She pursed her lips and sat back in her chair. Crossed her arms again. ‘I think I’m going to want to speak to my lawyer before I answer any more questions.’
‘What a surprise.’
Tufty followed Logan out into the corridor and clunked the interview room door shut behind him. ‘What do you think? Do you think she was in on it? I think she was in on it.’
Logan grunted, turned, and limped off down the corridor, his crutch making its irritating clunk-scuff, clunk-scuff noise all the way to the stairwell.
Tufty strolled along beside him. ‘Bet she’s guilty as a hedgehog in a condom factory.’
‘I don’t care. I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’m going home.’
52
Steel’s MX-5 scrunched up onto Logan’s driveway with a completely unnecessary roar. Roof down, stereo thumping out Frightened Rabbit’s ‘The Modern Leper’. Very cheerful.
He unfastened his seatbelt. ‘I could’ve made my own way home, you know.’
‘Aye, right.’ She got out and produced her e-cigarette. Puffed herself a watermelon-scented fog bank. ‘Anyway, got sod-all to do till your mate Beaconsfield’s brief turns up. Fiver says I can get him to roll on Russell Morton and Jerry Whyte.’ She jerked her chin at Logan. ‘You needing a hand?’
‘No.’ Bloody MX-Bloody-5. Why couldn’t they have made the thing easier to get in and out of for people suffering from a massive stab wound? Of course, if she’d left the roof on, he could’ve used it to lever himself up, but nooo…
He struggled out, using his crutch and the car door for leverage. Stood there, grimacing as fire burned its way across his stomach and up into his lungs.
She walked around the car and put a hand on his arm. ‘You sure you don’t want me to come in? Make you a cup of hot sweet tea, or something?’
‘Go away. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
She puffed a lungful of watermelon at him. ‘You know, me being nice to you is a limited-time offer?’
‘Go! Give Susan an inappropriate hug from me.’ He turned and limped towards the house.
‘OK. But I’m going nowhere till you’ve made it inside without collapsing or dying.’
He hobbled up the step, unlocked the front door, and scruffed inside. Turned and made shooing gestures until she rolled her eyes, climbed into her car, and vroomed off in a buckshot-spray of flying gravel and a blast of music.
‘Oh thank God for that.’
He thumped the door shut and leaned against it as the fires raged.
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
Aaaargh… Maybe checking out of the hospital three days early wasn’t such a good idea after all? Grey cauliflower cheese or not.
He straightened up. ‘Cthulhu? Where’s Daddy’s girl? Where’s you, Cthulhu?’
No reply.
Logan limped through into the living room. Still no cat.
She wasn’t in the kitchen either. But there was a massive pile of dirty pots and dishes in the sink. None of which were his. ‘Great…’
Well, they could wait.
Right now it was time for a couple of antipsychotics and a whole heap of industrial-strength painkillers.
He hobbled out into the hall, and ditched his coat on the end of the stairs. Kicked off his shoes. ‘Where are you, you daft cat?’
The stairs were a bit of a challenge, so he got both feet onto one before starting on the next. Paused two thirds of the way up for a breather. Then one last push from base camp to the landing.
‘Cthulhu?’
So much for the big welcome home. Oh, I missed you, Daddy.
He stopped by the bathroom for pills and a pee, then clumped his way along the landing floorboards. Clunk-scuff, clunk-scuff. Unbuttoning his shirt with his free hand on the way.
‘Westlife tribute band’ indeed. Superintendent Doig was a cheeky sod.
The bandages around his stomach were pristine white, except for the faint yellow stain over the hole Number Five made. Still: could’ve been worse – Lee Docherty had an exit wound to deal with as well. And hopefully it really hurt.
Finally – the bedroom.
He opened the door and froze.
Sunlight streamed in through the windows. A solid bar of it lay across the bed, catching Tara’s hair and making it glow like Lucozade. She was spreadeagled on top of the duvet, fully clothed in joggy bottoms and a tartan T-shirt, one leg hanging over the edge of the bed. Mouth open, making snuffling snorey noises.
At least that solved the mystery of the missing cat – Cthulhu was curled up on her chest. A fuzzy yawn and Cthulhu stood, back arched as she launched into her stretching routine, tail fuzzy as a feather duster.
‘Well, it wasn’t my fault I had to stay in hospital for a week, was it? Somebody stabbed me. Again.’
She padded over and he rubbed her ears, smiling as she closed her eyes and leaned into it, purring.
‘Oh ha, ha. “That’s just careless.” You’re a laugh riot, aren’t you?’
More purring.
Tara screwed up her face, making little smacking noises with her mouth. Then peered up at him, blinking. Scrubbed at her eyes. ‘Whtimisit?’
‘Thought you were in Birmingham on a course?’
‘Urgh.’ She yawned. Shuddered. ‘Time off for good behaviour.’
He peeled off his shirt, undid his trousers, and collapsed onto the bed. Winced. ‘Ow…’
‘And before you complain, I was going to tidy up before you got home tomorrow.’ Tara rolled over and draped an arm across him. ‘You’re—’
‘Ow! Get off, get off!’ God, it was like being thumped with a crowbar.
She squinted at him. ‘And if this is your idea of foreplay, it leaves a lot to be desired too.’
Ahhh…
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’
‘Positive.’ Logan settled in amongst the bubbles, mug of tea in one hand, the other making lazy ripples bob through the water. Warm. Comforting. Wet. ‘My surgeon says I’m allowed baths.’
‘Hmm…’ Tara sat on the toilet lid, with a large glass of red wine. She held the shiraz out. ‘I don’t mind sharing, you know.’
‘Can’t: pills.’
Cthulhu hopped up onto the bath surround and sat there, watching him, head on one side, prooping and meeping.
Logan groaned. ‘All right, all right, quit nagging. I’m doing it.’ He turned to Tara. ‘Thanks for looking after the furry monster here for me. It was a massive help and I really, really appreciate it.’
‘That’s the only reason you gave me a key, isn’t it? So I’d look after your cat if you got stabbed and hospitalised.’
‘Yeah … something like that.’ He rested his head against the tiles and closed his eyes.
‘So, did it all turn out well in the end?’
Good question.
‘Well, Sally MacAuley got her son back for a whole ten days – he’s in care now and she’s off to prison. DI Bell ruined his life for her and got killed for it. We still don’t know who all the paedophiles in the animal masks were. A journalist got kicked to death. And I’m lying here with yet another stab wound to join the collection. So, on the whole? Not really.’
She dipped a couple of fingers in the water. ‘God, you’re cheery, aren’t you?’
‘There’s one consolation: Mrs Irene Marshall isn’t too happy about Crowbar Craig Simpson trying to pin Kenneth MacAuley’s murder on her beloved dead husband. So she’s been telling DI Fraser all sorts of interesting stories about what Crowbar’s been up to since he moved in with her: extortion, drugs, punishment beatings, that smash-and-grab at Finnies in July… You know what they say: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”’
‘Hark at you with the poetry.’
‘And while we’re doing him for all that, it’ll give us plenty of time to prove he was the one who murdered Kenneth MacAuley and abducted Aiden. He’ll get at least twenty years.’
Tara raised her glass. ‘Then here�
�s to Craig Simpson spending the rest of his life in prison.’
Logan clinked his mug against it and smiled. ‘I’ll drink to that.’
Marky scuffed his way down B wing.
The sound of what could almost pass for singing boomed out across the Second Flat as the newly formed HMP Grampian Male Voice Choir committed attempted murder on an acapella version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.
He stopped outside Crowbar Craig Simpson’s cell. Peered in through the open door.
A small room, identical to all the others in this place: one corner walled off for the tiny en suite shower and toilet, a narrow desk with a kettle and a cheap TV on it, a barred window looking out to sea, walls covered in film posters and photos of a curly-haired woman with big glasses, a toddler, and an ugly dog. The inoffensive scent of lemon floor polish…
Crowbar was on his bunk, dressed in the standard prison-issue navy jogging bottoms and blue sweatshirt, one hand behind his head, the other mangling a paperback – the spine bent so far back it was broken.
Now that made Marky’s gums itch. There were killers in here, people who’d strangled their wives, or battered a drug rival to death with a sledgehammer, or drowned their own brother, or slit a stranger’s throat because they supported the wrong football team.
But to do that to a book?
Marky knocked on the door frame and Crowbar tore his eyes from PC Munro and the Cheesemaker’s Curse for all of two seconds, before returning to his tortured paperback.
‘What do you want, Marky?’
See, that was the trouble with your criminal element today: no respect. Someone like Crowbar looked at someone like Marky and all they saw was a little old man, his joggy bottoms and polo shirt faded almost grey after years of washing in the prison laundry. White hair going a bit thin on top. Arthritis-swollen hands. A back that would never be straight again.
Marky shuffled inside. ‘You busy?’
‘What’s it look like?’ Lying there with his stupid handlebar moustache and, what was it they called it these days, a ‘soul patch’? A barbed-wire tattoo around your throat didn’t make you a hard man. Not in here.
Didn’t even have the decency to put his book down when someone visited him.
Very rude.
Marky made a come-hither gesture and Ripcord and Charlie Bing slipped into the cell. Huge men, but they could move like ballet dancers when they wanted to. Charlie Bing: almost totally covered in DIY tattoos. Ripcord: face like the back end of an articulated lorry. Both wrapped in the kind of muscles you only got by spending eight-to-life in a prison gym.
The cell wasn’t big to start with, but now it was positively claustrophobic.
Marky put his hands in his pockets. ‘No need to be like that, Crowbar, not when I’ve got a present for you.’
Crowbar turned the page. ‘Not interested.’
He still hadn’t looked up from his book. How could anyone be so completely self-absorbed and unaware?
‘That’s a shame.’ Marky nodded at Ripcord and the big man eased the door closed without so much as a single squeak, muting the choir’s crimes. Another nod.
Ripcord and Charlie Bing lunged forward, silent as cats, pinning the disrespectful sod to the bed – one of Ripcord’s huge hands clamped down over Crowbar’s mouth.
His eyes went wide, tearing across the three of them. Then the struggling started: bucking and writhing, accompanied by what were probably meant to be threats. It was difficult to tell with Ripcord’s hand in the way.
But it was nice to see Crowbar paying attention at last.
Marky gave him a smile. ‘Sally MacAuley wants you to have this.’
It was a lovely piece of cell-made craft – a half-razor-blade embedded in a toothbrush. And you could tell it was quality, because the guy who’d made it had melted the plastic in the toothbrush’s head first, so the blade would stay in there nice and tight. Had to admire craftsmanship like that.
Unfortunately, Crowbar didn’t seem too keen: he went absolutely berserk on the bed. But Ripcord and Charlie Bing held firm.
‘Don’t be ungrateful, Crowbar, she’s spent a lot of money on your present. The least you can do is try and enjoy it.’ Marky held the blade against the skin beneath Crowbar’s left eye. ‘And I know you’ll be worried, but we’ve got plenty of time. At least a couple of hours till they fix the CCTV. Be lights out before they find what’s left of you. And the choir will drown out any screams, so we won’t even disturb anyone.’ He let his smile spread, showing off as much of his dentures as he could. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’
Marky eased the blade upwards, pulling a trickle of blood from Crowbar’s eyelid.
‘Now, this might nip a bit…’
If you enjoyed The Blood Road, try the latest standalone thriller from Stuart MacBride!
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About the Author
Stuart MacBride is the No.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Logan McRae and Ash Henderson novels. He’s also published standalones, novellas and short stories, as well as a children’s picture book.
Stuart lives in the northeast of Scotland with his wife Fiona, cats Grendel, Gherkin, Onion, and Beetroot, some hens, horses, and a vast collection of assorted weeds.
For more information visit StuartMacBride.com
Facebook.com/stuartmacbridebooks
@StuartMacBride
By Stuart MacBride
The Logan McRae Novels
Cold Granite
Dying Light
Broken Skin
Flesh House
Blind Eye
Dark Blood
Shatter the Bones
Close to the Bone
22 Dead Little Bodies
The Missing and the Dead
In the Cold Dark Ground
Now We Are Dead
The Blood Road
The Oldcastle Novels
Birthdays for the Dead
A Song for the Dying
A Dark so Deadly
Other Works
Sawbones (a novella)
12 Days of Winter (short stories)
Partners in Crime (two Logan and Steel short stories)
The 45% Hangover (a Logan and Steel novella)
The Completely Wholesome Adventures of Skeleton Bob (a picture book)
Writing as Stuart B. MacBride
Halfhead
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London,SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
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