Partners in Crime

‘You really think that’s a good idea?’

‘It’s no’ drink driving, it’s drink parking.’

Over in front of the hotel, Badger fought with his lighter again. Then looked over his shoulder back into the bar, before limping down the steps and across to an ancient maroon Peugeot with a deep gouge all the way down the passenger side. He hauled open the back door and lowered himself inside with slow stiff movements, as if his spine was made of broken glass. The hot blue-and-yellow flare of a lighter. The dull orange glow of a cigarette. The pale-grey smoke drifting against the glass.

Logan stuck his pudding bowl on the dashboard next to the iPrint kit. ‘One-by-one, just like Rambo.’

Badger McLean squealed as Logan wrenched open the Peugeot’s door and jumped into the back seat beside him.

‘I didn’t-’

Then another squeal as Steel slid in on the other side, trapping him in the middle.

Silence.

Outside, the wind howled.

Steel stretched her arm along the back of the seat, behind Badger’s shoulders, as if she was about to put the first-date moves on him in a darkened cinema. ‘Aye, aye Badger. Badge. Badge the Tadge. Long time eh?’

He licked his lips, eyes flicking from the car door to the hotel and back again.

She pouted. ‘Badger, I’m hurt — you don’t remember me?’

Still nothing.

‘Aberdeen, 2003: I did you for flogging aspirin round that nightclub down the beach, telling boozed-up teenagers it was E. Got you eighteen months, didn’t it?’

His mouth fell open an inch. Then everything came out in a machine-gunned Fife accent, the words going up and down like the boats in the harbour. ‘Oh thank God, I thought for a minute you were- ayabugger!’ He dropped the cigarette, shaking and blowing on his fingers, sending ash spiralling through the car. ‘Ow…’

‘Here’s the deal, Badge my boy: you tell me what I want to know, and my associate here won’t frogmarch you back in there and let everyone know how you’ve been cooperating with the police like a good little boy.’

He sneaked a glance at Logan.

Logan grinned back at him.

Badger slouched, then ran a hand across his face. ‘Aw … shite.’

‘How much?’ Steel stared, mouth hanging open like an empty pink sock.

Badger shrugged, then winced, clutching his chest on the left-hand-side — where the wave slammed him into the boat. ‘No one knows for sure, but that’s what they’re saying: nearly a ton of Afghanistan’s finest. Grade-A. Uncut. In four submersible pods.’

‘Bloody hell… A ton.’

‘Silly bastards’ yacht got caught in that big storm, had to cut the pods loose or get dragged down with them. Managed to limp into Oban three days ago. All the pods’ve got GPS, but one of them cracked open and it’s kinda … well, you know? Like driftwood, only kilo blocks of heroin.’

Steel pointed back at the bar. ‘And young Jimmy the Weasel?’

‘Turns out his son-in-law was one of the aforementioned silly bastards. The idiot got pished in Oban — you know, celebrating not being dead — and kinda let it slip… So now every dealer from Aberdeen to Belfast’s turning up to do a bit of fishing.’ Badger cleared his throat. ‘Now that I’ve cooperated, there’s no real need to tell anyone, is there? Why don’t I just get out of your hair and head back to the mainland? It’s not like you can actually do me for anything, is it? I’m not even in possession or anything.’

‘Funny you should say that…’ Logan dipped into his pocket, pulled out a block of heroin and tossed it at him. ‘Catch.’

‘Aagh…’ Badger caught the thing before it hit him in the face.

‘Your fingerprints are all over it now. That’s eight years for possession with intent.’

‘That’s not fair!’

‘Our word against yours.’

Steel licked her teeth, mouth open, making sticky noises with a pale-yellow tongue. ‘Nearly a ton of uncut grade-A drugs washing up on the shores of a wee Scottish Hebridean island. It’s sodding Heroin Galore.’

‘Jimmy’s going to kill me. He’s going to hack me up into little pieces like poor old Barney McGlashin. He’s going to-’

‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll hack you into little bits.’ Logan shifted in his seat. They’d parked Badger’s dented Peugeot down the main road, in front of the Antlers restaurant, tucked in behind a soft-top Land Rover with an expired tax disk. The hotel bar was just visible through a knot of bushes.

Two minutes later Jimmy the Weasel stormed out of the bar into the rain, head going left and right like a pasty-faced searchlight, scanning the car park.

Logan adjusted the binoculars, focussing through the hotel windows to where DI Steel was leaning back against the pool table, grinning.

The Weasel shook his fists at the sky. ‘THIEVING LITTLE BASTARD!’ It echoed back from the distillery buildings, before being swallowed by the downpour.

‘Oh, God.’ Badger buried his face in his hands. ‘That’s it: I’m dead.’

And then the Weasel was off, running down the road towards them. But before he got there he took a sharp right, around the back of the village shop. Making for the tiny stone pier that curled around a miniature harbour.

‘Keep your head down.’ Logan turned the key in the ignition and the Peugeot made a high-pitched retching noise. Then clunked. He tried again. Got the same result. ‘Come on, come on, come on…’ More retching. ‘COME ON!’

Clunk.

‘Bloody thing.’ Logan undid his seatbelt and jumped out into the rain, running after Jimmy the Weasel: between the shop and the village hall.

The little white fishing boat with the tiny red wheelhouse rocked against the harbour wall. Light bloomed through the wheelhouse windows, then a cloud of pale-grey exhaust sputtered out around the stern. The boat backed out, turned, and lurched away into the waves.

Run. Run fast. Leap. Sail through the air between the end of the pier and the fishing boat. Crash into the deck and wrestle Jimmy the Weasel into submission. Handcuff him. Say something pithy about boats and fish. Just like in the movies.

Three, two, one…

Bugger that. Knowing Logan’s luck he’d probably drown.

He scrabbled to a halt at the end of the pier, sending a pair of lobster creels splashing into the iron-coloured waves.

The wee boat puttered away, bow dipping and rearing more and more violently the further it got from shore.

The sound of another engine roared from somewhere off to the right. Logan turned. A little concrete slipway reached down from the road — between the distillery car park and the hotel beer garden — to the rolling sea. A man in dirty orange overalls was wrestling a rigid inflatable dingy out into the swell.

Kevin McGregor.

So much for Plan A.

DI Steel stared at him, rain dripping from her flattened grey fringe. ‘What do you mean, “He got away”? How could he get away? You were right sodding there!’

‘The car wouldn’t start.’

‘Well, that’s not-’

‘It’s not even my car!’ Logan pointed at the terminally ill Peugot, with Badger sitting in the back. ‘It’s this moron’s.’

The wee man waved.

Steel stuck up two fingers at him. ‘Sodding cheese-flavoured arse-monkeys… And Kevin McGregregor went after him?’