Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride

all going good here, you know? Settlin’ in and that. Speak to you later.’ And then he hangs up.

      Checks the doorway again.

      Slides the phone back into its dark hiding place.

      Happy birthday.

      The police aren’t the only ones who’ve got an exit strategy.

       10

      The manky little Fiat made a horrible grinding noise every time Logan tried to put it into third. He mashed the clutch to the floor and shoved the gearstick into place, pretending he couldn’t smell something burning. Heading back along the dual carriageway towards the Horrible Haudagain roundabout, next stop: FHQ, to find somewhere quiet to hide until his shift was over.

      The radio hissed and crackled, never latching onto any station for more than three or four minutes at a time. It gave a burst of static, then music – Katrina and the Waves, ‘Walking on Sunshine’. Logan’s stomach lurched, his mouth filling with warm saliva. Heart pounding. He stabbed the off button and the radio was silent.

      Jesus…

      He rolled down the window. Cold air, laced with drizzle and exhaust fumes.

      Deep breaths.

      Just a song. Nothing to worry about. Just a song.

      When his mobile phone rang he flinched. Logan checked the display: DI Steel. His thumb hovered over the off button … then he hit pick up, holding it to his ear as he pulled into a little layby off the dual carriageway with half a dozen small industrial units in it. Majestic Wines, Pizza Hut, that kind of thing.

       ‘Where the hell are you?’

      Logan killed the engine. ‘You said get out of your sight.’

      ‘Just … bloody…’ A pause, then, ‘I want you back at the ranch; we’re going round to Steve Polmont’s place.’

      ‘I’m stuck in Bucksburn.’ Which was a lie. ‘Can’t you take somebody—’

       ‘Bucksburn? What the cock-flavoured buggery are you doing in Bucksburn?’

      ‘You told me to go see the Diddy Men, remember?’

      Another pause.

      ‘Just get your scarred arse back here and pick me up. Now!’

      ‘You’re a bloody idiot, you know that, don’t you?’

      Logan just shrugged. Outside the car windows, King Street was a study in miserable grey. People clomped along through the drizzle, collars up, mouths down. A few of the more optimistic ones huddled beneath umbrellas: the misty rain just soaked them from the shoulders down.

      DI Steel wrestled with the passenger door, winding her window down. ‘And could you no’ have got a decent pool car?’

      ‘You said come pick you up, I picked you up.’

      ‘Smells like old lady farts.’ She dug out a cigarette and lit it, then shoogled the pack at Logan.

      ‘Danby still throwing a wobbly?’

      ‘What do you think? Lucky he didn’t have you kicked you off the case.’ She dug a sat-nav out of her bag and fiddled some sort of clip thing onto the back, then huffed a smoky breath onto the suction cup and stuck it to the windshield. Where it promptly fell off again. ‘Buggering hell… you ever clean this thing?’

      She breathed on the windscreen, fogging up a patch, then scrubbed at it with the sleeve of her jacket. This time, the sat-nav stuck. ‘Nicked it out of lost-and-found.’

      ‘Would a map not have been—’

      ‘Bloody GSM trace on Polmont’s mobile came back with latitude and longitude, OK?’ She switched the thing on and poked away at the screen, pale-yellow tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. ‘Straight on at the roundabout.’

      Logan drove them through the Bridge of Don and out past the Exhibition and Conference Centre, rain shimmering on its bizarre curvy glass bridge and fake airport control tower. Following the green arrow on the sat-nav’s screen.

      ‘So, what do we know about Polmont?’

      Steel pulled a face. ‘Came to me through a DI in Edinburgh who owes me a couple of favours. Polmont was his chiz on another Malk the Knife building site – got themselves half a million in cocaine, twenty illegal immigrants, and one thousand cartons of smuggled cigarettes.’

      ‘Well.’ Logan shrugged. ‘At least you know he’s sound.’

      ‘Aye…’ Steel picked a flake of ash off her trousers. ‘Sort of.’

      ‘What’s he done?’

      ‘Polmont’s got a bit of a drink problem.’

      ‘He’s a bloody alki, isn’t he?’

      Scowl. ‘What, you want to swap tips?’

      Logan ignored that. ‘He’s probably off on a bender somewhere. That’s why you can’t get him – too pissed to answer the phone.’

      ‘Oh, don’t be so—’

      ‘This is another wild bloody goose chase, isn’t it?’

      ‘Just shut up and drive.’

      Logan put his foot down and the manky Fiat rumbled and rattled up to fifty along the dual carriageway.

      All the way out to Balmedie the fields were a soggy patchwork of green-brown, bordered by pale-grey drystane dykes. The occasional flock of sheep breathing clouds of steam into the cold, damp air. And then they got to the signs saying, ‘WORKS ENTRANCE AHEAD’, ‘SLOW VEHICLES TURNING’, ‘NO ACCESS TO BEACH’.

      It hadn’t taken the local press long to nickname Donald Trump’s development ‘Trumpton’. A vast swathe of coast was due to disappear under the bulldozers: two golf courses, five hundred houses, a four-star hotel, and nearly a thousand holiday villas. Which kind of put McLennan Homes’ four hundred semi-detacheds into perspective.

      Three hundred yards further on a huge billboard sat at the side of the road – ‘MCLENNAN HOMES, BUILDING A BETTER TOMORROW FOR YOU’. Photo of a smiling nuclear family holding hands and staring mistily off into the distance. Very aspirational. Or it would have been if someone hadn’t spray-painted a big blue penis onto one of the kids.

      Logan slowed the car. According to the sat-nav, Steel’s map coordinates were off to the left. The Fiat juddered to a halt on the grass verge.

      He peered across and through the passenger window at the site entrance – a high chainlink fence, the gates held open with dented oil drums. ‘SITE PATROLLED BY GUARD DOGS’, ‘NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL’, ‘DANGER OF DEATH’, ‘WARNING: RAZOR WIRE’. A rutted mud track led away into Malk the Knife’s development.

      Logan checked the sat-nav again. ‘You sure you got those coordinates right?’

      ‘Course I’m sure.’ She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. ‘Maybe they’ve got caravans for people living on site?’

      ‘Maybe…’

      Logan eased the car through the gates. The muddy track bumped and slithered under the Fiat’s wheels, taking them closer to the rumble of heavy machinery, the beep-beep-beep of something backing up.

      Steel pointed through the windscreen. ‘Over there.’

      He pulled up beside a long Portakabin with ‘SITE OFFICE’ stencilled on the side, trying to aim for a bit that didn’t look like the battle of the Somme.

      ‘Right.’ Steel flicked her cigarette butt out of the window. ‘If anyone asks, you and me are debt collectors.