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

and Insch stopped. ‘That’s not the way it works, Sergeant. They’ve sunk their teeth into my arse; they won’t let go that easily. You heard the super: if this goes on much longer, I’m off the case. Lothian and Borders will be running the show.’

      ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen, sir.’

      Something like a smile flickered onto Insch’s face. ‘I know you didn’t.’ He offered the open bag of jelly babies and Logan took a green one. It tasted like five pieces of silver. Insch sighed. ‘Don’t worry: I’ll have a word with the troops. Let them know you’re not a rat.’

      But Logan still felt like one.

      ‘Listen up!’ said DI Insch, addressing the uniforms sitting at desks, answering phones, taking statements. They went quiet as soon as they saw him. ‘You’ve all seen my picture in the paper this morning. I let Roadkill go on Wednesday night, and the next day a girl’s body turns up in his collection of dead things. Turns out I’m an incompetent arse with a penchant for dressing up in funny clothes when I should be out fighting crime. And you’ll also have read that DS McRae told me not to let Roadkill go. But being an idiot I did it anyway.’

      Angry murmurs started, all directed at Logan. Insch held up a hand and there was instant silence. But the glaring continued.

      ‘Now I know you think DS McRae’s a shitebag right now, but you can forget it. DS McRae did not go to the papers. Understood? If he tells me any of you have been giving him grief. . .’ Insch made a throat-cutting gesture. ‘Now get your arses back to work and tell the rest of the shift. This investigation will continue and we will get our man.’

      Half past ten and the post mortem was well underway. It was a nasty, rancid affair and Logan stood as far from the dissecting table as he could. But it wasn’t far enough; even with the morgue’s extractor fan going full belt the smell was overpowering.

      The body had burst when the IB tried to lift it out of the pile at the farm. They’d had to scrape what was left of the internal organs off the steading floor.

      Everyone in the room was wearing protective gear: white paper boiler suits, plastic shoe-covers, latex gloves and breathing masks. Only this time Logan’s mask wasn’t full of menthol chest rub. Isobel paced slowly up and down the table, prodding the corpulent flesh with a double-gloved finger, making detailed and methodical notes into her dictaphone. The bit of rough – Brian – trailed along after her like some sort of demented puppy. Floppy-haired wanker. DI Insch was again conspicuous by his absence, having used Logan’s guilty conscience to get out of it, but the PF and the back-up pathologist were there. Keeping as far away from the rotting corpse as possible without being somewhere else.

      It was impossible to tell if the child had been strangled like David Reid. The skin was too heavily rotted around the throat. And something had been nibbling away at the flesh. Not just little wriggly white things either, and God knew there were enough of those, but a rat or a fox or something. A cold sweat beaded Isobel’s forehead as her running commentary faltered. Carefully, she lifted the internal organs out of the plastic bag they’d been shovelled into, trying to identify what it was she held in her hands.

      Logan was convinced he’d never get the smell out of his nostrils. Little David Reid had been bad, but this one was a hundred times worse.

      ‘Preliminary findings,’ said Isobel when it was finally over, scrubbing and scrubbing at her hands. ‘Four cracked ribs and signs of blunt trauma to the skull. Broken hip. One broken leg. She was five. Blonde. There’s a couple of fillings in her rear molars.’ More soap, more scrubbing. It looked as if Isobel was trying to get clean all the way down to the bone. Logan had never seen her so shaken up by work before. ‘I’d estimate the time of death between twelve and eighteen months ago. It’s hard to be sure with so much decomposition. . .’ She shivered. ‘I’ll need to run some laboratory tests on the tissue samples to be sure.’

      Logan placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t sure what for. That their relationship had fallen apart? That once Angus Robertson was put away, they had nothing in common? That she’d had to suffer what she suffered on that tower block rooftop? That he hadn’t got to her sooner. . . That she’d just had to carve up a badly decomposed child like a turkey?

      She smiled sadly at him, but tears sparkled at the edges of her eyes. For a moment there was a connection between them. A shared moment of tenderness.

      And then Brian, her assistant, ruined it all. ‘Excuse me, Doctor, you have a phone call on line three. I’ve put it through to the office.’

      The moment was gone and so was Isobel.

      Roadkill was undergoing psychiatric evaluation by the time Logan was heading across town to the steadings and their gruesome contents. He didn’t hold out any hopes of Bernard Duncan Philips being found fit to stand trial. Roadkill was a nutjob and everyone knew it. The fact he kept three farm buildings full of dead animals he’d scraped off the road was a bit of a giveaway. Not to mention the dead child. The smell was still clinging to him.

      Logan wound the car’s windows down as far as he dared, wisps of snow flickering in to melt in the heat of the blowers. That post mortem was going to stay with him for a long, long time. Shuddering, he turned the heat up again.

      The city was grinding to a halt in the heavy snowfall. Cars slithered and stalled all the way down South Anderson Drive, some up on the kerb, others just churning away in the middle of the four-lane road. At least his police-issue, rust-acned Vauxhall wasn’t having too much difficulty.

      Up ahead he could see the yellow on-off flash of a gritter spraying salt and sand across two lanes. The cars behind were hanging back, trying to avoid getting their paintwork scratched.

      ‘Better late than never.’

      ‘Sorry, sir?’

      The PC doing the driving wasn’t someone Logan had recognized straightaway. He would have preferred WPC Watson, but DI Insch wasn’t having any of it. He’d picked the new PC to accompany Logan because he was less likely to give Logan a hard time for the story in the morning paper. Besides, WPC Jackie Watson was in court again today with her changing-room wanker. Last time he was giving evidence against Gerald Cleaver, this time he was there to be tried. Not that it was going to take long. He’d been caught red-handed. Literally. Grimacing away in the ladies’ changing room, dick in hand, banging away for all he was worth. It’d be in, plead guilty, mitigating circumstances, community service order and out again in time for tea. Maybe she’d be more inclined to speak to him with a successful prosecution under her belt?

      It took them twice as long as it should have done to get across the Drive and out to Roadkill’s farm on the outskirts of Cults. Visibility was so bad they couldn’t see more than fifty yards in front of the car. The snow took everything away.

      A crowd of reporters and television cameras was huddled outside the entrance to Roadkill’s farm, shivering and sneezing in the snow. Two PCs, dressed up in the warmest gear they could get under their luminous yellow coats, guarded the gate, keeping the Press out. Snow had piled up on their peaked caps making them look slightly festive. The expression on their faces spoiled the image. They were cold, they were miserable and they were fed up with the army of journalists poking microphones in their faces. Asking them questions. Keeping them out of their nice warm patrol car.

      The small lane was clogged with cars and vans. BBC, Sky News, ITN, CNN – they were all here, the television lights making the snow leap out in sharp contrast to the dark grey sky. Earnest pieces to camera stopped as soon as Logan’s car pulled into view; then they descended like piranhas. Logan, stuck at the centre of the feeding frenzy, did just what DI Insch had told him: kept his bloody mouth shut as microphones and cameras were pushed through the open windows.

      ‘Sergeant, is it true you’ve been given control of this case?’

      ‘DS McRae! Over here! Has Inspector Insch been suspended?’

      ‘Has Bernard Philips killed before?’

      ‘Did you know he was mentally unstable before