Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
They kept the sirens and lights on until they were just a couple of miles from the turnoff that would lead them onto the back road towards the bothy. The Cairngorm Mountains were barely visible against the night sky, little more than texture changes in the darkness.
There were no lights out here. No orange glow of a town on the horizon, no headlamps on distant roads. Just the car, and the dark, and the mountains watching on.
Logan sat in the passenger seat, Google Maps providing directions on his phone.
‘Left here,’ he instructed, and the sergeant slowed, checking his mirrors, before taking the turn onto a stretch of single-track.
‘Penis of the Demon,’ Fleck announced.
Logan shot him a sideways look. ‘Eh?’
‘The mountain. Devil’s Point. That’s its real name.
Well, the English translation of the Gaelic, anyway,’ Gavin explained.
‘It’s about the only thing I remember my history teacher telling us.
Think it was Queen Victoria or someone who asked what it was called, and they told her it was Devil’s Point, rather than tell her its actual name. ’
He took another left. The car bumped and rolled on the uneven, narrow track, making it hard for Logan to check the map.
‘Or that could all be bollocks, I suppose. Mr Henderson didn’t half spill some shite.’
Logan didn’t say anything. He just consulted the map, checked the track winding along ahead of them, then tapped out a quick message and returned the phone to his pocket.
‘What do we do when we get there?’ Fleck asked.
‘We’ll talk to him,’ Logan said. ‘See if we can get him to hand himself in.’
Fleck shot him a glance. ‘You don’t think we should’ve called in backup?’
Logan watched the headlights dancing across the undergrowth that grew between the tyre tracks left by years of traffic.
‘Can’t risk the racket. I want Bosco alive.’
‘Course,’ Fleck agreed, and they continued along the track in silence until the lights picked out the boxy back end of a white transit van.
‘Engine off. Cut the lights,’ Logan instructed.
He checked his phone again as he got out of the car. The bothy was a few hundred yards ahead, down a worn pathway across terrain that would challenge even the most rugged of off-road vehicles.
They would have to walk it from here. That was good, though. Walking was quiet. Walking was slow.
Walking bought him some time.
A layer of cloud covered most of the sky, but a few clear patches offered glimpses of stars. So many stars out here away from the city, and so little of anything else.
The moon was buried behind cloud cover, and its light was far too faint to have much of an impact. Logan led the way, picking a path through the undergrowth, headed for the low, squat building he could just make out the edges of through the darkness up ahead.
Jack checked his phone. As expected, he’d left the signal somewhere back near the main road. Four little dots at the top of the screen told him they were on their own.
Maybe that should’ve worried him. But he’d thought this through. He’d been planning it, ever since it had all fallen into place.
Her car. Her bag. Her fingerprint, her husband, her money.
All of it.
‘We could do with a bit of light over here,’ he whispered, as they drew closer to the low, squat stone building.
At first glance, the place looked to be in darkness, but there was a faint glow around the edges of its one visible window, suggesting it had been boarded up on the inside.
This close, even in the dark, Logan got the sense of The Devil’s Point looming somewhere ahead. Huge. Intimidating. Potentially deadly.
He could see where it got its original name from.
‘You got your torch on you, Sergeant?’ he asked.
Even though he already knew the answer.
Even though he’d checked.
‘Shite. No,’ Fleck whispered.
It was confirmation, but only of a sort. Not a smoking gun, just something else to add to the pile.
Like the left turn that Fleck had taken without being told.
Like the ANPR hit on Eleanor Belov that had been faked from the sergeant’s own car.
‘Not got it replaced yet?’ Logan asked. He stopped just a handful of feet away from the bothy and turned. ‘After stoating it off Victor Belov’s skull?’
‘What do you—?’ Fleck began, but he abandoned the sentence midway through.
What would be the point in denying it?
He shrugged. A crooked smile turned up one corner of his mouth.
‘It’s on my to-do list, but I’ve been kind of busy.’
‘Oh, aye. You’ve been that alright,’ Logan agreed. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and tipped his head back towards the door of the darkened bothy. ‘Shall we?’
Bosco Maximuke knelt on the bare wooden floor, hands tied at his back, a gag pulled across his mouth and wedged in tight between his teeth.
There was blood on his forehead and some drying below his nose. His eyes swam, struggling to focus on Logan as the DCI threw open the door and stepped inside.
Jack stopped almost immediately, taken aback by the sheer number of people assembled around the edges of the bothy’s interior.
He’d been expecting Bosco and this Curtis Neil character. Maybe one or two others.
But this?
There were a dozen of them at least, all masked up in full-face balaclavas, and kitted out in dark clothing. They made Logan think of blackbirds or crows. A murder of them, all flocked together, beady eyes reflecting the glow of the battery-powered lamps that hung around the room.
He might not have been expecting this, but he was ready for it. Take charge. Show no fear. It had stood him in pretty good stead up until now.
‘Well, well, well,’ he boomed, as Sergeant Fleck shuffled in behind him. ‘And just who all do we have here?’
None of the masked figures reacted beyond the occasional uncertain glance at their neighbours. Logan had already identified the three largest and most dangerous of the group. The ones who looked like they belonged behind a balaclava. The ones whose bones he would break first, if it came to it.
Most of the others seemed small, meek, nervous. Like they’d buckle at the first sign of pressure. Like they had no business whatsoever being here.
That was good. Keep up the act, and he’d keep them off-balance. The other three, with their broad shoulders and clenched fists, he’d worry about when it came to it.
‘You not going to introduce everyone, Gavin?’ Logan asked.
He smiled, mostly for the benefit of the anxious ones. They wouldn’t expect a smile. They wouldn’t know what to do with it.
‘No?’ he asked, when Fleck said nothing. ‘Fair enough. Let me start. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan. And you lot? Well… you’re all in the deepest shit of your lives.’
‘You think?’
It was Sergeant Fleck who spoke. The sentence was punctuated by the clack-clack of a pump-action shotgun.
Logan turned slowly to find a sawn-off weapon being levelled at his chest. One of the more able-looking masked men stood at Fleck’s side. His hands gripped the weapon, still and steady. He didn’t shake, Logan noted. Not once.
‘I’d say you’re the one in the shit here, Jack,’ Fleck told him.
From the ranks of the masked, a woman let out a gasp. ‘Gavin!’
The sergeant silenced her with a look, before turning his attention back to the DCI.
‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to work it out. But you got too close, so you didn’t leave me with any choice,’ Fleck said. ‘I knew I had to help you along with it. Bring you here. Let you in on all of it.’
‘All of what?’ Logan asked. He looked around at the group. ‘What is this meant to be, exactly? What did you tell them all? That they could be crime-fighting vigilantes? That they could take back their communities from the bad people?’
‘Like I said. You weren’t supposed to work it out,’ Gavin reiterated.
‘But, aye. Exactly that. Everyone here—everyone in this room—has lost someone to these bastards. To the drug dealers, flooding our towns and villages with their poison. They were sick of it. Sick of seeing their kids, or their brothers, sisters, friends, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, falling prey to these pieces of shit.’
He glared raw hatred down at Bosco, but the Russian was still too out of it to pay much attention. He just groaned, his head hanging low, a string of bloody drool dangling from his bottom lip.
‘The police—you, me, us—we were doing nothing. Not really. If we did put one away, two others would spring up and take their place. Someone had to do something. Something real. Someone had to stand up!’
Logan laughed at that. A few feet shuffled on the bare floorboards. If his earlier smile had worried them, his derisory laughter now had them properly shiteing themselves.
The man with the gun didn’t appear moved, though. He kept it steady, kept it trained.
He was going to be a problem.
‘That what you told them, is it?’ Logan asked. ‘Was that how you got them all on board? Sold them on a noble crusade against the scourge of organised crime? It’s not murder then, is it? It’s justice.’
‘You’re damn right it is,’ Fleck agreed.
‘So, you killed Victor Belov because you believed he was dealing drugs—’
‘Not believed, knew,’ the man with the gun stressed.
It was the first words he had spoken. Logan ignored him and pressed on.
‘You killed Kendrick Crichton for the same reason, and now you’re going to kill poor Bosco here, too?’
‘“Poor Bosco,”’ Gavin said, sneering at the description. ‘You know what he is.’
‘Oh, I do, aye. Only too bloody well, in fact,’ Logan confirmed. ‘I also know that, rightly or wrongly, he’s served his time.’
It was Fleck’s turn to laugh. ‘Oh, come on. You don’t believe that any more than we do. You know he’d be straight back up to his old tricks in no time.’
‘I don’t know that, no,’ Logan countered. ‘Neither do you.’
‘Don’t lie to yourself, Jack!’
‘Lying?’ Logan nodded slowly, like he was giving the word some thought. ‘OK, Gavin, let’s talk about lying, will we?’
He turned on the spot, meeting the eyes of as many of the gathered men and women as he could.