'Steve Jacobs is my friend and I've got enough to worry about trying to catch the bastard that shot him without having to deal with YOU!'
'But I-'
'Get your arse back in that patrol car and keep it there.'
WPC Buchan spun around, looking for support, but suddenly everyone was busy doing something else, anything else. She turned back to find Logan looming over her. 'I am ordering you off my crime scene. Constable. You can expect a written complaint about your behaviour and attitude.' He leaned forward so their faces were almost touching. 'Now get out of my sight.'
'What do you mean there's no sign of them? There has to be!' Logan marched back and forth across the road, not paying any attention to his surroundings, forcing the IB team to scuttle around him as they photographed ejected shell casings and bloodstains. 'Are they stopping every car?'
The harassed woman on the other end of the phone said yes they were, and searching every boot too because, believe it or not, they had actually done this kind of thing before! Logan apologized and hung up. They were getting nowhere fast. Every major road was blocked, and most of the little side routes too. Not an easy task in farming country where minor roads criss-crossed the landscape, knitting tiny clusters of farm and residential buildings together. There were hundreds of possible routes south, as long as you knew where you were going. But the chances of a big-city Edinburgh boy like Chib being familiar with the road layout of Lower Deeside were slim. He would be a dual carriageway kind of guy.
'Where the hell are they?' Logan stopped pacing and stood looking down at Jackie – curled up in the passenger seat of an empty patrol car, mouth open, snoring softly. She was filthy, her face black with soot, smears of Steve's blood on her cheeks, more on her uniform, an egg-sized lump above her left eye where she'd banged her head on the wall. Logan sighed: there wasn't anything else they could do tonight. The roadblocks would either catch Chib and his mate or they wouldn't. And if they made it as far as Edinburgh, Lothian and Borders Police would pick the pair of them up and return them to Aberdeen for questioning and trial. Chib had screwed up big time: he'd been involved in the shooting of a police officer and left witnesses. Not even Malk the Knife could make that disappear.
'What the hell happened?' Chib was shouting, gripping the steering wheel in both hands, trembling with rage. 'I give you one simple fucking task…' He let go of the wheel and slapped the cowering figure in the passenger seat who squealed in pain. 'Where the fuck did the police come from?'
'I don't know, I don't know!' Greg wrapped his arms around his head, crying, but Chib hit him again anyway, knowing he'd feel bad about it afterwards. He always did.
Swearing, he dragged the van into a quiet-looking cul-de sac and killed the engine, sitting in furious silence as it pinged and clunked. He'd really loved that Mercedes, but by now it was little more than a burning hulk, abandoned and torched on a dirt track on the South Deeside Road.
Gritting his teeth, Chib took a deep, deep breath and counted to ten. This wasn't Greg's fault… 'OK,' he said at last. I'm sorry I hit you. That was wrong of me. I was upset, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you.' He reached over and patted his passenger on the arm. 'Now, can you tell me what happened?'
Greg shifted in his seat, wiping his runny nose on the back of his sleeve. 1 was… I was in the house and everything was going great: I did the old woman's front door with the screws and I poured in the petrol and I heard something on the stairs!
There was two of them and they shouted at me and I tried to get away, but one of them hit me in the knee and it really hurt and she was all over me and hitting and kicking and biting and I kicked her back and ran away and set fire to the stairs and ran outside and called you…'
Chib patted him on the knee. 'You did good, Greg, you did good.' And Greg's whole face lit up, happy that Chib wasn't angry at him any more. 'How did they know you were there? Did they follow you to the building?' 1 looked! I did! But there wasn't anyone I could see.'
Chib scowled. It was that bastard DS McRae again – he'd recognized him jumping out of the car, just before that grubby bitch broke the Merc's windscreen. Bloody DS McRae. A small smile fluttered across his lips. The police would expect him to go south: get out of Aberdeen and back to his home turf as quickly as possible. But instead they were going to head north, go up round Inverness then down the west coast, past Oban, through Glasgow and back to Edinburgh. If he put his foot down they could be back home before the pubs shut tomorrow. But there was something he wanted to do first.
Get even.
43
DI Insch turned up looking like someone had dragged him out of bed at half two in the morning. He listened in silence as Logan took him through everything from the time Jackie called the fire in, to the current status of the roadblocks. Insch popped a Liquorice Allsort in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, the IB spotlights shining off his huge, bald head. 'Right,' he said at last. 'Bugger off home out of it.' He pointed at Jackie snoozing away in the front of the patrol car. 'And take Rip Van Winkle with you. We'll meet again at twelve hundred hours tomorrow. There'll need to be an enquiry into the shooting.' Another Allsort disappeared. 'They're going to want to know what you were all doing out here.'
Logan blushed. 'Ah, yes, well, you see-'
Insch stopped him with a hand, face cold and impassive.
'No. I don't want to know. But you'd better pray all your stories fit together. Maitland was shot in the line of duty: but if this was some half-arsed unofficial operation, you're screwed.'
A patrol car dropped them off in Union Grove so they could take the pool car Jackie had been driving back to the station.
There wasn't much left of Grandma Kennedy's building: the top two floors were a write-off, just a hollow shell of granite and blackened timbers, the roof partially collapsed. Getting arrested for drug dealing was probably the luckiest break the old lady ever had, otherwise she'd be dead by now.
Logan clambered in behind the steering wheel, but Jackie told him to shift his backside over. He wasn't getting to drive.
'But it was ages ago, I-'
'I don't care. Last thing we need is you getting done for drink driving. We're in nough trouble as it is.' She started the car and struggled into her seatbelt, wincing as she twisted to clip the buckle into place. 'Did Insch know you'd been on the piss?'
'Don't think so… Least, he didn't say anything.'
'Good.' She pulled out into the road, heading back towards the flat. 'What did you tell him?'
'Everything… Well, everything except for Colin's fingers and the fact we were staking out Chib's house without any sort of official sanction. Didn't think that would go down too well.'
Jackie groaned and swung the car onto Holburn Street.
'Why the hell did we let you talk us into this?'
Logan sank down in his seat. 'Thanks,' he said, 'I don't actually feel bad enough already.' He clicked on the police radio, looking to pick up any news from the roadblocks, or an update on Steve. Nothing. He pulled out his phone and called A amp;E. Constable Jacobs was in surgery and his condition was critical. They'd know more in a few hours.
Logan let his head rest against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. What a great day: in the morning he'd gone to the funeral of someone he'd got shot; in the afternoon he'd caught a serial killer; in the evening someone else had taken all the credit for it; and now he'd presided over yet another shooting. What a great, great, great, great, day. Not to mention finding out he'd been responsible for a friend getting their fingers hacked off. No wonder he was part of DI Steel's Screw-Up Squad: it was where he belonged.
Speaking of which, he might as well get it over with… He pulled out his phone and called up DI Steel's messages, feeling more and more depressed as they played. 'Logan, where the hell are you? Press conference in half an hour – be there!' Beeeeeeep. 'It's me again – what, are you sulking? Come on, get your arse in gear, the CC
