Читать книгу Dark Blood - Stuart MacBride - Страница 20

‘Lying bastards!’ A porcelain dog hit the faded wallpaper, and became a starburst of pale shards. ‘All of it…’ Richard Knox grabbed a ballerina from the mantelpiece and sent it crashing into the far wall. Face flushed, teeth bared, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Bloody lies!’

‘Jesus, Richard, calm down!’ A large woman – one of Knox’s minders from Sacro – was crouching behind the sofa, popping her head up over the dusty fabric, then ducking down again as a shire horse turned into porcelain shrapnel.

‘They’ve no right!’

Logan froze on the threshold, head pounding. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

Knox snatched a Scotty dog from the mantelpiece and drew his arm back to send it flying. Logan stepped forward and grabbed it off him.

‘All right, that’s enough!’

Knox span around, eyes wide and shiny. Lips twitching across his gritted teeth. ‘Give it back!’

‘Constable Guthrie?’

Guthrie bumbled into the living room, clutching greasy paper bags from the baker’s they’d stopped at on the way over here, a wodge of flaky pastry in his other hand. ‘What?’

‘Lying…’ Knox’s eyes darted left, then right, then he snatched up a fishing teddy bear and sent that flying instead. ‘BASTARDS!’

The constable dumped his baked goods on the ancient couch and grabbed Knox’s arm, twisting it up behind his back, then slamming him into the wall. ‘Behave yourself!’

Knox struggled, screaming abuse. Guthrie glanced over at Logan, and got the nod. He pulled Knox back a couple of feet, then rammed him forwards again. Making the photos above the mantelpiece rattle.

‘Aaagh … get off us!’

‘You want another one?’

Knox didn’t reply, but he did keep wriggling, so Guthrie introduced him to the wallpaper again.

This time the struggling stopped.

‘You want the handcuffs?’

Silence.

‘OK.’ The constable let go and stepped back.

Knox staggered towards one of the cat-shredded armchairs and collapsed into it, rubbing his wrist and staring at the dead television. ‘Liars…’

The woman crept around from behind the sofa. ‘Thanks.’ There were little flecks of white china in her hair.

Logan pulled out his notebook. ‘Richard Knox, I’m arresting you for assault. You do not have to say anything, but if you fail to mention—’

‘I didn’t assault anyone.’ He kept his eyes on the ghosts in the TV screen.

Logan glanced at the woman, raised his eyebrows.

She shook her head. ‘Didn’t touch me.’

‘Where’s your partner? Thought there was supposed to be two of you.’

Knox shifted in his seat, muttering, ‘Got me rights…’

‘Harry’s stuck in the bog. Had a dodgy chicken chow mein last night. I was going to send him home if he doesn’t get any better.’

Logan looked around at the wreckage, then rubbed at his gritty eyes. ‘You want to tell me what the hell this was about then?’

She pointed at a tattered copy of the Aberdeen Examiner lying against the skirting board. Half the pages were sprawled across the carpet, but the lead story was clearly visible from where Logan stood: ‘SEX-BEAST STRIKES FEAR INTO COMMUNITY’. The photo of Knox was more up to date than the last one the papers used. Someone had been digging.

Logan bent down and picked up the front page, letting the rest of it fall back to the floor.

Exclusive by Colin Miller

Everyone knows a leopard can’t change his spots: once a dangerous animal, always a dangerous animal, but the people of Aberdeenshire are being expected to believe that convicted serial rapist Richard Knox can live amongst them without posing a serious risk to the population. Knox (39), a vicious sexual predator, served eight years in a high-security prison for the brutal abduction and rape of Newcastle grandfather William Brucklay (68)…

It wasn’t exactly the journalist’s best work. Sensationalist, melodramatic, and obviously designed to whip up outrage and panic. Further in it got even worse, with quotes from people in Newcastle, and William Brucklay’s grandchildren: teenagers more than happy to share the family’s anger. Castration’s too good for him, they should bring back hanging. That kind of thing.

And in Richard Knox’s case, they were probably right.

Logan folded the page up, then dumped it on the coffee table.

Knox was clutching his carrier bag again, the thing rustling as he rocked back and forth in his seat, muttering. ‘It’s all lies.’

‘All of it?’

‘“Convicted serial rapist”.’ He scowled at the TV. ‘Was convicted of one rape. One. Not a series. Served me time. Found God, didn’t I?’

‘Well…’ Logan looked at the chunky woman from Sacro – Margaret, Marge? Something like that. ‘Maybe you’d be better off trying your luck somewhere else? We could organize a midnight flit: get you somewhere further away, where they don’t know you. Devon, Cornwall, something like that?’

Get you the hell out of Aberdeen before you cause any more trouble, you creepy little bastard.

‘This is me home!’ Knox drew back his foot, then lashed out, crashing his heel into the TV screen, shattering it, sending the whole thing clattering over backwards to the floor.

Marge/Margaret flinched. Swore.

PC Guthrie loomed over Knox. ‘All right, on your feet.’

The man didn’t even look up at him, just sat there, clutching his foot. ‘What you going to do, like, arrest us for smashing me own telly? Bloody thing didn’t work anyway.’

The constable flopped his hands about for a moment. ‘Sarge?’

Logan shrugged. ‘He’s got a point.’

Knox closed his eyes, lips pinched tight, breathing in and out through his pointy nose. Then stood, and knelt in front of the ancient electric fire, head bowed, hands clasped together. Mouth moving silently.

They left him to it.

‘Tell you.’ Margaret/Marge filled a new-looking kettle in the sink, and plugged it in. ‘He’s really starting to creep me out.’

Logan shrugged. ‘Sex offenders can be a bit—’

‘Trust me, I know sex offenders. Did six years as a prison officer in Peterhead, I’ve seen every flavour of mong and stot you can think of and none of them weirded me out like Knox.’ She picked four mugs off the draining board and sniffed them, then plopped a teabag in each. ‘There was this one guy done for snatching women off the streets – blondes usually – bundled them into the back of an old van with the windows blacked out. Liked to rape them while he burned them with the cigarette lighter. Apparently nipples were a particular favourite. Never looked you in the eye when he spoke, always stared right here…’ She pointed at her not inconsiderable breasts. ‘You just knew he was thinking about it: the smell, the sizzling sound. The screams.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yeah, and even he wasn’t as creepy as Knox.’

She rinsed a teaspoon under the tap, peering at Logan out the corner of her eye. ‘So … what happened to your face?’

Logan reached up and touched his right cheek. The skin was all swollen and tender. ‘Cut myself shaving.’

‘Right…’

The sound of flushing came from upstairs.

Marge/Margaret looked up and smiled. ‘Harry’s arse must be in tatters by now.’