Logan McRae Crime Series Books 1-3: Cold Granite, Dying Light, Broken Skin. Stuart MacBride

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