treated.
'His name is Douglas MacDuff,' said Logan, trying to keep his gravelly voice level. 'He's the chief suspect in a murder investigation. He is to be considered extremely dangerous.'
The nurse backed away from the gurney, wiping her hands down the front of her blue smock, the latex of her surgical gloves making a dull, squeaking sound beneath the regular ping and beep.
Logan rubbed tenderly at his throat. 'I'll post a PC to watch him,' he said, swallowing painfully.
The nurse gave him an uncertain smile, but the doctor was already poking and prodding Dougie's battered body. With a deep breath she squared her shoulders and went to work.
Logan arranged for someone to stay by Desperate Doug's bedside and left them to it. Out in the hall he almost fell over a nurse pushing a trolley covered with bottles of pills. He turned to apologize and found himself looking into a familiar face. Only this time Lorna Henderson's mother was sporting a huge black eye. She'd tried to cover it up with six inches of make-up, but the bruising still shone through. 'Are you OK?' he asked.
A nervous hand fluttered up to the puffy eye and she forced a smile onto her face. 'Fine,' she said, her voice brittle round the edges. 'Never better. How are you?'
'Did someone hit you, Mrs Henderson?'
She smoothed down her blue nurse's uniform and said no. She had walked into a door. It was an accident. That was all.
Logan gave her one of DI Insch's patented silences.
Slowly the fake smile slid away, leaving her pale and jowly again. 'Kevin came round. He'd been drinking.' She picked at the name badge pinned to her chest, not looking Logan in the eye. 'I thought he'd come back to me. You know, dumped that flat-chested tart. But he said it was all my fault that Lorna was dead. That I should have never made her get out of the car. That I killed her…' She looked up, tears making her eyes sparkle in the fluorescent lighting. 'I tried to make him understand we could get through it together. Be there for each other. That I still loved him. That I knew he still loved me.' A single fat tear spilled over the edge and down her cheek. She wiped it away on the back of her hand. 'He got upset and shouted even louder. Then he…I deserved it! It was all my fault! He's never coming back…' Tears spilling down her face, she abandoned her trolley and ran.
Logan watched her disappear through a set of double doors and sighed.
WPC Watson was sitting in the waiting area, with her head back and a scrunched-up handful of toilet paper jammed against her face. It was bright red.
'How's the nose?' asked Logan, plonking himself down on the next plastic chair along. Trying to keep himself from trembling.
'Sore,' she said, peering at him from the corner of her eye, not moving her head. 'Ad leasd I don'd thing id's broken. How's the prisoner?'
Logan shrugged and instantly regretted it. 'How's everyone else?' he asked, his voice coming out as a painful croak.
WPC Watson pointed off down the corridor to the treatment rooms. 'One of the dog-handlers is gedding his ribs checked out. Everyone else is OK.' She smiled and winced. 'Oww…Someone from the bookies god their front teeth knocked out.' She peered at him again, watching as Logan rubbed a hand around his throat for the umpteenth time since sitting down. 'You OK?'
Logan pulled down the collar of his shirt, exposing his neck in all its strangled glory.
Watson winced again, but this time for him. Desperate Doug's finger marks stood out against the pale skin in red and purple. The two biggest bruises sitting on either side of the windpipe, where the old man's thumbs had tried to squeeze the life out of him.
'Jesus, whad happened?'
'I kind of fell down and couldn't get up.' Logan went back to rubbing his throat. 'Mr MacDuff wanted to make it permanent.' The knife blade flashing in the light. He shivered again.
'The old bastard!'
Logan almost smiled; it was nice to have someone on his side for a change. DI Insch was not so understanding. When they got back to Force Headquarters, Logan with another pocket full of painkillers and WPC Watson with confirmation that her nose wasn't broken, the message was delivered by the desk sergeant: Logan was to report to the inspector's office. Now!
The inspector was standing with his back to the door, hands clasped behind his back, his bald head shining in the overhead lighting as Logan entered. Insch was staring out of the window at the steadily falling snow. 'What the hell did you think you were doing?' he asked.
Logan rubbed at his throat again and said he was trying to arrest George Stephenson's killer.
Insch sighed. 'Sergeant, you just beat an old man unconscious. The hospital say his condition is serious. What if he dies? Can you imagine how that's going to play in tomorrow's paper? 'Policeman Beats Pensioner To Death!' What the hell were you thinking?'
Logan cleared his throat and wished he hadn't. It hurt. 'I…I was defending myself.'
Insch spun around, his face beetroot-red. 'Reasonable force does not include battering old…' He stopped when he saw Logan's bruise-ringed neck. 'What happened? Watson go into a love-bite feeding-frenzy?'
'Mr MacDuff tried to strangle me. Sir.'
'That why you hit him?'
Logan nodded, wincing. 'It was the only way to make him stop.' He dug a clear plastic wallet out of his pocket and clunked it down on DI Insch's desk with a trembling hand. There was a Stanley knife inside. 'He was going to carve me up with that.'
Insch picked up the knife, twisting it around, examining it through the plastic. 'Nice to see the old ways aren't dying out,' he said at last before looking Logan square in the eye. 'You're probably going to be suspended from duty while this is investigated. If Desperate Doug decides to press charges…' he shrugged. 'You know what it's like around here right now. We don't need any more bad PR.'
'He was going to kill me…'
'You beat an OAP unconscious, Logan. It doesn't matter why. That's all they're going to see. Police brutality of the worst kind.'
Logan couldn't believe his ears. 'So you're hanging me out to dry?'
'Sergeant, I'm not doing anything. Professional Standards won't let me. This is all out of my hands.' The incident room was empty except for Logan and his paperwork. He sat in the semidarkness, a cup of cold coffee on the table next to a half-eaten packet of Maltesers. Trying not to shake.
The knife.
Logan ran a hand over his face. He'd not thought about that night for a long time. Lying on the tower block roof, half-unconscious, while Angus Robertson stabbed and stabbed and stabbed…Desperate Doug MacDuff had brought it all screaming back.
Logan had filled in all the forms, explaining why he'd put an old age pensioner in the hospital. Had spent a happy hour and a half while Inspector Napier scowled at him, asked leading questions and left him in no doubt about what was going to happen next. Now there was nothing left to do but sit back and wait to be told he was suspended. One week back on the job and already his career was down the tubes. And it wasn't even his fault!
Sighing, he looked up at Geordie Stephenson's dead face. Worst of all Desperate Doug was going to be that much harder to convict now. The jury would see a poor old man, beaten by the police, fitted up for the murder of an Edinburgh hoodlum. How could that old man murder anyone? He was so frail! The Procurator Fiscal wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.
Logan let his head sink forward until it clunked off the pile of papers. 'Shit.' He banged his forehead on the table, in time with the words: 'Shit, shit, shit, shit…'
He was interrupted by the blaring tune from his mobile phone. Sighing, he pulled the thing out, and stuck it to his ear. 'Logan,' he said, without enthusiasm.
'DS McRae? This is Alice Kelly, we met yesterday? At the safe house? We were looking after Mr Philips?'
Logan had the sudden image of a frumpy, plain-clothes policewoman with too many rings. 'Hello…' He stopped and sat up. 'What do you mean: you 'were' looking after him? Where is he?'
'Ah, yes. You see that's the thing.' Embarrassed pause. 'DC Harris went out to the shops for a pint of milk and some crisps while I was in the shower-'
