Dark Blood. Stuart MacBride

luck somewhere else? We could organize a midnight flit: get you somewhere further away, where they don’t know you. Devon, Cornwall, something like that?’

      Get you the hell out of Aberdeen before you cause any more trouble, you creepy little bastard.

      ‘This is me home!’ Knox drew back his foot, then lashed out, crashing his heel into the TV screen, shattering it, sending the whole thing clattering over backwards to the floor.

      Marge/Margaret flinched. Swore.

      PC Guthrie loomed over Knox. ‘All right, on your feet.’

      The man didn’t even look up at him, just sat there, clutching his foot. ‘What you going to do, like, arrest us for smashing me own telly? Bloody thing didn’t work anyway.’

      The constable flopped his hands about for a moment. ‘Sarge?’

      Logan shrugged. ‘He’s got a point.’

      Knox closed his eyes, lips pinched tight, breathing in and out through his pointy nose. Then stood, and knelt in front of the ancient electric fire, head bowed, hands clasped together. Mouth moving silently.

      They left him to it.

      ‘Tell you.’ Margaret/Marge filled a new-looking kettle in the sink, and plugged it in. ‘He’s really starting to creep me out.’

      Logan shrugged. ‘Sex offenders can be a bit—’

      ‘Trust me, I know sex offenders. Did six years as a prison officer in Peterhead, I’ve seen every flavour of mong and stot you can think of and none of them weirded me out like Knox.’ She picked four mugs off the draining board and sniffed them, then plopped a teabag in each. ‘There was this one guy done for snatching women off the streets – blondes usually – bundled them into the back of an old van with the windows blacked out. Liked to rape them while he burned them with the cigarette lighter. Apparently nipples were a particular favourite. Never looked you in the eye when he spoke, always stared right here…’ She pointed at her not inconsiderable breasts. ‘You just knew he was thinking about it: the smell, the sizzling sound. The screams.’

      ‘Christ.’

      ‘Yeah, and even he wasn’t as creepy as Knox.’

      She rinsed a teaspoon under the tap, peering at Logan out the corner of her eye. ‘So … what happened to your face?’

      Logan reached up and touched his right cheek. The skin was all swollen and tender. ‘Cut myself shaving.’

      ‘Right…’

      The sound of flushing came from upstairs.

      Marge/Margaret looked up and smiled. ‘Harry’s arse must be in tatters by now.’