Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride

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 outside 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,’ Samantha undid 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 something to hang onto, didn’t it? Not that Harry would ever say anything. Well, you don’t, do you? Not when you work together. 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 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.

      But all that time spent on his knees really paid off, you know? Not like some of them dirty bastards in Frankland Prison; the time they spent on their knees was for a different reason. Not that Richard had anything to do with that, thank you very much.

      No.

      Well … only once, and it wasn’t like he had any option, was it? Not with a length of sharpened pipe waiting for him. They soon learned though, didn’t they? Felt the wrath of God. No one bothered him after that.

      He sneaks another look at his two minders from Sacro. Harry and Mandy. A right pair of do-gooders. ‘Oh aren’t we so special, volunteering to look after rapists and paedos?’ How stupid can they be?

      Richard can’t keep the smile off his face. They have no idea what’s coming their way.

       8

      DC Rennie scowled. ‘Is it me, or did the weather just get even crappier?’