communal drying green. Not that it was particularly green, even at the best of times. Fresh footprints, slowly disappearing in the falling snow, heading for the tenement on the opposite side.
Logan followed them at a run straight through the building opposite. Another street and another line of tenement buildings. A door slammed directly ahead and Logan slithered his way down the path, across the road, through the door, down the hallway, and out the other side again. Only this time there wasn't another row of bleak grey buildings: this time there was only a six-foot chainlink fence separating the drying green from a band of rough scrubland. An industrial estate was visible through the fence, and a couple of high-rise buildings behind that: Tillydrone.
Desperate Doug MacDuff was clambering his way over the top of the high fence.
'Hold it right there!' Logan legged it across the snow, slipping and sliding to a halt at the end of the drying green just in time to see Doug vanish from sight again. 'What are you, bloody Houdini?'
Clambering up the chainlink, Logan suddenly realized how Desperate Doug had managed to disappear so suddenly. The fence marked the dividing line between the Sandilands Estate and the railway track north out of the city. Hidden by the scrubland and bushes was a deep, wide, man-made ravine with railway lines at the bottom. Doug had slithered his way down one side of the steep siding.
The old man wasn't running very fast any more. He had slowed to a lurching jog, clutching one arm to his chest as he scuffed his way along the railway tracks.
Logan pitched himself over the top of the fence and hit the ground hard. Immediately his feet went out from under him. Gravity did the rest. He tumbled down the bank like a boulder, scraping through gorse and bracken, smacking into the hard gravel at the bottom of the ravine. He hit with a cry of pain. Blood was seeping from a gash on the back of his hand. His head rang from its sudden stop against the gravel. But worst of all was the pain exploding in his belly. One year on and Angus Robertson, the Mastrick Monster, was still hurting him.
The high banks of the railway siding sheltered the bottom of the ravine from the wind. Here the snow fell steadily from the sky, drifting down like a blanket in the still air.
Logan lay on his side, groaning, trying not to be sick, letting the snow settle on him. He couldn't even move. But he did have a perfect view of Desperate Doug as the old man risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the policeman who'd been chasing him lying, bleeding on the railway tracks. He stopped running and turned to watch Logan, his breath fogging the air in huge, ragged lungfuls.
And then he started back up the tracks towards Logan. He dug in one of his pockets and something shiny sparkled in his hand. Something sharp.
Ice water rushed through Logan's body. 'Oh God…'
He tried to roll over, get to his feet before Desperate Doug reached him. But the pain in his stomach was too much, even with death walking slowly up the tracks towards him.
'You didn't have tae follow me.' Doug's voice came out in jagged puffs. 'You could've just minded yer own bloody business. Now I'm gonnae have to teach you a lesson, Mr Pig.' He held up the shiny thing: it was a Stanley knife, the blade fully extended.
'Oh God, no…' It was happening again!
'I'm real fond of bacon, me.' Doug's face was bright red, creased and florid with broken veins. His milky, dead eye, the same colour as the snow, his twisted smile nicotine-brown. 'Thing 'bout bacon is, you gotta slice it nice and thin.'
'Don't…' Logan desperately tried to roll over again.
'Aw, now you're no goin' tae cry are you, Mr Pig? Gonnae greet like a bairn? Hell, wouldn't blame you like. It's gonnae fuckin' hurt!'
'Don't…please! You don't have to do this…'
'No?' Doug laughed, the sound turning into a thick, rattling cough and a stream of black-and-red spit. 'What,' he asked when he finally got his breath back, 'what have I got to lose? Eh? I've got the cancer, Mr Pig. Nice wee man at the hospital says I've got me one, maybe two years, tops. And they're gonnae be shitty years. And you bastards are after me, aren't ye?'
Logan gritted his teeth and pushed against the ground, getting as far as his knees before Doug put a foot in the centre of his back and pushed. The ground slammed against Logan's chest. 'Aaaaaaaaaaaa…'
'See, youse bastards are gonnae lock me up again. I'm no comin' out alive. No with the cancer eatin' ma lungs and bones. So what can they do to me if I slice you up? I'm dead before my sentence is up anyway. What's one more dead body, eh?'
Logan groaned and rolled onto his back, feeling the snow falling cold against his face. Keep him talking. Keep him talking and someone might come. One of the uniform. WPC Watson. Anyone. God, please let someone come! 'Is that…is that why you killed Geordie Stephenson?'
Doug laughed. 'What's this? You think we're gonnae have us a nice wee chat and I'm gonnae 'fess up tae everything? Keep the old fart talking and he'll spill his guts?' He shook his head. 'You watch too much television, Mr Pig. Only guts I'm gonnae spill are yours.' He waggled the Stanley knife and grinned.
Logan kicked him in the knee. Hard. There was a loud pop and Doug collapsed, dropping the knife, clutching at his ruined kneecap. 'Ahyafucker!'
Hissing through his teeth, Logan rolled onto his side and lashed out with his foot again, catching the old man on the side of the head, opening up a three-inch gash.
Doug grunted, his hands covering his bleeding scalp as Logan aimed another blow at the old man's head. Two of his fingers snapped beneath Logan's boot. 'Fuckinbastard!'
He might have been old and riddled with cancer, but Doug MacDuff had earned his reputation as a hard man in the toughest prisons Scotland had to offer. Earned it the hard way. Snarling, he scrabbled backwards, getting out of range. And then he lunged, wrapped his nicotine-stained hands around Logan's throat and squeezed, his face creased and brutal as he strangled himself a detective sergeant.
Logan grabbed at the hands encircling his neck, trying to pull them away, but the man's grip was like iron. Already the world had started to take on a red tinge, his ears ringing with the pressure in his head. He let one hand go, curled it into a fist and smashed it off the side of Doug's face. The old man grunted, but didn't let go. Screwing his face up, Logan did it again and again, blood from Doug's wounds dripping down all around him, turning the snow pink. Fighting for his life, he slammed his fist into Doug's head, cracking the jaw, closing the milky, unseeing eye. Punching for all he was worth as the world started to go dark. Again and again and again…until at last the hands around Logan's throat went slack and the old man went limp, slumping over sideways to lie, bleeding in the falling snow.
29
They rushed Douglas MacDuff straight through Accident and Emergency and into a treatment room. He looked like death. His lined and wrinkled face was covered with a growing network of dark red bruises. His breathing was shallow and rattling. He hadn't regained consciousness in the ambulance on the way to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, just lay there, oozing blood from his battered face.
The ambulance men hadn't spoken a word to Logan all the way over here. Not once they learned he was the one who'd beaten up the old age pensioner.
Standing in silence, shivering, Logan watched as a nurse wired Desperate Doug up to a bank of monitors, bleeps and pings marking time with the old man's heart.
She looked up to see Logan standing at the foot of the gurney. 'You're going to have to go,' she told him, unbuttoning the old man's shirt. 'He's been beaten up pretty badly.'
'I know,' Logan left off the fact that he was the one who'd done it. His voice was rough, painful.
'Are you a relative?' Her face was concerned and professional as she carefully peeled Doug's shirt open.
'No. A police officer: DS McRae.'
She stopped, her expression becoming cold. 'I hope you catch the bastard who did this and lock him away for life! Beating up an old man!'
And then the doctor arrived: a short, balding man with a clipboard and a stressed expression. He didn't care that Logan was an officer of the law. Everyone was to leave so that the patient could be diagnosed and
