then shut it as Isobel placed a hand against his chest. Her touch was hot in the cold tent.
She stared up into his eyes. ‘I’ve missed you—’
‘Isobel, I—’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ One of the IB techs marched over: Samantha, scarlet hair painfully bright in the harsh lighting. She unzipped her suit, exposing a swell of pale cleavage surrounded by tattoos. ‘He’s mine. Aren’t you Logan?’
Isobel bit her bottom lip. Looked away. ‘Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘But maybe…’ Samantha stepped up close and ran her fingertips across Isobel’s cheek. ‘Maybe I’ll let you share.’
Pain jagged across Logan’s ribs. ‘Ow, what was—’
‘Maybe we can all do something … special together.’
‘I’d like that.’ Isobel licked her blood-red lips and cupped one of Samantha’s breasts. ‘I’d like that a – Stop sodding snoring!’
‘Mmmph…?’ Detective Sergeant Logan McRae struggled upright in his seat. ‘I’m awake. I’m awake.’ Cold. Dark. A lung-rattling cough shook his body, ending with a shiver. ‘God…’ Sniff. He ran his hands across his face, feeling the stubble rasp. ‘What time is it?’
DI Steel was almost invisible in the darkness, but he could hear her shifting in the passenger seat of his manky brown Fiat. ‘You were snoring.’
The inspector stabbed her thumb on the button for the cigarette lighter, waited for it to pop up, then pulled it out of the dashboard and sparked up a Silk Cut. The orange glow turned her face into a topographical map of wrinkles and shadow. Train-wreck hair hidden beneath a furry hat.
‘Bloody freezing…’ Logan peered at the fogged-up windscreen, then cleared a porthole with his sleeve, looking out at the moonlit countryside. They’d parked down a small lane overlooking a sprawling building site, just off the A90 – Aberdeen to Ellon road. He yawned. ‘Need a pee.’
‘Shouldn’t have drunk all that coffee then, should you?’
‘Knew he wouldn’t show.’
‘I mean, what sort of idiot takes decaf on a stakeout?’
‘So where is he then?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this crappy car listening to your bloody snoring, would I?’
‘Fine, be like that.’ Logan helped himself to one of the inspector’s cigarettes, lighting it with a Zippo as he climbed out into the freezing night.
‘Close the sodding door!’
SLAM.
He stood there for a second, shivering, drew in a deep lungful of smoke, then started down the lane towards a clump of trees. The ground crackled beneath his feet, grass coated in a thick rime of frost, everything turned monochrome in the light of a nearly full moon. Bright as day.
Logan stepped off the lane and into the undergrowth.
God it was cold. Bloody Steel and her bloody CHIS. What was the point of having a Covert Human Intelligence Source if the sodding ‘Source’ was so ‘Covert’ you couldn’t bloody see him?
Zip, rummage, grimace … ahhhhh. Oh yeah … that was better.
He stood there, in a growing cloud of bitter-sweet steam, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Twelve days straight without a single day off. No wonder he was knackered.
You could see the whole development from here: a swathe of frozen mud surrounded by chainlink fencing; piles of bulldozed earth; a cluster of pale concrete foundations. Twenty or thirty houses looked almost finished, another half dozen were at the scaffolding and brick stage. Eventually there’d be four hundred of the damn things, courtesy McLennan Homes. Nasty, boxy, rabbit hutches for people with more money than sense.
Christ knew how the bastard got planning permission.
The site office was a little Portakabin and as Logan watched, someone opened the door spilling pale yellow light across the churned-up earth. A dog barked. The sound of a radio. Then the door swung shut and the light was gone, replaced by the faint circle of a torch, working its way around the perimeter fence. You’d have to be desperate: taking a night watchman’s job on a building site in the middle of winter. Knowing that if anything went missing Malcolm McLennan would have your balls.
Literally.
Logan zipped himself up then hurried back to the car, out of the cold. He clunked the door shut behind him. ‘Baltic out there…’ He cranked the key in the ignition and turned the heater up full, holding his hands over the vents.
DI Steel sat and scowled at the windscreen as it started to clear. ‘Sod this, he’s two hours late. I’m no’ buggering about any longer; some of us got pregnant wives to get home to.’
Logan wrestled the gearstick into reverse, getting a loud grinding noise, then turned in his seat and peered out of the rear window, navigating by the light of the moon. The manky Fiat shuddered backwards up the lane. ‘Told you he wasn’t going to show.’
‘Blah, blah, blah.’
‘I’m just saying: no one’s daft enough to rat out Malk the Knife.’ Logan backed out onto the slip road, flicked on the headlights, then stuck his foot down. Hoping for a bit of wheel-spin, getting nothing but a dull groan as the car slowly dragged its rusty backside towards fifty.
‘Stop past Asda on the way home, we’re out of ice-cream.’
‘In this weather?’
‘Cravings. Susan wants double chocolate chip, and cheese Doritos. In the same bowl. And before you say anything, I know: I have to watch her eating it.’ Steel scooted down in her seat. ‘Doesn’t this thing go any faster?’
‘No.’
They sat in silence as the moonlit countryside rumbled past. Fields of frost-whitened grass, ploughed up earth, miserable-looking sheep, big round bales of hay wrapped in black plastic.
Logan slowed for the roundabout on the outskirts of Bridge of Don. ‘Fancy a pint – celebrate my finally getting some time off? Dodgy Pete’s’ll still be open.’
‘Pregnant wife, remember?’ Steel pulled out her cigarettes again. ‘And I want you back at the ranch seven o’clock Thursday morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed. Don’t want Mr Knox thinking we’re no’ pleased to see him, do we? Christ knows what the nasty wee sod would get up to.’
The Eastern Airways Jetstream 41 was tiny compared to the British Midlands 737 at the next stand. Logan stood in the shelter of a plastic-roofed walkway outside the terminal building, watching as the little blue-and-white plane edged in from the runway, twin propellers roaring in the drizzly rain, navigation lights winking in the gloom.
