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

come he wasn’t in school today?’ asked Logan, helping himself to one of Insch’s sweets.

      ‘Bullying. Some big fat kid’s been beating the crap out of him ’cos he’s ginger. Mother’s keeping him off until the school do something about it. She’s not told the stepfather though. She thinks he’d go nuts if he knew someone was picking on Peter.’

      Insch stuffed a fizzy thing into his mouth and sighed. ‘Two kids missing in two days,’ he said, not bothering to disguise the sadness in his voice. ‘Christ, I hope he’s just run away. I really don’t want to see another dead kid in the morgue.’ Insch sighed again, his large frame deflating slightly.

      ‘We’ll find them,’ said Logan with a conviction he didn’t feel.

      ‘Aye, we’ll find them.’ The inspector stepped out into the rain, without waiting for Logan to open the brolly. ‘We’ll find them, but they’ll be dead.’

       12

      Logan and Insch drove back to Force Headquarters in silence. The sky had darkened overhead, storm clouds spreading from one horizon to the other, blotting out the daylight, turning the city dark at two in the afternoon. As they drove the streetlights flickered on, their yellow light making the day seem even darker.

      Insch was right of course: they wouldn’t find the missing children alive. Not if it was the same man who’d snatched them. According to Isobel the sexual abuse had all happened post mortem.

      Logan slid the car across Anderson Drive on autopilot.

      At least Peter Lumley had lived a bit first. Poor bloody Richard Erskine had nothing but an overprotective mother. Somehow Logan couldn’t see her taking Richard to Corfu and Malta and Florida. Far too dangerous for her little darling. Peter was lucky he had a nice stepdad to take care of him. . .

      ‘You been seen by the Spanish Inquisition yet?’ asked Insch as Logan negotiated the roundabout at the end of Queen Street. A large statue of Queen Victoria sat in the middle on a huge granite plinth. Someone had stuck a traffic cone on her head.

      ‘Professional Standards? No, not yet.’ He still had that little treat to look forward to.

      Insch sighed. ‘I had them in this morning. Some jumped-up prick in a smart new uniform, never done a damned day’s policing in his life, telling me how important it is to find out who leaked the story to the press. Like I couldn’t work that one out for myself. I tell you, I get whoever—’

      A dirty Ford van shot out in front of them, causing Logan to slam on the brakes and swear.

      ‘Let’s pull them over!’ cried Insch with glee. Making someone else’s day miserable might make them both feel better.

      They gave the driver a stern talking to and ordered her to turn up at nine the following morning with all her documentation. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

      Back at Force HQ the incident room was in turmoil. The phones were ringing non-stop, following an announcement on Northsound Radio and the lunchtime TV news. All the major channels were carrying the story. Aberdeen was becoming a media hot-spot. The whole force was under the spotlight. And if Insch didn’t get this thing solved soon, he’d get his head to play with.

      They spent a while going over the various sightings of the two missing boys. Most of them would be a waste of time, but they all had to be investigated, just in case. One of the force’s technical experts was busy collating all the reports into the computer, taking every sighting and interview, location, time and date and sticking it into HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, setting the massive cross-referencing program running, churning out reams and reams of automatically generated actions. It was a pain in the arse, but you never knew when something might prove to be important.

      But Logan knew it was all a waste of time, because Peter Lumley was already dead. Didn’t matter how many old ladies saw him wandering the streets of Peterhead or Stonehaven. The kid was lying in a ditch somewhere, half-naked and violated.

      The admin officer, a woman far too clever to be that thin, handed a stack of paper to Insch: the actions generated by HOLMES while he and Logan had been out. The inspector took them with good grace and skimmed through them. ‘Shite, shite, shite,’ he said, throwing unwanted sheets over his shoulder as he came to them.

      Every time it came across a person’s name in a statement, HOLMES produced an action to have that person interviewed. Even if it was just some old woman saying she’d been feeding her cat Mr Tibbles at the time the kid went missing: HOLMES wanted Mr Tibbles interviewed.

      ‘Not doing that, or that.’ Another couple of sheets went fluttering to the floor. When he’d finished the pile had been reduced to a mere handful. ‘Get the rest underway,’ he said, handing it back to the admin officer.

      She gave him a long-suffering salute and left them to it.

      ‘You know,’ said Insch, casting a critical eye over Logan, ‘you look worse than I feel.’

      ‘I’m not doing anything here, sir.’

      Insch parked himself on the edge of a desk and riffled through a stack of reports. ‘Tell you what,’ he said and handed over the pile of paper. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, go through that lot. It’s from the door-to-doors in Rosemount this morning. Norman bloody Chalmers gets his appearance in court this afternoon. See if you can find out who that little girl was before they let the bastard out on bail.’

      Logan found himself an empty office as far away from the noise and chaos of the incident room as possible. Uniform had been thorough, the times on the statements making it clear that they’d gone back to some buildings more than once to be sure they spoke to everyone.

      No one knew who the dead girl was. No one recognized her face from the photograph taken in the morgue. It was as if she hadn’t existed before her leg was spotted sticking out of a bin-bag at the tip.

      Logan went out to the supply office and got himself a new map of Aberdeen, sticking it up on the wall of his commandeered office. There was one of these in Insch’s incident room already, all covered with pins and lines and little sticky tags. But Logan wanted one of his own. He stuck a red pin in the Nigg tip, and another in Rosemount: 17 Wallhill Crescent.

      The bin-bag the girl was stuffed into came from the home of Norman Chalmers. Only there was no forensic evidence to tie him to the victim. Other than the contents of the bag. Maybe that was enough to go to trial, but a good defence lawyer – and Sandy Moir-Farquharson wasn’t just good: the little shite was brilliant – would rip the case to shreds.

      ‘Right.’ He sat back on the desk, arms folded, staring at the two pins in the map.

      That bin-bag bothered him. The flat had been covered in cat hair when they’d arrested Chalmers. Logan had spent most of that night in the pub trying to brush the damned stuff off his trousers. There were still stubborn patches of grey fluff sticking to his suit jacket. If the kid had been in the flat, Isobel would have found traces of cat hair during the post mortem.

      So she was never in the flat. That much they knew. That was why Insch had asked for a thorough background search on Chalmers, to see where else he could have taken her. But the research teams had come up empty. If Norman Chalmers had somewhere else to take a four-year-old girl, no one knew about it.

      ‘So what if he didn’t do it?’ he asked himself aloud.

      ‘What if who didn’t do what?’

      It was WPC Wat. . . Jackie.

      ‘What if Norman Chalmers didn’t kill that little girl?’

      Her face hardened. ‘He killed her.’

      Logan sighed and picked himself off the edge of the desk. He might have known she’d be touchy about this. She was still hoping that finding the receipt would crack the case.

      ‘Look