Free Dark Blood by Stuart MacBride

there – then pulls the mobile phone from his pocket. The phone he’s not supposed to have, just in case he uses it to make contact with other perverts.
    Like he’d want to speak to those filthy bastards.
    He scrolls down through the address book until he comes to the number of a certain gentleman in Newcastle. A very influential gentleman who’s not in the least bit gentle. It rings for a while, then the voicemail picks up and Richard leaves a message.
    ‘Hi, Aunty Maggie, just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Yer present’s in the post, like.’ Pause. ‘It’s all going good here,you know? Settlin’ in and that. Speak to you later.’ And then he hangs up.
    Checks the doorway again.
    Slides the phone back into its dark hiding place.
    Happy birthday.
    The police aren’t the only ones who’ve got an exit strategy.

10
    The manky little Fiat made a horrible grinding noise every time Logan tried to put it into third. He mashed the clutch to the floor and shoved the gearstick into place, pretending he couldn’t smell something burning. Heading back along the dual carriageway towards the Horrible Haudagain roundabout, next stop: FHQ, to find somewhere quiet to hide until his shift was over.
    The radio hissed and crackled, never latching onto any station for more than three or four minutes at a time. It gave a burst of static, then music – Katrina and the Waves, ‘Walking on Sunshine’. Logan’s stomach lurched, his mouth filling with warm saliva. Heart pounding. He stabbed the off button and the radio was silent.
    Jesus…
    He rolled down the window. Cold air, laced with drizzle and exhaust fumes.
    Deep breaths.
    Just a song. Nothing to worry about. Just a song.
    When his mobile phone rang he flinched. Logan checked the display: DI Steel. His thumb hovered over the off button…then he hit pick up, holding it to his ear as he pulled into a little layby off the dual carriageway with half a dozen smallindustrial units in it. Majestic Wines, Pizza Hut, that kind of thing.
    ‘Where the hell are you?’
    Logan killed the engine. ‘You said get out of your sight.’
    ‘Just…bloody…’ A pause, then, ‘I want you back at the ranch; we’re going round to Steve Polmont’s place.’
    ‘I’m stuck in Bucksburn.’ Which was a lie. ‘Can’t you take somebody—’
    ‘Bucksburn? What the cock-flavoured buggery are you doing in Bucksburn?’
    ‘You told me to go see the Diddy Men, remember?’
    Another pause.
    ‘Just get your scarred arse back here and pick me up. Now!’
    ‘You’re a bloody idiot, you know that, don’t you?’
    Logan just shrugged. Outside the car windows, King Street was a study in miserable grey. People clomped along through the drizzle, collars up, mouths down. A few of the more optimistic ones huddled beneath umbrellas: the misty rain just soaked them from the shoulders down.
    DI Steel wrestled with the passenger door, winding her window down. ‘And could you no’ have got a decent pool car?’
    ‘You said come pick you up, I picked you up.’
    ‘Smells like old lady farts.’ She dug out a cigarette and lit it, then shoogled the pack at Logan.
    ‘Danby still throwing a wobbly?’
    ‘What do you think? Lucky he didn’t have you kicked you off the case.’ She dug a sat-nav out of her bag and fiddled some sort of clip thing onto the back, then huffed a smoky breath onto the suction cup and stuck it to the windshield. Where it promptly fell off again. ‘Buggering hell…you ever clean this thing?’
    She breathed on the windscreen, fogging up a patch, then scrubbed at it with the sleeve of her jacket. This time, the sat-nav stuck. ‘Nicked it out of lost-and-found.’
    ‘Would a map not have been—’
    ‘Bloody GSM trace on Polmont’s mobile came back with latitude and longitude, OK?’ She switched the thing on and poked away at the screen, pale-yellow tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. ‘Straight on at the roundabout.’
    Logan drove them through the Bridge