Blind Eye (63 page)

'Aaghh, Jesus...' Her lips were turning blue. 'Kill him...' She gritted her teeth. 'Kill him ...
please
...'

'Why would Detective Sergeant kill me? I am his friend, but you ... You use him to find me, I am thinking he does not like this.' He smiled at Logan. 'She pay man in Warsaw Police to tell her if anyone ask question about me. Is clever, yes?'

'You ... you blinded ... my father. You carved out his eyes!'

Kravchenko shrugged. 'I make blind many men. Maybe I make you blind too, before you die?'

She recoiled, trying to squirm away from him, hands still tied behind her back, but every motion made her cry out in pain.

Logan tightened his grip on the trigger. 'Get away from her.
Now!
'

Kravchenko reached into his pocket and pulled out the Swiss Army knife. 'When I am finish.' The little tin of lighter fluid was next.

'I'm not telling you again!'

Wiktorja stared at the knife's curving blade. 'Please no ... Please!
Prosze
!
Prosze, nie zabijaj mnie!
'

Kravchenko grabbed a handful of her hair, pulling her face up. She screamed. Logan braced himself, aimed - and the door behind him flew open.

Something went BOOM and the old man ducked. Then the delicate pitter-patter of shot rained down on the concrete floor. 'Next one,' said a voice from the doorway, 'doesn't go into the ceiling.'

Thank God - the cavalry was here...

Only when Logan looked around, the guy standing in the doorway wasn't one of DI Steel's firearms team. He was massive, at least twenty stone, his face twisted with scar tissue - last seen working on an old Jaguar at Wee Hamish Mowat's place: Reuben. He'd ditched the overalls for a straining pink polo shirt, a pair of jumbo-sized jeans, and a sawn-off shotgun. Reuben lumbered into the room, forehead glistening with sweat. And right behind him came a spotty youth with green hair, dragging a blood-smeared DS Pirie into the room.

Green-Hair dumped Pirie in the middle of the floor, then pulled out an old-fashioned revolver.

Pirie looked as if his nose had exploded, leaving a flattened, bloody flap above a swollen mouth. Voice slurred and lisping, 'Please don't kill me!'

Green-Hair kicked him. 'Shut up.'

Reuben looked Logan up and down. 'We're here for the Polish guy.'

Kravchenko picked himself up from the floor. Wiktorja's blood had stained one knee of his linen trousers, turning the cream material a dark raspberry. 'I am
not
Polish. I am from Ukraine.' He pointed his gun at them. 'And I am going nowhere.'

The kid with the green hair grabbed Pirie by the back of the collar and hauled him to his knees. Then ground the revolver into the side of the Detective Sergeant's head. 'Put your fuckin' gun down or I kill the pig!'

Kravchenko sighed. 'We have already done the "who is make a bluff" talk.' The silvered automatic barked once. A small plume of blood burst from Pirie's stomach, a much bigger one spraying out of his back as the bullet tore straight through.

'SHIT!' Green-Hair let go and danced back, hands and feet high in the air. Pirie slumped back onto the concrete, screaming.

'Now is easier, yes? Now we--'

The fat man in the pink polo shirt said, 'Bugger this,' then shot Kravchenko in the chest with his shotgun.

70

The old man flew backwards, bounced off the stack of I-beams and crumpled to the floor, face-down in the pool of Wiktorja's blood.

The BOOM seemed to take forever to fade away.

Logan stared at Kravchenko's body, then back at the huge man in the pink polo shirt. 'You just--'

Reuben shook his head. 'No I didn't.' He glanced over his shoulder at his green-haired sidekick. 'That bastard Pirie still alive?'

The DS had stopped screaming, instead he was clutching onto the small hole in his stomach, face pale, mouth open, shallow breaths.

'Yeah, he's still alive.' Green-Hair kicked him again. 'Two-timing cock. Oh yeah, we know you been playin' both sides, Pirie; been followin' you for
days
, man. What you think Wee Hamish is gonnae do to you, eh? You're gonnae be pig food, you--'

'Jonny! Shut the fuck up, OK? We got a policeman present.' Then he smiled at Logan. 'Ignore him: this ain't got nothing to do with Mr Mowat. This is strictly personal. Understand? Now Jonny and me are gonnae take Pirie and that Polish dickhead, and get out of your hair, OK?'

'What makes you think I'm going to just let you take them?'

Reuben turned the sawn-off shotgun until it was pointing at Logan's chest.

Logan looked down at the twin barrels. 'You've fired it twice already. No shells left.'

'You think?' The big man smiled. 'Jonny, you help Mr Pirie to his feet and see him out to the car, eh? We'll ... ah ... drop him off at the hospital on the way home.'

'Aye, right ... hospital.' The green-haired youth hauled Pirie away by the armpits, leaving a smear of bright red on the concrete.

'Good boy.' The fat man lowered his shotgun, and pointed at Kravchenko's motionless body. 'Now, I'll just take that wee shite and--'

'No. You leave him where he is.'

A short laugh. 'I'm no' leaving any--'

Logan stepped forward and stuck the barrel of his gun in the middle of the fat man's forehead. 'Yes you are.'

Pause.

'Aye, fair enough.'

He waited till the door slammed shut, then hurried across the concrete to Wiktorja. She was pale, sweating, shivering, lying in an ever-expanding pool of her own blood. Logan dug out his phone, switched it back on and called for an ambulance, trying to figure out how long it had been since he'd spoken to DI Steel - how long it would be until the firearms team got here. Now that it was too sodding late for them to do anything. Maybe they'd be just in time to stop Reuben and his little green-haired friend from getting away with Pirie?

Drop him off at the hospital. Yeah, right.

But somehow Logan didn't care - the two-faced bastard deserved everything coming to him. Besides, Logan had more than enough to feel guilty about already. Whatever happened to Pirie was his own fault.

Wiktorja lay on her side, making little pedalling motions with her legs, smearing them round and round in the dark red slick. Logan picked up Kravchenko's Swiss Army knife, unfolded a serrated blade, then sawed through the cable-ties holding her wrists behind her back.

As soon as the plastic snapped she gritted her teeth and hissed out a stream of Polish obscenities. Her right arm - the one that used to be in a sling - made a disturbing sideways bow half way between her elbow and her wrist where Grigor had broken it. She clutched it to her chest.

'Are you OK?'

'You let ... you let ... him shoot me...' Each word squeezed out and painful.

'Why didn't you tell me?' He knelt beside her, cold blood soaking through the knees of his trousers. 'How could you be working for Ehrlichmann?'

She looked up at him. 'So I can find ... Kravchenko ... and ... make him ... pay...'

Logan had never seen anyone so pale in his life.

'You're going to be OK.'

Or maybe not.

She blinked a couple of times, as if trying to get the empty warehouse into focus. And then she saw the man lying next to her, his pale linen suit gradually turning dark red. Wiktorja screwed up her face and spat, but the bloody spittle didn't get that far, it just dribbled down her chin. 'I am ... I am glad ... you are dead ... you old ... bastard.'

Her left leg twitched in Kravchenko's direction. Trying to kick him. Not getting anywhere near. And then her head slumped forwards.

Logan checked for a pulse.

71

She was still alive, just, but if the ambulance didn't get here soon, she probably wouldn't be for long. Still, there was one thing he could do for her: Logan stood, walked over to Kravchenko's body, and kicked it in the ribs.
Hard
.

The old man groaned.

Logan stared at him. 'Oh you have got to be kidding...'

Kravchenko was trying to lever himself onto his side, the front of his baggy linen suit tattered from the shotgun blast, drenched in blood.

How the hell did he survive that?

Logan placed his foot against the old man's shoulder and shoved him over onto his back. Kravchenko's head hit the ground with a dull THUNK and he grunted.

Logan looked down at the ruined suit, the ripped shirt, all the holes from the shotgun pellets. And the guy was still moving. 'You're as bad as bloody Grigor!'

Kravchenko reached for his tattered chest with trembling hands, and fumbled with the buttons on his blood-soaked shirt. And that's when Logan saw the bulletproof vest. The old man coughed, then swore in Polish.

Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out Grigor's gun. His latex gloves stuck to the handgrip, leaving bloody smears on the black barrel.

'Everyone thinks you're already dead.' He racked the slide back and a brass-jacketed 9mm bullet pinged out into the warm afternoon air, landing with a plop in the blood - sending out slow-motion ripples. 'Do you have any idea how much shite I've gone through, because of you?'

The old man rolled onto his side again, then struggled to his knees.

Logan kicked him between the shoulder blades, sending him crashing back to the ground.

'Thanks to you I've been blown up, shot at, I'm probably going to get fired, maybe sent to bloody prison...' He kicked the old man in the bullet-proof ribs. 'And I've started smoking again! You know how
stupid
that is? I don't even like the bloody things any more!'

Once more for luck, this time hard enough to hurt his own foot. Logan limped away, then back again, pointing the gun at Kravchenko's face. 'Right, first: the
Buckie Ballad
, where is it?'

'Go ... make fuck with yourself.'

He jabbed the gun barrel up under Kravchenko's chin.

'Tell me where that fishing boat's going to unload the guns, or I'm going to blow your head off.'

The old man made a noise. It took Logan a moment to realize it was laughter. 'What the hell's so damn funny?'

'You are. Is big act. You are
policja
, you must to have rules. It make you weak.'

Logan took a step back. Kravchenko was right: there
were
rules.

'You know what? Fuck it.' Logan shot him in the chest.

Kravchenko slammed back into the concrete, mouth open on a silent scream, fingers scrabbling at the new shiny lump on the front of his bulletproof vest.

Logan watched him writhe. 'Hurts, doesn't it? Bet it's like being cracked in the ribs with a crowbar. Where's the
Buckie Ballad
?'

'Ffffuck ... you ...
kurwa
...'

'Want another go?'

Logan shot him again, this time in the stomach - right in the middle of the vest's abdominal panel. Kravchenko nearly folded in half, hissing in pain.

'You really think I'm going to let you bring a boatload of automatic weapons into my city?' He kicked the old man over onto his back and shot him in the ribs again. 'Where is it?'

'Aaaaaaagh!
Cholernik ... Odpierdol sie!
' Swearing, and groaning, and swearing some more.

'OK, fine. Let's make it more interesting.' Logan swung the gun around and blew a hole in the old bastard's leg. 'Now where's that bloody boat?'

Aftermath

I

C
AULFLEG
F
ARM
, 35
MILES FROM
A
BERDEEN
- F
OUR
H
OURS
L
ATER

'Now then,' Wee Hamish stepped into the barn, 'are we ready?'

A fat man in stained overalls hauled the metal door shut, locking out the sunny afternoon. He flipped a switch and the lights flickered on, just bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling, making the wet concrete floor glow.

Sties ran down either side of the building, full of big pink bodies, snouts poking through metal bars. It stank in here. A deep, savoury reek of raw sewage, sweat and terror. A dusty hint of dry straw bedding. The grunt and squeal of the pigs.

Hilary Brander looked at her husband. 'We're ready.'