beige carpet, a line of syringes and flame-blackened spoons on the bedside cabinet.
One of the Forced Entry team was leaning back against an ancient-looking sideboard, black crash helmet sitting beside her while she flipped through a copy of Hello! She slapped it down on a pile of celebrity gossip mags.
Even drug dealers and addicts had aspirations.
‘Sarge.’ She nodded at the boy. ‘Watch: he bites.’
The child bared his teeth, a small growling noise coming from his throat, filthy fingers clutching a plastic Buzz Lightyear like a claw-hammer.
‘Ricky?’ Lucy Woods lowered herself down in front of him, waistcoat groaning. ‘You remember me, Ricky?’
The kid stared at her for a moment, then nodded.
‘Good. We’re going to take you to stay with your granny tonight, OK? While your mum’s not feeling well.’
Logan hauled the pool car around onto Abbotswell Crescent and into a labyrinth of blank grey granite houses, silent in the dawn’s pale glow.
Wee Ricky sat in the back with PC Guthrie, the constable looking every bit as wary and worried as the three-year-old.
Lucy Woods tapped on the passenger-side window. ‘How much do you think that lot’s worth then?’
Bunches of flowers wrapped in cellophane made a slick that nearly covered the pavement outside a nondescript semi-detached. Teddy bears were tied to the knee-high fence, along with angels, unicorns, and other assorted cuddly toys. Candles in glass jars flickered among the tributes, their light fading before the rising sun. A banner with, ‘JENNY, WE’LL NEVER STOP BELIEVING!’ was tied to stakes in the front garden. A smattering of the posters they’d given away with the Scottish Sun at the weekend: ‘ALISON AND JENNY ~ NEVER GIVE UP!’ stuck to walls, stapled to sticks.
A handful of people sat at one end of the display, wrapped up in sleeping bags and heavy parka coats, two of them were still awake, smoking cigarettes and sharing a Thermos. They stopped to stare at the pool car as it drifted by.
One raised a hand, gave a short wave of solidarity, then went back to their vigil.
The social worker nodded back. ‘Course they never had anything like the X-Factor, or Britain’s Got Talent, or Big Brother, when I was young. Could’ve made it if they had. Been properly famous.’ She turned her head as the public display of grief faded from the rearview mirror. ‘That could be me…’
Bloody hell.
Logan glanced at her, then back at the road.
Some people should watch what they wish for.
‘You sure this is a good idea?’ Logan looked around the living room, trying to find somewhere even vaguely clean to sit.
The sound of a dog scrabbling at the kitchen door, claws raking the other side of the wood. Deep growls and the occasional outraged bark.
‘I’m not supposed to take a kid into care unless there’s no other option.’ Lucy Woods picked a CD from the littered coffee table, the shiny surface glittering in the overhead light. ‘If we can place them with a member of the family we will. Means the kid doesn’t get dragged through the system.’
‘Yeah, but…’ Logan lifted his foot, but the carpet didn’t want to let go.
‘Trisha’s mum might not be perfect, but at least she’s blood.’ The social worker wrinkled her nose and dropped the CD back into the mess. ‘Fleetwood Mac.’
A voice at the door behind them: ‘What the fuck’s wrong with Fleetwood Mac?’
Lucy Woods snapped on a smile. ‘Hi Helen. He go off to sleep OK?’
‘What she do this time?’ Helen Brown lurched into the room, swigging from a tin of Tennent’s Super, one leg stiff at the knee. Her face was every bit as thin as her daughter’s, the same dark hollows under her bloodshot eyes, the same yellowy teeth spaced wide in pale gums. Pupils the size of pinpricks.
She was wearing a pale-grey long-sleeved T-shirt, tugging the cuffs down every time she looked in Logan’s direction. Probably hiding the trackmarks.
He shifted away from the sticky patch. ‘She’s just helping us with an investigation.’
Trisha’s mum howched, picked up a scummy mug and spat into it. ‘Hooring, or drugs?’
‘I can’t—’
‘You fucks is all the same.’ Another swig of extra-strong lager. ‘Hassling folk doing no harm to no one.’ A dribble of liquid ran down her chin, dripped and made a clay-coloured stain on the long-sleeved T-shirt. ‘Fuck is it to you if she’s making a few quid down the docks? Not like she’s robbing auld wifies’ pensions, is it?’
The social worker cleared her throat. ‘So, Helen, how are you coping? Doing OK?’
‘You fuckers should be out there!’ She jabbed a finger at the closed curtains. ‘Looking for that wee girl and her mum. Not arresting my Trisha for giving someone a blowjob!’
‘There was a drugs raid and—’
‘What, she wouldn’t give you a freebie, so you banged her up? You make me sick! Fucking country’s going to shit and it’s bastards like you dragging it there!’ She tipped the tin of lager to her mouth, glugging it down.
‘—in accident and emergency for observation.’
Helen Brown scrunched the can up and threw it across the room. It bounced off Logan’s chest. ‘What, you going to arrest me too? That’s about your fucking speed, isn’t it? Arrest the victims, when there’s illegal Paki bastards living two doors up, shitting in the street and stealing my fucking washing!’
Logan brushed the droplets of pale yellow liquid from his jacket. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’
7
‘Mmph…?’ Logan peered out from beneath the duvet. The alarm clock radio stared back at him. He fumbled with the buttons on the top, but it didn’t stop the noise.
Sat up.
Phone.
It was his mobile, in his jacket pocket, hanging on the back of the chair in the corner, warbling the Danse macabre at him.
God’s sake … He hauled it out and squinted at the glowing screen: ‘DI STEEL’
Logan stabbed his thumb onto the button. ‘What the hell do you want?’
There was a pause. ‘You know what costs sod-all in this life, Laz? A smile; a thank you; and my boot up your arse, you rude little—’
‘What – do – you – want?’
‘Well seeing as the little hand is on the nine, and the big hand is on the twelve, what I want is you at bloody work!’
He slumped back on the bed, spreadeagled like a
