![The 45% Hangover [A Logan and Steel novella] - Stuart MacBride](/cover_342892.jpg "The 45% Hangover [A Logan and Steel novella] - Stuart MacBride")
round to point at Logan. ‘What about you?’
‘None of your business.’ The next sheet was a list of the most credible sightings from the last week. Which wasn’t saying much. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a missing person to find.’
‘Pfff. No’ really a person, is he? A lawyer, a pervert, a wannabe politician, and a No campaigner? The more of them goes missing the better.’
‘Yes, because dehumanizing people who don’t agree with you always turns out well.’
‘Don’t care. Sick of his smug, dumpy wee face. Banging away on the telly and the radio and the sodding papers,’ she put on a posh Aberdonian accent, ‘“Scotland’s going to fall apart under independence.”, “We’re not clever enough to run our own affairs without Westminster.”, “You’re all chip-eating, whisky-swigging, heart-attack-having, ginger-haired, tartan-faced, teuchter thickies, and you should be glad the posh boys in London are prepared to look after you.”’ She sniffed. ‘Tosser.’
‘You made that last one up.’ Sheet number three held a photocopied article from the Aberdeen Examiner. ‘Missing Campaigner “Paid For Sex”, Claim’. The journalist had got statements from a pair of working girls down on Regent Quay. Logan pulled out a pen, wrote the word ‘Names?’ and underlined it twice.
‘And who cares what Chris Sodding Browning thinks anyway? Only reason the slimy git’s getting airtime is because he was on that reality TV bollocks. Silver City my sharny arse. You want to make decent telly? Follow police officers about, no’ some ambulance-chasing unionist turdbadger.’
‘You finished?’ The last sheet was a photocopy of Browning’s diary for the day he went missing. Every appointment checked, everyone he’d met with interviewed. And still no idea where he was or what had happened to him. ‘Chris Browning’s perfectly entitled to support whatever side he wants. That’s democracy.’
‘Oh – my – God.’ Steel took her feet off the windowsill and turned to face him. ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’
‘Eh?’ Rennie frowned at Logan. ‘Thought you liked girls, Guv? Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but— Ow!’
Steel hit him again. ‘No’ one of them, you idiot, one of them: a Better Togetherer.’ She shuddered. ‘And to think I let you get my wife up the stick!’
Logan closed his eyes and folded forward, wrapped his hands around his face. ‘Will you both, please bugger off?’
Rennie didn’t. Instead he sat down in the other visitor’s chair. ‘Was great though, wasn’t it? You know, that feeling of coming out of the polling station and thinking, “This is it. We could actually do this.” Right? Wasn’t it great?’
There was silence.
‘Guv?’
Logan peeled one eye open.
Steel was sitting bolt upright in her seat, mouth hanging open. Then both eyebrows raised like drawbridges. ‘What time is it?’
Rennie checked. ‘Quarter to ten.’
She scrabbled to her feet. ‘Get a car, now!’
The pool car roared its way up Schoolhill – past the closed shops – lights flashing, siren wailing. It still managed to sound better than Steel’s rendition of ‘Flower of Scotland’, though.
She sat in the passenger seat, hanging onto the grab handle above the door as Rennie floored it.
Logan had to make do with his seatbelt, clutching it in both hands as the car flashed across the junction outside the Cowdray Hall, its granite lion watching with a silent snarl and a traffic cone on its head. The streetlight gilded it with a pale-yellow glow. He raised his voice over the wailing skirl. ‘HOW COULD YOU FORGET TO VOTE?’
‘IT’S NO’ MY FAULT!’
‘REALLY?’
‘SHUT UP.’
Logan’s mobile buzzed in his pocket, the ringtone drowned out by the siren. He pulled the phone out and hit the button. ‘McRae.’
‘Guv?’ Stoney sounded as if he was standing at the bottom of a well. ‘Hello? Guv? You there?’
He leaned forward and poked Rennie in the shoulder. ‘TURN THAT BLOODY THING OFF!’
But when Rennie reached for the controls, Steel slapped his hand away. ‘DON’T YOU DARE!’
His Majesty’s Theatre streaked by on the right – a chunk of green glass, followed by fancy granite, light blazing from its windows – then a church that looked like a bank, then the library. Granite. Granite. Granite.
‘Guv? Hello?’
‘I’LL CALL YOU BACK.’ He hung up as the pool car jinked around the corner onto Skene Street, leaving a squeal of brakes behind. The headlights caught two pensioners, frozen on the central reservation, clutching each other as the car flashed by, dentures bared, eyes wide.
When Logan looked back, they’d recovered enough to make obscene gestures. ‘STILL DON’T SEE WHY I NEED TO BE HERE.’
Steel waved a hand. ‘IN CASE I NEED SOMEONE ARRESTED.’
Naked granite gave way to a shield of trees, their leaves dark and glistening in the streetlights.
Rennie pouted. ‘I CAN ARREST PEOPLE!’
‘COURSE YOU CAN. YOU’RE VERY SPECIAL. YES YOU ARE.’ She turned in her seat and mugged at Logan. ‘ISN’T IT SWEET WHEN THEY THINK THEY’RE REAL POLICE OFFICERS?’
‘HOY!’
The pool car swept out and round a Transit van, then back in again. Slowed briefly for the junction outside the Grammar School, catching the lights at red, and back to full-speed-ahead, tearing up Carden Place. Granite. Granite. Granite.
She poked a finger at the windscreen. ‘THERE!’
St Mary’s Episcopal Church loomed on the left of the road. A vast, grand structure with lanced windows and buttresses. No tower. It occupied the triangular wedge between two roads, with expensive-looking cars parked along its kerbs.
Rennie slammed on the brakes and wrenched the steering wheel left. The back end kicked out for a moment, then they were lunging through the narrow gap between two spiky granite posts and scrunching to a halt on the gravel beyond. He flashed his watch. ‘You’ve got one minute.’
Steel scrambled out of the car, sprinting across the gravel and in through the door marked ‘Polling Station’.
‘Cheeky old bag. I am a real police officer.’
‘Sure you are.’ Logan climbed into the warm night. Pulled out his phone
