Free Partners in Crime: Two Logan and Steel Short Stories by Stuart MacBride

MISTER!’ Shedding the layers of SOC gear as she went.
    DS Chalmers shuffled her feet. ‘Well, that was...?’
    ‘They caught the au pair nicking things.’ Logan pulled out his phone. ‘And consider yourself lucky – the last person who asked for a time of death? She made them help her take the victim’s temperature. And the thermometer doesn’t go in the front end.’

3
    Midges bobbed and weaved in the glow of a SEB spotlight, shining like tiny blood-thirsty diamonds. In the middle distance, Tom Jones had given way to ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’. Logan stuck a finger in his ear and shifted a couple of paces further away from the grumbling diesel generators. ‘What? I can’t hear you.’
    On the other end of the phone, DI Steel got a notch louder. ‘
I said, what makes you think it’s drugs?
’
    ‘Might not be, but it looks like an execution. We’ll know more when we get an ID on the body: my money’s on a scheemie drug runner from Manchester or Birmingham.’
    ‘
Sodding hell, that’s all I need: some flash bastard knocking off rival dealers like it’s a performance art.
’ Silence. Then a plastic sooking sound. ‘
No way I’m carrying the bucket on this one.
’
    ‘Thought that was the point of being in charge of CID?’
    ‘
Sometimes shite flows uphill, Laz, and this one’s got “Assistant Chief Constable’s Oversight” written all over it in black magic marker. Let him deal with the members of the press.
’
    The SEB tech who’d taken him to see the body shuffled into view, holding one corner of what looked like a crate wrapped in miles of thick blue plastic. It was big enough to take a kneeling man chained to a metal stake. She grimaced at him. ‘Budge over a bit, eh? This is bloody heavy...’
    ‘
And by “members” I mean—
’
    ‘Got to go, the Procurator Fiscal wants a word.’ Which was a lie – she’d left nearly half an hour ago.
    ‘
Oh no you don’t: you’re no’ going nowhere till you tell me where we are with that bloody jewellery heist. You think you get to dump all your other cases just because you’ve got a juicy wee gangland execution on the cards?
’
    ‘Investigations are on-going, and—’
    ‘
You’ve done sod all, haven’t you?
’
    ‘I’ve been at a bloody murder scene!’
    The SEB hauled their blue plastic parcel through the graveyard of burned-out cars, swearing and grunting all the way, feet kicking up a cloud of pale dust from the parched earth.
    ‘
Well, whose fault is that? You’re a DI now: act like it! Park your arse behind your desk and organize things – send some other bugger off to play at the scene.
’
    Rotten, stinky, wrinkled, bastarding... ‘
You’re
the one who told me to come out here! I wasn’t even on duty, I was having my tea.’ He pulled the mobile from his ear and glared at it. Concentrate hard enough and her head would explode like an overripe pluke on the other end of the phone. BANG! Brains and wee bits of skull all over the walls.
    ‘Er... Guv?’ DS Chalmers tapped him on the shoulder, a frown pulling one side of her face down. ‘Are you OK? Only you’ve gone kinda purple...’
    Logan gritted his teeth, put the phone back to his ear. ‘You and I are going to have words about this tomorrow.’
    ‘
Sodding right we will. I’m no’—
’
    He hung up. Glowered at his phone for a beat, then jabbed the ‘O FF ’ button. Leave it on and she’d just call back, again and again, until he finally snapped and murdered someone. Logan took a deep breath and hissed it out through his nose. ‘I swear to God...’
    Chalmers held up her notebook, like a small shield. ‘We got chassis numbers off all the cars, and guess what: I found my Range Rover.’ Pause. ‘The Range Rover on the CCTV? The one that ram-raided the off-licence?’
    ‘What about the Golf?’
    ‘Reported stolen at half ten this morning. According to Control: the registered keeper says he drove down the Kintore chippy for his tea Friday evening, came back