. ‘Susan’s going to kill me.’

‘You got any of that sticky toffee pudding left?’ DI Steel clambered back into the little MX-5.

‘Bugger off — first hot thing I’ve had today.’

‘Ungrateful sod.’ She fidgeted with her left boob, hauling at the underwire. ‘That’s another four turned up. So far we’ve got three scheemie toe-rags from Glasgow, Badger and Weasel, a pair of scary bitches kicked out of the provisional IRA for being too violent, two Scouse wideboys, a dead gangster, four of Malk the Knife’s goons, and the spotty ginger kid that works for Wee Hamish Mowat. Sodding hotel bar’s like the United Nations for drug-dealers.’ She reached over and poked a finger into Logan’s toffee sauce.

‘Hey!’

Steel sooked her finger. ‘And you want to know the weirdest thing? They’re all playing nice. Even Kevin McGregor and the Riley Sisters: in there, quietly sipping their pints. You’d think they’d at least chib each other for old time’s sake.’ Pause. ‘Give us a go of your spoon.’

Logan turned away, shielding the pudding with his arm. ‘Get your own.’

She stared back towards the bar. ‘Never mind a paddle: if this kicks off, we’re up shite creek without a canoe. According to the guidebook, Jura’s got two special constables and that’s it. No firearms team, no black maria, nothing.’

‘So call Strathclyde — get them to send a helicopter.’

‘And let those Weegie soap-dodgers take all the credit? No thanks.’

‘No, of course not — silly me. It’s much better if this lot tear the hotel apart and murder each other in the lounge bar. What was I thinking?’

She stared at him. ‘No one likes a smart arse, you know that, don’t you?’

Logan finished his sticky toffee pudding. Licked the bowl clean so there’d be nothing left for Steel. ‘Only one thing for it then: we pick them off one-by-one like Rambo.’

Mid-afternoon and the sky was like boiling tar, rain battering down — bouncing off the road and a handful of parked cars. DI Steel curled her lip, buzzed down the window and spat out into the storm. ‘“We’ll pick them off one-by-one like Rambo,” he says.’

‘Not my fault they all go to the toilet in pairs, is it? Who knew drug dealers were like girlies on a hen night?’

‘Prat. They go to the bogs in pairs so the opposition doesn’t chib them in the ribs while they’re having a slash. Puts them off their aim — blood and pee everywhere.’

Badger McLean shuffled out through the bar’s main door onto a raised stone patio with a handrail around it to keep anyone from falling into the bustling rush-hour traffic. Which probably consisted of a Post Office van and a sheep. If it was a really busy day.

‘Did you tell the hotel owners that their bar was full of drug dealers?’

‘Course I sodding didn’t. What they don’t know won’t kneecap them.’

The wee hairy man huddled in the hotel doorway and winkled a hand-rolled cigarette out of a tin of tobacco. He lit up, shifting from foot to foot, puffing away in the torrential rain. Shivering.

Steel sighed. ‘I miss fags.’ She pulled out a silver hip flask, twisted the top off, took a swig, then waggled it at Logan. ‘Snifter?’