Cold Granite. Stuart MacBride

      Watson shrugged: after all, she’d been calling Miller much worse just minutes ago.

      Leslie gave her an embarrassed smile. ‘Aye, well, the wee shite swans up here from the Scottish Sun thinkin’ he’s God’s fuckin’ gift … Got kicked off the paper from what I hear.’ His face darkened. ‘Some of us still believe in the rules! You don’t screw your colleagues. You don’t phone up a dead kid’s mum until you know the police have broken the news. But the little bastard thinks he can get away with murder, just as long as there’s a story at the end of it.’ There was a bitter pause. ‘And his spellin’s bollocks.’

      Logan gave him a thoughtful look. ‘You have any idea who told him we’d found David Reid?’

      The old reporter shook his head. ‘No idea, but if I find out you’ll be the first to know! Be a pleasure to screw him over for a change.’

      Logan nodded. ‘Right, that’s great …’ he forced a smile. ‘Well, we’re going to have to get going …’

      WPC Watson pulled the car out of the space, leaving the old reporter standing on his own in the rain.

      ‘They should make you a DI!’ he shouted after the car. ‘A DI!’

      As they drove out past the security gate Logan could feel his face going red.

      ‘Aye, sir,’ said WPC Watson, watching him turn a lovely shade of beetroot. ‘You’re an inspiration to us all.’

       5

      Logan was starting to get over his embarrassment by the time they were fighting their way across Anderson Drive, heading back to Force Headquarters. The road had started life as a bypass, but the city had suffered from middle-aged spread and oozed out to fill in the gaps with cold grey granite buildings so that it was more of a belt, stretched across the city and groaning at the seams. It was a nightmare during rush hour.

      The rain was still hammering down and the people of Aberdeen had reacted in their usual way. A minority trudged along, wrapped up in waterproof jackets, hoods up, umbrellas clutched tight against the icy wind. The rest just stomped along getting soaked to the skin.

      Everyone looked murderous and inbred. When the sun shone they would cast off their thick woollens, unscrew their faces, and smile. But in winter the whole city looked like a casting call for Deliverance.

      Logan sat staring morosely out of the window, watching the people trudge by. Housewife. Housewife with kids. Bloke in a duffle coat and stupid-looking hat. Roadkill with his shovel and council-issue wheelie-cart full of dead animals. Child with plastic bag. Housewife with pushchair. Man in a mini-kilt …

      ‘What the hell goes through his mind of a morning?’ Logan asked as Watson slipped the car into gear and inched forward.

      ‘What, Roadkill?’ she said. ‘Get up, scrape dead things off the road, have lunch, scrape more dead things—’

      ‘No not him.’ Logan’s finger jabbed at the car window. ‘Him. Do you think he gets up and thinks: “I know, I’ll dress so everyone can see my backside in a light breeze”?’

      As if by magic the wind took hold of the mini-kilt and whipped it up, exposing an expanse of white cotton.

      Watson raised an eyebrow. ‘Aye, well,’ she said, nipping past a shiny blue Volvo. ‘At least his pants are clean. His mum won’t have to worry about him getting knocked down by a bus.’

      ‘True.’

      Logan leaned forward and clicked on the car radio, fiddling with the buttons until Northsound, Aberdeen’s commercial radio station, blared out of the speakers.

      WPC Watson winced as an advert for double-glazing was rattled out in broad Aberdonian. They’d somehow managed to cram about seven thousand words and a cheesy tune into less than six seconds. ‘Jesus,’ she said, her face creased in disbelief. ‘How can you listen to that crap?’

      Logan shrugged. ‘It’s local. I like it.’

      ‘Teuchter bollocks.’ Watson accelerated through the lights before they could turn red. ‘Radio One. That’s what you want. Northsound, my arse. Anyway, you’re not supposed to have the radio on: what if a call comes in?’

      Logan tapped his watch. ‘Eleven o’clock: time for the news. Local news for local people. Never hurts to find out what’s going on in your patch.’

      The advert for double-glazing was followed by one for a car firm in Inverurie done in Doric, Aberdeen’s almost indecipherable dialect, then one for the Yugoslavian Ballet and another for the new chip shop in Inverbervie. Then came the news. Mostly it was the usual rubbish, but one piece caught Logan’s attention. He sat forward and cranked up the volume.

      ‘ … earlier today. And the trial of Gerald Cleaver continues at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. The fifty-six-year-old, originally from Manchester, is accused of sexually abusing over twenty children while serving as a male nurse at Aberdeen Children’s Hospital. Hostile crowds lined the road outside the courthouse, hurling abuse as Cleaver arrived under heavy police escort …’

      ‘Hope they throw the book at him,’ Watson said, cutting across a box junction and speeding off down a little side road.

       ‘ … The parents of murdered toddler David Reid have been flooded with messages of support today, following the discovery of their three-year-old son’s body near the River Don late last night …’

      Logan poked a finger at the radio, switching it off in mid-sentence. ‘Gerald Cleaver is a dirty little shite,’ he said, watching as a cyclist wobbled out into the middle of the road, stuck two fingers up and swore at a taxi driver. ‘I interviewed him for the rape murders in Mastrick. Wasn’t really a suspect, but he was on the “dodgy bastards” list, so we pulled him in anyway. Had hands like a toad, all cold and clammy. Pawing himself the whole time …’ Logan shuddered at the memory. ‘Not going to beat this one, though. Fourteen years to life: Peterhead.’

      ‘Serve him right.’

      Peterhead Prison. That was where they sent the sex offenders. The rapists, paedophiles, sadists, serial killers … People like Angus Robertson. People who had to be protected from normal, respectable criminals. The ones that liked to insert makeshift knives into sex offenders. Ta-da. Colostomy bag time for poor old Angus Robertson. Somehow Logan couldn’t feel too sorry for him.

      WPC Watson said something, but Logan was too busy thinking about the Mastrick Monster to pick anything up. From her expression, he got the feeling he’d just been asked a question. ‘Hmmm …’ he said, stalling for time. ‘In what way?’ It was a standard fall-back.

      WPC Watson frowned. ‘Well, I mean, what did the doctor say last night? At A&E?’

      Logan grunted and dug a plastic bottle out of his inside jacket pocket, rattling it. ‘One every four hours, preferably after meals. Not to be taken with alcohol.’ He’d already had three that morning.

      She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

      Two minutes later they were pulling into the multi-storey car park at the back of Force Headquarters, making for the section reserved for patrol and CID pool cars. Command officers and senior staff got to use the car park. Everyone else had to make do with what they could get, usually abandoning their cars on the Beach Boulevard, a five-minute walk from the station. It paid to be an Assistant Chief Constable when it was pissing with rain.

      They found Detective Inspector Insch perched on the edge of a desk in the incident room, swinging one large leg back and forth, listening to a PC carrying a clipboard. The news from the search teams wasn’t good. It was too long since the body had been dumped. The weather conditions were terrible. If, by some miracle, any forensic evidence had managed to survive the last three months it would have washed away in the last six hours. DI Insch didn’t say