The first one to cry out in pain was the dog-handler. A crash, a snarl, the sound of someone hitting the deck. A fist whistled past Logan's head and he ducked, flailing out with a fist of his own. There was a brief, momentary feeling of skin and bone breaking under his knuckles, a muffled cry, a splash of something wet on his cheek, and another crash. He hoped to hell he hadn't just flattened WPC Watson!
The dog was still barking its head off, between snarling, biting noises. The televisions blared as the next race was announced and more greyhounds were loaded into the traps. A metal pole clattered into Logan's back and he stumbled forward, tripped over a supine body and fell headlong to the floor. A foot came down hard next to his head and then was gone again.
White light spilled over the scene and Logan twisted his head round to see a hunched figure, silhouetted against the snowstorm outside. The figure dropped the plastic bag it was carrying. Four tins of Export and a bottle of Grouse clattered against the tatty linoleum.
In that moment the room was revealed in the soft glow of winter daylight. One of the handlers was on the floor, his leather-padded arm being savaged by the snarling Alsatian. WPC Watson had blood streaming out of her nose and a large tattooed man in a headlock. The other handler was being punched in the guts while another punter held him down. And Logan was lying, half-sprawled, over someone in a boiler suit with a bloody gap where their front teeth used to be.
The figure in the door turned and ran.
Desperate Doug!
Swearing, Logan hauled himself off the floor and lurched towards the closing door. A hand clutched his ankle and he pitched forward again, hitting the floor hard, feeling the scars in his stomach scream. The grip on his ankle tightened and another hand clapped onto his leg.
Gasping in pain, Logan grabbed the fallen whisky bottle, gripped it like a club and swung. It battered his assailant's head with a dull clunk and the hands holding him went limp.
Logan back-pedalled, struggled to his feet again and staggered through the door. The pain in his stomach was like fire. Someone had injected him with petrol and set it alight. Hissing through clenched teeth, he dragged his mobile out and told Quebec Three One to get their arses into the betting shop, now! He leant heavily on the railing that separated the shops from the car park. Desperate Doug might have done a runner, but he was hardly a spring chicken any more. He couldn't have got far.
Left: nothing but empty road and parked cars, fading in and out of sight through the snow. Right: a grey wash of brick-and-concrete tenement blocks. More parked cars. Someone disappearing into one of the lifeless, gloomy buildings.
Logan pulled himself off the railing and lurched after the disappearing figure. Behind him, Quebec Three One roared into the icy car park, lights and sirens going full blast.
The wind drove needles of ice into his face as Logan pushed himself on. The pavement beneath his feet was treacherous, threatening to send him sprawling every time his feet hit the slush. He scrabbled up the path to the building Doug had vanished into, leaping the small flight of steps and banging through the front door. It was quiet and cold in the entrance and his breath fogged the air. Dark stains around the concrete doorways – spreading tree shapes from groin height to the ground – marked where someone had repeatedly urinated against their neighbour's door. The smell hung sharp and rancid in the freezing hallway.
Logan screeched to a halt, breathing hard, eyes stinging in the urine reek. Doug could have gone to ground in any of these flats. Or he could be hiding just out of sight, behind the stairs. He inched forwards to look, but Desperate Doug wasn't there. The back door was ajar.
'Damn.' Logan took a deep breath and ran through it, back out into the snow.
The buildings were arranged so that between each row of three-and four-storey tenements there was a communal drying green. Not that it was particularly green, even at the best of times. Fresh footprints, slowly disappearing in the falling snow, heading for the tenement on the opposite side.
Logan followed them at a run straight through the building opposite. Another street and another line of tenement buildings. A door slammed directly ahead and Logan slithered his way down the path, across the road, through the door, down the hallway, and out the other side again. Only this time there wasn't another row of bleak grey buildings: this time there was only a six-foot chainlink fence separating the drying green from a band of rough scrubland. An industrial estate was visible through the fence, and a couple of high-rise buildings behind that: Tillydrone.
Desperate Doug MacDuff was clambering his way over the top of the high fence.
'Hold it right there!' Logan legged it across the snow, slipping and sliding to a halt at the end of the drying green just in time to see Doug vanish from sight again. 'What are you, bloody Houdini?'
Clambering up the chainlink, Logan suddenly realized how Desperate Doug had managed to disappear so suddenly. The fence marked the dividing line between the Sandilands Estate and the railway track north out of the city. Hidden by the scrubland and bushes was a deep, wide, man-made ravine with railway lines at the bottom. Doug had slithered his way down one side of the steep siding.
The old man wasn't running very fast any more. He had slowed to a lurching jog, clutching one arm to his chest as he scuffed his way along the railway tracks.
Logan pitched himself over the top of the fence and hit the ground hard. Immediately his feet went out from under him. Gravity did the rest. He tumbled down the bank like a boulder, scraping through gorse and bracken, smacking into the hard gravel at the bottom of the ravine. He hit with a cry of pain. Blood was seeping from a gash on the back of his hand. His head rang from its sudden stop against the gravel. But worst of all was the pain exploding in his belly. One year on and Angus Robertson, the Mastrick Monster, was still hurting him.
The high banks of the railway siding sheltered the bottom of the ravine from the wind. Here the snow fell steadily from the sky, drifting down like a blanket in the still air.
Logan lay on his side, groaning, trying not to be sick, letting the snow settle on him. He couldn't even move. But he did have a perfect view of Desperate Doug as the old man risked a glance over his shoulder and saw the policeman who'd been chasing him lying, bleeding on the railway tracks. He stopped running and turned to watch Logan, his breath fogging the air in huge, ragged lungfuls.
And then he started back up the tracks towards Logan. He dug in one of his pockets and something shiny sparkled in his hand. Something sharp.
Ice water rushed through Logan's body. 'Oh God…'
He tried to roll over, get to his feet before Desperate Doug reached him. But the pain in his stomach was too much, even with death walking slowly up the tracks towards him.
'You didn't have tae follow me.' Doug's voice came out in jagged puffs. 'You could've just minded yer own bloody business. Now I'm gonnae have to teach you a lesson, Mr Pig.' He held up the shiny thing: it was a Stanley knife, the blade fully extended.
'Oh God, no…' It was happening again!
'I'm real fond of bacon, me.' Doug's face was bright red, creased and florid with broken veins. His milky, dead eye, the same colour as the snow, his twisted smile nicotine-brown. 'Thing 'bout bacon is, you gotta slice it nice and thin.'
'Don't…' Logan desperately tried to roll over again.
'Aw, now you're no goin' tae cry are you, Mr Pig? Gonnae greet like a bairn? Hell, wouldn't blame you like. It's gonnae fuckin' hurt!'
'Don't…please! You don't have to do this…'