Blind Eye (58 page)

'Oh Jesus...'

More screaming.

He was going to be sick.

The second eye joined it a minute later, rolling to a halt, its surface speckled with bits of grit and spots of blood.

Blue. They were both blue. Lying there,
staring
at Logan.

The screaming stopped. Rory slumped, and Grigor let him slide to the floor.

Kravchenko picked up the lighter fluid. 'You must to be very careful with the burning. Too much and they die. To little...' Shrug. 'There is no point burning them at all, yes?'

He flipped up the little red cap and Grigor nudged Rory over onto his back. The little man's eyes were just two ragged slits, surrounded by glistening red. Logan couldn't look.

The smell of burning meat.

The sound of crackling skin.

63

The car door opened and Logan fell. With both hands still tied behind his back, he couldn't do anything but slam into the hard ground, then lie there, groaning in claustrophobic darkness. No idea where he was.

'
Clunk
' Then the crunch of feet on dry earth, getting closer - someone walking around the vehicle towards him. Rough hands on his shoulders, dragging him backwards until he was completely out of the car. And then the darkness lifted as Kravchenko pulled the bag off Logan's head. The change from pitch black to bright sunshine was sudden and painful.

They were in a lay-by surrounded by trees. A grass verge full of yellow dandelions and tangled brambles. An abandoned armchair, the fabric stained and fraying. A ripped open bin-bag with its contents strewn across the undergrowth.

Kravchenko smiled down at him. 'Please to remember, Detective Sergeant, you do what you are told. And everything is happy.'

'Let her go.'

'I am sorry, Senior Constable Jaroszewicz is stay with me until I trust you.' Kravchenko put his foot against Logan's shoulder and pushed him over onto his back. 'You have been ask questions about Krystka Gorzalkowska, yes? Very pretty girl, is good, but she not like to make film with men, want go to
policja
, but Grigor is play with her. Very rough.' The smile vanished. He hooked a thumb at his driver. 'If I can not trust you, Senior Constable Jarosewicz is blinded. Only I let Grigor play with her first. And when he is finished with her, I let him play with you.'

Leaning back against the black BMW, Grigor grinned.

'And please to remember I have, as you say, the "copper who bends", and if you try fuck me, I will know.' Kravchenko pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and placed it on the ground by Logan's head. 'If I need you, I call, yes?'

Logan squinted up at the clear blue sky, trying to gauge how much time had passed since they'd left the warehouse. Half an hour? Forty minutes? 'You have to get Rory to a hospital.'

'Why do you care? He is children rapist, yes?' The old man opened his arms wide. 'But you are alive, you have still both eyes. This is happy day for you.'

Logan struggled on the ground for a moment, tugging against his bonds.

'You want perhaps I should untie you, yes?' Kravchenko's smile was back. 'But you are resourceful man. You can manage I am thinking.' And then he climbed back into the car. 'I will to be in touch. Grigor?'

The car door slammed, and the engine roared, wheels spinning on the dry earth, sending grit and pebbles flying as the BMW shot out onto the road. Logan waited for it to dis appear from view, then rolled over and threw up.

He limped and hobbled along the side of the road in his bare feet. He'd tried walking on the verge, but the grass was full of sharp stones and broken bottles. And Logan
really
didn't need another serious laceration.

He sucked at the heel of his left hand. Probably going to need a tetanus shot. That's what happened when you had to saw through a set of cable-ties with the rusty lid from a tin of baked beans.

Lucky he didn't lose a finger.

He dug out the mobile phone Kravchenko had given him, and fiddled with the buttons again, like he'd done a dozen times since getting himself free. Still no luck. Somehow they'd managed to lock the handset so it would only accept incoming calls. Kravchenko could call in, but Logan couldn't call out.

He kept on walking.

It was a quiet road, somewhere north of the city, judging by the helicopters that occasionally droned by, far overhead, going to and from the offshore oil platforms.

And then there was a new noise: a car's engine, getting closer. About time too. He limped into the middle of the road and started waving his arms.

A red hatchback roared around the corner, doing at least sixty. No intention of stopping. Logan jumped back onto the verge as it flew past, the driver leaning on the horn. '
Brrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeep!
'

Logan gave it the two-finger farewell. 'Bastard!'

Five minutes later a tractor rumbled up the road, huge heavy tyres churning up the grass on one side of the road, the farmer too busy blethering away on his mobile phone to notice Logan standing there waving at him. He looked up at the last moment and his eyes went wide.

The tractor lurched to a halt in a squeal of air-brakes and foul language.

Logan marched up to the cab, hands up in the universal sign for stop. 'I need you to--'

'You bloody idiot!' The farmer yanked his door open and shouted down at Logan, 'Trying to get yourself killed?'

'Police - give me your phone.'

'
What
? Do you lot have nothing better to do than harass innocent motorists?'

Logan stuck out his hand. 'Phone. Now.'

'I was only listening to my messages!'

'I don't care if you're having phone sex with the Duke of sodding Edinburgh, give me your bloody mobile!'

The farmer scowled. 'Bunch of bastards. If it was up to me--'

'You want let off with a warning, or locked up?'

He shut his mouth. Shifted in his seat. 'Sorry, Officer.' He tossed the phone out of the cab and Logan grabbed it before it hit the dirt, then dialled DI Steel's number from memory.

She picked up on the second ring.
'Who's this?'

'I need you to--'

'YOU!'

Logan flinched, holding the phone away from his ear as the inspector shouted and swore.

'What did you do to my bloody house? I leave you in charge for five bloody minutes and it looks like a bloody bomb went off! That TV cost thousands, you--'

'They've got Wiktorja. Kravchenko and his sidekick ... they gouged Rory's eyes out.'

There was a pause.

'Inspector?'

More swearing.
'You
sure
they did Rory? We've no' had a phone call or anything, so maybe he's just--'

'I was there: I watched them do it.'

'You WHAT?'

'It's not like I had any choice, is it? I was tied up. The point is they've got Wiktorja.'

'Where are you?'

'Are you listening to me?'

'Just answer the bloody question.'

'Oh for God's sake...' Logan did a slow turn, but he still couldn't recognize anything. 'Hold on.' He walked back to the tractor and shouted up at the driver, 'Where's the nearest town?'

The man pointed out of the cab. 'Whitecairns is about two miles that way.' Then he harrumphed. 'This phone call ... not long distance is it? I've only got five quid credit left and--'

Logan turned his back on him and limped down the road a bit. 'They dumped me north of the city. You need to get the tracking thing on Rory Simpson's ankle bracelet turned on. Wiktorja might still be with him.'

'Sodding hell, Bain's going to do his nut when he finds out... Why did I let you talk me into this?'

'It's not my fault! They broke in and--'

'I don't care: get your arse back here, ASAP.'

Logan said he'd see what he could do.

The farmer gave him a lift as far as the industrial estate on Denmore Road, Bridge of Don. Then Logan flagged down a taxi. He'd given Steel the number of the anonymous mobile phone Kravchenko had left, and now Logan held it clutched in his hand, unsure if he wanted the thing to ring or not.

Outside the taxi windows the sky had faded to a pale blue-grey, the sunset already gone from a fiery pink to a faint yellow haze on the horizon, soon lost behind the dark hulks of buildings and tower blocks. They were most of the way down King Street before the sinister mobile started making irritating bleeping noises.

He checked the display - DI Steel.

'... look like a sodding mind reader? Get your finger out and--'

'Hello?'

'--hold on a minute. Laz? Where are you?'

'Almost at the station: two minutes tops.'

'Change of plan. We got a location for Rory's - I don't care. Do I look like I sodding care? Just do it! - Hello?'

'Hello?'

'Playing fields, other side of the river from Duthie Park. And when you get here you can tell me how the sodding hell I'm supposed to organize a search party without telling anyone!'

* * *

The grass was cool beneath Logan's bare feet as he picked his way down the slope from Abbotswell Road, trying not to step in anything nasty in the growing gloom. A high, chain-link fence ran down the right-hand edge of the park, the skeletal frame of a building behind it just visible against the darkening sky.

A couple of people were walking dogs on the other side of the park. They didn't seem to notice the small clump of flashlights working their way through the scrub and bushes at the water's edge.

Logan hobbled on.

DI Steel was standing with her hands in her pockets twenty feet from the river bank, cigarette dangling from the corner of her downturned mouth, staring out at the water. 'They wrecked my house.'

A car horn blared from the road above.

Logan glanced back. 'Can someone lend me a twenty? I've got to pay the taxi and--'

'How could you let them blind him?'

'I didn't let--'

'He was a sodding prisoner in
your
sodding care!'

'They broke in! I didn't have a--'

She poked Logan in the chest. 'If he's dead I'm no' taking the blame, understand?'

Logan looked up at the sky, then back down at the inspector. 'What was I supposed to do? I was tied up, dumped miles out of town.' He held up his palm, showing off the jagged dark red line where the can lid had sliced into the skin. 'I nearly cut my bloody hand off getting free!'

'You should have...' Silence.

'What? What should I have done? Please: tell me, because I can't think of a fucking thing!' He was shouting now. 'WHAT SHOULD I HAVE FUCKING DONE?'

She sighed, took the cigarette from her mouth, and pointed with the glowing tip at the little circle of torches, still at it down by the river. 'I've got four people looking for him.
Four
. That was all I could get without Bain or Finnie finding out we lost Rory. Because soon as they do, you and me are well and truly screwed.'

'I didn't have any choice.'

The taxi horn sounded again and this time Logan shouted back, 'AND YOU CAN FUCK OFF AS WELL!'

He slumped to the ground, sitting with his knees against his chest. Trembling.

'You OK?'

'They've got Wiktorja.'

'I know.' Steel put a hand on his shoulder. 'We'll find her. Bain's setting up a big press conference, the whole three-ring circus. And don't look at me like that, I had to tell him, OK? We'll keep Rory a secret for as long as we can, but - oh sodding hell...' The Airwave handset in her pocket was ringing. She dragged it out and went, 'Uh-huh, is he...? ... Aye.'

Down by the water, someone was waving their torch back and forth, trying to attract their attention.

They'd found Rory Simpson.

64

What he really wanted to do was to climb inside a bottle of ice-cold vodka and stay there. Instead he was sitting on his own in his ratty brown Fiat; parked on Commercial Quay in the shadows with the lights off, listening to the buzz and chatter of a typical Aberdeen nightshift.

'Aye, this is Alpha One Niner, we've been roon the Trinity Centre and there's naybiddy here. Must've been a hoax...'
-
'Just picked up three teenagers drunk and disorderly on Holburn Street...'
-
'Roger that Control, on our way tae Seafield Road noo...'
-
'... can I get a PNC check on a blue Renault Clio, registration number Sierra Wilko Zero Seven...'