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

into the blizzard, making for the farmhouse, the torch’s beam a bar of white, swirling and whirling, marking his progress through the long grass. Ten steps and his trousers were soaked to the knee, his shoes full of icy water. By the time he got to the front door his teeth were clattering in his head, the steady clacka-clacka-clacka running counterpoint to his shivers.

      Light flickered from the kitchen window, but Logan could only make out silhouettes through the filthy glass. He didn’t bother knocking, just heaved and shoved at the swollen door. Inside, the house was even more dilapidated than he’d expected. With no one living here for God knows how long, the place had turned into a mausoleum of mould. He ran the torch over the hallway, picking out the remains of wallpaper and furniture. Here and there the plaster was gone from the walls, exposing the lath beneath. Dark fungus clustered round the holes like flies round an open sore. The staircase was missing rungs and one step was broken, the board snapped in the middle and sticking up at the ends. But there were still photos on the walls.

      Logan brushed a clearing in the dust-covered glass of one, and a happy-looking woman smiled back at him. He made the clean patch bigger and a little boy appeared, grinning at the camera, wearing a smart new set of clothes, his hair all combed straight. There was a striking family resemblance. Bernard Duncan Philips and his mother in better times. Before he started collecting dead things. Before there was a little girl’s corpse in steading number two.

      The kitchen was cramped and dark. Piles of cardboard boxes lined the room, the constant damp making them sag at the corners. Mildew covered the walls, lending the place a smell of desolation. And in the middle of the room sat a tatty kitchen table with two treacherous-looking chairs.

      Bernard Duncan Philips, AKA Roadkill, was slumped in one of them, DI Insch leaning against the sink opposite. Between them a small candelabrum flickered. Only two of its five sockets had any candles in them, and they were little more than stubs. No one said a word as Logan entered.

      Insch’s face was like stone, scowling down at the sagging figure. He must have been thinking the same thing as Logan: they’d had him last night and they’d let him go. And now they had another dead child on their hands.

      ‘I’ve sent the duty doctor home.’ Logan’s voice was swallowed by the gloom.

      ‘What did he say?’ asked Insch, not taking his eyes off Roadkill.

      ‘It’s probably a little girl. We don’t know how old. She’s been dead for a long time. Maybe years.’

      Insch nodded and Logan knew he was feeling relieved. If the kid had been dead for years then it didn’t matter that they’d let Roadkill go last night. No one had died because of that.

      ‘Mr Philips here has declined to comment. Haven’t you, Mr Philips? You won’t tell me who she is, or when you killed her. Funny how we’ve now got two dead girls on our books, isn’t it? Even funnier how we’ve got some sick bastard running round killing little boys and sticking things up their arses. Cutting off their dicks.’

      Logan frowned. David Reid had turned up dead and mutilated in a ditch on the other side of the city. Roadkill liked to keep his dead things. He wouldn’t leave a prize like that lying out in the open.

      ‘You know,’ said Logan, trying to play good cop. ‘We could make this a lot easier for you, Bernard. You tell us what happened. In your own words, OK? I’m sure you didn’t mean for all this to happen, did you?’

      Roadkill slumped forward until his head rested on the scarred tabletop.

      ‘Was it an accident, Bernard? Did it just happen?’

      ‘They’re taking them all away. All my beautiful dead things.’

      Insch slammed his huge fist down on top of the table, making the candelabrum and Roadkill jump. Hot wax spattered onto the wood. Bernard Duncan Philips slowly sank back down to the tabletop, covering his head with his arms.

      ‘You’re going to jail. You hear that? You’re going to Peterhead Prison, with all the other sick bastards. The paedophiles, rapists, murderers. You going to be someone’s bitch up there? Going to find the love of your life in some hairy-arsed Weegie bastard? ’Cos if you don’t start talking to us I’m going to make sure you get shacked up with the skankiest arse-raping bastard they’ve got up there!’

      It was designed to get a response. But it failed. In the uneasy silence Logan could hear a quiet tune. Roadkill was humming something to himself. It sounded like ‘Abide with me’.

      The kitchen window filled with light and Logan cleared a hole in the grubby glass. The Identification Bureau van was struggling its way up the track. It stopped outside steading number two. There was another car behind it. Something sleek and expensive which was having trouble with the snow-covered drive. By the time it drew level with the farm buildings, the technicians had started humping their equipment from the warmth and safety of the van into the charnel house.

      The car’s driver clambered out into the snow. It was Isobel.

      Logan sighed. ‘That’s IB and the pathologist.’ He watched her turn her collar up and slither around to the boot of her car. She was wearing a long camel-coloured coat over her tan suit. She struggled out of her Italian leather boots and into a pair of wellies before clumping her way into the steading.

      Thirty seconds later she was out in the snow again, bent double, breathing hard. Trying not to be sick. A grim smile spread itself over Logan’s face. It wouldn’t do to appear human in front of the lower ranks.

      Insch pushed himself away from the sink and produced a pair of handcuffs. ‘Come on, Philips. On your feet.’

      Logan watched as the bedraggled figure was read his rights and the cuffs were snapped into place, hands behind his back. Then Insch dragged Roadkill out of the kitchen and off into the snow.

      Alone in the house, Logan blew out the candles and followed.

       21

      This time Roadkill’s ‘appropriate adult’ was a run-down man in his early fifties, thinning on top and sporting a ridiculous little moustache. Lloyd Turner: an ex-schoolteacher at Hazlehead Academy who’d recently lost his wife and wanted something to take his mind off being alone all the time. He sat at the table next to Bernard Duncan Philips, facing the combined scowls of Detective Inspector Insch and DS Logan McRae.

      The small room smelled. Not just the usual, inexplicable whiff of cheesy feet, but the stale sweat and rotting animal odour that Roadkill exuded. The bruises Logan had seen last night had blossomed. Dark purple and green spread over the prisoner’s face, disappearing into his matted beard. His hands fluttered on the tabletop, the skin dirty, the nails black. The only clean thing about him was the white paper boiler suit the Identification Bureau had given him when they’d taken his clothes away for forensic examination.

      Logan and Insch had spent three hours getting exactly nowhere. The only thing they could get out of Roadkill was that someone was stealing all his precious dead things. They’d tried being nice; they’d tried being nasty. They’d tried getting the ex-teacher with the moustache to talk to him, to explain the seriousness of the situation. Nothing.

      DI Insch rocked back in his seat, making the plastic creak. ‘Right,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Let’s try this again shall we?’

      Everyone round the table grimaced, except for Roadkill. He just went on humming. Abide with bloody me. It was beginning to drive Logan mad.

      The teacher put up his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I think it’s quite clear Bernard is not in any fit state to be interrogated.’ He cast a sideways glance at the smelly man sitting next to him. ‘His mental state is a matter of record. He needs help, not incarceration.’

      Insch slammed his chair forward. ‘And the kiddies lying dead in the morgue need to be safe and sound at home, not killed by a twisted weirdo!’ He crossed his arms, straining the seams on his shirt, making himself look even bigger. ‘I want to know