Cold Granite. Stuart MacBride

going to do? Should he come clean and admit he couldn’t remember anything? He grimaced. That would go down well: ‘Hi, I’m sorry, but I don’t remember having sex with you. Was it good?’ Yeah, and oh, by the way: ‘What’s your name?’

      There was nothing else for it: he’d have to keep his mouth shut and let her make the first move. Logan took a deep breath and stepped into the kitchen.

      The room smelled of frying bacon and stale beer. WPC Watson and her lovely legs were standing in front of the cooker, poking about in the frying pan, making the bacon hiss and crackle. Logan was about to say something complimentary to break the ice when someone spoke behind him, making him jump out of his skin.

      ‘Urrrrrrghhhh … Shift over, I don’t think I can stand up much longer.’

      Logan turned to find a rumpled young man with a rough growth of stubble and bleary eyes, dressed in casual clothes and scratching his arse, waiting for Logan to clear the way to the kitchen.

      ‘Sorry,’ Logan mumbled, letting the youth slouch past and collapse into a chair.

      ‘Gnnnnnnnn, my head,’ said the newcomer, burying the offending article in his hands and letting it sink to the tabletop.

      Watson looked over her shoulder and saw Logan standing there, all done up in his work suit. ‘Sit yourself down,’ she told him, grabbing a couple of slices of white bread from a new loaf and slapping about half a pack of fried bacon between them. She thumped it down on the tabletop, and chucked more bacon into the pan.

      ‘Er … thanks,’ said Logan.

      The hungover young man sitting on the other side of the table looked vaguely familiar. Was it one of the search team? The one who spilled lager over that bearded bloke from CID? Watson slammed another bacon buttie onto the table, this time in front of the groaning PC.

      ‘You didn’t have to make breakfast,’ said Logan, smiling at Watson as she tipped the last of the smoked streaky into the frying pan. A big cloud of hissing steam rose from the pan and she waved it away with the fish slice, little droplets of fat falling from the plastic utensil to splatter on the work surface.

      ‘What, you’d rather he did it?’ she asked, pointing at the PC. He didn’t look as if he’d make it as far as the toilet if the bacon buttie decided to give him any trouble. ‘Don’t know about you, but I like my breakfast chunk free.’

      Another face Logan only partially recognized appeared around the kitchen door. ‘God, Steve,’ it said, ‘look at the state of ye! If Insch catches you like that he’ll have a fit …’ He stopped when he saw Logan sitting there in his nice clean suit. ‘Mornin’, sir. Good party last night. Thanks for putting us up.’

      ‘Er … Don’t mention it.’ Party?

      The face smiled. ‘Ooooooh! Nice legs, Jackie! God, bacon butties. Any chance—’

      ‘Bugger all,’ said Watson, grabbing another two slices of white and stuffing them with the last of the bacon. ‘MacNeil only got four packs and they’re all gone. Anyway, I gotta get ready.’ She grabbed the tomato sauce off the counter top and squeezed an indecent amount of thick red into the buttie. ‘You should have got out your pit earlier.’

      The new face creased up with unconcealed envy as WPC Jackie Watson ripped a huge bite out of her buttie. She chewed away contentedly with a large tomato sauce smile plastered across her face.

      Not one to give up easily, the man Logan still couldn’t place sat himself down on the last remaining chair and lent his elbows on the tabletop. ‘God, Steve,’ he said, his voice dripping with concern, ‘you really look rough. Are you sure you’re OK to eat that?’ He pointed at the bacon buttie sitting on the tabletop. ‘It looks really, really greasy.’

      Watson’s mouth was full of food, but she still managed to mumble round the edges, ‘Don’t you listen to him, Steve. Do you the world of good that will.’

      ‘Yeah,’ said the PC with no name. ‘You get that down you, Steve. Nice hunks of sliced dead pig. Fried in its own grease. Dripping with fat. Just the thing you need to settle a queasy, heaving stomach.’

      Steve was starting to go grey.

      ‘Nothing like a bit of lard to settle the old …’

      The newcomer didn’t have to go any further. Steve lurched up from the table, slapped a hand over his mouth and sprinted for the toilet. As the sounds of retching and splattering echoed out of the bathroom the newcomer grinned, snatched up Steve’s forgotten buttie and rammed it into his gob. ‘God that’s good!’ he declared, grease running down his chin.

      ‘You’re an utter and complete bastard, Simon Rennie!’

      The bastard Simon Rennie winked at WPC Jackie Watson. ‘Survival of the fittest.’

      Logan sat back from the table, chewing on his bacon buttie, trying to remember what the hell happened last night. He couldn’t remember any party. Everything was pretty much a blank after the pub. And some of the stuff before that was none too clear either. But apparently he’d had a party and some of the search team had crashed at his place. That made sense. His flat was on Marischal Street: two minutes’ walk from Queen Street and Grampian Police Headquarters. But he still couldn’t remember anything after they were chucked out of the pub. The PC currently throwing up in his toilet – Steve – had stuck Queen’s ‘A Kinda Magic’ on the jukebox and promptly taken off all his clothes. It couldn’t be called a striptease. There was no teasing and too much staggering round like a drunken lunatic.

      The bar staff had kindly asked them to leave.

      Which explained why half of Aberdeen’s constabulary were either in his kitchen wolfing bacon, or in his bathroom chucking their guts up. But it didn’t shed any light on WPC Jackie Watson and her lovely legs.

      ‘So,’ he said, watching as Watson tore another huge mouthful out of her buttie. ‘How come you ended up with cooking duty?’ It was a neutral subject. No one would be able to discern the subtext: did we sleep together last night?

      She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shrugged. ‘My turn. If it’s your first time on a sleepover you have to make the butties. But it’s your flat, so it goes to the next one in line.’

      Logan nodded as if that made perfect sense. It was too early in the morning and he wasn’t up to thinking speed yet. He just smiled in a way that he hoped didn’t say anything negative about whatever had happened last night.

      ‘Well,’ he stood, dropping his crusts in the bin. ‘I’ve got to go. The briefing’s at half-seven, sharp, and I’ve got some pre-work to do.’ Nice and businesslike. No one said anything, or even looked up. ‘OK, well, if you can make sure and lock up I’ll see you all there …’ He stopped, expecting some sort of signal from WPC Watson. Jackie! Not WPC Watson: Jackie. He didn’t get one. She was too busy eating. ‘Yeah. Right,’ he said, backing towards the door. ‘See you later.’

      Outside it was still dark. This time of the morning wasn’t going to see the sun for another five months at least. The city was starting up as he climbed Marischal Street to the Castlegate. The streetlights were still on, and so were the Christmas lights. The twelve days of Christmas: Aberdeen’s favourite, strung all the way from here to the far end of Union Street.

      Logan stopped for a moment, breathing in the cold morning air. The torrential downpour was gone, replaced by a misting drizzle that made the Christmas lights hazy and blurred. Ivory-white light sculpted into lords a-leaping and swans a-swimming against the gunmetal-grey sky. The streets were slowly filling up with cars. The Union Street shop windows offered a riot of Christmas cheer and cheap tat. Above these, grey granite reached up for three or more storeys, the windows dark where offices were yet to open, people yet to wake. The whole scene was washed with amber and sparkling-white from the festive lights. It was almost beautiful. Sometimes the city reminded him why he still lived here.

      He grabbed a pint of orange juice and a couple of butteries at the nearest newsagents before