Logan picked up one of the iPhone boxes. It had all the documentation and everything. ‘So they’re crap then?’
‘Depends on your definition of crap. You can make phone calls, and you can run a couple of applications, play MP3s, but that’s about it.’
He stuffed it back in the box. ‘Hair straighteners are fake too.
Logan shrugged. The bottle was cold, deep-chilled in the fridge-like warehouse. ‘Vodka?’
‘Try again.’
Logan turned it over.
‘God, it’s like teaching a monkey to yodel…’ Dildo prodded the red-and-silver label.
‘You, being a dick?’
‘Read the sodding label!’
Logan did. According to the bottle it was Grant’s Vodka, seventy centilitres, thirty-seven-and-a-half-percent. Produced and bottled in Great Britain, Glen Catrine Distilers, Catrine, Ayrshire, Scotland. ‘So?’
‘How do you normally spell “Distillers”?’
‘D-I-S-T-I-L-L…Oh.’ Logan stared at the label again.
Dildo grinned. ‘Do you think a genuine distillery might
‘It’s counterfeit.’
Dildo took the bottle back. ‘There’s two or three bottling plants for this stuff somewhere down the south of England. Trading Standards have been after them for years – shut one down and two months later another one springs up.’ He stuck the bottle back in the box.
‘Who the hell makes fake Grant’s Vodka? It sells for, what: eight quid a bottle? If you’re going to counterfeit something, counterfeit the expensive stuff.’
‘Mate, I’ve seen faked Tetley tea bags, Surf washing powder, Heinz baked beans.’ Dildo held his hands against the radiator’s peeling paint. ‘Boots were selling fake Colgate in 2008.
Logan stood there for a minute, staring at the boxes and boxes from Polmont’s flat. Then down at the pile of hair straighteners, still in their original – fake – packaging. They were the kind that made a good Valentine’s Day present for a loved one, if you wanted to let them know you weren’t a tight-arsed skinflint…
‘Dildo?’
‘I don’t think this thing’s working.’ He slapped the radiator.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’
Logan lowered the two mugs carefully down on top of a case of not-Grant’s Vodka. Then pulled out the evidence bags he’d wedged under his arms.
Dildo pulled a face. ‘What, did you fly to India and pick the tea leaves yourself? I’m freezing here.’
‘Don’t moan. Couldn’t find the milk.’ Which was a lie. What he’d had difficulty locating were the items confiscated from Angus Black when he’d been picked up. The IB had signed them back into evidence after checking for fingerprints and PC Sniffles had promptly filed them in the wrong place.
Logan stuck the evidence bag on one of the shelves. ‘Did you get anything out of our friend the used car salesman, by the way?’
Blank look. ‘Remind me?’
‘Kevin Middleton, got a dealership out by Kirkton of Skene?’
‘Oh, yeah: Sicknote paid him a visit yesterday. Impounded one cut-and-shunt, a pair of “unsafe for road use”, and three clocked four-by-fours. Result.’
‘Speaking of results…’ Logan held up the evidence bag with the hair straighteners in it. ‘These look fake to you too?’
Dildo groaned. ‘Have I not got
‘Humour me.’
‘Tea.’ He helped himself to a mug, wrapping his gloved hands around it, shrouding his face in steam. Getting condensation in his goatee beard. ‘Open the box and check the grub screws on the handle. If they’re hexagonal heads, the thing’s real.’
Logan did, getting Amido black fingerprint powder all over his hands. ‘Phillips screwdriver.’
‘Fake.’
They went through the same process with the rest of Angus Black’s merchandise – Dildo drinking his tea and straddling the radiator, calling out instructions and occasionally asking to see something. Everything was counterfeit.
‘Perfect.’ Logan smiled and downed the rest of his lukewarm tea. ‘I’ve got to get back to the station, you be OK here?’
‘In the cold? On my own? You ungrateful sod.’
