‘Where can I find them?’
Silence.
Fine. Be like that.
Logan grabbed both of Angus’s ankles and pulled.
‘FUCK!’ He came clattering back into the cubicle, hands grabbing at the window frame. A skinny wee man with a face that was all nose and no chin. His legs scrabbled, but Logan wouldn’t let go.
‘Where do I find them, Angus?’
‘Aaagh, I’m-’ And then he fell, bashing his face on the top of the cistern. One hand hauling the toilet roll dispenser off the wall.
Logan let go of Angus’s legs and the man tumbled to the cubicle floor, groaning, swearing.
‘Aw…fuck, my head!’ Pause. Swear. Moan. ‘Urgh, it’s all damp down here!’
Logan hauled the rucksack off him, before it got covered in whatever was all over the floor. ‘You want to stay here, rolling about in it, or you want to go back to the bar?’
They took their drinks into the snug, a tiny room at the back of the bar, just big enough for two bench seats, a small table, and some dark-red wallpaper. It was like sitting in a blood clot.
Angus sniffed at his jacket sleeve, grimaced, then scoofed down a mouthful of dark brown beer. ‘Covered in pish…’ The left side of his forehead was already swelling up, a thin smear of blood oozing out onto his pale face.
Logan squeezed into the seat opposite and handed him a damp bar towel with a couple of ice cubes folded in the middle. ‘Try this.’
Angus dabbed at his smelly sleeve.
‘It’s for your head, you idiot.’
‘Oh…’ He pressed it against his lump. Winced. Squinted. Took another mouthful of beer. ‘I should sue.’
‘For what? You were breaking and entering.’
‘I wasn’t entering, I was exiting. Since when was breaking and exiting a-’
‘Why don’t we take a wee peek in your rucksack?’ Logan flipped open the plastic toggles, then upended the contents on the little table. About a dozen iPod Nanos, still in their boxes; perfume gift sets from Dior and Gucci; a couple of fancy-packaged hair straighteners.
‘I got receipts for all that, honest.’
There was something wedged in the bottom of the rucksack. Logan gave the whole thing a shake, and a small padded envelope — about the size of a paperback book — thunked onto the pile of merchandise.
Angus groaned. ‘I’ve no idea how that got there.’
‘Sure you don’t.’ Logan flipped the envelope over: it was from Amazon.co.uk, addressed to ‘MR THOMAS BLACK.’
‘Maybe…’ Cough. ‘It…You like music? Cos I got more iPods than I really need for Christmas, and you could-’
‘Don’t be an idiot.’ Logan winkled the flap open and upended the envelope. A handful of little white packages fell out, held together with sticky tape, closely followed by twenties, tens, and fives, all done up in drug-dealer-bundles. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pair of blue nitrile gloves and snapped one on. Picked up one of the packets. ‘Angus, Angus, Angus. Is this what I think it is?’
‘It…I…’ He shifted in his seat, licked his lips. ‘Don’t suppose you’d take cash instead?’
Angus Black was chatty enough on the way back to FHQ, and while the nice Police Custody and Security Officer photographed, fingerprinted, and DNA-sampled him. And while they made themselves comfortable in interview room two with mugs of tea and stale digestive biscuits. But as soon as Logan switched on the audio and video recorders — silence.
Logan struggled on for half an hour, before giving up and terminating the interview. And as soon as the tapes were off, Angus started talking again. Typical.
He shrugged. ‘Exercising my human rights not to incriminate myself, aren’t I?’
‘So come on then,’ Logan led the way down to the cell block, Angus Black in the middle, PC Butler bringing up the rear — carrying the contents of Angus’s rucksack in half a dozen evidence bags — as they clomped down the stairs, ‘where did you get the gear? Wee Hamish?’
‘Off the record?’
‘Off the record.’
Angus made humming noises for a bit. ‘Same place I sorted out Danny’s loan…You meet that bint of his? Face like the back end of a wellington boot, how the daft sod managed to get that up the stick is anyone’s guess. Bag over her head and do her from behind?’
Butler gave him a shove. ‘Chauvinist pig.’
Angus staggered down the last couple of steps. ‘Hey, no pushing! Know what you buggers are like for people “falling down stairs”. Tell you-’
‘She’s a human being, not a sex object.’
‘Bloody right she isn’t. I wouldn’t poke her with-’
Logan stepped between them. ‘Enough, OK? These loan-sharks-slash-drug-dealers, where can I find them?’
Angus laughed. ‘No chance. You want that kinda info, it’s gonna cost. I’m not grassing those bastards up for free, they’ll sodding kill me. Don’t fancy ending my days as a big pile of dogshite.’
They handed him over to the PCSO who’d processed him in the first place, signed him into custody again, then headed back upstairs. Butler set off at a brisk pace, Logan struggling to keep up. He was huffing and puffing after a couple of flights, and by the time they reached the third floor, he was bent double, wheezing.
Butler patted him on the back. ‘You OK, Sarge?’
‘Just need a minute.’
Need to lose some weight. Get some exercise. Cut down on the fags. Lie down and die…
He coughed for a bit, every hack making his head pound. Finally he straightened up, held out his hands for the evidence bags, and told Butler to go see if they’d done a preliminary report on Steve Polmont’s post mortem yet.
As soon as she was gone, Logan pushed through the double doors into the hallowed ground of the Identification Bureau. Or the Scenes Examination Branch. Or whatever the hell it was the Scottish Police Services Authority were calling them these days. It was a long corridor with a scuffed green terrazzo floor; lots of corkboards covered in posters, memos, and holiday postcards; and a collection of wooden doors leading off into each sub-department.
Logan made straight for the little lab, knocked on the door, then stuck his head in.
The FHQ lab wasn’t much bigger than a large kitchen, lined with worktops, chunks of machinery, and a couple of upright fridges. The room was in partial darkness, a single anglepoise lamp shining down on a set of golf clubs. The metal shafts glinted as an IB tech swabbed the striking face of a nine iron with a cotton bud, headphones clamped over their ears. Bum twitching in time to the music.
Logan crept in and gave it a pinch.
‘WhatthefuckinghellRennie!’ Samantha span around, left hand flashing out. Logan danced backwards and the slap went wide.
‘Woah!’
She blushed. ‘Oh…Thought you were someone else.’ Her scarlet hair was stuffed into a baseball cap, the piercings in her ears, nose, and lip glinting in the light from the glowing tabletop. She had a smiley-face badge pinned to her My Chemical Romance T-shirt.
Logan stiffened. ‘Rennie comes in here and grabs your arse?’
Little bastard.
‘So, where you taking me for dinner?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s that horrible smell?’
‘I’ll bloody kill him.’
She patted Logan on the cheek with a latex glove, talking in a flat, deadpan voice, ‘Oh yeah, you’re so manly and butch. Uh-huh, it really turns me on. Etcetera.’ She dropped her hand. ‘Told him I’d kick his knackers up round his nipples if he does it again.’
‘Why’s he grabbing your arse at all?’
‘Don’t be so jealous.’ She turned back to the light box. ‘He does it then runs away giggling like a schoolgirl. Don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.’
He was still a little bastard.
Tiny wrinkles appeared between her eyebrows, then she leaned in and sniffed again. ‘It’s you! Why do you smell of sick?’
Logan hefted the evidence bags onto
the table. ‘Any chance…?’
Samantha groaned. ‘Might have known. And there was me thinking you’d come to carry me off to a nice romantic restaurant.’
‘I didn’t mean-’
‘What is it anyway?’ She pointed at the clear plastic evidence bag — the one full of Angus’s little white parcels. ‘Heroin?’
‘Hopefully.’
‘Ooooo, these are nice…’ She picked up one of the boxed hair straighteners. ‘Hundred quid in Boots. Make a good Valentine’s Day present for a loved one, don’t you think? You know, if you wanted to let them know you weren’t a tight-arsed skinflint with no prospect of ever getting his leg over again.’
‘Subtle.’
She poked at the other bags. ‘You want the iPods and perfume tested too?’
‘Might as well.’
She frowned at the bag with the money in it, snapped on a fresh pair of gloves, and pulled out one of the bundles. Unfolding the origami shape till it was a stack of battered-looking twenty-pound notes. ‘Jesus, these things are everywhere.’
Logan leant against the central unit. ‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of day I’ve-’
‘Got to admire the workmanship.’ She flicked on the light box and held a note against the glowing surface. The metallic strip showed up like a malignant shadow on an X-ray. ‘Clydesdale-Bank-issue Robert the Bruce twenty, circa 1994. Still in circulation.’ She opened a drawer, took out a jeweller’s glass and squinted through the magnifying lens at the note. ‘Real money, you’ve got about eighty, eighty-five different inks, all printed one after another. These are CMYK. Resolution’s amazing though…’
Logan picked one of the notes out of the bundle. ‘Looks OK to me.’
She straightened up. ‘Paper’s too white. They don’t make the original stock any more, and it wasn’t available for public sale anyway. Whoever’s making them’s faked up the watermark pretty well, but the trouble is making them look old enough. So they stick them in a cold tumble drier with a bunch of tea towels, or socks, or something, and squirt in some stewed tea every now and then. Softens them up and makes them all sepia. Good enough to fool the punters.’
She delved into the bag and took out another bundle. ‘They’re doing fives now too! How cool is that?’
Logan smiled, pulled up the bill of her baseball cap, and kissed her on the forehead. ‘If I’d known counterfeit cash got you this excited, I’d have brought some home ages ago.’
She pushed him away, smiling. ‘Cheeky. Give me a couple minutes to finish up.’ Samantha pointed at the nine iron. ‘DS Taylor got herself a murder. Wife paid a couple of blokes to teach her cheating husband a lesson with his own golf clubs. They kinda got carried away…’
‘Lucky old Doreen.’
‘You know, maybe we should skip the restaurant — grab a curry, go home, and climb into a nice hot bath. Get all soapy…’ She stepped in close, chest-to-chest, and kissed him, running her hands through his hair.
Logan flinched back — hot shards stabbing out across the back of his head. ‘Ow!’
‘Not still sore, is it?’ She grabbed him, turned him around, then Logan could feel her fingers working their way across his scalp. ‘What the hell did you do to yourself? Got another lump like a pickled egg back here. You collecting them?’
‘Like I said: it’s been a bad day.’ He forced a smile. ‘Now tell me again about getting all soapy.’
26
‘C’mon, Sparks, just a wee one, eh?’ She flutters her eyelashes, big thick black things like mouldy caterpillars. ‘Please?’
Sparks turns his back, gives her the hard shoulder…or is that only on motorways? Fucked if he knows. Shouldn’t be parking on the hard shoulder: no, no, no. Dangerous. Saw this bloke on that CCTV camera show getting his piece of shit Mondeo squashed by an eighteen-wheeler. Fuck kind of car is called ‘Mondeo’ anyway? What: some marketing cunt couldn’t come up with a better name than-
‘Sparks? Come on, it’s fuckin’ freezin’ out here.’
Big Eleanor’s right for a change — it is fucking freezing. Big bastard flakes of snow, coming down like…dandruff or something.
She sidles up, gives him a smile with that bullet-hole mouth of hers. ‘Give us a cuddle…’
She snakes her arms around him, big chunky things, like a fucking anaconda. ‘Ooh, you’re all warm.’ She lays a padded cheek against his neck, a cold pillow of flesh, nuzzling in deeper.
Sparks is always warm, got one of them internal thermostat things, like central heating, always up full crank. Roasty toasty, fever fun.
‘Come on, Sparks, just a wee wrapper, yeah? Do you a favour for it?’ Big Eleanor’s hand drifts down his back and into his trousers. She wraps her cold fingers round one bony arse cheek and squeezes. Runs a wet tongue up his throat, scritching through the stubble.
Sparks wriggles free. ‘Fucksake, leave us alone, you horny fat cow.’
She steps back, bottom lip out, wobbling in the piss-yellow light like an epileptic slug. Big Eleanor sniffs. ‘Don’t be like that, Sparks, I’m only wantin’ a wee-’
‘No.’
She sticks her hand down the front of his trousers, rummaging about till she’s got hold of his cock. Squeezes. Steps in close again. ‘Just one wrap, couple of rocks, just to keep the cold-’
‘WILL YOU FUCK OFF?’ He shoves and she stumbles back, goes sprawling. Lies there with her wee black skirt up round her thighs, spotty, shaved minge on show.
Sparks wipes a string of spit off his chin. ‘Doing business here.’
Big Eleanor gets to her feet, pulls her skirt back into place, stamps her strappy high-heel down on the pavement and gives him the finger. ‘WANKER!’ She storms off, slipping and sliding on the snowy pavement.
Silly cow.
Like he’s going to do her a freebie? Fat chance.
And he’s no’ a wanker. No’ got time for wanking, got a beautiful girlfriend to keep him company.
He licks his lips.
She’s whispering from his jacket pocket. Telling him she wants it. Love him long time.
He shifts in his little spotlight. Looks up and down the street. Clears his throat.
Never touch the merchandise: never. No’ like Shaky Jake, silly cunt. Lot of good it does you when you’re on your back in intensive care with fucking gravel for ankle bones. Mr Mowat’s people don’t like sales staff with sticky fingers.
Sparks checks his watch: eight fifty-three and fourteen seconds. Fifteen seconds. Sixteen seconds. Looks up, makes sure he’s standing right under the streetlight, gotta be keen to be seen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Time is money, yeah, but money’s no’ time, is it: otherwise all them rich cunts would buy more of it and never have to die.
Fucking profound that is.
Sparks twitches, jitters, keeping time to the beat no one else can hear. OK, so he likes a wee smoke every now and then, the odd pipe, a wee syringe or two, but who doesn’t? No’ his fault, is it? Nah, Mum was an alky, wasn’t she? And Dad was a junkie. That’s genetics. Gee-net-tick. Tock. Ticktock. Tick-tock.
Stand still you daft bastard and concentrate.
Force the twitches to stop. Stand dead-still under the streetlight.
A car goes past. A seagull screeches.
More silence.
Fucking cold when you’re standing still.
The car does a three-pointer at the end of the road, then heads back towards him. Big black fucker. Headlights for eyes. Staring. Making all them snowflakes shine.
Sparks’s knee twitches.
The big car stops by the kerb right in front of him and the window slides down. Woman looks out: blonde, no’ bad looking. If Sparks wasn’t spoken for, he’d probably do her, you know? But his girlfriend’s a jealous bitch…
Blondie says, ‘Looking for someone.’ Sounds posh, doesn’t she: like something off the telly. English. Nothing wrong with that, long as she’s got the cash.
‘Yeah? Who?’ Sparks tells his knee to stand the fuck still, but it’s off on its own,
taking no prisoners.
‘Charlie about?’
‘Might be. Who’s asking?’
She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a couple of notes. Holds them up and peers at them. ‘Charles Darwin and…Sir Edward Elgar.’
Sparks curls his top lip. ‘Fuck’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Thirty quid.’
Nod. Yeah, that’s more like it. He does a quick calculation in his head, totting up the number of wrappers and the change from thirty. Always shite at arithmetic at school, you know? Much better now, yeah, like Carol Fucking Vorderman with the old arithmetic, fractions, and shite like that. Teachers want to make kids better at maths? Learn them how to do a decent drug deal: Wee Jonnie has a sixth of an ounce, and Sarah wants an eighth — how stoned will she be, and how much change does she get from twenty and a handjob?
Blondie’s looking at him like he’s supposed to know the answer to some fucking question he wasn’t even listing to.
Sparks spits a chunky lump of yellow into the snow at his feet. ‘Thirty gets you two.’
Not really: thirty gets you three, it’ll be two for Blondie and one for Sparks. Market economy. Thatcher and Blair’s fuck-you Britain.
The door cracks open and Blondie steps out into the snow. Holds up Elgar and Darwin. ‘How do I know it’s any good?’
He sniffs, spits again. ‘Calling us a lying cunt?’
Blondie looks back over her shoulder. ‘Am I calling him a lying cunt?’
Car’s back door opens and fucking Elvis steps out. ‘Looks like a lying cunt to me.’ Elvis with a Geordie accent. Wye-aye man, am all shook oop, like. Big bastard though.
Sparks takes a step back, but Blondie’s already there. Right behind him. Bump.
He gives a wee squeal, flinching like a spaz. Calm the fuck down and take charge. Sparks clears his throat, turns round and gives her the evil. Asserts his authority. ‘Thirty gets you two.’
Blondie nods, reaches into her pocket and comes out with a pair of leather gloves. Doesn’t want to touch the merchandise, doesn’t want to get her English bitch hands dirty.
While she’s doing it, Sparks sneaks a good hard stare at her tits. Not bad.
Dark Blood lm-6 Page 20
