Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
He was dead. That much was obvious. If the gaping hole in his throat hadn’t been enough of a clue, the sheer quantity of blood inside the car would’ve been a giveaway.
Not to mention the colour of him. Nothing alive was that colour.
‘Well, I’m not going to keep you hanging on the cause of death,’ Shona said, shining her torch around the inside of the vehicle, before settling on the purple-red meat of the dead man’s injury.
‘Someone opened his throat for him,’ Logan said.
‘Yeah, well, there’s no prizes for figuring that one out, I’m afraid.’
Shona leaned in closer, letting the torchlight push back the shadows, fully exposing the wound. ‘Sharp blade, deep. Straight line across, right to left.’
‘Passenger seat?’ Logan guessed, then he corrected himself before Shona had a chance to. ‘No. Angle would be all wrong.’
He snapped on a pair of gloves, then carefully opened the rear passenger door of the car. A thick tartan blanket, matted with golden dog hair, lay scrunched across the back seats.
‘Killer was sat behind him,’ Logan reasoned. ‘Could’ve hidden under that blanket, and then… What?’
He looked around them, up and down what would, under normal circumstances, be a fairly quiet stretch of road.
‘Waited until the guy parked up in a lay-by in the arse end of nowhere before slitting his throat?’
‘Better that than doing it while he was still driving,’ Shona reasoned. ‘That’s not going to end well for either of them. I mean, look, your man there’s not even wearing his seatbelt. Bit reckless of him.’
Logan glanced into the front, then considered the back seats of the BMW for a few more moments. Finally, he closed the door and clicked his torch off.
‘Aye. Maybe,’ he conceded.
The rain was starting to get heavier. It plinked against the car’s sunroof and dotted the windscreen. Logan caught the eye of the waiting SOCOs, pointed up, and twirled a finger to suggest they might want to get a shifty on and put the tent up.
The guys in the white paper suits looked over to Geoff Palmer for his orders, but Palmer was too engrossed in conversation with DC Neish to notice. They hurried into action regardless, none of them wanting to find themselves told twice by DCI Logan.
‘Um, evening, sir.’
Logan turned to find Hamza standing beside him, fiddling anxiously with the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt.
‘Sorry I’m late. I got… held up.’
‘Aye, well, you’re here now,’ Logan told him.
‘Woot woo!’ Shona called. It would’ve been a wolf whistle, but she was holding her torch in her mouth, which made things difficult on the whistling front. ‘Looking good, Detective Inspector.’
Hamza flashed her a smile. It wasn’t enough to wash away the terror in his eyes. ‘Oh. Thanks!’
‘Congratulations on the promotion. It was well deserved,’ she continued, mangling the words so badly around the butt of the torch that Hamza just nodded back at her.
She took the torch out of her mouth, clicked it off, then raised a hand like she was about to lean on the car. A panicky shout from one of the nearby SOCOs stopped her before she could compromise any forensic evidence.
‘Ooh, shite, sorry,’ she said, jumping back. ‘That’s me for now. I’ve got enough to call it.’
She left them to their tent construction and approached Hamza and Jack, pulling off her gloves on the way.
‘I remember you doing your first post-mortem with me, back in the day,’ she said, shaking her head wistfully and shooting a look in Logan’s direction. ‘God, they grow up so fast, don’t they?’
Logan smirked. ‘Aye, well, now’s his chance to prove it. What do you think, Detective Inspector?’
Hamza swallowed. ‘Sir?’
‘Jack’s fine,’ Logan told him.
Panic flared behind Hamza’s eyes. ‘Oh, no, sir. No, that’s… I don’t think I could do that.’
‘Ach, it’s easy,’ Shona said. She put a hand on Jack’s arm and winked at the freshly minted DI. ‘You should hear some of the names I call him.’
‘Next steps, son,’ Logan said. ‘What are they?’
Hamza’s face went rigid. Went pale.
‘Next steps?’
Logan nodded. ‘You’ve a lot of people standing around here waiting for orders, and I’m about to run Shona home, so… Next steps?’
Hamza’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. He looked around, as if searching for inspiration, sweeping past Logan, past the car, past Tyler and Palmer, until finally alighting on Dave Davidson further back towards the cordon.
Dave nodded to him, and raised a hand in a thumbs-up.
‘Hamza?’ Logan pressed.
‘Check the cordon’s secure, make sure only necessary personnel are within it, prioritise SOCO access so they can get the tent up and protect the scene.’
‘Right. All underway,’ Logan confirmed. ‘So, what else?’
‘Uh, it’s not quite underway, sir, because you need to shift,’ Hamza said, his eyes darting to the guys in the paper suits struggling to construct the tent around him. ‘After that, we run the car’s plate, see if we can get a name. And then…’
What else?
What else?
‘Witnesses!’ he blurted. ‘Send Uniform door-to-door around the nearby houses to see if anyone saw anything. Get one of the team to talk to the person who found the body.’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ Logan confirmed. He looked very deliberately at all the other officers scattered around them. ‘But what are you telling me for?’
It took Hamza a moment to realise what the DCI was getting at, but then he nodded, drew himself up to his full height, and summoned DC Neish with a shout.
‘Tyler.’
‘Oh, thank Christ,’ Tyler whispered, turning his back on Geoff and hurrying over to join the others. ‘Nice one. Thanks for that, Ham. I thought he was never…’
Tyler stopped mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open as an expression of pure, unbridled joy spread across his face.
‘Don’t,’ Hamza said, already predicting what was coming.
‘Did I say “Thanks for that, Ham”?’ Tyler asked.
‘Please, don’t,’ Hamza reiterated.
Logan had also figured out what was coming, and laid a supportive hand on the new DI’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. You stop hearing it after a while.’
‘What I meant to say,’ Tyler continued, beaming like a kid on Christmas morning, ‘was cheers, boss!’
Hamza groaned and rolled his eyes. ‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’
‘Very much so, aye,’ Tyler confirmed. ‘What were you wanting, anyway?’
‘I, eh, I need you to run the plate on the car, see what that tells us,’ Hamza said. It took all his willpower not to look to DCI Logan for confirmation. ‘See who it’s registered to, see if there are any ANPR cameras that picked it up in the last few hours.’
‘I’ve done that,’ Tyler said, to the amazement of everyone within earshot.
‘You’ve done it?’ Logan asked. ‘Already?’
‘Sure did, boss,’ Tyler confirmed.
‘What, without anyone having to tell you?’
‘Aye.’ Tyler’s smile faded a little. ‘I mean… is that alright?’
Logan shoved his hands into his coat pockets and rocked back on his heels. ‘Oh, right. Aye. I see what this is.’
‘I don’t follow, boss.’
‘The interviews. The DS job. This is you making a play for it, isn’t it?’ Logan leaned in Shona’s direction. ‘Him and Sinead are both going for it. They’ve got a competition going on to see who gets it.’
‘Sinead will, surely?’ Shona replied.
Tyler’s face remained a picture of innocence. ‘OK, one, I resent that. And two, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, boss. Just thought I’d get ahead of things. Give us a wee head start.’
‘My arse,’ Logan said. ‘But go on.’
‘OK. But you might want to hold on to your hats,’ Tyler warned them. ‘Because this is some serious shit.’
He drew in a deep breath and glanced across their faces to make sure they were all listening, before making his big announcement.
‘Victor Belov.’
The reaction was not as spectacular as he’d been hoping for.
‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’ Logan asked.
Tyler’s shoulders sagged. ‘Aye, well, I hadn’t heard of him either, but I thought you two might’ve been paying more attention than I was.
He’s on CID’s hotlist. High up in the local drug scene.
Allegedly. They’ve never been able to make anything stick.
But he’s one of the big boys. They’ve been trying to connect some seized shipments picked up in Aberdeen to him and his brothers. Reckon they were getting close.’
‘Wait,’ Logan said, holding up a hand to stop the DC before he could go any further. ‘And you found all this out? You?’
‘Just a couple of phone calls, boss. It was nothing major,’ Tyler said.
‘You’re bloody up to something,’ Logan replied. ‘I can tell.’
‘Again, boss, I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tyler insisted, but the smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth said otherwise.
Logan turned and looked back at the car. The tent was mostly assembled, shielding the vehicle from the elements, protecting the evidence.
A big-time drug dealer with his throat slit in a lay-by.
Not some random killing, then. Not by a long shot.
‘Someone should go talk to the family,’ Hamza suggested. ‘See about them making a formal ID once he’s been brought in.’
Logan checked his watch. ‘I can do that. Get the details and ping them through. I’ll drop Shona at the house first, and then she can be at the hospital for the body arriving.’ He met Hamza’s eye. ‘I can leave the rest to you, aye?’
Hamza swallowed. His mouth, when he spoke, made a series of faint clicking sounds.
‘No bother, sir,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ve got it all under control.’
The shake in his voice didn’t really sell that idea.
‘Oh, I know you do, son,’ Logan told him. ‘I have complete faith.’
‘He’s floundering,’ Logan declared the moment the car doors closed around them. ‘Nerves are getting to him.’
‘He’ll be fine. He’s great. He can handle it,’ Shona said.
Logan looked ahead through the windscreen. Hamza was trying to get the attention of a uniformed sergeant, hanging back while the other man finished his conversation.
‘I know he can. That’s why I put him forward for the job in the first place,’ Logan replied. ‘I believe he’s up to it. I’m just not convinced that he does.’
‘So, what’re you going to do? One of your big shouty pep talks?’ Shona adopted a gruff voice. ‘“Pull your finger out of your arse, son. Get your bloody act together.”’
‘Was that meant to be me?’
‘It was pretty spot-on, I thought.’
Logan let out a single hmmpf of laughter. ‘Aye, well. Tempting. It could do the job.’
He slid his seatbelt into the catch, clicking it into place.
‘But I think I might have a better idea.’