Dark Blood

Logan almost choked on his salad. ‘I…Erm…’ Mouthful of water. ‘I don’t know if…Ahem.’ Pause. ‘Anyway, how come the Perv Patrol aren’t dealing with Knox? How come this is our problem?’

The inspector’s eyes narrowed, making all the wrinkles stand out. ‘Our lord and master DCI Finnie thinks the Offender Management Unit need someone senior to personally oversee Knox’s case. Apparently it’s too high profile. Apparently I have experience with sexual predators. Apparently I’m the best person to support the Diddy Men in this difficult and delicate operation.’

She scrunched up her empty crisp packet and hurled it at the bin. Missed. ‘Which means Frog-Face Finnie knows Knox is an odious wee shite, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll be the one carrying the can.’

‘Maybe it won’t be that bad?’

‘Course it bloody will: Knox’ll need someone watching him till the day he dies. So I’ll no’ get shot of him till I retire. It’s the gift that keeps on sodding giving.’ Steel scowled. ‘But don’t you worry: I shall have my revenge. Meantime, you go see what you can get on this Billy Adams bloke Danby’s being so secretive about.’

6

‘Aw, Jesus, not again!’ Detective Sergeant Mark MacDonald wrinkled his nose, then slapped a hand over his face, hiding his wee goatee beard. ‘Ack…’ He grabbed a folder from his desk and fanned it back and forth, sending paperwork fluttering across Logan’s desk.

‘What are you…’ Logan frowned, and then the smell hit him. ‘Bloody hell, Bob!’

DS Bob Marshall just grinned. If God existed, He hadn’t been paying a lot of attention when He’d put Bob together. Big ears stuck out at right-angles from a square head with a bald patch at the back and a single, thick eyebrow at the front. Arms like hairy string. A monkey in a machine-washable suit.

‘Christ!’ Mark blinked, then hauled the door open. ‘What’ve you been eating?’

Bob patted the sides of his stomach. ‘Can’t beat cauliflower cheese and chips.’

‘Oh no it’s everywhere…’ Logan stood, backing away into the corner of the little walled-off section of the CID office, built to house the detective sergeants. Six desks – four for dayshift, two for night – all but one covered in drifts of paperwork and ring binders, monitor, keyboard, and overflowing in-tray. The walls were just about visible between the procedural flowcharts, a corkboard covered with mugshots and memos, a whiteboard with each DS’s name written above a list of active cases, another one with a schematic of some drug dealer’s house scrawled in blue marker pen. And a yellow-and-black biohazard triangle mounted above Bob’s desk.

Mark wafted the door open and closed, and open and closed…‘Never mind fucking Iraq, bloody United Nations should invade your arse. That’s a weapon of mass destruction, right there!’

‘I can’t help it if I’m talented.’

Gradually the smell faded, and people got back to work.

Logan finished a report on two indecent exposures in Trinity Cemetery – you’d have to be a brave man to wave your willy about in January in Aberdeen – then called up his internet browser and went looking for Billy Adams. 12,900,000 results in Google.

He refined the search criteria, narrowing it down to Newcastle. 358 results. Apparently there was a featherweight boxer called Billy Adams in the fifties, a guitarist with Dexys Midnight Runners in the eighties, a bunch of businessmen, some football fans…Then Logan included Knox’s name in the search.

An article from the Newcastle Evening Chronicle was top of the list: ‘MISSING OFFICER’S BODY FOUND.’

There were more links to the Newcastle Journal, News Post Leader, Sunday Sun, Morpeth Herald, and Whitley Bay News Guardian. Even a few of the national broadsheets had got in on the act. Logan clicked on the Chronicle link.

Under the headline was a photo of a blue SOC tent, the kind you put up to preserve a crime scene. It was surrounded by patchy bushes with some trees and the leg of a pylon in the background, an IB technician in protective gear walking towards the camera, carrying a black plastic box. Further down the article there was another photo: a smiling man with short blond hair, squint nose, blue eyes. According to the caption, it was ‘DETECTIVE INSPECTOR BILLY ADAMS (42)’

Apparently they’d found his body in the family Ford Mondeo on a patch of wasteland to the north of Newcastle. The story didn’t have a lot of detail on the cause of death – not surprisingly – concentrating instead on how police search teams had been looking for Adams since he’d gone missing from his home the Wednesday before. There was a quote from his wife. One from the detective inspector who’d headed up the search. Another from the young man who’d found the car. And a small potted history of DI Adams’s career. Drug seizures, three murder enquiries, one high-profile kidnapping that ended in disaster…

Logan dug the phone out from under a pile of partially completed crime reports and called Northumbria Police Headquarters.

‘Well?’ Detective Inspector Beardy Beattie’s office was crowded with box files – piled up on the carpet, the shelves, the windowsill, even the visitor’s chair. So Logan had to stand. The only place not covered in boxes was Beattie’s desk. That was covered in biscuit crumbs and paperwork.

Logan handed over the indecent exposure report. ‘He’s done it twice that we know of, probably more. Young mothers with pushchairs every time.’

Beattie sat forward, eyebrows raised. ‘Maybe he’s not flashing the mothers at all, you think of that? Maybe he’s flashing the kids!’ The DI smiled, obviously pleased with his deductive reasoning. Like a podgy Sherlock Holmes, who’d been dropped on his head as a child.

‘Don’t be daft George. He’s picking victims he knows aren’t going to chase after him. You going to abandon your baby in a graveyard to go running after some pervert who’s just shown you his dick?’

‘Oh.’ Beattie picked at a coffee stain on his new desk. ‘What about the counterfeit goods?’

‘Did you speak to Trading Standards, like I told you?’