And God loves Richard Knox.
Richard places his hand against the glass and scrubs away the picture he drew in the grime. Smiles to himself.
Soon. Very, very soon…
15
It was nearly half ten by the time Logan got back to the CID room. The place was packed – plainclothes and uniformed constables sitting in every seat, working the phones. The almost constant murmur of conversation and electronic ringing.
‘Yes, sir, I know you’re worried about your father but—’
‘In Kincorth? I see…And what makes you believe it was Richard Knox?’
A constable stuck her hand over the mouthpiece and offered the phone to Logan. ‘Sarge, there’s a bloke on the phone says he was attacked by Knox last night, do you want to deal?’
Logan looked out across the crowded, noisy room. ‘Is every nutjob in the city calling in?’
‘Pretty much. So, you want it?’
‘Do I buggery.’ He hurried through into the little sergeants’ alcove, before anyone else tried to lumber him with their loony, closed the door – shutting out the babble – and collapsed into his seat. Rubbed at his thumping forehead.
He had the little office to himself, no one to see him rummaging through everyone’s desks on the hunt for painkillers. OK, so he was a bit hungover but after Reuben and everything he’d deserved a drink, hadn’t he? Even if the late night vodka hadn’t been the best of ideas.
DS Mark MacDonald had a packet of ibuprofen hidden in a drawer. Logan helped himself to two, washing them down with the pint of orange juice he’d bought on the way back to the station. His stomach gurgled as the liquid hit, bitter acid at the bottom of his throat.
There was a Post-it note stuck right in the middle of Logan’s computer screen: a summons in block capitals. ‘MY OFFICE AS SOON AS YOU GET BACK!!!’ Signed, ‘DI BEATTIE!’ just like that, with an exclamation mark. Just in case Logan didn’t know he was a dickhead.
Logan peeled it off, scrunched it up, and hurled it at the bin.
Someone shouted, ‘Shop?’ and Logan looked around to find PC Butler standing in the doorway. She wasn’t exactly the tallest officer in Grampian Police: petite, with cropped blonde hair, Butler looked like the kind of person who helped little old ladies across the road; raised money for underprivileged kittens; couldn’t pull the skin off a boiled tattie. Which just went to show how wrong you could be.
She waggled a manila folder at him. ‘You in for an armed robbery?’
‘Dump it on Doreen’s desk.’ He jerked his thumb towards a neatly ordered workstation, with law books alphabetically arranged on a shelf above the computer.
Constable Butler pulled a face, wrinkling her nose, and puckering her mouth. ‘You sure you don’t want it?’
‘Positive.’
‘Oh come on.’ She settled onto the only clear patch on Biohazard Bob’s desk. ‘DS Taylor’s being a right cow at the moment. Ever since her husband ran off with that accounts assistant, you can’t do anything right.’
‘Give it to Bob then.’
Butler shuddered. ‘I’d have to drive him about, and it’s too bloody cold to have the windows open all the time.’ She batted her eyelashes. ‘Please?’
‘DS MacDonald?’
‘Wandering hands. He does it again I’ll have to castrate him. Don’t want that on your conscience, do you?’
Logan turned away and jabbed the power button on his computer. ‘Thought you lot in uniform were all whinging about me being shouty and sarcastic.’
He could hear her shifting on the desk behind him. ‘Yeah, but you’re kinda the lesser of four evils. So…armed robbery?’
Logan slumped back in his seat and swore at the ceiling tiles. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘Great.’ She slapped the folder down on the desk in front of him. ‘Henderson’s the Jewellers, on Crown Street. Bloke wanders in with a wee kid in a pushchair, asks to see the engagement rings, and when the assistant hauls them out, our boy produces a sawn-off sledgehammer.’
‘Who the hell holds up a jewellers with a sawn-off sledgehammer? You sure it wasn’t a shotgun?’
‘Positive.’
Logan flicked through the file. ‘Time?’
‘Nine fifteen this morning.’
‘Anyone hurt?’
‘One witness peed herself, that count? Said she was only in to pick up her husband’s watch.’
Logan pulled out the witness statements, skimming them as PC Butler waited. At the back was a list of items the jewellers claimed their mystery shopper had got away with. It had an estimated value of just under five hundred pounds. Not exactly worth getting banged up for. ‘Is that all?’
Butler shrugged. ‘Apparently. Went on a bit of a rampage, smashed open display cabinets, stuffed his pockets
