Blind Eye

by Stuart MacBride

  The wardrobe was next. He dragged it upright and it bounced off the wall, denting the woodchip wallpaper. All the clothes lay in a heap at the bottom – cheap jeans, shirts, a couple of rugby tops, pink fluffy bath robe.

  The impact had knocked the chipboard moulding round the bottom loose. Logan gave it a little kick, but instead of going back on, the whole front piece fell off.

  He bent and tried to force it into place again, but it wouldn’t fit. What did it matter anyway? Everything here was destined for the tip when the council got around to clearing the place out.

  He was about to stand up when he saw it: two parallel indents in the carpet, right in the corner of the room, where the little chest of drawers would have sat.

  Logan ran the torch along the skirting board.

  Everywhere else the carpet was tucked down flush with the wall, but in the corner it was all curled up. Pinned underneath that chest of drawers for who knew how many years, it should have been flat.

  He took hold of the edge and pulled – about eighteen inches of cheap, corrugated carpet peeled back without so much as a ripping sound. And then it stopped, where the gripper strip started.

  No underlay – the carpet had been laid straight onto the chipboard.

  Someone had cut an uneven, shoebox-sized rectangle out of the chipboard, then put it back again. Probably nothing. Just a jury-rigged access point for the electrics, hacked out by a sparky too lazy to do the job properly. But it looked far too well-used for that, the join covered in grimy fingerprints.

  Stash for drugs?

  Logan poked a biro down into the crack and used it to lever the lid off. He was right, it was a hiding place. Bundles of photographs, held together with fraying elastic bands. Family snapshots of a much younger Kylie and Tracey on holiday, or at someone’s birthday, or just playing Mexican banditos in the back garden. Kylie looked happy, a million years away from the stick-thin drug addict who couldn’t get out of bed because her pimp had beaten her.

  There was a small tin in the hole, complete with a syringe and spare needles. A bong in the shape of Yoda’s head. A little porcelain ballerina. A set of tarot cards.

  Logan took everything out, and lined it all up on the carpet. Not much to show for a life.

  Then he stuck the torch back in the hole and swung it round for one last look.

  Something glinted in the darkness.

  He stuck his hand down into the gap between the chipboard and the dusty concrete.

  Couldn’t quite reach …

  He lay on his side, getting as much of his arm down the hole as possible, then walked his fingers along the gritty surface. Nothing … nothing … nothing – and then a faint rustle. Carrier bag? He teased it closer with his fingertips, took a good handful of plastic and pulled the whole thing out.

  It was an anonymous blue-and-white-striped plastic bag, the kind you got from a corner shop. Heavy. He lowered it to the floor and peered inside.

  It was a claw hammer, crusted with dark-brown, partially wrapped in a bloodstained copy of the Aberdeen Examiner.

  59

  ‘I don’t care, OK? Get out of your sodding bed and put her on the phone!’ Logan sat on the arm of the broken couch, the pre-dawn light just beginning to trickle in through the lounge window as he waited for the Witness Protection Officer to do what she was told.

  ‘Quarter to five … Jesus.’ A yawn. There was some muttered swearing, then a rustling noise then – ‘Some bastard from Aberdeen … What? … I don’t know, do I?’ More rustling. And finally knocking. ‘Kylie? You awake? Kylie?’

  Pause.

  Then the officer was back: ‘I think she’s asleep.’

  ‘Of course she’s asleep, it’s the middle of the night. Wake – her – up!’

  ‘OK, OK, Jesus…’ The knocking turned into thumping. And a minute later Kylie was on the other end of the phone.

  ‘Whhhhu?’ Some wet chewing noises. ‘Whssleepin’…’

  ‘Kylie, it’s DS McRae. Remember me?’

  ‘Mmmnhmmmm? You’re the guy saved us. Tracey says we owe you, you know? For the doctor, and gettin’ us outta that shite-hole and into rehab.’ A huge yawn came down the line from Lossiemouth. ‘No one was ever nice to us before. Always thought police was bastards, but you’re like, a hero and that…’

  ‘I know about the hammer.’

  Silence.

  ‘I … eh?’

  ‘Under the floor: in your little hidey hole, there’s a claw hammer in a plastic bag with blood all over it.’

  ‘What? No. But…’

  ‘It wasn’t Creepy, was it? It was you. You battered Harry Jordan and tried to frame Colin McLeod.’

  ‘No! It can’t… Me and Colin, we’re … you know? He said he’d take me to Australia, start over … maybe even get married. Have babies…’

  Another voice in the background, asking who it was, and then Kylie’s sister Tracey was on the phone. ‘You found a hammer, yeah? Must’ve been that old bag Mrs McLeod. Planted it, like. Make it look like it wasn’t Creepy smashed the bastard’s head in.’

  Logan hefted the carrier bag in his gloved hand. It was a long shot, but what the hell: ‘Then why has it got your fingerprints all over it?’

  Pause. ‘It has?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  This time the silence dragged on for so long Logan had to check his phone to see if he’d lost the signal. ‘Well?’

  ‘Kylie, love, get us a can of Coke, or something, eh?’ Pause. A door closing. ‘It wasn’t her, it was me. I did it. She doesn’t even know.’

  Score one for the educated guess.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? Harry was going to hurt her again. Sooner or later, and maybe next time she’s not so lucky, you know?’ Her voice was starting to wobble. ‘Maybe next time he kills her, or she ends up a vegetable. I had to, OK?’

  She sniffed. ‘Told him we was leaving, but he wouldn’t let us. He’s got this big knife and he’s off his face on smack. Going on about how no one fucks with Harry Jordan, how we belong to him, got to learn respect, he’s going to cut off our faces… I was scared, OK?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper, ‘I kicked over Harry’s wheelchair and he goes sprawling on the carpet. Hits his head on the sideboard.’

  Logan looked down at the broken sideboard with its missing leg. ‘You’re saying it was an accident? How stupid do you think I am?’

  ‘He … he hit the sideboard – and there’s blood pouring from this gash in his forehead, you know? And it’s all down his face and he’s trying to drag himself along the carpet, shouting and screaming how he’s going to kill the pair of us … I got a hammer from Harry’s toolbox, and I made him shut the fuck up. You know? Once and for all. No more threats, no more fists, no more of his shite.’

  Logan closed his eyes and swore quietly. ‘And you thought you could blame Colin McLeod.’

  He could almost hear her shrugging all the way from Lossiemouth. ‘Was a hammer, wasn’t it? Creepy likes hammers …’ She sniffed again, but her voice was a lot calmer than before. ‘I’m glad I did it, OK? Harry Jordan was an evil bastard. And Creepy’s just as bad. Way I see it, I did the world a favour. Harry’s in a coma and Creepy’s in prison, and they can’t hurt my sister no more.’

  Bloody hell. Logan sat on the ruined couch, holding the carrier bag with the claw hammer still in it. The one piece of evidence that would damn them all.

  Tracey was right – the world would be a much better place without Colin McLeod and Harry Jordan. And all Logan had to do was lose the hammer. Pretend he’d never found it.

  Hammer? What hammer?

  Kylie and Tracey get to start their new life in Lossiemouth, off the drugs and off the game. No one would miss Harry Jordan, and Creepy Colin McLeod deserved to rot in jail for the rest of his natural life.

  All Logan had to do was drive out to the middle of nowhere and ditch the hammer. Or chuck it in the River Dee. Or just drop the d
amn thing in a wheely bin.

  No one would ever know.

  DI Steel’s cough rattled out of the phone’s earpiece, followed by some light blasphemy. Logan let her get it out of her system. Dawn had finally arrived, the sun slowly crawling its way up the sky, casting a rectangle of watery gold through the lounge window. Making the smoke from Logan’s third cigarette shine like ivory.

  ‘It’s half five!’ Steel groaned. ‘Someone better be dying…’

  ‘I need to ask you something.’

  ‘If it’s no’ about you filling a wee plastic cup with spunk, I’m no’ interested.’

  ‘I’ve got an ethical problem.’

  Pause. ‘And you phoned me? Jesus, things must be bad. Hold on…’ He could hear her bumbling about, then she was back. ‘Well, come on then?’

  ‘Suppose there’s someone who’s going to get sent down for attempted murder, but you’ve got proof he didn’t do it. He did heaps of other stuff, but always gets away with it: drugs, beatings, extortion, maybe a couple of deaths… But if you tell anyone what you know, the bastard walks and someone else has to take the blame. Someone who maybe doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘You got me out of bed for this?’

  ‘But it—’

  ‘Who we talking about?’

  ‘No one. It’s … hypothetical.’

  ‘Hypothetical my sharny arse. You don’t wake me up at five thirty in the morning for hypo-bloody-thetical. Who is it?’

  Logan took a long draw on his cigarette, the smoke burning deep in his scarred lungs. ‘Colin McLeod.’

  ‘Creepy Colin? But he’s…’ She swore. ‘Are you telling me someone else bashed Harry Jordan’s brains in? Oh, that’s just bloody brilliant. First chance we’ve got to put him away and the son-of-a-bitch didn’t do it? … What’s Chief Inspector Frog-Face say?’

  ‘Haven’t told him.’ Logan dropped his cigarette to the grubby carpet and ground it out with his foot.

  ‘He’ll go bonkers.’

  Logan walked over to the window, rubbing a clear patch in the dusty glass. Looked like another beautiful day to be a police officer, with outbreaks of infighting, sulking and recriminations. ‘What if we don’t say anything?’

  There was a pause. ‘We? When the hell did it become “we”? You’re no’ dragging me into this.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Just hypothetical you said.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look, Laz, I love you like a slightly retarded little brother, but you know what you’ve got to do. Wouldn’t have called me otherwise. I am your conscience, your Jiminy Cricket, your Fairy Sodding Godmother. Soon as you told me, it’s no’ a secret any more: truth’s out. You’ve got to tell Finnie.’

  ‘Oh … bollocks.’

  ‘Aye, and if you’re lucky you’ll still have yours by the time he’s finished with you.’

  60

  There was a slightly bleary edge to Force Headquarters at seven in the morning: constables, sergeants and inspectors slouching around like half-shut knives, bent under the weight of a night in the Illicit Still, celebrating DCI Finnie’s recent drug bust.

  Logan asked around and finally tracked the DCI down in the canteen, tucking into a fry-up.

  ‘Mmmph.’ Finnie looked up, mouth full, a bean juice cold sore on his top lip. He chewed and swallowed. ‘What happened to you last night?’

  ‘I … ahem…’ Logan sat, and tried not to watch as the Detective Chief Inspector got stuck into a glistening disk of black pudding, little flecks of oatmeal and fat peppering the cooked blood.

  Finnie stuffed down a forkful, talking while he ate. ‘Got a table booked at Toni’s tonight: you, me and Pirie. Celebrate you getting back on the job after your accident.’

  Accident…

  Logan tried a smile. It wasn’t easy with his stomach churning. ‘I had a visit from Hilary Brander yesterday.’

  ‘Oh aye?’

  Logan told him about the affair, the other claw hammer, and the call to Kylie’s sister Tracey.

  Finnie stopped eating, his voice a strangled whisper: ‘Why the bloody hell didn’t you call me? You knew how important this was!’

  ‘I…’ Logan scanned the rows of breakfasting police officers, but no one seemed to be looking in their direction. ‘I thought Brander was just taking the piss. How was I supposed to know it would pan out?’

  ‘So now you’re exempt from the chain of command, is that it? You’re too damn special to tell me when there’s a major screw-up on my investigation?’

  ‘What was I supposed to do, stick the hammer back where I found it? Pretend it never happened, just because we can’t get Colin McLeod for anything else?’

  Finnie screwed his rubbery lips into a scowl, and his eyes into narrow, evil slits. Then he stabbed his last chunk of sausage and jammed it in his mouth. Chewing and glowering. And then he sagged.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said at last. ‘I fucking hate it, but you’re right. Just because Creepy’s a nasty little bastard, it doesn’t mean we can fit him up for something he didn’t do.’ Sigh. ‘Bloody hell, it was going to be such a good day as well.’

  Finnie threw back the last of his tea, then stared into the empty mug. ‘Better get onto that witness protection lot: I want those prossies back here ASAP.’ He scraped back his chair and stood. ‘Suppose I’d better go tell the Procurator Fiscal. Bloody hell…’

  And then he was gone, leaving Logan and a half-eaten breakfast behind.

  Logan pulled out his mobile and put in a call to the Witness Protection Officer he’d spoken to earlier. Finnie’s plate was awash with animal fat and little flecks of gristle, smears of blood-red tomato sauce… Logan pushed the plate away, but he could still smell it.

  It took a while, but eventually the Witness Protection Officer answered the phone. Loan told her to go get Kylie and her sister packed up – Finnie wanted them back in Aberdeen. Now.

  There was some grumbling, an almost inaudible, ‘Make up your bloody mind…’ and then Logan could hear the officer marching out into a different room, the phone pressed against her chest.

  The muffled noise of a conversation in the hallway. ‘They’re all the same at bloody Queen Street…’

  Some knocking.

  The Witness Protection Officer’s raised voice: ‘Kylie? Tracey? Hello?’ A moment of silence, then a door opening. ‘Oh fuck … Bill: get an ambulance! … JUST GET A FUCKING AMBULANCE!’

  And then the phone went silent.

  ‘Are you deaf or something?’

  Logan looked up from the report he was supposed to be writing; Big Gary was standing in the doorway, nursing a mug of tea and a packet of custard creams.

  The CID office was deserted, just Logan and a dying pot plant.

  ‘Hospital called.’ The huge sergeant sniffed then hauled at the belt straining around his middle. ‘Pumped their stomachs, but it’s touch and go. Drain cleaner. I mean, you’d have to be desperate, wouldn’t you?’

  Logan didn’t want to think about it. ‘Any news on Colin McLeod yet?’

  ‘Last I heard the PF and the Sheriff were in with Finnie and the ACC. Mucho shouto, mucho swearo. Apparently your name’s coming up a lot.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘I thought so.’ Big Gary grinned, adding an extra couple of chins to his collection. ‘Anyway: you got a call on line two. Some Polish bint, been on hold for five minutes. I tried calling, but you never bloody answer.’

  Logan swore, then dug his desk phone out from beneath a pile of search reports. Sure enough, the little red light was winking. He reached for the handset.

  ‘Before I go,’ said Gary, ‘we still on for that meal tonight? Coz if we are, stick a paper bag over your head, eh? All those bruises and scabs’ll put me right off my grub.’

  For a big lad, he moved fast, getting safely out of the door before Logan hurled a stapler at his departing backside. It bounced off the wall and fell to the carpet.

&nbs
p; Logan stabbed the button on his phone. ‘DS McRae, how can I help—’

  ‘Logan? This is Senior Constable Jaroszewicz? From Poland?’

  ‘Wiktorja?’ Just the sound of her voice was enough to make Logan break out in a cold sweat. ‘What—’

  ‘Can we talk?’

  ‘Hold on, let me close the office door—’

  ‘No, not on the phone, I need to talk to you in person. It is important.’

  ‘What?’ His bowels clenched. Oh God, he didn’t want to go back to Poland. He really, really didn’t want to go back to Poland. ‘But I can’t—’

  ‘I am at Aberdeen Airport. I can get a taxi to your police headquarters?’

  ‘No!’ Even though he knew he was alone, Logan glanced around the empty CID offices, then lowered his voice. ‘Don’t come to the station. I’ll give you an address…’

  The taxi pulled up outside DI Steel’s house. The back door opened and a familiar figure struggled out into the hot July sunshine. Wiktorja. Her face was speckled with yellow-green bruises, a patch of white gauze taped to her forehead above a collection of brown-scabbed scrapes. She struggled one-handed with a bright yellow ‘DUTY FREE’ carrier bag – her right arm useless in a sling – until Logan lumbered up the path and paid the driver.

  He hefted her battered brown leather suitcase out of the boot, and they stood there, not saying anything as the taxi pulled away from the kerb. Logan coughed. She looked at her feet. DI Steel’s fluffy grey cat slouched past on the garden fence.

  ‘How’s the arm?’

  Wiktorja grimaced. ‘My stupid doctor says I am not fit to return to duty, and my stupid sergeant agrees with him.’ She smiled, but her eyes were dead, her voice full of artificial cheer. ‘So I decided to take a holiday. I have always wanted to see Aberdeen…’

  ‘For a police officer, you’re a bloody lousy liar.’

  This time her smile looked more genuine. ‘Do you think so?’

  They rummaged a clear spot in Steel’s freezer for the bottle of vodka Wiktorja had brought from Poland, then sat in the back garden, in the sunshine, Wiktorja shivering slightly, Logan trying to light up. The cigarette wouldn’t hold still, dancing back and forth away from the flame.

  Wiktorja took a sip of instant coffee. ‘I did not know you smoked.’