Cold granite

27

By the time Logan climbed out of bed and into the shower, Sunday was tearing at the windows of his flat with wintry fingers. Snow, coming down in small icy flakes, whipped back and forth in the gusting wind. It was cold, it was dark, and it was no longer the day of rest he'd been promised.

Struggling into a grey suit, with matching expression, Logan doddered around his warm home, trying to put off the moment when he'd have to step out into the bloody awful weather. And then the phone went: the inimitable Colin Miller looking for his exclusive.

Logan grumbled his way down the communal stairs to the building's front door. Half a ton of flying ice tried to get in as he struggled his way out into the frigid morning. The snow attacked him like frozen razorblades, slashing at his exposed face and hands, making his cheeks and ears sting.

The day was dark as a lawyer's soul.

Miller's flash motor was waiting for him at the kerb, the interior lights on, something classical blaring out through the glass as the reporter hunched over a broadsheet newspaper. Logan slammed the apartment door shut, not caring if he woke his neighbours. Why the hell should he be the only one up and about on a crappy day like this? He slipped and slithered his way around the car to the passenger seat, bringing a flurry of icy, white flakes with him.

'Watch the leather!' Miller had to shout over the opera blaring from the car's stereo. He cranked down the volume a bit as the thin crust of snow slowly defrosted on Logan's heavy overcoat.

'What, no rowies today?' asked Logan, wiping ice out of his hair before it could turn into a frigid trickle down the back of his neck.

'Think I'm goin' tae let you spill greasy crumbs all over my nice new motor? This interview goes well an' I'll buy yous an Egg McMuffin. OK?'

Logan told him he'd sooner eat a deep-fried turd. 'And how come you can afford a flash car like this? Thought all you reporters lived in penury.'

'Aye, well,' Miller shrugged and pulled away from the kerb. 'I did this bloke a favour once. Didn't publish a story…'

Logan raised an eyebrow, but Miller wouldn't say any more.

Traffic was light at this time on a Sunday morning, but the weather slowed what little there was down to a crawl. Miller slotted his car in behind a once-white truck, the top covered with a foot of icy snow, the rest of it covered with three inches of dirt. Some wag had scrawled the usual 'I WISH MY WIFE WAS THIS DIRTY' and 'WASH ME' in the grime. The writing glowed in Miller's headlights as they slowly made their way across town to Summerhill.

The safe house didn't look any different to the others in the street: just another concrete box with a small garden out front, buried under a growing blanket of white. Asagging willow tree stood forlorn in the middle, bent under the weight of snow and ice.

'Right,' said Miller, parking behind a battered Renault. 'Let's go get us an exclusive.' The reporter's attitude towards Roadkill had changed dramatically since Logan told him about the road accident. Bernard Duncan Philips was no longer to be strung up by his balls until they popped. Now he was a victim of society's disposable culture, in which the mentally ill could be thrown out into the community to fend for themselves.

Bernard Duncan Philips was roused from his bed by a large, plainclothes policewoman and prodded downstairs to perform for the reporter. Miller's questioning technique was good, making Roadkill feel relaxed and important, while a snazzy digital recorder whirled silently in the middle of a coffee table that had seen better days. They went over his glittering academic career, ruined by his mother's ill health, then delicately tiptoed around the descent into mental illness and the death of Mrs Roadkill Senior, God rest her soul. There was nothing there Logan hadn't got from the files, so he spent his time drinking over-strong tea, poured from a cracked brown pot. And counting the roses on the wallpaper. And the blue silk bows. Between the pink stripes.

It wasn't until Miller got onto the subject of Lorna Henderson, the dead girl in steading number two, that Logan started paying attention again.

But, good though he was, Miller wasn't getting that much more out of his subject than DI Insch had. The whole topic made Roadkill twitchy. Agitated.

It wasn't right. They were his dead things. They were taking them away.

'Come on now, Bernard,' said the plainclothes WPC, womanning the teapot again. 'There's no need to get excited, is there?'

'My things. They're stealing my things!' He jumped to his feet, sending a plate of chocolate digestives clattering to the ground. A pair of wild eyes darted at Logan. 'You're a policeman! They're stealing my things!'

Logan tried not to sigh. 'They have to take them away, Bernard. You remember we came round with the man from the council? They were making people sick. Like your mum. Remember?'

Roadkill screwed up his eyes tight. Teeth gritted. Fists pressed hard against his forehead. 'I want to go home! They're my things!'

The large policewoman put down the teapot and made soothing noises, as if the grubby, ranting man was a small child with a skinned knee. 'Shoosh, shoosh,' she said, stroking Roadkill's arm with a plump hand covered in rings. 'It's all right. Everything will be all right. You'll be safe here with us. We won't let anything happen to you.'

Slowly, uncertainly, Bernard Duncan Philips sat back down on the edge of his seat, his left foot crunching a chocolate digestive to crumbs on the carpet.

But the interview went downhill from there. No matter how clever, or careful, Miller's questions were they still managed to upset Roadkill. And he just kept coming back to the same thing, time and time again: he wanted to go home: they were stealing his things. Aberdeen beach was desolate and freezing. The North Sea raged, dark grey, between the whipping curtains of snow. The boom of granite-coloured waves smashing into the concrete beachfront punctuated the howling storm, sending spray twenty feet into the air, where the wind threw it against the shopfronts.

Most of the businesses hadn't bothered opening this morning. It wasn't as if there was going to be a lot of passing trade for the tourist shops, amusement arcades and ice-cream parlours. But Miller and Logan were ensconced at a window table in the Inversnecky Cafe, wolfing down smoky bacon butties and drinking strong coffee.

'Well that was a waste of bloody time,' said Miller, picking a rubber band of bacon fat from his roll. 'You should be buyin' me breakfast after that. No the other way around.'

'You must've got something!'

Miller shrugged and curled the fat into the unused ashtray. 'Aye: he's off his friggin' trolley. I got that loud and bloody clear. Mind you, no exactly news, is it?'

'I'm not looking for much,' said Logan. 'Just something that lets everyone know he didn't kill that little girl. He didn't do it so we had to let him go.'

The reporter wrapped himself around a large bite, chewing thoughtfully. 'Your bosses must be bricking it if they've asked you to come beggin' for a puff piece.'

Logan opened and shut his mouth.

Miller winked at him. 'It's OK, Laz, I can run with this. Give it the patented Colin Miller Midas Touch. We slap a copy of the X-rays on the front cover. Get the graphics department to knock us up some "kiddie gets smacked by Volvo" pictures. Bob's your uncle. But that's no going to come out till Monday. You see the telly this mornin'? They're havin' a field day. Your pantomime dame's going to be out of a job by then. Letting Roadkill go. Twice.'

'He didn't kill that kid.'

'That's no the point, Laz. The public sees all these nasty things happenin': dead boys in ditches, dead lassies in bin-bags, children abducted left, right and centre. Cleaver goes free, even though we all know he did it. And now Roadkill's out too.' He ripped another bite from his buttie. 'As far as they're concerned he's guilty.'

'But he didn't do it!'

'No one gives a toss about the truth any more. You know that, Laz.'

Gloomily Logan had to admit that he did. They sat and ate in silence.

'So how's your other story coming?' he asked at last.

'Which one?'

'When you told me you were backing off Geordie No-Knees you said you had safer fish to fry.'

The reporter took a slurp of coffee. 'Oh aye. That.' Miller paused, gazing out through the window at the snow and the waves and the battling sea. 'No that well.' He lapsed into silence.

Logan let the pause go on for long enough to make sure the details weren't going to come out of their own accord. 'Well? What was it?'

'Hmm?' Miller dragged his attention back into the cafe. 'Oh right. There's this rumour that there's a bloke in the market for somethin' special. Somethin' no many people sell.'

'Drugs?'

The reporter shook his head. 'Nah. Livestock.'

Well that sounded bloody daft. 'What? Pigs and chickens and cows and things?'

'No that kind of livestock.'

Logan sat back in his seat and examined the taciturn reporter. His face, usually an open book, was closed and lined. 'So what kind of livestock is this buyer after?'

Miller shrugged.

'Difficult to tell. No one's sayin' bugger all. Nothin' that makes sense anyway. Maybe a woman, man, boy, girl…'

'You can't just buy people!'

The look Miller gave Logan was a mixture of pity and contempt. 'You sail up the Clyde in a banana skin? Course you can bloody buy people! Take a stroll down the right streets in Edinburgh and you can buy anythin' you like. Guns, drugs. Women too.' He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper. 'Did I no tell you Malk the Knife imports tarts from Lithuania? What you think he does with them?'

'I thought he hired them out…'

Miller laughed sourly. 'Aye he does. Hires and sells. You get discount on the shop-soiled ones.'

The disbelieving look on Logan's face made him sigh. 'Look: most of the times it's pimps doin' the buyin'. One of your tarts pops an overdose so off you go to Malkie's Cash amp; Carry. Get yourself a replacement. One nearly-new Lithuanian whore at bargain basement prices.'

'Jesus!'

'Most of the poor bitches can't even speak English. They get bought, hooked on smack, hired out, used up and chucked back on the street when they're too skanky to turn a decent trick.'

They sat in silence, just the dull hiss of the cappuccino machine and the faint sounds of the storm outside filtering through the double-glazing. Logan wasn't going back to the office. That's what he told himself when Miller dropped him off at the Castlegate. He was going to nip along to Oddbins, pick up a couple of bottles of wine, some beer, and then settle down in front of the fire in the flat. Book, wine, and a carryout for tea.

But he still found himself standing in the dreary front lobby of Force Headquarters, dripping melting snow onto the linoleum.

As usual there was a pile of messages from Peter Lumley's stepfather. Logan did his best not to think about them. It was Sunday: he wasn't even supposed to be here. And he couldn't face another of those desperate phone calls. So instead he sat at his desk staring at the picture of Geordie Stephenson. Trying to read something in those dead eyes.

Miller's tale of women for sale had set him thinking. Someone in Aberdeen wanted to buy a woman, and here was Geordie, representing one of the biggest importers of flesh in the country, up on business. Maybe not the same business – property not prostitution – but all the same…

'You really screwed up, didn't you, Geordie?' he told the morgue photograph. 'Come all the way up from Edinburgh to do a wee job and end up floating face down in the harbour with your knees hacked off. Couldn't even manage to bribe a member of the planning department. I wonder if you told your boss someone was interested in buying himself a woman? Cash. No questions asked.'

Geordie's post mortem report was still sitting on Logan's desk, unread. What with everything that had gone on this week, there just hadn't been time. He picked the manila folder off the tabletop and started to flick through it when his phone blared into life.

'Logan.'

'Sergeant?' It was DI Insch. 'Where are you?'

'FHQ.'

'Logan, don't you have a home to go to? Didn't I tell you to take a nice WPC out and show her a good time?'

Logan smiled. 'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.'

'Well, it's too late for any of that now.'

'Sir?'

'Get your arse over to Seaton Park. I've just got the call: they've found Peter Lumley.'

Logan's heart sank. 'I see.'

'I'll be there in about…God, it's blowing a blizzard out here. Make it thirty minutes to be safe. Maybe forty. Keep it low profile, Sergeant. No blue lights, no sirens and no fuss. OK?'

'Yes, sir.'

*

Seaton Park was a pretty place in the summer – wide banks of green grass, tall mature trees, a bandstand. People picnicked on the grass, played an impromptu game of football, made love beneath the bushes. Got mugged after dark. It wasn't a stone's throw away from Aberdeen University's student halls of residence, so there was a steady stream of naive newcomers with money in their pockets.

Today it was like something out of Dr Zhivago. The sky hadn't lightened as day went on but just hung there, throwing snow down over everything.

Logan trudged across the park, trailing a PC wrapped up like an Eskimo behind him. The rotten sod was using Logan as a windbreak as they fought their way through the snow. Their goal was a low concrete building in the middle of the park, the walls on one side coated with a crust of white. The public loos were closed during the winter. Anyone caught short would have to make peecicles behind a bush. They went around the side, glad to get out of the bitter wind, to where the ladies' entrance was hidden behind a small recess.

The door was open, just a crack, the wood splintered and torn where a padlock was meant to keep it shut. Instead the big brass lock hung uselessly from its metal clasp. Logan pushed the door open and stepped into the female toilets.

It actually seemed colder in here than it had outside. A pair of uniform kept an eye on three well-wrapped-up children between the ages of six and ten, their breaths fogging the air. The kids looked excited and bored in turn.

One of the uniforms looked up from his charges. 'Cubicle number three.'

Logan nodded and went to take a look.

Peter Lumley wasn't alive any more. Logan knew it as soon as he opened the black-painted cubicle door. The child was lying on the floor, curled up around the bottom of the toilet, as if he were giving it a cuddle. The fiery red hair was dull and pale in the cold light, the freckles almost indiscernible against the waxy, blue-white skin. The little boy's T-shirt was pulled up, covering his face and arms, leaving the pale skin of his back and stomach exposed. He wasn't wearing anything else.

'You poor wee sod…'

Logan frowned, peering at the child's exposed body, unable to get any closer in case he contaminated the crime scene. Peter Lumley wasn't like the little boy they'd found in the ditch. Peter Lumley was still anatomically intact. The loos were getting a little crowded. Insch had turned up red-faced and swearing just after the duty doctor and the Identification Bureau. The IB lads had turned up, as instructed, in their own clothes, leaving the white van with all its gear in the car park next to St Machar's Cathedral where it wouldn't draw attention to itself.

As Insch stomped the snow off his boots, the IB team and everyone else struggled into their white overalls, shivering in the frigid air and bitching about how cold it was.

'So what's the score?' asked Insch as the duty doctor peeled off his paper coveralls and tried to wash his hands in one of the sinks.

'The poor little lad's dead. Dunno how long for. He's pretty much frozen solid. Weather like this plays merry hell with the old rigor mortis.'

'Cause of death?'

The doctor wiped his hands dry on the inside of his fleecy jacket. 'You'll have to get confirmation from the Ice Queen, but it looks like ligature strangulation to me.'

'Same as last time.' Insch sighed and dropped his voice so the children who weren't dead couldn't hear him. 'Any sign of sexual assault?'

The doctor nodded and Insch sighed again.

'Righty ho.' The doctor wrapped and tucked and zipped himself into his many-layered thermal insulation. 'If you don't need me any more, I'll bugger off somewhere warmer. Like Siberia.'

With death declared the IB team set about collecting everything they could get their glove-covered hands on. Lifting fibres, dusting for prints. Photographer clicking and whirring away, video operator recording everything and everyone. The only thing they didn't do was move the body. Not one of them wanted to incur the wrath of the pathologist. Isobel had got herself quite a reputation since Logan had returned to the force.

'One week today, isn't it?' asked Insch as they stood against the wall and watched the Identification Bureau work. Logan admitted that it was. Insch dug a packet of jelly babies from his coat pocket and offered them around. 'What a great bloody week it's been too,' he said, chewing. 'You thinking of taking a holiday anytime soon? Let the crime statistics get back to normal again?'

'Ha bloody ha.' Logan stuck his hands in his pockets and tried not to think about how Peter Lumley's stepfather would look when they told him what they'd found.

Insch nodded at the three children, slowly turning blue in the crowded ladies lavatory. 'What about them?'

Logan shrugged. 'They say they were out making snowmen. One of them needed a wee, so they came in here, and that's when they found the body.' He looked over at them: two girls of eight and ten and a boy, the youngest at six. Brother and sisters. They all had the same ski-jump nose and wide brown eyes.

'Poor kids,' said Insch.

'Poor kids, my arse,' said Logan. 'How do you think they got in here? Took an eight-inch screwdriver to the clasp on the door, wrenched the padlock clean off. A passing patrol caught them at it.' He pointed at the two frozen PCs. 'The little sods would have done a runner if these guys hadn't shown up and grabbed them.'

Insch switched his attention from the kids to the two uniforms. 'A passing patrol? In the middle of Seaton Park? In this weather?' He frowned. 'Sound a bit far-fetched to you?'

Logan shrugged again. 'That's their story and they're sticking to it.'

'Hmmm…'

The PCs shifted uncomfortably under Insch's gaze.

'Think anyone saw the body being dumped?' he said at last.

'No. I don't.'

Insch nodded. 'Nah, me neither.'

'Because the body wasn't dumped: it was stored. The kids had to break in. The door was padlocked with the body inside. That means the killer put the padlock on. He thought the body was safely locked away. Ready for him to come back to, whenever he felt the urge. He's not claimed his trophy.'

An evil smile spread across the inspector's face. 'That means he's coming back. We've finally got a way to catch this bastard!'

And that's when Dr Isobel MacAlister arrived, stamping into the toilets in a thick woollen coat, a flurry of snow, and a foul mood. Standing in the entranceway, she took in the scene, her face falling even further into a scowl upon seeing Logan. It looked as if she was bearing a grudge: not only had Logan ruined her evening at the theatre, he'd proved her wrong about the child being beaten to death. And Isobel was never wrong. 'Inspector,' she said, completely blanking the man she used to sleep with. 'If we can make this quick?'

Insch pointed at cubicle number three and Isobel swept off to examine the body, her Wellington boots flapping and slapping as she walked.

'Is it just me,' whispered Insch, 'or did it suddenly just get colder in here?' They broke the news to Peter Lumley's parents that evening. Mr and Mrs Lumley didn't say a word. As soon Logan and the Inspector appeared they knew. They just sat side by side on the sofa in silence, holding each other's hands as DI Insch intoned the fateful words.

Without saying a word Mr Lumley got up, picked his coat off the hook, and walked out.

His wife watched him go, waiting for the door to shut behind him, before finally bursting into tears. The Family Liaison Officer hurried over to offer her a shoulder to cry on.

Logan and Insch let themselves out.