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

secretly Logan knew if he ever got into trouble himself, he’d want Slippery Sandy representing him.

      ‘So how come you let Hissing Sid suspend the interview?’

      Insch shrugged. ‘Because we were never going to get anything out of Chalmers anyway. At least whatever the Snake comes up with will be entertaining.’

      ‘I thought he was busy representing our favourite child molester, Gerald Cleaver.’

      Insch shrugged and dug the bag of sweets out of his pocket. ‘You know Hissing Sid. That case’s got about a week, week and a half left to run. After that he’s going to need something else to get his face in front of the cameras.’ The inspector offered the open bag to Logan who helped himself to a coconut wheel with a liquorice centre.

      ‘Forensics are going to find something,’ Logan said, chewing. ‘The girl had to be in his flat. There were food scraps and empty wine bottles in that bag. There’s no way he could have got her into that bin-bag anywhere else. . . Unless he’s got another property he eats and drinks at.’

      Insch grunted, rummaging in the bag. ‘Get onto the council in the morning. See if he’s got a second property registered anywhere. Just in case.’ He found what he was looking for: one of the aniseed disks with blue bobbles on it. ‘Listen,’ he said, popping the sweet into his mouth, ‘the post mortem’s been scheduled for quarter to eight this evening.’ He paused, his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet. ‘I was wondering if you would mind. . .’

      ‘You want me to go?’

      ‘As senior investigating officer I should be there, but. . . well. . .’

      The inspector had a little girl about the same age as the victim. Watching a four-year-old being filleted like a side of meat would be rough for him. All the same it wasn’t a job Logan was looking forward to. Especially if Dr Isobel MacAlister was going to be the one doing the filleting. ‘I’ll go,’ he said at last, trying not to sigh. ‘You should probably be interviewing Chalmers anyway . . . as senior investigating officer.’

      ‘Thank you.’ As a token of his esteem he gave Logan the last liquorice allsort.

      Logan took the lift down to the morgue, hoping it would be Isobel’s night off. Maybe he’d be lucky and get one of her deputies instead? But the way his luck was running he doubted it.

      The morgue was unnaturally bright and airy for this time of night, the overhead lights sparkling off the dissecting tables and chiller cabinets. It was nearly as cold in there as it was outside. A heavy layer of disinfectant almost managed to hide the stench of corruption from this morning’s post mortem. The smell of David Reid.

      He arrived just in time to see the little girl being unloaded from her oversized body-bag. She was still wrapped in the packing tape, only now the shiny brown strips were dusted with white fingerprint powder.

      Logan’s heart sagged. It was Isobel, not one of her deputies, who stood on the far side of the stainless steel table, directing the little body into place. She was dressed in her cutting gear, the red rubber apron still clean and free from gore. The Procurator Fiscal and the corroborating pathologist were already there, dressed in coveralls, discussing the body with Isobel as she described the rubbish tip where it had been discovered.

      She looked up as Logan approached, annoyance shining out from behind her safety goggles, and pulled down her surgical mask. ‘I thought DI Insch was SIO on this case,’ she said. ‘Where is he this time?’

      ‘He’s interviewing the suspect.’

      She snapped the mask back into place and muttered her displeasure. ‘First he skips the David Reid post mortem and now he can’t even be bothered to attend this one. I don’t know why I bloody bother. . .’ Her complaints trailed off into silence as she prepared her microphone and then went through the opening preliminaries. The Procurator Fiscal cast a disapproving glance at Logan. Clearly he agreed with Isobel’s reading of the situation.

      The shrill bleeping of Logan’s mobile phone cut across her listing of those present and she hurled a furious scowl at him. ‘I do not allow mobile phones to be used during my post mortems!’

      Apologizing profusely, Logan dug the offending article out of his pocket and switched it off. If it was anything important they’d call back.

      Still seething, Isobel finished off the introductory procedure, selected a pair of gleaming stainless steel scissors from the tray of instruments and began to snip away at the packing tape, documenting the state of the body as it was uncovered.

      Underneath the tape, the little girl was naked.

      A big chunk of hair threatened to come away as Isobel tried to unwrap the child’s head. She loosened it with acetone, the sharp chemical smell cutting through the room’s antiseptic tang and underlying perfume of decay. But at least this body hadn’t been lying in a ditch for three months.

      Isobel replaced the scissors on the tray and her assistant started packing the tape into labelled evidence bags. The body was still curled up in a foetal position. Gently Isobel worked the rigor out of the joints, flexing them back and forward until she could lay the little girl out flat on her back. As if she was just sleeping.

      A blonde four-year-old girl, slightly overweight, with numerous bruises on her shoulders and thighs, the contusions dark on her waxy skin.

      A photographer Logan didn’t recognize was snapping away as Isobel worked.

      ‘I’ll need a good head and shoulders shot,’ Logan told him.

      The man nodded and perched over the cold, dead face.

      Flash, whirr, flash whirr.

      ‘There’s a deep incision between the left shoulder and upper arm. It looks like. . .’ Isobel pulled at the arm, opening up the deep gash. ‘Yes: it goes all the way down to the bone.’ She prodded the cut surfaces with a gloved finger. ‘It was inflicted some time after death. A single blow from a sharp, flat blade. Possibly a meat cleaver.’ She moved in so close to the incision that her nose was almost touching the dark-red flesh. She sniffed. ‘There is a distinct smell of vomit in the region of the cut. . .’ She stuck out a hand. ‘Pass me those tweezers.’

      Her assistant did as he was told and Isobel ferreted around in the wound, finally emerging with something grey and gristly.

      ‘There are signs of partially-digested food in the wound.’

      Logan tried not to picture the scene. Failed. ‘He was trying to cut her up,’ he sighed. ‘Trying to get rid of the body.’

      ‘And what makes you think that?’ Isobel asked, one hand resting lightly on the little girl’s chest.

      ‘God knows there’s enough talk of dismembered bodies in the papers. He wants to get rid of the evidence, so he tries to hack it up. Only it’s not as easy as it sounds. Just trying it makes him sick.’ Logan’s voice was hollow. ‘So he wraps her up in packing tape, stuffs her in a bin-bag and puts her out for the scaffies to take away.’ In London they might be refuse disposal operatives, but in Aberdeen they were scaffies.

      The Procurator Fiscal actually looked impressed. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘You may well be correct.’ He turned to Isobel’s assistant, Brian, who was busy popping the bits of gristle into a little plastic tube. ‘Make sure that gets sent off for DNA analysis.’

      Ignoring them, Isobel opened the child’s mouth, peered in with a tongue depressor and recoiled. ‘She appears to have ingested some form of household cleaner. Quite a lot of it from the state of her mouth. The teeth and skin all show signs of corrosive bleaching. We’ll get a better idea when we get to the stomach contents.’ Isobel closed the child’s mouth with one hand, the other supporting the back of the blonde head. ‘Hello. . .’ She beckoned the photographer closer. ‘Take one of this. The back of the head has suffered a severe concussive blow.’ Her fingers moved, probing the hair just above the spot where the skull met the neck. ‘This wasn’t a blunt object, but something wide that tapered