‘Useless tosser couldn’t investigate a septic tank for jobbies.’
She jabbed the fork into the catch again. ‘Give us a hand, eh?’
‘Thought you were supposed to be cutting down on the fags?’
‘This is an infringement of my human rights…Open you bastard!’
They struggled with the mechanism for a minute, before Steel managed to stab herself in the thumb with her fork. ‘Fffffffffffffffffff…’ She screwed her face up, then hurled the stainless steel thing in the bin. ‘FUCK!’ Steel slumped into her office chair and stuck her bleeding thumb in her mouth.
‘Why can’t you go outside for a cigarette, like a normal person?’
Steel just scowled at him.
‘Whatever.’ Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘Billy Adams. AKA: Detective Inspector Billy Adams, Northumbria Police. Did a lot of anti-gang stuff, and some undercover work on a big Newcastle mobster called Maitland. Killed himself about six weeks after Knox got sent down. And I mean seriously killed himself.’
She pulled her thumb out of her mouth. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘According to the sergeant I spoke to, DI Adams swallowed enough antidepressants to cheer up a whole bouncy castle full of goths, a bottle of gin, and the barrel of a shotgun.’
‘No sodding about for our Billy, then.’
‘Blew a big hole in the roof of the family Mondeo, in the grounds of some disused factory. Been there four days in the sun before they found the body. The magpies had been at him.’
Steel went back to sucking her thumb, mumbling around the digit, ‘So why’s Danby being all touchy about it?’
‘No idea.’ Logan shifted forward in his seat. ‘I went for a dig in Knox’s file too, in case there was a connection there. He’s got big chunks marked “restricted”. No details.’
‘That’ll be those other rapes Danby was waffling about. Would’ve been before the Soham murders, back when we all thought we had to be so sodding sensitive about unsubstantiated accusations going on some dirty bastard’s permanent record. Bloody Data Protection Act bollocks.’
Logan shrugged. She was probably right.
Silence.
Then she stood. ‘Get your coat, we’re off to see a man about some dodgy twenties.’
‘Nah, business is shite, truth be told.’ The man in the oil-smudged blue boilersuit spoke over his shoulder while a scabby kettle grumbled to a boil. ‘Bloody recession barely made a dent in Aberdeen, but suddenly no one wants to buy a car. You know? Hypocritical bastards.’
The office faced out onto what looked like an old cattle yard, the grey concrete floor host to a multicoloured array of second-hand cars crammed in bumper-to-bumper with ‘DEAL OF THE WEEK!!!’ signs taped to the windscreens. A couple of calendars hung on the white breezeblock walls, all featuring spanners and bits of mechanical equipment. DI Steel finished flipping through one and pulled a face, before perching herself on the edge of the battered desk. ‘Whatever happened to nudie women?’
‘Milk, two sugars, right?’ He ladled coffee granules into three mugs, lined up along the windowsill.
‘Aye.’
Logan shook his head. ‘Just milk for me.’
‘OK…’ He poured in the hot water, steam turning the window opaque, blocking out the forecourt. The garage was hidden away down a country road, somewhere between Westhill and the Loch of Skene, surrounded by trees and fields full of grumbling cattle.
‘Mr Middleton.’ Logan watched him sniffing a carton of semi-skimmed milk. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t recognize the man who gave you the cash?’
Middleton sploshed milk into their coffees. ‘Dunno. Never saw him before.’
Steel accepted her mug, wrapping her hands around it and breathing in the hot steam. ‘If I was a suspicious wee sod – which I am – I’d be tempted to say your mystery man with a handful of dodgy twenties never existed. It was just you, trying to launder the stuff.’
Kevin Middleton stiffened. ‘You think I’d be daft enough to pay counterfeit cash into my own bank account? How thick would I have to be?’
Steel shrugged. ‘Maybe you thought they’d be good enough to pass the bank’s tests?’
Middleton laughed, then settled into the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘You’re kidding, right? If I wanted to clean some money, I’d go down the bookies. Or the casino. Or to one of them dog nights in Dundee. Somehow I get the feeling a bank would know what to look for.’
‘Right, right.’ Steel looked at him, her head tilted to one side. ‘You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Come on, you don’t think it’s a wee bit odd: some tadger comes in here with over four thousand pounds in crisp new twenties wanting to buy one of your manky motors?’
‘A lot of people doing business in readies now. No bugger trusts them thieving dicks in the banks any more. Safer keeping it under the mattress.’
‘And if it’s cash, you can accidentally forget to mention it to the tax man, right?’
Middleton’s face darkened. ‘I’m the victim here, OK? Four and a half grand I’m down! Not to mention one Honda Civic.’
Logan took a sip of instant coffee: bitter, burnt tasting, little beads of fat glimmering on the surface. ‘If you sold the car, you’ve got the buyer’s details, yes? On the registration documents?’
Middleton coughed, swivelled back and forth in his chair, stared at a parts catalogue. ‘Look, maybe this is all going a bit too far. I mean the bloke probably didn’t know the cash was—’
Steel cut him off. ‘Don’t talk shite. Give us the guy’s details, or I’m dragging you down the station and doing you for passing counterfeit money and trying to poison a police officer with crap cheapo coffee.’
Middleton glowered in silence for a bit, then stood and muttered his way to a beige filing cabinet in the corner of the office. He went rummaging through one of the drawers, and came out with a registration document. He held it out and Steel snatched it off him, gave it a cursory glance, then chucked it to Logan. ‘Read.’
Logan opened it up and scanned the new keeper section, carefully printed in blue biro. ‘You know you’re meant to send this off to the DVLA, right?’
‘How come you bastards aren’t out there arresting paedophiles and bloody muggers, eh?’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’ Steel took another sip and grimaced. ‘We got an address?’
‘Car’s registered to a Douglas Walker in Peterculter.’
‘There you go, wasn’t so difficult now, was it?’ Steel clunked her mug down on the desk and stood, rubbing the seat of her trousers. ‘Come on Sergeant, let’s get out of here before Mr Middleton threatens to make more coffee.’
Logan followed her out onto the forecourt, buttoning up his jacket against the cold. Brambles scratched along the drystane dyke that bordered the lot, their dark-brown skeletons speckled with frost where the weak sun hadn’t managed to reach yet. He dug his hands deep into his pockets, then froze, staring at one of the vehicles: a red Honda Civic.
He checked the registration documents again. ‘Inspector?’
Steel kept on walking, pulling out her phone.
Behind him, Logan could hear Kevin Middleton locking the garage up. Then the man was hurrying past, weaving his way between the used cars towards a Range Rover parked at the kerb.
Logan shouted across to him. ‘Where, exactly, do you think you’re going?’
‘Erm, dentist appointment?’
Steel leant back against the CID pool car, poking away at her phone’s keypad. ‘Hurry up; sodding perishing out here. My nipples get any pointier they’ll put someone’s eye out.’
Logan nodded towards the Honda. ‘This is the car he says he sold for four and a half grand.’
‘Er…no it isn’t. Just cos it’s the same make—’
‘And the same colour, and the same number plate.’ Logan held up the regis
tration documents. ‘Want to explain that?’
‘It…Er…’ Middleton sagged back against a Ford Fiesta, staring up at the low grey sky, breath steaming out as he swore. ‘I got it back. OK?’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Come on, it was four and a half grand!’
‘Which you’re no doubt claiming back on your insurance.’ Logan ran his eyes over the collection of cars on the forecourt. ‘Have you had a visit from Trading Standards recently, Mr Middleton? Checking the odometers aren’t clocked? All the vehicles are roadworthy? No cut-and-shunt jobs?’
‘What was I supposed to do? I’m a small businessman, I can’t afford to have people ripping me off! You know how it—’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Steel stomped her feet. ‘Shut up the pair of you. I’m cold and I’m bored and if it’s all the same to you, I’d kinda like to get home before the next sodding ice age sets in.’ She turned her back on them. ‘Logan, get your arse in gear. We’re leaving.’
‘But—’
‘Now.’ She clambered into the passenger seat and slammed the car door.
Brilliant. Nothing like being supported by your senior officer. Logan pointed a finger at Middleton. ‘This isn’t over.’
‘Thanks a lot.’ Logan changed gear and put his foot down, overtaking a minibus on the dual carriageway. ‘That was really nice. Empowering.’ The traffic was getting heavier the closer they got to the Kingswells roundabout. Rush-hour congealing the arteries leading in and out of Aberdeen like a deep-fried Mars Bar.
Steel cracked open the pool car window and blew a stream of smoke out into the cold afternoon, mobile phone clamped to her ear. ‘What did you want to do? Arrest him? Impound all his stock? Spend the rest of the night filling in sodding paperwork?’
‘He’s dodgy.’
‘Shock horror, a dodgy second-hand car dealer. Who would’ve thunk it? That has to be a first.’
‘He’s—’
‘Come on Steve, pick up the bloody phone!’ She squinted her face up, cigarette gripped between her front teeth. ‘Finnie’s getting a DI down from Fraserburgh to cover my cases while I’m away. Try and no’ whinge too much when you’re working for him, eh? Make it look like I run a tight ship.’
‘Brilliant. Bring someone else in.’ Logan gripped the steering wheel tighter.
‘Steve, it’s your mum. Where the hell are you? Call me back.’ She snapped her phone shut. ‘Voicemail.’
‘I could’ve run the caseload. I know it all inside out. I’m already doing all the bloody work. Instead of which I’m going to have to hold some Teuchter numpty’s—’
‘Wah, wah, wah. You’re such a bloody moan. Just be thankful I didn’t let them hand everything over to Beattie.’
Small mercies.
Steel stuck the phone back in her jacket. ‘Can’t decide if I’m more pissed off or worried about Steve.’
‘Steve who?’
‘Polmont, my chiz.’
Which explained the, ‘it’s your mum’ bit – keeping it all secretive, in case anyone else heard the message.
Logan frowned. ‘How come you even know his name? Personal info’s meant to stay on the other side of the “sterile corridor”, or whatever rubbish they’re calling it now. Who else knows who he is?’
‘No one.’ She flicked ash out of the window. ‘Just me, Frog-Face Finnie, and now you.’
‘Thought all informant stuff was meant to be handled by the Spook Squad? Why—’
‘Look it just is, OK? And shut up.’ She took an angry sook on her cigarette. ‘This is top, top Secret Squirrel. Understand?’
Logan sighed. ‘I think I can—’
‘I’m no’ joking. This gets out, I swear to God I’ll wear your wee heterosexual arsehole as a foot warmer. He’s a sparky at Malk the Knife’s building site.’
‘He’s the one we were waiting for on Monday? Told you: no one’s going to be daft enough to squeal. What is he, suicidal?’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of…Poor wee bugger could be lying dead in a ditch for all I know.’
‘So go round his house, pay him a visit.’
She sniffed. ‘Don’t have an address.’
‘Then get a GMS trace on his mobile. If it doesn’t move overnight, that’s his house.’ Logan stuck his foot on the clutch, popped the pool car out of gear, and drifted to a halt at the back of a long line of traffic. ‘What about the counterfeit cash? Want to get a warrant organized for the guy who bought the car?’
‘Tonight?’ Steel stared at him. ‘Are you mental? Be after five by the time we get back to the ranch. Get some backshift troglodyte to pick the bugger up. I’m going home.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t make me “La-la-la-la-la” you again.’
7
‘…celebrations outside the offices of McLennan Homes. Back to you in the studio.’
The picture jumped to a balding anchorman with an unfeasible moustache. ‘Thanks, Tim.’ That familiar, blurry photo of Richard Knox they’d used on the front page of the Aberdeen Examiner appeared on the screen. ‘A convicted rapist took up residence in the Grampian Region today…’
Logan turned the sound down, then cracked the ring pull on another tin of Stella. Cold beer after a hot curry. Singing wafted through from the bathroom, Samantha doing her best to murder a Marilyn Manson cover of a Soft Cell version of a Gloria Jones song.
But it was still better than listening to yet another report about Richard Creepy-Pants Knox setting up home in Aberdeen. The anchorman disappeared from the screen, replaced by a lumpy woman mouthing angry somethings at the camera. Probably complaining about Grampian Police mollycoddling perverts when there were drunken yobs hanging about her local community centre.
Logan toasted her with his tin of beer.
Then it was over to the weather. Which apparently was going to be crap for the foreseeable future.
A standard January in the north-east of Scotland, then.
‘What you watching?’
Logan turned to see Samantha standing in the lounge doorway, wearing a pink fluffy bathrobe and a pink towel turban. She even had pink fluffy socks on. ‘You’re looking very goth tonight.’
She stuck her middle finger up at him. ‘Any beer left?’
‘Fridge. And there’s a film coming on at half ten, if you fancy it?’
‘Got an early start tomorrow.’ She plonked herself down on the couch and stole a scoof of his beer. ‘Your mum was on the phone earlier.’
Logan groaned.
‘Relax, I told her you’d died of dysentery.’ Samantha unwrapped the towel from her head, and rubbed at the bright red hair it had been hiding. ‘Oh, and some bloke called Reuben called? Wouldn’t leave a message.’
Fuck…Reuben.
Logan cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t say anything at all?’
‘Nada. Your mum wants us to go round for Sunday lunch to discuss, and I quote, “access to her grandchild”.’
What the hell did Reuben want?
Silence.
‘You know, if you get over your fatal bout of the squits?’
And how the hell did he get their home number?
‘Logan?’
‘Hmm?’ He looked up. ‘Sorry, miles away.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Samantha, undoing the tie on the front of her robe, ‘maybe I’ve got something here that’ll bring you back from the dead…’
‘What’s he doing?’
Mandy wrinkled her nose. ‘Praying, I think.’
Harry peered around the doorway at the figure kneeling in front of the broken three-bar electric fire. The whole house smelled of damp and mould. Dark and creepy. Dank and creaky. Harry put his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. ‘He’s a bit…you know? I mean, you saw the papers, right?’
Mandy turned and smiled at him. She was pretty. Brown curly hair. A little black mole at the corner of her mouth. A bit on the chunky side, but that just gave you s
omething to hang onto, didn’t it? Not that Harry would ever say anything. Well, you don’t, do you? Not when you work together like this. But still…she had tremendous knockers.
She punched him on the arm. ‘Worried our boy’s going to find you irresistible?’
‘Ha, ha.’ Harry shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Anyway, Knox likes auld mannies. And in case it skipped your attention, I’m in the prime of my life.’ If you could call a divorced forty-three-year-old man with a receding hairline and expanding waistline in the prime of anything.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Mandy went back to staring at Knox. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting some kip? It’s nearly midnight, and you’re on at six.’
Harry shrugged again. ‘Can’t sleep the first night in a strange house. You?’
‘Like a log.’
Harry tore his eyes away from the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. ‘I hear he attacked more than a dozen pensioners in Newcastle. Chained them up like dogs.’
Mandy put her head on one side, still staring at the praying man. ‘Had to watch a paedophile once. Primary school gym teacher. Abusing little girls in the changing rooms. Got away with it for seven years.’
‘Jesus…’
‘Watched him for three weeks, till he slashed his throat with the lid off a tin of tuna. Bathroom looked like a horror movie, blood everywhere.’ She sighed. ‘Ruined a perfectly good pair of shoes.’
‘There’s a lovely image.’
‘Point is, he was never going to be a hundred percent safe: didn’t matter how long it took, he was always going to see six-year-old girls as sex objects. If he hadn’t topped himself, I’d probably still be watching him now. Knox is the same. Did it before, he’ll do it again.’ She shrugged. ‘If we’re not here to watch him.’
Harry tried a smile. ‘Good job I got in a couple packets of HobNobs then.’
She nodded at the man kneeling on the threadbare hearthrug. ‘Maybe you should have bought some tins of tuna…’
Richard Albert Knox tries not to smile. He can see them, reflected in the dusty screen of the dead television. Standing there at the lounge door like a pair of old women, gossiping.
His knees ache, but that’s all right. A little pain never did anyone any harm. Sometimes it did them a lot of good. And after all those years kneeling on the concrete floor of his cell, the tatty old rug’s something of a luxury.
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