in Thailand—’
Steel made a little naked sock puppet out of her left hand and went, ‘Blah, blah, blah. Look at me, I’m Defective Constable Rennie, and I went to the Far East with Gary Glitter Tours.’
The constable blushed. ‘That’s not funny.’
‘Aye it is. Isn’t it Laz?’
Logan shook his head. ‘Didn’t you hear? Rennie’s got himself a grown-up lady friend. About twenty years older than he is.’
‘Is it his mum?’
Rennie scowled. ‘That’s the last time I get a round of bacon butties in. Ungrateful bastards.’
‘Does she make you a packed lunch in the morning and tell you not to talk to strange men?’
‘Just—’
‘Read you a bedtime story?’
‘We—’
‘Bet she gives your arse a good spanking when you’ve been naughty.’
And at that, Rennie’s blush got even redder.
‘She does!’ Steel laughed, spraying out a claggy mush of half-chewed bread and bacon. ‘Oh, you are such a pervert!’ Five minutes later she was obviously getting bored of winding the constable up, because she shouted across the room: ‘Hoy, Pirie – where’s your lord and master?’
DCI Finnie’s sidekick looked at his watch. ‘Supposed to be here.’
‘I know where he’s supposed to be, what I want to know is where he actually is!’
‘Em…’
‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Steel marched down to the front of the room. ‘Right, we’re none of us getting any younger, so: briefing. Everyone who’s on an active case, stand up.’
Tumbleweed.
‘Aunty Roberta says, on your feet, you lazy bastards!’
Reluctantly, they did as they were told, the sound of rubber-soled chair legs squeaking on the green terrazzo floor.
‘Better.’ Steel crossed her arms. ‘Right, if you can see someone else on your case who outranks you, sit your arse down.’
That left half a dozen Detective Constables and Detective Sergeants. The inspector made them all give a little report on their investigations: background, current status, and estimated chances of not cocking the whole thing up. The last one standing was DS Pirie.
He ran a hand through his wiry ginger hair, straightened his suit jacket on his skeletal frame, and brought everyone up to date on Operation Oedipus. The slideshow was set up ready for the absent DCI Finnie, and Pirie started at the beginning. The very first victim’s tattered face filled the screen. ‘Tolek Dobrowski, twenty-three, electrician, originally from Gdańsk.’
Steel scrunched up the tinfoil her bacon buttie came in and lobbed it at the detective sergeant. ‘Don’t sod about, we’ve been over this already. Tell us something we don’t know.’
Pirie flushed, filling in the space between his freckles. ‘Fine…’ He went scrabbling through his notes. ‘The … here we are: the only thing our victims had in common, is that they’re all Polish nationals, except for Simon McLeod. And none of them will tell us anything about what happened, or why.’ He turned and poked the projection screen. ‘Someone does that to you, and you don’t talk to the police?’
Steel snorted. ‘They’re scared, you idiot. What do you think our eye-gouger would do to them if he found out they talked: bake them a cake? Move on!’
‘Ah, yes, well…’
Rennie stuck up his hand. ‘Why are we calling him Oedipus?’
Pirie squared his shoulders, scowling at the interruption. ‘If you’d been paying attention Constable, you’d know why. Now—’
‘Yeah, but Oedipus slept with his mum, murdered his dad, then gouged his own eyes out. He didn’t blind anyone else.’
Steel snorted. ‘And if anyone knows about sleeping with his mum, it’s Rennie.’
Laughter.
The constable blushed. ‘If you want a proper name we should call him Cornwall – he’s the one who blinds the Earl of Gloucester in King Lear. You know, Shakespeare?’
Pirie just stared at him. ‘If you don’t have anything constructive to add, Constable: shut up.’
Rennie put his hand down and Finnie’s sidekick nodded. ‘Now, does anyone else have any stupid comments…?’ Silence. ‘Good. We got Dr Goulding to update the profile following the attack on DS McRae and DI Steel on Friday. I’ve got copies here at the front – make sure you take one and read it. Dr Goulding believes we’re now looking for two men.’ The e-fits appeared on the screen. ‘You’ll have seen these faces on posters all over town, but bear in mind they’re probably wrong. No offence to DS McRae, but his source is highly questionable. Posters went up Friday evening and we’ve not had a single positive identification yet. So forget the e-fits: we’re looking at a pair of men in their mid to late twenties. One will be older than the other – probably very charismatic – the younger man is following him and may be mentally subnormal.’
Steel made another Rennie joke.
Pirie carried on, ignoring the laughter: ‘We need to start looking at the usual care-in-the-community jobs. Find out if any of them have recently fallen in with an older man.’ The DS fiddled his paperwork into a neat pile. ‘I would have expected the Polish community to come out in force on this one, given the fact it’s them being targeted, but I get the feeling they wouldn’t talk to us even if they knew. It’s a conspiracy of silence out there. Keep that in mind when you’re interviewing them – they don’t trust us.’
The inspector let Pirie finish his briefing before she handed out the day’s assignments. ‘One last thing,’ she said, before anyone could escape, ‘the language in this department is fucking shocking. We’re going to do something about that.’ She grabbed her carrier bag from the floor and dragged out a big tin of Quality Street.
An excited murmur went around the room.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, I’ve eaten them all.’ The tin went on the desk at the front of the room, then Steel put on a sing-song voice, as if she was speaking to very small, very thick children, ‘This is our new swear box, isn’t that exciting! And every time you rude bastards come out with some verbal filth, you have to put money in it.’
Everyone groaned.
‘Oh shut up. When it’s full the money either goes to charity or we stick it behind the bar and get blootered.’
She crumpled up the empty carrier bag and stuck it in her pocket. ‘And before I forget: since his brother got blinded it looks like Creepy Colin McLeod’s been doing a world tour of the local lowlife with his pet claw hammer. Harry Jordan got his kneecaps done last night – that makes six. Now I know drug dealers and affiliated scumbags aren’t as cute as puppies and kittens, but that doesn’t mean Creepy gets to cripple them. Eyes and ears open, people.’
She sniffed, then stared at them for a moment. No Questions. ‘Right, we’re done. One quick chorus of “We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up” then you can all go catch some bloody crooks for a change.’
By half past eight Logan was on the phone to the hospital, checking up on Kevin Murray – the man who’d got his nose cut in half on Friday night. Apparently he’d been given lots of stitches, lots of painkillers and was back on the street within twenty-four hours.
There was no sign of the four hoodies who’d attacked him.
‘It’s like a bloody jungle out there most weekends,’ said the inspector in charge of the CCTV room, covering the front of his white shirt with cake