Cold granite

19

The evening didn't go exactly as Logan had planned. WPC Jackie Watson was still at the pub when he finally got there, but she was also still smarting from his reprimand. Or maybe there was a lingering smell of Roadkill about him, even though he'd had the car windows open all the way back? 'Oh, how the stench of you clings Whatever it was, she spent most of her time speaking to the Bastard Simon Rennie and a WPC Logan didn't recognize. No one was rude to him, but they didn't exactly fall over themselves to make him feel welcome. This was supposed to be a celebration! He'd found Richard Erskine. Alive!

Logan called it a night after only two pints and sulked his way home, via the nearest chip shop.

He didn't see the dark grey Mercedes lurking under the streetlight outside his flat. Didn't see the heavy-set man get out of the driver's seat and pull on a pair of black leather gloves. Didn't see him crack his knuckles as Logan balanced the cooling fish supper in one hand while the other hunted for his keys.

'You didn't call.'

Logan almost dropped his chips.

He spun around to see Colin Miller standing with his arms crossed, leaning back against a very expensive-looking automobile, his words wreathed in fog. 'You were supposed to call me by half-four. You didn't.'

Logan groaned. He'd meant to speak to DI Insch, but somehow never got around to it. 'Yeah, well,' he said at last. 'I spoke to the DI…He didn't feel it was appropriate.' It was a barefaced lie, but Miller wouldn't know that. At least it would sound as if he'd tried.

'No appropriate?'

'He thinks I've had quite enough publicity for one week.' Might as well be hung for a lying bastard as a lamb. 'You know how it is…' He shrugged.

'No appropriate?' Miller scowled. 'I'll show him no' a-fuckin'-propriate.' He pulled out a palmtop and scribbled something onto it. The next morning started with about a dozen road traffic accidents. None of them fatal, but all blamed on the inch of snow that had fallen overnight. By half-eight the skies were gunmetal-grey and low enough to touch. Tiny flakes of white drifted down on the Granite City, melting as soon as they hit the pavements and roads. But the air smelled of snow. It had that metallic tang which meant that a heavy fall wasn't far away.

The morning's Press and Journal had hit Logan's doormat like a tombstone. Only this time the funeral wasn't his. Just his fault. Right there on the front page was a big picture of Detective Inspector Insch done up in his pantomime villain outfit. It was one of the show's publicity shots and Insch had on his best evil snarl. 'D.I. PLAYS THE FOOL WHILE OUR CHILDREN DIE' ran the headline.

'Oh God.'

Under the photo it said: 'IS PANTO REALLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN CATCHING THE PAEDOPHILE KILLER STALKING OUR STREETS?'

Colin Miller strikes again.

Standing at the sink, he read how the inspector had been 'prancing around on stage like an idiot, while local police hero Logan McRae was out searching for little Richard Erskine'. And the rest of the article went downhill from there. Miller had done a first-rate hatchet job on DI Insch. He'd made a well-respected senior police officer look like a callous bastard. There was even a quote from the Chief Superintendent saying that this was 'a very serious matter that would be thoroughly investigated'.

'Oh God.'

'COUNCIL WORKER ATTACKED BY CONCERNED PARENTS' barely made it onto page two.

*

Insch was in a foul mood at the morning briefing and everyone did their damnedest to make sure they didn't do or say anything to set him off. Today was not a good day to screw up.

As soon as the briefing was over Logan scurried away to his little incident room, doing his best not to look guilty. He only had one WPC today: the one womanning the phones. Every other available officer was going to spend today looking for little Peter Lumley. Someone had stuck a rocket up Insch's backside and he was determined to share the experience. So it would be just Logan, the WPC, and the list of possible names.

The team he'd had working their way through Social Services' 'at risk' register had turned up exactly nothing. All the little girls were right where they should have been. Some of them had 'walked into the door' and one had 'fallen down the stairs after burning herself on the iron', but they were all still alive. A couple of the parents were now facing charges.

But that wasn't the only thing Logan had to worry about now. Helping DI Steel on the Geordie Stephenson inquiry seemed to consist of DI Steel smoking lots of cigarettes while Logan did all the work.

There was a new map of Aberdeen pinned to the wall, this one covered with little blue-and-green pins marking every bookmaker in town. The blue ones were 'safe' – not the kind of place that took your kneecaps if you failed to pay up. The green ones were kneecap territory. The Turf 'n Track was marked in red. So was the harbour where they dragged the body out of the water. And next to it was a post mortem head-and-shoulders photo of Geordie Stephenson.

He wasn't much to look at. Not now he was dead anyway. The bouffant hairstyle was all flattened to his head and the porn-star moustache stood out, heavy and black, against the waxy skin. It was odd, but seeing the dead man's photograph Logan got the feeling he'd seen him somewhere before.

According to the information Lothian and Borders Police had sent up, Geordie Stephenson had been quite a character in his youth. Assault mostly. A bit of collecting for small loan sharks. Breaking and entering. It wasn't until he started working for Malk the Knife that he stopped getting caught. Malk was very particular about his employees staying out of prison.

'How'd you get on then?' It was DI Steel, hands rammed deep in the pockets of her grey trouser suit. Yesterday's ash-coated blouse was gone, replaced by something shimmery in gold. The bags under her eyes were a deep, saggy purple.

'Not too great,' Logan plonked himself down on the desk and offered the inspector a chair. She sank into it with a sigh and a small fart. Logan pretended not to hear.

'Go on then.'

'OK.' Logan pointed at the map. 'We went through all the bookies marked in green. The only one that looks likely is this one-' he poked the red pin, 'Turf 'n Track-'

'Simon and Colin McLeod. Lovely pair of lads.'

'Not as lovely as their clientele. We got to meet one of their regulars: Dougie MacDuff.'

'Shite! You're fucking kidding me!' She pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. They looked as if she'd sat on them. 'Dirty Doug, Dougie the Dog…' she excavated a slightly flattened fag from the pack. 'What else did they use to call him?'

'Desperate Doug?'

'Right. Desperate Doug. After he choked that guy with a rolled-up copy of the Dandy. You'd've still been in nappies.' She shook her head. 'Fuck me. Those were the days. I thought he was dead.'

'Got out of Barlinnie three months ago. Four years for crippling a builder's merchant with a ratchet screwdriver.'

'At his age? Good old Desperate Doug.' She popped the cigarette in her mouth, and was at the point of lighting it when the WPC on the phones gave a meaningful cough and pointed at the 'No Smoking' sign. Steel shrugged and stuffed the offending fag in her top pocket. 'So how's he looking these days?'

'Like a wrinkly old man.'

'Aye? Shame. He was fucking tasty in his day. Quite the lady-killer. But we couldn't prove it.' She drifted off into silence, her eyes focused on the past. Eventually she sighed and came back to the here and now. 'So you think the McLeod brothers are our likely lads?'

Logan nodded. He'd read their files again. Hacking off someone's kneecaps with a machete was right up their street. The McLeods had always been hands-on when it came to debt control. 'Problem's going to be proving it. There's no way in hell either of them's going to admit killing Geordie and dumping him in the harbour. We need a witness, or some forensic evidence.'

Steel dragged herself out of the chair and gave an expansive yawn. 'Up all night shagging, you know,' she said with a conspiratorial wink. 'Get on to Forensics: have them run every bloody test they've got. And it wouldn't hurt to take another look at the body. It's still in the morgue.'

Logan stiffened. That meant having to speak to Isobel again.

DI Steel must have seen him flinch, because she laid a nicotine-stained hand on his shoulder. 'I know it's not going to be easy. Not now she's got herself a bit of rough. But to fuck with her! You've got a job to do.'

Logan opened and closed his mouth. He didn't know she was seeing someone else. Not already. Not when he was still on his own.

The inspector stuffed her hands back in her trouser pockets, clasping the squashed packet of cigarettes. 'Got to go. Fucking bursting for a fag. Oh, and if you see DI Insch: tell him I liked his picture in the papers this morning.' Another wink. 'Very sexy.' Detective Inspector Insch didn't look very sexy when Logan saw him next. He was riding the elevator down from the top floor. And that meant a meeting with the Chief Constable. Insch's nice new suit was stained darker grey under the arms and down the back.

'Sir,' said Logan. Trying not to make eye contact.

'They want me to give up the pantomime.' His voice was low and flat.

Guilt stampeded up Logan's back until it sat on top of his head, like a big sign saying: 'I DID IT! IT WAS ME!!!'

'The Chief Constable thinks it's not conducive to the image Grampian Police wants to portray. Says they can't afford to have that kind of negative publicity associated with a major murder enquiry…Either the panto goes, or I do.' He looked as if someone had pulled the stopper out, leaving him to slowly deflate. This was not the DI Insch Logan knew. And it was all his fault. 'How long have I been doing Christmas panto for? Twelve, thirteen years? Never been a bloody problem before…'

'Maybe they'll forget all about it?' tried Logan. 'You know, when it all blows over. This time next year no one will remember a thing.'

Insch nodded, but he didn't sound convinced. 'Perhaps.' He mashed his features round in a circle with his podgy hands. 'God, I'm going to have to tell Annie I can't go on tonight.'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

Insch tried a brave smile. 'Don't be, Logan. It's not your fault. It's that bastard Colin Miller.' The forced smile turned into a scowl. 'Next time you see him you tell him I'm going to rip his bloody head off and crap down his neck.' The morgue was quiet, just the hum of the air conditioning breaking the silence. All the dead bodies had been tidied away, the dissecting tables lying empty and sparkling beneath the overhead lights. Not only were there no dead people in here, there were no living ones either.

Gingerly, Logan made his way across to the wall of refrigerated drawers. One by one he read the name cards on the drawer doors, looking for George Stephenson. He stopped when he reached the one marked 'UNKNOWN FEMALE CAUCASIAN CHILD: APPROX 4 YEARS OLD', one hand on the cool metal drawer handle. The poor wee sod was lying in there, cold and dead without even a name.

'Sorry.' It was all he could think of to say.

He worked his way along the row. There was no sign of a George Stephenson, but there was an 'UNKNOWN MALE CAUCASIAN: APPROX 35 YEARS'. DI Steel hadn't told the morgue they'd IDed the body yet. Something else for Logan to do. He unlatched the drawer and pulled it open.

Lying on the flat steel surface of the drawer was a large, dead man, in a white plastic body-bag. Gritting his teeth, Logan pulled on the zip.

The head and shoulders that appeared from the bag were the same as the photo pinned up on Logan's incident room wall. Only the real thing had a wrinklier look to it, as if someone had peeled the face down from the top of the head so they could open the skull with a bone-saw and extract the brain. The skin was waxy and pallid, deep purple bruises marking where the blood had pooled and congealed after death. There was another bruise on the left temple. In the photograph Logan always thought it was just a shadow.

The main attraction was still hidden.

He pulled the zip all the way down, exposing a naked body that had been past its prime even when it was alive. According to Lothian and Borders Police, Geordie had been a keep-fit fanatic in his younger days. Someone who took a lot of pride in his appearance. The man on the slab had a beer belly, his thick forearms and shoulders more fat than muscle. Even without the pallor of death he would have been pasty white. Milk-bottle skin, with moles and a faint scarlet rash.

And no kneecaps. Both hairy legs had ragged holes in them where a normal person would keep their knees. The flesh was torn and tattered around the joint, yellow bone poking through the mess of hacked-up tissue. Whoever had done this hadn't been bothered about making a tidy job of it. This was unelective surgery by enthusiasm rather than skill.

Logan's eyes moved past the gore. There were distinct ligature marks around both ankles. The wrists too. Angry bruises, torn skin. The signs of a struggle. He winced. From the look of things Geordie had been tied up and awake while one of the McLeod boys took his kneecaps off. Hack after hack. And George Stephenson had been a big lad. He would've put up one hell of a fight. So it was both McLeods: Colin and Simon. One to hold him down, the other to wield the machete.

There were other marks too. Contusions, scrapes, damage from floating about in the harbour all night. What looked like teeth-marks.

Logan hadn't read the post mortem report yet, but he recognized bite-marks when he saw them. He squatted down beside the body and peered at the indentations. Dark purple weals in the pale skin. Slightly irregular, as if a few teeth were missing. He didn't think of the McLeods as being biters. Not Simon anyway. Colin? There always was something not right about that boy, from the moment he'd jammed a live cat onto the railings surrounding Union Terrace Gardens to the time he'd been caught taking a crap on his grandmother's tombstone. Not right. And he didn't have a full set of choppers, due to a bottle fight in a karaoke bar. He'd have to get Forensics to make a cast of the bite. See if they couldn't match it up to Colin McLeod's dental records.

The door banged behind him and he straightened up to see Isobel deep in conversation with her assistant, Brian, who finished saying something and made a big, expansive gesture with his hands. Isobel threw back her head and laughed.

Oh Brian, you're so damn funny with your floppy girl's hair and your massive nose. Was this the bit of rough DI Steel was talking about? Even with his stomach full of stitches Logan could kick the shite out of him in two minutes flat. How was that for rough?

Isobel stopped laughing as soon as she saw him standing there over the naked body of Geordie Stephenson. 'Hello?' she said, flushing slightly.

'I have an ID for this gentleman.' Logan's voice was slightly less warm than the corpse.

'Ah, right…' She looked at him, then at the body laid out on the slab. She gestured to her assistant. 'Well…Brian will be able to help you.' She flashed a brittle smile, and then she was gone.

Brian took down George Stephenson's details, scribbling them down in a little pad. Logan was finding it very difficult to keep his voice polite and even. Was this little shite of a man screwing Isobel? Did she make those small mewing noises for him?

Brian spiked the last full stop with a flourish and popped the pad back in his jacket. 'Oh, and before you go I've got something for you…' he said.

Logan had the sudden feeling he was going to pull a pair of Isobel's panties out of his pocket but instead Brian crossed the room and picked a large manila envelope out of the internal mail tray.

'Bloodwork on your unknown four-year-old girl. Some interesting stuff in there.' He handed the envelope over then busied himself zipping up Geordie's body-bag and tidying the corpse away while Logan flipped through the report.

Brian wasn't kidding. It was very interesting. In the canteen at lunchtime there was only one topic of conversation: was DI Insch for the chop? Logan ate in silence at a table as far away from everyone else as possible. The lasagne tasted like damp newspaper to him.

A wave of silence went through the room and Logan looked up to see DI Insch walking up to the counter for his usual: scotch broth, macaroni cheese and chips, jam sponge and custard.

'Please God,' said Logan under his breath, 'let him sit somewhere else…'

But Insch took one look round the canteen, fixed his eyes on Logan and made a beeline for his table.

'Afternoon, sir.' Logan pushed the half-eaten lasagne away.

To his immense relief DI Insch just grunted a hello and started in on his soup. And when that was all gone he launched himself at the macaroni, drowning the chips in salt and vinegar, smothering the cheesy pasta with black pepper. Munch, munch, munch.

Logan felt daft, just sitting there, watching the inspector eat. So he poked at his lasagne with a fork. Breaking down the layers into a big homogeneous mush. 'Got the bloodwork back on the little dead girl,' he said at last. 'She was pumped full of painkillers. Temazepam mostly.'

Insch's eyebrow shot up.

'It wasn't enough to kill her. Not an overdose or anything, but it looked like she'd been on them for a while. The lab thinks it would have kept her spaced out. Docile.'

The last of the pasta disappeared into Insch and a chip used to mop up the remaining, vinegar-laced, cheese sauce. He chewed thoughtfully. 'Interesting,' he said at last. 'Anything else?'

'She had TB at some point.'

'Now we're getting somewhere.' Insch stacked his empty plate on top of the soup bowl and pulled his dessert to centre stage. 'Not that many places in the UK you can still catch TB. Get onto the health boards. It's a notifiable disease. If our girl had it she'll be on their lists.' He scooped up a spoonful of custard and sponge, a smile on his lips. 'About bloody time we got some good luck.'

Logan didn't say anything.