Cold granite

31

Sunset painted the sky above Rosemount in violent orange and scarlet flames. From street level, hemmed in on all sides by long lines of grey three-storey tenements, it was only visible as ribbons of iridescent colour. Here and there sulphurous-yellow streetlights flickered and hummed in the crisp December air, giving the buildings a jaundiced pallor. It wasn't even five o'clock yet.

Against all the odds WPC Watson had managed to find them a parking spot in front of the building Norman Chalmers lived in. The communal bin stood directly in front of the front door. It was a large black barrel, chest height, flattened at the sides and chained to a post. That was where the girl must have been dumped. Where the scaffies collected her from, taking her body to the council tip along with all the other garbage.

Forensics had been all over the bin and come up with nothing except the fact that someone in the building was into leather-fetish pornography.

'How many buildings we going to do?' asked Watson, balancing a pile of statements against the steering wheel.

'Start from the middle and work out. Three buildings each side: that's seven buildings. Six flats in each…'

'Forty-two flats? God, it'll take us for ever!'

'Then there's the other side of the road.'

Watson looked up at the building next to her, then back at Logan. 'Can we not get some uniforms in to do it?'

Logan smiled. 'You are uniform, remember?'

'Yeah, but I'm doing something: driving you about and all that. This'll take ages!'

'Longer we sit here, longer it'll take.'

They started with the building Chalmers lived in.

Ground floor left: an old lady with shifty eyes, urine-yellow hair and breath that stank of sherry. She refused to open the door until Logan had shoved his warrant card through the letterbox and she'd phoned the police station just to make sure he wasn't one of these paedophiles she'd heard about. Logan didn't point out she was about ninety years safe from people like that.

Ground floor right: four students, two of whom were still asleep. No one had seen or heard anything. Too busy studying. 'My arse,' said Watson. 'Fascist,' said the student.

First floor left: timid single woman with big glasses and bigger teeth. No she hadn't seen anyone or heard anything and wasn't it all simply dreadful?

First floor right: no answer.

Top floor left: unmarried mother and three-year-old child. Another case of see, hear and speak no evil. Logan got the feeling you could commit regicide in her bathroom while she was taking a bath, and she'd still swear she'd seen nothing.

Top floor right: Norman Chalmers. His story hadn't changed. They had no right to harass him like this. He was going to call his lawyer.

And back out onto the street again.

'Well,' said Logan, stuffing his hands into his pockets to keep out the chill. 'Six down, seventy-eight to go.'

Watson groaned.

'Never mind.' Logan gave her a smile. 'If you're very, very good I'll buy you a pint when we've finished.'

That seemed to cheer her up a bit and Logan was on the verge of adding an invitation to dinner when he caught sight of his reflection in the car windscreen. It was too dark to make out much detail on the building behind him, but the windows shone like cats' eyes in the dark mirror of glass. All of them.

He turned and stared up at the building. Every single window on the front of the building was ablaze. Even the supposedly empty first floor right flat. As he watched a face appeared at the window, staring down at the street. For a heartbeat their eyes met and then the face was gone, wearing a terrified expression. A very familiar face.

'Well, well, well…' Logan patted WPC Watson on the shoulder. 'Looks like we have ourselves a contender.'

Back inside, Watson pounded on the door of the offending flat. 'Come on: we know you're in there. We saw you!'

Logan leaned back against the banister and watched her bash at the black-painted door. He'd brought the pile of statements in with him and was flicking through them, looking for the one that fitted the address. First floor right, number seventeen…A Mr Cameron Anderson. Who came from Edinburgh and made ROVs.

WPC Watson mashed her thumb on the doorbell again, still hammering away with her other hand. 'If you don't open this door I'm going to break the damn thing down!'

All this racket out in the hall and not a single face peeked out from the other flats to see what was going on. So much for a sense of community.

Two minutes and still the door remained resolutely shut. Logan was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. 'Kick it in.'

'What?' Watson turned and whispered loudly at him, the words hissing out. 'We don't have a warrant! We can't just break down the door! I was only bluffing-'

'Kick it in. Now.'

WPC Watson took a step back and slammed her foot into the door, just below the lock. With an explosive bang the door flew open, slamming into the flat's hall and bouncing back, rattling photographs in their frames. They rushed in, Watson into the lounge, Logan taking the bedroom. No one.

Like Chalmers's flat, upstairs, there wasn't a door on the kitchen but it was empty anyway. That only left the bathroom and it was locked.

Logan rattled the door, banging the flat of his hand on the wooden door. 'Mr Anderson?'

From inside came the sound of sobbing and running water.

'Damn.' He gave the door one last try before asking Watson for a repeat performance.

She nearly kicked it off its hinges.

Clouds of steam billowed out into the tiny hallway. Inside, the small bathroom was clad in wood, like a sauna, partially concealing a nasty avocado suite. The room was just big enough for the bath to fit along the far wall, on the other side of the toilet, a shower rigged up over it, the curtain drawn.

Logan yanked the curtain open to reveal a fully-dressed man on his knees in the rising water, hacking away at his wrists with a broken disposable razor. They took Mr Anderson directly to A amp;-E, without waiting for an ambulance. The hospital was less than five minutes away. They wrapped his wrists in layers of fluffy towels before stuffing them into discarded plastic carrier bags from the kitchen so he wouldn't bleed all over the car.

Cameron Anderson hadn't done a very good job of killing himself. The cuts weren't deep enough to fully open the veins, and he'd gone across, rather than down their length. A few stitches and a night's observation was all he needed. Logan smiled as he was told the news and promised the nurse that Mr Anderson would get all the observation he needed in a cell back at Force Headquarters. She looked at him as if he should be scraped off her shoe.

'What the hell is wrong with you?' she demanded. 'That poor man has just tried to kill himself!'

'He's a suspect in a murder enquiry-' was as far as Logan got before she scowled in recognition at him.

'I know you! You're that one was here yesterday! The one beat up that old man!'

'I don't have time for this. Where is he?'

She crossed her arms and refocused her scowl.

'If you don't leave I'm calling security.'

'Good for you. Then we'll see how you get on with a charge of obstruction. OK?'

Logan brushed past her heading into the row of curtained-off cubicles. He identified the one Anderson was in by the sound of snivelling in an Edinburgh accent.

The man sat on the edge of the examination bed, rocking back and forth, crying to himself, snatches of words escaping through the tears. Logan pushed his way through the curtains and sat on a black plastic chair opposite the bed. Watson followed him in, taking up position in the corner, notebook at the ready.

'Hello again, Mr Anderson,' said Logan in his best friendly voice. 'Or can I call you Cameron?'

The man didn't look up. A small patch of red had seeped through the bandage on his left wrist. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

'Cameron, I've been wondering about something,' said Logan. 'You see, there was this bloke who came up from Edinburgh and ended up in the harbour. We put his picture in all the papers and stuck posters up all over the shop, but no one came forward. Seems they didn't like the way his kneecaps were hacked off with a machete.'

At the words 'hacked off Mr Anderson flinched. 'Machete' elicited an anguished moan.

'Now the thing that confuses me, Cameron, is that you never gave us a call. I mean you must have seen the picture. It was on the news and everything.' Logan pulled a rectangle of paper from his pocket, unfolding it into a photograph of Geordie Stephenson from when he was alive. He'd been carrying it about since they'd done their tour of Aberdeen's seedier bookies. He held it up in front of the weeping man. 'You do recognize him, don't you?'

Anderson's eyes flashed up to the photograph then back to the stain on his bandage. In that swiftest of glimpses Logan knew he'd been right. Cameron Anderson and Geordie Stephenson. They didn't share the same surname, but they shared the same heavy features, the same bouffant hair. The only thing missing was the porn-star moustache.

Anderson said something, but it was too low and muffled to make out.

Logan laid the photograph on the floor, positioning it so Geordie's dead eyes stared up at the man on the bed. 'Why'd you try to kill yourself, Cameron?'

'Thought you were him.' The words were mumbled rather than spoken, but at least this time they were audible.

'Him who?'

Anderson shivered. 'Him. The old man.'

'Describe him.'

'Old. Grey.' He made scratchy, claw-like gestures at his throat. 'Tattoos. One eye all white. Like a poached egg.'

Logan settled back. 'Why him, Cameron? What does he want with you?'

'Geordie was my brother. The old man…he…' One hand went up to his mouth. He started methodically biting the nails on each finger down to the quick. 'He came to the flat. Told Geordie he had a message for him. From Mr McLennan.'

'Mr McLennan? Malk the Knife?' Logan scooted forward in his chair. 'What was the message?'

'I let him in and he hit Geordie with something. And then he started kicking him when he was on the ground.' Red-rimmed eyes darted imploringly at Logan. Tears tumbled down the pasty cheeks. 'I tried to stop him, but he hit me…' That explained the bruise he'd been sporting the day he'd let them into the building.

'What was the message, Cameron?' The mysterious message that Simon McLeod said all of Aberdeen knew about. Everyone except the police.

'He spat on me…' A sob escaped, followed by a silvery trail that leaked out of Cameron's nose. 'He dragged Geordie out of the flat. He said he'd be back for me! I thought you were him!'

Logan examined the man sitting in front of him, rocking back and forward on the edge of the bed, eyes and nose running freely. He was lying. He'd looked out his front window and seen Logan and WPC Watson standing in the street. He knew it wasn't Desperate Doug back to finish him off. 'What was the message?'

Cameron waved a hand in random circles, the red smudge on his bandaged wrist growing ever larger. 'I don't know. He just said he was coming back!'

'What about the little girl?' Logan asked.

Anderson acted as if Logan had slapped him across the face. It took him a good ten seconds to recover enough to say, 'Girl?'

'The girl, Cameron. The one that ended up dead, wearing a bin-bag belonging to your upstairs neighbour. You remember her? A nice man from the police came round and took your statement.'

Anderson bit his lip and wouldn't meet Logan's eyes.

They couldn't get anything more out of him. Instead they all sat there in silence until a pair of uniformed constables arrived to take him away. The PC guarding Desperate Doug MacDuff's room was halfway through his novel when Logan and WPC Watson turned up at the door. He'd had a boring day, except for flirting with a couple of the nurses. Logan sent him off to fetch coffees again.

Doug's room was buried in semidarkness, the flickering television screen casting its green-and-grey glow, making shadows writhe and jump. It was like being back in the Turf 'n Track again. Only this time no one was trying to kick the living hell out of them. The only sound came from the air conditioner, the humming machinery, and the pallid, wheezing old man lying on the hospital bed, gazing up at the silent TV. Logan sat himself down at the foot of the bed again. 'Evening, Dougie,' he said with a smile in his voice. 'We brought grapes.' He plonked a paper bag on the blankets by the old man's feet.

Doug sniffed and went on staring at the television screen.

'We've just had a very interesting chat with someone, Dougie. About you.' Logan leaned forward and helped himself to a grape from the bag. In the light of the TV they looked like little gangrenous haemorrhoids. 'He's fingered you for assaulting and abducting the late Geordie Stephenson. He watched you do it! How about that, Dougie? First we get forensic evidence and now we've got a witness.'

No reaction.

Logan helped himself to another grape. 'Witness says you also killed that little girl.' It was a lie, but you never knew your luck. 'The one we found in a bin-bag.'

That took Doug's attention off the television set. He sat, propped up with half a dozen pillows, glaring at Logan with his one good eye. And then he went back to the television. 'Little fucker.'

The silence stretched out in the gloom. Lit by the TV's ghostly glow, Desperate Doug looked like a skeleton, all sunken cheeks and dark-ringed eye sockets. His teeth were still floating in a glass.

'Why'd you kill her, Dougie?'

'You know,' said the old man. His voice was low and gravelly, a whisper forced through broken glass. 'I was a fuckin' stallion when I was young. Aye, no that much younger mind. Women fallin' over themselves to get a bit of it Dougie-style. Women mind. Women. No like them sick fucks.'

Logan watched as Doug coughed: a wet, rattling sound that ended with a globule of dark phlegm being spat into a bedpan.

'I gets word Geordie's stayin' with his faggot half-brother in Rosemount. So I go round. Pay them a little visit. Geordie tries to come off all hard to start with, you know? He's the man. I'm just some old fuck. "Go home, granddad or I'll break your zimmer…" 'A toothless smile turned into a laugh that turned into another fit of coughing. Doug lay back on the mound of crunchy hospital pillows, breathing hard. 'So I kicked the shit out of him. Right there in the lounge. Then his poof-bastard-brother comes bargin' in from the bedroom, all wrapped up in this pink dressin' gown. And I'm thinking nothin' of it. You know, figure he's going for a bubble bath or some shite like that. Only I can hear somethin', like a kid cryin'.' He shook his head at the memory. 'Fucker's standing there shouting at me: "You can't come in here! You can't do this!" Like I give a shit. And I can still hear the cryin'. So I go see what it is, only poof-boy's no gettin' out of the way: "You've got no right…" 'He smacked a fist into his palm. 'Bang. There's this little girl in the bedroom. Wearin' nothin' but a fuckin' Mickey Mouse hat. You know, with the ears?' He looked at Logan for confirmation, but Logan was too shocked to answer. 'So I'm lookin' at this naked wee girl and that bastard's in there, barely dressed.' He grimaced. 'Went back in the lounge and kicked the shite out of him too. Sick bastard.'

Logan finally recovered enough to say, 'What happened to the girl?'

Desperate Doug MacDuff dropped his eyes to his hands. They lay curled in his lap like wizened talons. Arthritis, just beginning to turn the joints into swollen balls of pain. 'Aye. The girl…' He cleared his throat. 'She…came in as I'm givin' the sick bastard a goin' over. And she's foreign. You know, like German or fuckin' Norwegian. Somethin' like that. And she's lookin' up at me with these big brown eyes, an' she's cryin' and sayin' fuckin' filthy things: "I suck your dick." "Fuck me in the ass…" Over and over again.' The old man gave a shuddering breath and dissolved into a bed-shaking fit of coughing. He was white as milk when he finally stopped. 'She's…She's holding onto my leg, cryin' and snotterin' everywhere, bare naked, and tellin' me she wants me to fuck her in the arse. I…I pushed her away…' His voice dropped. 'Fell against the fireplace. Bang. Head into the brick.'

They sat in silence once more. Doug lost in thought, Logan and Watson trying to come to terms with what they'd just heard. It was Doug who spoke first.

'So I picked up Geordie, took him somewhere nice and quiet, and fucked him over. You should have heard him scream when I hacked off his fuckin' knees. Filthy bastard.'

Logan cleared his throat. 'How come you let his brother live?'

Doug looked at him with sadness written in the deep lines of his face. 'Had a job to do. Message to deliver. I was goin' to go back the next day. Show him what happened to sick bastards like him. You know, with a Stanley knife? Only when I went back there was all these pigs clamberin' all over the place. And the next day and the day after that…'

Logan nodded. The first lot of policemen must have been his team arresting Norman Chalmers. The rest doing door-to-doors, trying to find witnesses. While all the time Desperate Doug MacDuff was hovering in the shadows, watching them.

'Standin' like a fuckin' idiot in the snow and rain, gettin' myself some pneumonia to go with the cancer.' Doug lapsed back into silence, a faraway look in his good eye, the milky one shimmering in the television's glow.

Logan stood. 'Before we go there's one thing that's been bothering me: what was the message?'

'The message?' A smile spread across Desperate Doug's toothless face. 'You don't steal from your employer.'