Cold Granite. Stuart MacBride

a great help.’

      ‘No I haven’t,’ said the reporter. ‘I’ve been “vague and rambling” like the “senile old fart” I am.’

      As he ambled off back to his desk, Logan and WPC Watson made a beeline for the toilets. To Logan’s surprise Watson stormed straight into the gents. Shaking his head, he followed her into the black-and-white-tiled interior.

      Her shout of ‘Colin Miller?’ produced assorted journalistic shrieks as full-grown men scrabbled at their flies and scurried out of the toilets. Finally only one man was left: short, heavily-built, wearing an expensive-looking dark-grey suit. Broad-shouldered, with a pristine haircut, he whistled tunelessly at the urinals, rocking back and forth.

      Watson looked him up and down. ‘Colin Miller?’ she asked.

      He glanced over his shoulder, a nonchalant smile on his lips. ‘You want tae help me shake this?’ he asked with a wink, Glaswegian accent ringing out loud and proud. ‘Ma doctor says I’m no’ to lift anythin’ heavy …’

      She scowled and told him exactly what he could do with his offer.

      Logan stepped between them before Watson could demonstrate why she was called ‘Ball Breaker’.

      The reporter winked, shoogled about a little, then turned from the urinal, zipping himself up, gold signet rings sparkling on almost every finger. A gold chain hung around his neck, lying over the silk shirt and tie.

      ‘Mr Miller?’ asked Logan.

      ‘Aye, you wantin’ an autograph?’ He strutted his way to the sink, hitching up his sleeves slightly as he did so, exposing something chunky and gold on his right wrist and a watch big enough to sleep four on the left. It wasn’t surprising the man was well-muscled: he had to be to cart about all that jewellery.

      ‘We want to talk to you about David Reid, the three-year-old who—’

      ‘I know who he is,’ said Miller, turning on the taps. ‘I did a front page spread on the poor wee sod.’ He grinned and pumped soap into his hands. ‘Three thousand words of pure journalistic gold. Tell ya, kiddie murders: pure gold, so they are. Sick bastard kills some poor kid and suddenly everyone’s dyin’ tae read about the wee dead body over their cornflakes. Fuckin’ unbelievable.’

      Logan resisted the urge to grab Miller by the scruff of the neck and smash his face into a urinal. ‘You called the family last night,’ he said instead, fists jammed deep in his pockets. ‘Who told you we’d found him?’

      Miller smiled at Logan’s reflection in the mirror above the sink. ‘Didn’t take a genius, Inspector …?’

      ‘Sergeant,’ said Logan. ‘Detective Sergeant McRae.’

      The journalist shrugged and wriggled his hands under the hand-drier. ‘Only a DS, eh?’ he had to shout over the roar of warm air. ‘Never mind. You help me catch this sick bastard and I’ll see you make DI.’

      ‘Help “you” catch …’ Logan screwed his eyes shut and was assailed by visions of Miller’s broken nose bleeding into urinal cakes. ‘Who told you we’d found David Reid?’ he asked through gritted teeth.

      Click. The drier fell silent.

      ‘Told you: didn’t take a genius. You found a wee dead kiddie, who else could it have been?’

      ‘We didn’t tell anyone the body was a child!’

      ‘No? Ah well, must’ve been a coincidence then.’

      Logan scowled. ‘Who told you?’

      Miller smiled and shot his cuffs, making sure there was a fashionable inch of starched white visible at the end of both sleeves.

      ‘You never heard of journalistic immunity? I don’t have tae reveal my sources. And you can’t make me!’ He paused. ‘Mind you, if the tasty WPC wants tae do a Mata Hari I might be persuaded … Gotta love a woman in uniform!’

      Watson snarled and pulled out her collapsible truncheon.

      The door to the gents burst open, breaking the moment. A large woman with lots of curly dark-brown hair stormed into the toilets, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ she said, glowering at Logan and Watson. ‘I’ve got half the news desk out there with piss all down the front of their trousers.’ She rounded on Miller before anyone could respond. ‘And what the hell do you think you’re still doing here? They’re giving a press conference on the dead kid in half an hour! The tabloids are going to be all over the damn thing. This is our bloody story and I want it to stay that way!’

      ‘Mr Miller is assisting us with our enquiries,’ said Logan. ‘I want to know who told him we’d found—’

      ‘You arresting him?’

      Logan only paused for a second, but it was long enough.

      ‘Didn’t think so.’ She stabbed a finger at Miller. ‘You! Get your arse in gear. I’m not paying you to chat up WPCs in the bogs!’

      Miller smiled and saluted the glowering woman. ‘You got it, chief!’ he said and winked at Logan. ‘Gotta go. Duty calls and all that.’

      He took a step towards the door, but WPC Watson barred his path. ‘Sir?’ She fingered her truncheon, desperate for an excuse to use it on Miller’s head.

      Logan looked from the smug journalist to Watson and back again. ‘Let him go,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll talk later, Mr Miller.’

      The journalist grinned. ‘Count on it.’ He made his right hand into a gun and fired it at WPC Watson. ‘Catch ya later, investigator.’

      Thankfully she didn’t reply.

      Back in the car park, WPC Watson stomped through the rain to their Vauxhall, wrenched the car’s door open, hurled her hat in the back seat, thudded in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut again, and swore.

      Logan had to admit she had a point. There was no way Miller was going to volunteer his source. And his editor, the curly-haired harridan, had made it perfectly clear, in a ten-minute tirade, that there was no way in hell she was going to order him to do so. There was about as much chance of that happening as Aberdeen Football Club winning the Premier League.

      A knock on the passenger window made Logan jump and a large, smiling face beamed in at him from the rain, a copy of the Evening Express held over his head to keep his thin comb-over dry. It was the reporter who ‘hadn’t’ told them the repulsive Mr Miller was hiding in the men’s toilets.

      ‘You’re Logan McRae!’ said the man. ‘See? I knew I recognized you!’

      ‘Oh aye?’ Logan shrank back in his seat.

      The man in the saggy, faded-brown corduroys nodded happily. ‘I did a story, what wis it: a year ago? “Police Hero Stabbed in Showdown with Mastrick Monster!”’ He grinned. ‘Shite, that wis a damn good story. Nice headline too. Shame “Police Hero” didn’t alliterate …’ A shrug. Then he stuck his hand in through the open car window. ‘Martin Leslie, Features Desk.’

      Logan shook it, feeling more and more uncomfortable with every second.

      ‘Jesus, Logan McRae …’ said the reporter. ‘You a DI yet?’

      Logan said no, he was still a DS, and the older man looked outraged. ‘You’re kidding! Bastards! You deserved it! That Angus Robertson was one sick bastard … You hear he got himself a DIY appendectomy in Peterhead?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Sharpened screwdriver, right in the stomach. Has to crap in a wee bag now …’

      Logan didn’t say anything, and the reporter leaned on the open window, poking his head in out of the rain.

      ‘So what you workin’ on now?’ he asked.

      Logan stared straight ahead, through the windscreen at the dismal grey length of the Lang Stracht.