Cold granite

6

Richard Erskine's mother was overweight, overwrought and not much more than a child herself. The lounge of her middle terrace house in Torry was packed with photos in little wooden frames, all showing the same thing: a grinning Richard Erskine. Five years old. Blond hair, squint teeth, dimpled cheeks, big glasses. The child's life was mapped out in the claustrophobic room, from birth right through to…Logan stopped that thought before it could go any further.

The mother's name was Elisabeth: twenty-one, pretty enough if you ignored the swollen eyes, streaked mascara and bright red nose. Her long black hair was scraped back from her round face and she paced the room with frantic energy, eating her fingernails until the quicks bled.

'He's got him, hasn't he?' she was saying, over and over again, her voice shrill and panicky. 'He's got Richie! He's got him and he's killed him!'

Logan shook his head. 'Now we don't know that. Your son might just have forgotten the time.' He scanned the photograph-laden walls again, trying to find one in which the child looked genuinely happy. 'How long has he been missing?'

She stopped pacing and stared at him. 'Three hours! I already told her that!' She flapped a chewed hand in WPC Watson's direction. 'He knows I worry about him! He wouldn't be late! He wouldn't.' Her bottom lip trembled and tears started to well up in her eyes again. 'Why aren't you out there finding him?'

'We've got patrol cars and officers out there right now looking for your son, Mrs Erskine. Now I need you to tell me what happened this morning. When he went missing?'

Mrs Erskine wiped her eyes and nose on the back of her sleeve. 'He was supposed…supposed to come straight back from the shops. Some milk and a packet of chocolate biscuits…He was supposed to come straight back!'

She started to cross the lounge again, back and forth, back and forth.

'Which shops did he go to?'

'The ones on the other side of the school. It's not far! I don't normally let him go on his own, but I had to stay in!' She sniffed. 'The man was coming to fix the washing machine. They wouldn't give me a time! Just some time in the morning. I never would have let him out on his own otherwise!' She bit down on her lip and the sobbing intensified. 'It's all my fault!'

'Have you got a friend or a neighbour who could stay with…'

Watson pointed at the kitchen. A used-looking older woman emerged carrying a tray of tea things: two mugs only. The police weren't expected to stay for tea, they were expected to get out there and start looking for the missing five-year-old.

'It's a disgrace, so it is,' said the older woman, putting the tea tray down on top of a pile of Cosmopolitans on the coffee table. 'Letting perverts like that run around! They should a' be in prison! It's no as if there's no one handy!' She was talking about Craiginches, the walled prison just around the corner from the house.

Elisabeth Erskine accepted a mug of milky tea from her friend, shaking so much that the hot liquid slopped over the edge. She watched the drops seep into the pale blue carpet.

'You, eh…' She stopped and sniffed. 'You don't have a cigarette on you, do you? I…I gave up when I got pregnant with Richie…'

'Sorry,' said Logan. 'I had to give up too.' He turned and picked the most recent-looking photo off the mantelpiece. A serious little boy, staring at the camera. 'Can we take this with us?'

She nodded and Logan handed it over to WPC Watson.

Five minutes later they were standing in the small back garden, sheltering beneath a ridiculously little porch bolted on above the back door. The tiny square of grass was disappearing under a spreading network of puddles. About a dozen child's toys were scattered about the place, the bright plastic shapes washed clean by the downpour. On the other side of the fence more houses stared back at him, grey and damp.

Torry wasn't the worst bit of the city, but was in the top ten. This was where Aberdeen's fish processing factories were. Tons of white fish landed every week, all to be gutted and filleted by hand. Good money if you could handle the cold and the smell. Huge blue plastic bins of discarded fish guts and bones squatted on the roadside, the rain doing nothing to dissuade fat seagulls from swooping in to snatch a fish head or a beakful of innards.

'What you think?' asked Watson, sticking her hands deep in her pockets, trying to keep warm.

Logan shrugged, watching water overflowing the seat of a bright yellow digger. 'The house been searched?'

Watson pulled out her notebook. 'We got the call at eleven oh five. Mother was hysterical. Control sent round a couple of uniforms from the local Torry stationhouse. First thing they did was go through the place with a fine-toothed comb. He's not hiding in the linen cupboard and his body's not been stashed in the fridge freezer.'

'I see.' That digger was way too small for a five-year-old. In fact a lot of the toys looked as if they belonged in the age three-and-up bracket. Maybe Mrs Erskine didn't want her little baby growing up?

'You think she killed him?' asked Watson, watching him stare out at the drenched garden.

'No, not really. But if it turns out she has and we didn't look…the press would crucify us. What about the father?'

''Cording to the neighbour he's been dead since before the kid was born.'

Logan nodded. That would explain why the woman was so overprotective. Didn't want her son going the same way as his father. 'So what's the state of the search?' he asked.

'We've phoned his friends: no one's seen him since Sunday afternoon.'

'What about his clothes, favourite teddy bear, that kind of thing?'

'All present and accounted for. So he's probably not run away.'

Logan gave the discarded toys one last look and went back into the house. The inspector would be here soon, looking for an update. 'Er…' He looked at Watson out of the corner of his eye as they walked through the kitchen and down the hallway towards the front door. 'You've worked with DI Insch before, right?'

WPC Watson admitted that she had.

'So what's with the-' Logan mimed stuffing his face with fizzy cola bottles. 'He trying to give up smoking?'

Watson shrugged. 'Dunno, sir. Maybe it's some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder?' She paused, brow furrowed in thought. 'Or maybe he's just a big fat bastard.'

Logan didn't know whether to laugh or look shocked.

'Tell you one thing though, sir, he's a damn good policeman. And you don't fuck with him twice.'

Somehow Logan had already come to that conclusion all on his own.

'Right.' He stopped at the front door. The hallway was festooned with photographs, just like the lounge. 'Get that picture down to the nearest newsagents. We'll need about a hundred photocopies and-'

'The local boys have already done it, sir. They've got four officers going door to door all along the route Richard would have taken to the shops, handing them out.'

Logan was impressed. 'They don't hang about.'

'No, sir.'

'OK, let's get half a dozen uniform down here to give them a hand.' He pulled out his mobile phone and started dialling, his finger freezing over the last number. 'Oh, ho…'

'Sir?'

A flash-looking motor had pulled up at the kerb and out bustled a familiar, short figure, all wrapped up in a black overcoat, wrestling with a matching umbrella.

'Looks like the vultures are circling already.'

Logan grabbed a brolly from the hallway and stepped out into the rain. The icy water thrummed off the umbrella as he stood and waited for Colin Miller to climb the stairs.

'Sergeant!' said Miller, smiling. 'Long time no see! You still carting that tasty…' The smile became even broader as he saw WPC Watson scowling from the doorway. 'Constable! We was just talking about you!'

'What do you want?' Her voice was even colder than the grey afternoon.

'Business before pleasure, eh?' Miller dug a fancy dictaphone out of his pocket and pointed it at them. 'You've got another missing kid. Are you-'

Logan frowned. 'How did you know another child's gone missing?'

Miller pointed out at the rain-soaked road. 'You've got patrol cars out broadcastin' the kid's description! How do you think I found out?'

Logan tried not to look as embarrassed as he felt.

Miller winked. 'Ah, don't worry about it. I make an arse of myself all the time, but.' He held the dictaphone up again. 'Now, is this disappearance connected to the recent discovery of-'

'We have no comment to make at this time.'

'Oh, come on!'

Behind Miller another car had pulled up, this one with the BBC Scotland logo emblazoned down the side. The media were going to have a field day. Yesterday a little boy turned up dead, today another one had gone missing. They'd all be jumping to the same conclusion as Miller. He could see the headlines now: 'HAS PAEDOPHILE KILLER STRUCK AGAIN?' The Chief Constable would have a fit.

Miller turned to see what Logan was staring at and froze. 'How about if-'

'I'm sorry, Mr Miller. I can't give you any further details at this time. You'll just have to wait for the official statement.'

He didn't have to wait long. Five minutes later DI Insch's mud-splattered Range Rover pulled up. By then a little cordon of newspaper and television people had appeared, forming a wall of microphones and lenses at the foot of the steps, huddling beneath large black umbrellas. Just like a funeral.

Insch didn't bother getting out of his car, just wound down his window and waved Logan over. The cameras turned to watch Logan cross the road and stand in the rain beneath his borrowed umbrella by DI Insch's window, trying not to wince at the smell of wet spaniel that oozed out of the car's interior.

'Aye, aye,' said the inspector, nodding towards the ring of cameras. 'Looks like we're going to be on the telly tonight.' He ran a hand over his bald head. 'Good job I remembered to wash my hair.'

Logan forced a smile. The scars crisscrossing his stomach were starting to bother him as last night's punch in the guts made its presence felt.

'Right,' said Insch. 'I've been authorized to release a statement to the media. Before I do, is there anything I need to know that's going to make me look like an arse here?'

Logan shrugged. 'Far as we can tell the mother's being straight with us.'

'But?'

'Don't know. The mother treats the kid like he's made of glass. Doesn't get out on his own. All his toys are for a kid two years younger than he is. I get the feeling she's smothering the life out of him.'

Insch raised an eyebrow, causing the pink, hairless skin of his head to wrinkle. He didn't speak.

'I'm not saying he hasn't been snatched.' Logan shrugged. 'But still…'

'Point taken,' said Insch, smoothing himself down. Unlike the filthy, smelly Range Rover he was immaculately turned out in his best suit and tie. 'But if we play this down, and he turns up all strangled with his willy cut off, we'll be up to our ears in shite.'

Logan's phone went off in an explosion of beeps and whistles. It was the Queen Street station. They'd picked up Duncan Nicholson.

'What…? No.' Logan smiled, the phone clamped to his ear. 'No, stick him in a detention room. Leave him there to sweat till I get there.' By the time Logan and WPC Watson got back to Force Headquarters a full-blown search was underway. DI Insch had more than trebled the six uniforms Logan had drafted in to help and now more than forty police men and women, four dog-handlers and their alsatians, were out in the freezing rain, searching every garden, public building, shed, bush and ditch between Richard Erskine's home and the shops on Victoria Road.

The desk sergeant told them that Duncan Nicholson had been stuck in the mankiest detention room in the place. He'd been there for nearly an hour.

Just to be on the safe side, Logan and WPC Watson stopped off at the canteen for a cup of tea and a bowl of soup. Lingering over the pea and ham while Nicholson sat in a room, all alone, and worried.

'Right,' said Logan, when they'd finished. 'How'd you like to drag Mr Nicholson into an interview room? Give him the silent glower routine? I'll check up on the search and pop along in about, fifteen, twenty minutes. He should be bricking it by then.'

Watson stood, cast one last longing look at the thick slices of sponge pudding and steaming yellow custard, and headed off to make Duncan Nicholson's life even more miserable.

Logan got an update from the admin officer in the incident room: the search teams hadn't turned up anything and neither had the door-to-door interviews. So Logan grabbed a cup of tea from the machine in the hallway and drank it slowly, filling in the time. Then took another painkiller. When twenty minutes had elapsed he headed down to interview room two.

It was small and utilitarian, done up in a nasty shade of beige. Duncan Nicholson sat at the table, opposite a silent, scowling, WPC Watson. He was looking very uncomfortable.

The room was no smoking and Nicholson obviously had a problem with that. There was a pile of shredded paper on the table in front of him and as Logan entered Nicholson jumped, sending little scraps of white fluttering to the scuffed blue carpet.

'Mr Nicholson,' said Logan, sinking down into the brown plastic chair next to Watson. 'Sorry to keep you waiting.'

Nicholson shifted in his chair, little beads of sweat sparkling on his upper lip. He wasn't a day over thirty-two, but looked closer to forty-five. The hair on top of his head was shaved down to the bone, blue-grey stubble showing between shiny patches of pink scalp. Each of his ears had been pierced in at least three places. The rest of him looked as if it had been thrown together on a Monday morning before the factory was properly awake.

'I've been here for hours!' he said, mustering up as much indignity as he could. 'Hours! There was nae bog! I wis burstin'!'

Logan frowned. 'Dear, dear, dear. There's obviously been some mistake, Mr Nicholson. You came forward of your own free will, didn't you? No toilet? I'll have a word with the duty sergeant. Make sure it doesn't happen again.' He smiled a disarming, friendly smile. 'But we're all here now, so shall we get started?'

Nicholson nodded, smiling a little, feeling reassured. Feeling better.

'Constable, would you do the honours?' Logan passed Watson two brand new audiotapes and she unwrapped them, sticking one in each side of the recorder bolted to the wall before doing the same with a pair of videotapes. The machine clicked and bleeped as she pressed 'Record'.

'Interview with Mr Duncan Nicholson,' she said, going through the standard names, date and time.

Logan smiled again. 'Now then, Mr Nicholson, or can I call you Duncan?'

The man on the other side of the table cast a nervous glance at the camera in the corner of the room, over Logan's shoulder. At last he nodded his shaved head.

'So, Duncan, you found the body of David Reid last night?'

Nicholson nodded again.

'You have to say something, Duncan,' said Logan, his smile getting wider by the minute. 'The tape can't hear you if you nod.'

Nicholson's eyes darted back to the staring glass eye of the video camera. 'Er…Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I found him last night.'

'What were you doing down there in the middle of the night, Duncan?'

He shrugged. 'I wis…takin' a walk. You know, had a row with the wife and went for a walk.'

'Down the riverbank? In the dead of night?'

The smile started to fade. 'Er, yeah. I go down there sometimes to, you know, think an' stuff.'

Logan crossed his arms, mirroring the PC sitting next to him. 'So you went down there to think. And just happened to fall over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy?'

'Er, yeah…I just…Look, I…'

'Just happened to fall over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy. In a waterlogged ditch. Hidden beneath a sheet of chipboard. In the dark. In the pouring rain.'

Nicholson opened his mouth once or twice, but nothing came out.

Logan left him sitting in silence for almost two minutes. The man was getting more and more fidgety by the second, his shaved head now as sweaty as his upper lip, the smell of second-hand garlic oozing out of him in nervous waves.

'I'd been…drinking, OK? I fell down, nearly killed myself goin' down that bloody bank.'

'You fell down the bank, in the pouring rain, and yet when the police arrived there wasn't a speck of mud on you! You were clean as a whistle, Duncan. That doesn't sound like someone who's just fallen down a muddy bank and into a ditch, now does it?'

Nicholson ran a hand over the top of his head, the stubble making a faint scritching noise in the oppressive interview room. Dark blue stains marked his armpits.

'I…I went home to call you. I got changed.'

'I see.' Logan switched the smile back on again. 'Where were you on the thirteenth of August this year, between half past two and three in the afternoon?'

'I…I don't know.'

'Then where were you between the hours of ten and eleven this morning?'

Nicholson's eyes snapped open wide. 'This mornin'? What's goin' on? I didnae kill anyone!'

'Who said you did?' Logan turned in his seat. 'Constable Watson, did you hear me accuse Mr Nicholson of murder?'

'No, sir.'

Nicholson squirmed.

Logan produced a list of all the children registered missing in the last three years and placed it on the table between them.

'Where were you this morning, Duncan?'

'I was watching the telly.'

'And where were you on,' Logan leant forward and read off the list, 'the fifteenth of March between six and seven? No? How about the twenty-seventh of May, half-four to eight?'

They went through every date on the list, Nicholson sweating and murmuring his answers. He wasn't anywhere he said. He was at home. He was watching television. The only people who could vouch for his whereabouts were Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey. And they were mostly repeats.

'Well, Duncan,' said Logan when they'd got to the end of the list, 'doesn't look too good, does it?'

'I didn't touch those kids!'

Logan sat back and tried DI Insch's silent treatment again.

'I didn't! I fuckin' came to you lot when I found that kid, didn't I? Why the hell would I do that if I killed him? I wouldn't kill a kid: I love kids!'

WPC Watson raised an eyebrow and Nicholson scowled.

'Not like that! I've got nephews and nieces, OK? I wouldn't fuckin' do something like that.'

'Then let's go back to the start.' Logan shoogled his chair in closer to the table. 'What were you doing wandering about on the banks of the Don in the middle of the night in the pouring rain?'

'I told you I was pissed…'

'Why don't I believe you, Duncan? Why do I get the feeling that when the report comes back from Forensics there's going to be evidence linking you to the dead boy?'

'I didn't do anything!' Nicholson slammed his hand down on the tabletop, making the little pile of shredded paper scatter and fall like snow.

'We've got you, Mr Nicholson. You're only kidding yourself if you think you're going to talk your way out of it. I think a little time in the cells is going to do you the world of good. We'll talk again when you're ready to start telling the truth. Interview terminated at thirteen twenty-six.'

He got WPC Watson to escort Nicholson down to the cellblock, hanging on in the interview room until she returned.

'What do you think?' he asked.

'I don't think he did it. He's not the right type. Not smart enough to lie convincingly.'

'True.' Logan nodded. 'But he's lying all the same. No way he was down there having a bit of a late night stagger. You get plastered, you don't go stomping about down the riverbank in the pissing rain for a laugh. He was down there for a reason, we just don't know what it is yet.' Aberdeen harbour slid by the car window, grey and miserable. A handful of offshore supply vessels were tied up along the docks, their cheery yellow-and-orange paintwork dulled by the pouring rain. Lights glinted in the semi-darkness of the afternoon as containers were winched off lorries and onto the waiting boats.

Logan and WPC Watson were heading back to Richard Erskine's house in Torry. Someone had actually remembered seeing the missing boy. A Mrs Brady had seen a small blond boy wearing a red anorak and blue jeans crossing the waste ground behind her house. It was the only break they'd had.

The half past two news was about to come on and Logan turned the car radio on, catching the end of an old Beatles track. Not surprisingly Richard Erskine's disappearance was given top billing. DI Insch's voice boomed out of the speakers asking members of the public to come forward with information about the child's whereabouts. He had a natural flair for the dramatic, as everyone who'd seen him in the annual Christmas panto knew, but he managed to keep it in check as the newsreader asked the obvious question:

'Do you think Richard has been taken by the same paedophile who killed David Reid?'

'At this moment we're just looking to find Richard safe and sound. If anyone has any information please call our hotline on oh eight hundred, five, five, five, nine, nine, nine.'

'Thank you, Inspector. In other news: the trial of Gerald Cleaver, the fifty-six-year-old former male nurse from Manchester, continues today under tight security following death threats made to the accused's solicitor, Sandy Moir-Farquharson. Mr Moir-Farquharson spoke to Northsound News…'

'Here's hoping it's not just an idle threat.' Logan reached out and snapped the radio off before the lawyer's voice could come through the speakers. Sandy Moir-Farquharson deserved to get death threats. He was the weaselly little shite who'd argued leniency for Angus Robertson. Who'd tried to claim that the Mastrick Monster wasn't entirely to blame. That he'd only killed those women because they'd reacted violently against his advances. That they'd dressed provocatively. That they'd been, basically, asking for it.

The media presence outside the door of little Richard Erskine's house had almost doubled by the time they got there. The whole road was packed with cars. There were even a couple of outside broadcast vans. WPC Watson had to park miles away, so they trudged back through the rain, both sheltering under her umbrella.

BBC Scotland had been joined by Grampian, ITN and Sky News. The harsh white television lights bleached colour from the pale granite buildings. No one seemed to take much notice of the winter rain, even though it was battering down from the sky in sheets of frigid water.

The blonde woman with the big boobs from Channel Four News was doing a piece to camera, standing far enough down the street to get the house and the rest of the pack in the background.

'…have to ask: does the media's attention on a family's pain, at a time like this, really serve the public interest? When-'

Watson marched right through the shot, her blue and white umbrella completely obscuring the woman from camera.

Someone yelled: 'Cut!'

'You did that on purpose,' whispered Logan as the sounds of a swearing television journalist erupted. WPC Watson just smiled and barged her way through the crowd gathered at the foot of the stairs. Logan hurried after her, trying not to hear the howls of complaint mixed in with the shouted questions and demands for comment.

A Family Liaison Officer was through in the living room with Richard Erskine's mother and the bitter old woman from next door. There was no sign of DI Insch.

Logan left Watson in the lounge and tried the kitchen, helping himself to an open packet of Jaffa Cakes lying on the worktop next to the kettle. A half-glazed door led from the kitchen out into the back garden, the light blocked by a large figure standing outside.

But it wasn't Insch. It was a sad-looking, overweight detective constable with half-past-two o'clock shadow, chain-smoking under the tiny porch.

'Afternoon, sir,' said the DC, not bothering to straighten up, or put his cigarette out. 'Shitty weather, eh?' He wasn't a local lad: his accent was pure Newcastle.

'You get used to it.' Logan stepped out onto the back step next to the DC to do as much passive smoking as he could.

The constable took the cigarette out of his mouth and stuck a finger in, working a nail up and down between his back teeth. 'Don't see how. I mean I'm used to rain like, but Jesus this place takes the fucking biscuit.' He found whatever it was he was digging for and flicked it away into the downpour. 'Think it's going to keep up till the weekend?'

Logan looked out at the low, dark-grey clouds. 'The weekend?' He shook his head and took in another scarred lungful of second-hand smoke. 'This is Aberdeen: it won't stop raining till March.'

'Bollocks!' The voice was deep, authoritative and coming from directly behind them.

Logan twisted his head round to see DI Insch standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

'Don't you listen to DS McRae, he's pulling your leg.' Insch stepped out onto the already crowded top step, forcing Logan and the DC to shuffle precariously sideways.

'Won't stop raining till March?' Insch popped a fruit sherbet into his mouth. 'March? Don't lie to the poor constable: this is Aberdeen.' He sighed and stuck his hands back in his pockets. 'It never stops fuckin' raining.'

They stood in silence, watching the rain do what rain does.

'Well, I've got a bit of good news for you, sir,' said Logan at last. 'Mr Moir-Farquharson is receiving death threats.'

Insch grinned. 'Hope so. I've written enough of them.'

'He's representing Gerald Cleaver.'

Insch sighed again. 'Why doesn't that surprise me? Still that's DI Steel's problem. Mine is: where's Richard Erskine?'