Dark Blood

47

The PCSO had fallen behind after the first two flights of stairs, but Logan wasn’t waiting for her to catch up.

He stormed down the corridor to DI Beattie’s office and barged through the door. It bounced off a filing cabinet with a loud clang and started to swing shut. Logan marched in.

Beattie was sitting behind his desk, eyes wide, phone clamped to his ear. ‘What…?’

Logan slammed the custody log down on the desktop, hard enough to send a mug of tea spiralling to the new carpet. ‘What the hell did you do?’

Beattie shrank back. ‘I’m on the phone!’

‘You’re going to be on your arse in a minute!’

The PCSO’s voice came from the open door behind him: ‘I told you he’d taken it.’

Then a man: ‘Sergeant McRae, would you care to explain yourself?’

Logan didn’t need to look around, he knew it was Chief Inspector Young from Professional Standards, which meant he was probably already screwed.

‘Beattie faked the custody log.’

The DI’s chin came up. ‘I don’t know what you’re-’

‘Here!’ Logan yanked the ring binder open, whipping through the pages until he got to the first forged custody record — the one that said he’d interviewed the art student at quarter to nine on Monday morning. ‘Douglas Walker, checked out of custody at oh-nine-forty-five Monday by DS McRae.’

Chief Inspector Young appeared at Logan’s shoulder. ‘And how does that-’

‘At nine forty-five I was making sure Richard Knox got through the lynch mob outside his house in one piece. You can check with DI Steel, and half a dozen PCs. It was on the bloody telly!’ He flipped back a few pages. ‘Twenty past six, Sunday night: I was arresting Angus Black for possession in Blackburn. This says I was interviewing Walker again. But the computer log says it was Beattie!’

The DI lumbered to his feet. ‘Sergeant, how dare you suggest-’

Logan slammed his hand down on the open ring binder. ‘What, you couldn’t figure out how to fiddle the electronic version? Bit more difficult than faking a signature, was it?’

Beattie looked at CI Young. ‘Chief Inspector, I want to make a formal complaint about DS McRae’s behaviour. You’re a witness, right? You and…’ He pointed at the PCSO. ‘You. He threatened me, and-’

‘I’ll do more than bloody threaten you!’

He lunged, but Young was faster, wrapping one of those huge scarred hands around Logan’s arm. ‘I think we should all calm down, don’t you?’

‘He tried to attack me! You saw him!’

Logan had another go, but Young’s grip was solid.

And then everyone froze as DCI Finnie appeared in the doorway. ‘Tell me gentlemen, am I running a CID department, or a playground for badly behaved children?’

Silence.

Logan tore his arm out of Young’s grip. Pointed at Beattie. ‘Tell him what you did.’

‘DS McRae is being abusive and threatening-’

‘You lying bastard!’

Young had to restrain him again.

Beattie backed away. ‘I want him brought up on charges, and-’

‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ Finnie’s voice made the paintings rattle on the walls. ‘You will both behave like professional police officers, or I’ll suspend the pair of you!’ He checked his watch. ‘Chief Inspector Young, would you be so kind as to escort DS McRae back to your office for a small chat about appropriate workplace behaviour?’ He turned to face Logan and Beattie. ‘And I’ll expect both of you in my office at five this evening when we shall discuss your conduct. Do you understand?’

Logan stiffened. ‘Sir.’

‘Sir, it’s not my fault, he barged in and-’

‘Do you understand, Inspector Beattie?’

The beardy idiot deflated a bit. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘We’ve got a rapist on the loose, and a missing detective superintendent. I suggest you redirect your energies to getting out there and bloody well finding them!’

Then the head of CID turned a thin smile on the PCSO. ‘And Marie, I hate to be a stick in the mud, but the custody log is not supposed to leave the custody area.’

Pink crept up from the white collar of her shirt. ‘But-’

‘Don’t let it happen again.’

‘We didn’t do nothing.’ Wendy Leadbetter folded her arms across her chest. The white Tyvec SOC suit they’d given her to wear, while her own clothes were being examined, made rustling noises as she shifted in her seat. Up close she looked older than he’d been expecting, her face hard and cold, scowl lines already beginning to etch themselves around her eyes and mouth.

‘I am now showing Ms Leadbetter exhibits three, four, five, and six.’ Logan laid the photos out on the interview-room table, starting with the figure throwing the petrol bomb, then moving on to the reference shots of Wendy and her brother Ian in the crowd outside Knox’s home.

She shrugged. ‘Could be anybody. Got their face covered, like.’

‘We found traces of petrol on your jacket, your gloves, your jeans, and your shoes Wendy. See, petrol’s funny that way, it’s like glue: sticks to everything.’

‘Maybe I was filling up me car? Had a bit of an accident. Ever think of that?’

Logan packed the photos away again. ‘Fine. Lie. See if I give a toss.’ He stood. ‘We’ve got you on camera, we’ve got witnesses, we’ve got forensics, and we’ve got motive. You want to play the hardnut? Go right ahead, see how much it helps when you’re banged up for eight years.’

He glanced over Wendy Leadbetter’s shoulder to where PC Butler was leaning against the wall. ‘Get her out of here. We’ll do her brother for conspiracy, then we can all sod off to the pub.’

Butler stepped forward. ‘Up.’

She didn’t move. ‘Ian wasn’t involved in nothing.’

‘Yeah, right. He’s an innocent little lamb with…’ Logan flicked through the file. ‘Look at that: eighteen counts of criminal damage, six public order offences, and four warnings for sending threatening letters.’ He looked at Butler again. ‘Cells.’

‘I said, on your feet.’

‘Who says Ian had anything to do with it? Knox didn’t just rape our grandad, did he? Loads of families up for doing him a bit of harm.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re the only ones in Aberdeen, so-’

‘Shows how much you know.’ She rapped her knuckles on the chipped Formica. ‘Seen at least two others outside Knox’s house. Could’ve been any of them, like.’

‘You really expect me to believe…’ Logan trailed to a halt. Then pulled out the photos and laid them out on the tabletop again — along with all the others he’d printed off — until there was just a big sea of angry faces staring up into the interview room. ‘Prove it.’

Leadbetter sniffed. Then leaned forward and stared, her hard green eyes sweeping back and forth. ‘Him.’ Her finger jabbed a pale-skinned older man in a leather jacket, red Man U scarf around his neck, mouth open shouting something. ‘Lowe, or Lovie, something like that. Knox raped his dad.’ Thirty seconds later she’d picked out another one: a heavy-set woman snarling beneath a ‘DIE — KNOX — SCUM!’ placard. ‘No idea what she’s called.’

Logan waited, but she couldn’t pick out anyone else.

Wendy Leadbetter scowled at him. ‘Our grandad was a good man, and that sick bastard tortured and raped him. You let Knox go, and now he’s out there, doing it to other families.’ She finally got to her feet. ‘They should’ve killed him in prison. More than he fucking deserves.’

And she was probably right.

While Butler was sticking Leadbetter back into custody, Logan apologized to Marie, the PCSO. Sorry for nicking her custody log. Sorry for getting her in trouble with Finnie. But mostly he was sorry for not breaking DI Beattie’s nose.

Butler was waiting for Logan outside the cells, running a hand through her short spiky blonde hair. ‘You want me to go get the brother now?’

Logan shook his head. ‘One mental family member at a time is enough for me. We need to go and…’ Logan frowned.

He pulled out the plastic bag with his crusty notebook in it, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and picked through the sour-smelling pages. Something about mental family members…

‘Sarge? I said, where are we going?’

‘Hmm? Oh…Cove: got to help DI Steel search for signs of Knox.’

Butler wilted slightly. ‘Oh God, not more tramping about in the snow.’

‘Might have to make a little diversion on the way…Nip upstairs and get us a pool car, will you?’

She stomped off as he worked his way backwards through the notebook, looking for his visit to Danny Saunders’s caravan. Then Logan went into his other pocket for the pilfered CV he’d been scribbling notes on since yesterday afternoon, and compared the two.

He closed his eyes and groaned. What a bloody idiot.

Logan’s rusty Fiat bumped to a halt outside the part-completed steading. PC Butler hauled on the handbrake and killed the engine, then sat there, looking at the peeling steering wheel, the dented dashboard, the passenger-side window covered in a patchwork of black plastic bag and duct tape, the buckled bonnet. ‘Bet you pull all the girls in this thing.’

‘Should have tried harder for a pool car then, shouldn’t you?’

‘I was doing fine till I told Big Gary it was for you.’

Logan peered out through the chipped windscreen. Danny Saunders had managed to cover all the roof joists with a skin of marine-ply. Right now he was balancing at the top of a long ladder, nailing batons down over some sort of black material.

‘Like driving an oil tanker. You never heard of power steering?’

‘Lucky the damn thing’s still going at all.’ Especially after being shunted into a ditch by a dirty big Transit van. At least the duct tape and string was still holding the bonnet in place…though the engine had developed a worrying burning smell to go with the growling exhaust.

Logan clambered out onto the crunchy snow. The sky was a bright blue lid with dark-grey clouds massing over the North Sea. Probably going to be another horrible night.

Especially if DCI Finnie had anything to do with it. The lecture on not attacking your colleagues from Chief Inspector Young had been bad enough, but the one from the head of CID would be a lot worse.

Logan slammed the car door.

Standing on top of the ladder, Danny flinched, the hammer and a plastic pouch of nails skittering down across the marine-ply, then off the edge of the roof. ‘Ah, shite!’

He turned, the expression freezing on his face when he saw who it was.

Logan picked his way through the snowy tufts. ‘Morning, Danny.’

‘I didn’t rob that jewellers on Huntly Street!’

‘Yeah, I know. I arrested someone for that yesterday.’

Behind him Logan could hear PC Butler climbing out of the car, scrunching over to back him up.

‘Oh aye?’

‘Funniest thing, but the guy was called “Alan Gardner”. Ring any bells?’

Danny coughed, then glanced over the ridge of the steading roof at the moss-streaked caravan, just visible around the corner. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘You told him you’d break his daughter’s legs if she didn’t pay off her drug debt.’

‘Got to get back to work. The roof gets all warped if it’s not-’

‘Danny? Why can’t I hear hammering?’ A woman’s voice, coming from the caravan. Logan turned to see the pregnant fiancee standing there with her hands on her hips, face flushed, mouth a hard line. ‘You know we need that roof waterproofed before it snows again. Don’t make me come up there!’

‘Oh Jesus…’ He straightened up and shouted back. ‘It’s the police.’

Logan clumped through the snow towards her. ‘Stacy Gardner?’

‘You know fine well it is. What do you want?’

‘I had a very interesting chat with your dad, Stacy. Says he’s sorry he hasn’t come up with more money, but he kind of got arrested doing over a jewellery shop on Huntly Street. He hopes your dealer,’ Logan nodded at the man balancing on the roof, ‘will give him a bit more time before hurting you.’

Stacy throttled the dishcloth in her hands. ‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

Danny sighed. ‘Stacy, love, it’s not-’

‘You shut up, Danny Saunders, I’m dealing with this.’ She took a step out onto the snowy ground. ‘The old man can’t cope since he got mum killed. Lives in a little world of his own.’

‘Stacy, we-’

‘I said I’m dealing with it!’ She turned a cold smile in Logan’s direction. ‘So you see, you can’t trust a word he says. He’s lost it.’

Logan nodded. ‘But you still trust him to look after Nicole, don’t you? What is she, two, three? We had to put her into care.’

The pregnant woman stiffened. ‘She’s not my daughter any more. I’m making a new life.’

‘He’s sold everything for you, you know that don’t you? Car, furniture, telly, cashed in his pension — even the house is up for sale, because he thinks you’re in trouble.’

Stacy turned and reached back into the caravan for something, keeping whatever it was hidden by her pregnant bulge. ‘So he sends me money every now and then. Not like I don’t deserve it, is it? Just my share of mum’s inheritance.’

‘It’s extortion.’

She swivelled round, both hands behind her back, and sniffed as if fighting back a tear. ‘It wasn’t my idea. Danny made me do it!’

Up on the roof, her fiance’s mouth fell open. ‘You lying cow!’

‘Where do you think Daddy got the idea to use a sledgehammer? That was Danny’s trick.’

‘I was the one tried to talk you out of it!’

Stacy took a step forward, biting her bottom lip. ‘Sorry, Danny, but I can’t cover for you any more. It was all his fault, Officer. He made me do it.’

Logan looked back at the roof.

Mistake.

Stacy lunged, hands coming out from behind her back — eight inch carving knife in one hand, steaming kettle in the other. The kettle lashed past, close enough for Logan to feel the heat on his cheek.

He staggered back, arms over his head as the knife slashed down, the point tearing through the sleeve of his jacket.

Logan’s heel caught something buried in the snow and he went crashing down on his backside for the second time in two days. Looking up at someone who wanted him dead.

And then a blur of black and fluorescent yellow: PC Butler charged across the rutted ground, her peaked cap flying off. Stacy snarled and swung the knife again in a huge overhead slash.

Butler darted in, arm up. She blocked Stacy’s stab, reached through with her other hand in some sort of weird jujitsu limb origami, and pulled, forcing the pregnant women’s arm to bend in ways it really wasn’t designed to.

Stacy’s eyes bulged, then she screamed and lurched back into the wall of the caravan. ‘You’re breaking my arm!’

‘Drop the knife, or I’ll pop it right out of the socket!’

‘Get off me you bitch!’

One more twist and the knife thudded into the snow, blade first, the handle sticking up into the air.

‘Danny! Danny, help me! They’re hurting the baby!’

But Danny just sat on the roof of his house and stared at her.

There was a gunshot sound and Logan’s manky little Fiat puttered to a halt on the rear podium car park, leaving a cloud of grey smoke behind. Should probably get that seen to.

PC Butler killed the engine, before it died on its own. ‘Everyone out. Now!’

‘If my baby’s damaged by carbon monoxide poisoning, I’ll sue!’

Butler turned and stared at her. ‘Shut up. For once in your life. All the way into bloody town!’

Stacy Gardner pouted. ‘You can’t talk to me like that! I-’

‘For God’s sake!’ Sitting next to her, on the threadbare back seat, Danny Saunders gritted his teeth. ‘Give it a rest, Stacy.’

‘That’s right — shout at the pregnant woman in handcuffs! Oh yes, you’re such a big man, aren’t you Danny? Such a big-’

Logan climbed out and slammed the car door shut, cutting off the rest.

PC Butler stood on the other side of the dented Fiat, massaging her temples. ‘Why are we not allowed to gag prisoners any more?’

‘Just get them processed and we’ll head out to Cove. Let someone else listen to her bitch and moan for a while.’

Butler glared at the sky for a moment, sighed, pulled on her peaked cap, then wrenched open the car door and folded the driver’s seat forward. ‘I said everyone out!’

Logan left them to it.

Logan had the Wee Hoose to himself while he waited for PC Butler to get Danny Saunders and his poisonous fiancee photographed, fingerprinted, DNA-sampled, and checked into separate cells.

He spread Danby’s cases out across the desk. The PNC printouts weren’t exactly heavy on detail, more summaries and status reports. A couple of unsolved murders: one drug addict found with a bullet hole in the back of his head; one prostitute kicked to death behind the bins at a nightclub. One Post Office job where the gang had got away with a pathetically small amount of cash after putting a pensioner in intensive care — solved. One blackmail: a bank manager with a thing for Filipino ladyboys — solved. A couple of demanding money with menaces…

Something started ringing. It took Logan a minute to realize it was his new phone. ‘McRae.’

‘LoganDaveGoulding, Just heard back from your CSI boys about the old man who was attacked last night.’ Might have known the psychologist wouldn’t mind using the wanky Americanism.

‘What about him?’ Logan kept on reading.

The last report in Danby’s file was a drug seizure: a shipment of heroin and cocaine, smuggled in through the international ferry terminal in North Shields. Estimated street value of one-point-six million.

‘Knox didn’t rape him. He bit him, he tortured him, he beat him, but there’s no sign of penetration.’

According to the summary three men were due up in court in four weeks’ time, all of them connected to Michael ‘Mental Mikey’ Maitland’s operation.

God rest his soul.

‘So it’s exactly the same as the Sacro handler…Harry Weaver. I thought it might be because Weaver wasn’t old enough, didn’t fit the victim profile, but I’m beginning to wonder if Knox might be impotent.’

Logan skimmed a list of charges. ‘That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’

‘Causing pain is how Knox achieves arousal, it’s what gets him off. If he can’t get an erection, he’s just going to try harder. The next victim’s probably going to end up dead. And it won’t be quick either.’

Logan stopped reading. Not so good after all.

‘Any ideas where he’s heading?’

There was a pause.

‘Well…Aberdeen’s been highly traumatic for him, completely out of his comfort zone. He’ll want familiar ground, somewhere he feels safe.’

All roads lead to Newcastle. Which was pretty much what they’d been thinking anyway. Logan thanked the psychologist and hung up.

Logan drummed his fingers on the desk, staring at the blank computer screen.

God: the idea that Knox could get even worse…

‘You should eat more roughage.’

Logan turned to find Doreen settling in behind her desk.

‘What?’

‘You’ve got the same expression on your face my six-year-old gets when he’s constipated.’

‘Actually, I was thinking about Richard Knox.’

‘Join the club. DCI Finnie’s got everyone on either Knox or Danby. It’s an absolute nightmare trying to get anything else done.’ She rearranged her cardigan. ‘Do you know if our little fairy princess got to see her grandad again?’

Logan shrugged. ‘I’ve been a bit-’

‘Oh for goodness sake. I’ll do it.’ Doreen pulled the phone towards her and started dialling. ‘Hello? Yes, I want to speak to someone about a little girl taken into temporary care last night…’

PC Butler stuck her head around the door. ‘You ready, Sarge?’

Logan gathered all the files together and stuck them back in the folder. ‘We got a pool car?’

Butler’s expression soured. ‘Guess.’

The Fiat groaned from second to third, then whined from third to fourth, and refused to do fifth at all. ‘You know.’ Butler hauled the gearstick back again. ‘I’ve got some friends who could arrange a little electrical fire, if you like? Claim on the insurance?’

‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ Not that he’d get much for it — the thing only cost him two hundred pounds. Logan ran his finger across the dashboard, leaving a clean grey line in the dust. ‘Suppose you were a gangster-’

‘Cool.’ Butler grinned. ‘Do I get to kneecap that sleazy git DS MacDonald?’

‘Just shut up and listen, OK? Suppose you were a gangster and some police officer had just cost you over a mill and a half in drugs. He’s got three of your men banged up waiting for trial, and if they turn Queen’s evidence it’s going to be bad news for your other business interests. What do you do?’

She didn’t even pause. ‘Kill them. Get a couple of mentalists inside to shank the bastards. Sends out a message — no one squeals.’

Logan looked at her. ‘What if they’re loyal.’

‘Not worth the risk. Got to cut out the cancer before it spreads.’ She slowed down for a corner, the tyres rumbling over a lumpy mixture of slush and ice. ‘Then you go after the pig.’

Logan turned back to the window. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

‘He awake yet, Babe?’

‘Dunno. Think he’s faking it?’

‘One way to check.’

Pain lances through Detective Superintendent Graeme Danby’s nipples. His eyes snap open and he roars. Or tries to. There’s something over his mouth. Something over his head, making everything dim and muffled. He rocks back and forth, fire burning across his chest.

‘Gotta love the titty-twister, like.’

Fucking hell that hurts.

Then the woman’s voice is back again. ‘Hello, Sweetheart, remember me?’

Graeme tries to shrink back, but he’s sitting on something:

can’t move his arms or legs…A chair? And it’s freezing in here.

He’d been…He’d been wearing the white fluffy dressing gown he’d found in the hotel room wardrobe — the one with the matching slippers in a little plastic bag. But now he feels a biting draught on his bare stomach and thighs.

Isn’t even wearing any underwear.

He’s tied to a chair, stark bollock naked, with a bag over his head.

With her.

Graeme tries to sit up straight, to bring his chin up. Not to tremble.

‘You’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you, Danby?’ A man’s voice, Newcastle accent.

And then a fist slams into Graeme’s stomach, wrenching him forwards. Or as far as he can go with his wrists tied to the seat. He tries to breathe through the aching stabs, air whistling in and out through his burning nose. Everything smells of burning copper.

‘You see, Babe, we know what you’ve been up to. You and your pet rapist.’

Oh God, don’t be sick. Be sick and you’ll choke. Choke and die. Naked, tied to a chair with a FUCKING BAG OVER YOUR HEAD!

Slowly, he hauls himself back up, eyes scrunched tight shut. Swallowing it down.

‘Neil? Do the honours will you, Darling, I hate questioning someone when I can’t see their eyes.’

Fumbling. The whoosh of fabric against his face. Then a cool draft of air.

Graeme opens his eyes, blinks. Looks down at his pale, naked body — the big dent in his right leg where the bone poked through years ago.

‘That’s better, isn’t it?’

Julie. She hasn’t changed much since last time: still wearing the same cowgirl jeans-and-boots combo. That polished razorblade smile.

Someone looms into view over his shoulder — Elvis quiff, big nose, tufty eyebrows. ‘Afternoon, Guv. Sitting comfortably?’ Elvis has a tartan pillowcase in his hand. He drops it to the floor.

Julie pulls up a chair, wrong way round, and straddles it. Smiles down at Graeme’s crotch. ‘Didn’t think it was that cold.’

He tries on his best Senior Police Officer Glower, but she just laughs.

‘Neil?’

A fist slams into the side of Graeme’s head. Ringing in his ears. The taste of blood. Lights flashing on and off. Then a throbbing ache.

‘Now, Babe, you need to think really hard about this, because if you get the answer wrong you lose ten points and we move on to the water round. And trust me, you won’t like the water round. Understand?’

Graeme stares at her. Then nods.

‘Good. Neil, you can take the gag off.’

A harsh ripping noise, eye-watering agony. ‘Fuck…’

Elvis holds up the duct tape, grinning. ‘Got half his beard off in one go! Can we do his eyebrows next?’

‘Bastards…’ Breath hissing through gritted teeth.

‘OK, Babe: here’s your starter for ten.’

He can hear her chair scraping closer.

‘Where’s Richard Knox?’

‘No, I can barely hear you.’ Logan stuck his finger in his ear as they juddered up the hill past the truncated concrete pyramid of the Shell building, heading south. A massive eighteen-wheeler passed them in the outside lane, sending filthy grey-brown spray all over the car, the windscreen wipers struggling to clear it, leaving two diarrhoea-coloured rainbows across the glass.

‘I said, where the bastarding hell are you?’

‘Nigg roundabout. Should be with you in ten minutes.’

If the car didn’t die by then.

‘Listen, I found a possible motive for abducting Danby — million-and-a-half in seized-’

‘I don’t care. Just got a call from Susan, she’s got these stomach cramps…’

Oh no.

Logan swallowed. ‘She all right?’

‘Course she’s not, she’s having bloody stomach cramps!’ Silence. ‘What if she loses the baby?’

More silence.

‘I’m sure she’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine.’ That was what you were meant to say, wasn’t it?

Steel coughed. Sniffed. Cleared her throat. ‘Sod it, I’m taking her to A amp;E. You’re in charge: give the search another couple hours then wind it down. Make it look like we tried.’

‘Do you want…’

But Steel was gone. He was talking to a dead phone.

‘Sod it.’ Logan jabbed the car’s cigarette lighter with his thumb, and when it popped up he pulled a cigarette from the packet and sooked it into life.

Butler immediately started making pantomime coughing noises.

‘Fine…’ Logan ground it out in the overflowing ashtray. ‘Happy?’

‘Bad enough I’ve got to drive this rattletrap without catching your second-hand smoke.’

‘Just drive, OK?’

The gritters were out in force — two of them taking up both lanes of the dual carriageway, huge rusty yellow things topped with flashing orange lights, strafing the road with salt and sand. All the cars hanging back to avoid having the paint battered off their bonnets.

Butler took the second exit at the next roundabout, heading into Cove, weaving through the suburban streets for the south-east corner.

Jimmy Evans’s house sat on its own at the end of a long, rutted driveway, potholes and ice making Logan’s tatty little Fiat slither and jerk as Butler got them as close to the brightly lit house as possible.

A series of patrol cars and police vans snaked back from a snow-covered driveway, blocking the lane.

‘We’ll have to walk from here.’

Sunlight speared down from a crystal blue sky, making the fields glitter, the snow crunchy underfoot, the sound of dogs and police chatter ringing in the crisp air.

The Police Search Advisor met them at the front door, scratching an armpit. With thinning, scraggy blonde hair and a pointy nose, he looked a bit like a meerkat with mange. ‘So.’ He squinted at Logan. ‘It true you’re in charge now?’

‘That a problem?’

‘Hey, long as you sign off on the overtime, I’m happy.’ He held out a stack of reports and Logan flicked through them.

‘You want to summarize this for me?’

More scratching. ‘No sign of Knox anywhere.’

There was a shock. ‘IB?’

The POLSA took his hand out of his armpit for long enough to point at a familiar filthy Transit van. ‘Still doing the guest bedroom. Family’s cleared out, so we’ve got the run of the place.’

‘Door-to-doors?’

He blinked, then did a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, staring out at the snow-covered fields. ‘Erm…There’s no one living anywhere near, if you don’t count the sheep, so-’

‘Back there, where the lane joins the main road. There’s houses overlooking the entrance — they might’ve seen a car coming or going.’

The rest of Constable Meerkat’s face turned as pink as his nose and ears. ‘Ah, OK. I’ll get that organized…’

The Airwave handset clipped to Butler’s shoulder started bleeping and she moved away a couple of paces to answer it, then came back and handed the thing to Logan. ‘Control.’

‘McRae.’

‘Aye, hud oan, puttin’ you through…’

Click.

‘Sergeant, it’s Dr Frampton, we met at the-’

‘Steve Polmont crime scene, yes, I remember.’

‘I tried getting in touch with DI Steel, but it seems she’s unavailable?’

‘Yeah…’ According to the paperwork, there wasn’t so much as a footprint beyond the back garden.

‘We’ve got a result from the soil sample we took yesterday, from the flat where Knox escaped. A footprint just inside the hallway?’

‘Uh-huh?’ Logan handed the search reports back to the POLSA. Steel was right — the search was a waste of time, but at least it looked as if they were doing something. Knox was long gone.

‘We ran it against the national soil database, and there’s about a dozen places it could have come from in Aberdeenshire, I’ve emailed the results to you.’

‘Hold on…’ He pulled out the scrap of paper he was using as a surrogate notebook, and pinned it to the roof of the nearest patrol car with the side of his hand, pen poised. ‘Want to give me the edited highlights?’

Pause. ‘The sample has a pH of five-point-five and carbon’s sitting around three-point-six percent. Add in silt at eleven percent and that makes it Cairnrobin. You see, the general SSKIB values for soils like these-’

‘Place names. Honestly, it’ll be quicker if you just give me place names.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, well Cairnrobin is a pretty small series — there’s only three hundred and ninty-five hectares in the whole of Scotland — in isolated pockets around Cove, Menie House, and near the mouth of the Ythan at Sleek of Tarty.’

Logan crabbed them out on the paper, then put his hand over the mouthpiece, leant over to the POLSA. ‘Any signs of a break in?’

‘Back door — the lock’s been gouged with a screwdriver.’

He went back to the call.

‘…time. You see, a soil sample is like a fingerprint-’

‘Thanks Doctor. That’s great. I’ll be in touch.’ He hung up before she could launch into anything else.

Logan stood there, tapping the handset against his chin.

Butler raised an eyebrow. ‘Something?’

He turned to the POLSA, and slapped his hand on the roof of the patrol car. ‘You got keys for this?’

Turned out it wasn’t even locked. Logan slipped into the passenger seat and fired up the little grey laptop mounted on the dashboard, using it to log into his Grampian Police email address.

Half a dozen messages from Beattie — which he ignored — and right after them the one from Dr Frampton. He opened it, then clicked on the.jpg attachment, shifting in his seat as the picture file downloaded.

It was a high-resolution map that looked as if it was made from stitched together screenshots. The areas where the soil matched the print in the flat highlighted in red. One cluster of red blobs sat north of Balmedie, near Donald Trump’s golf resort; one was about halfway to Peterhead; but the biggest concentration lay along the coast just south of Cove.

Logan frowned at the screen.

Most were just fields, but two of the blobs had houses in them.

Logan zoomed in on the Cove section. ‘See this?’

Constable Itchy squinted. ‘No, that’s wrong.’ He stuck his finger on the laptop’s screen and drew a little greasy circle inside the red bit. ‘That’s the search area: Steel only wanted a hundred meters. Are we meant to search the rest of it? Only it’s bloody freezing out there, and it’ll be dark soon.’

Why was there mud from around the victim’s home on the carpet of Knox’s Sacro flat?

Maybe whoever helped him escape stopped off on the way up to check on potential targets…?

Logan looked up at the house. ‘I need to speak to the victim, Evans.’

The POLSA shook his head. ‘Like I said — the family’s cleared out. Son took the old man back to Sunderland, said they didn’t want him being on his own, you know, with Knox on the loose.’

Couldn’t blame them. ‘Give him a phone: I need to know if Evans saw anything suspicious — cars, people — over the last couple of days.’

Mind you, they’d have to be pretty open-minded mobsters to find their accountant an old man to torture and rape…

‘Sarge?’

Logan blinked. ‘Right…You two go grab a cup of tea. I’ve got some calls to make.’