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

the linoleum was green. It was like sitting inside a huge bogey.

      The two carrier bags were sitting on the tabletop.

      ‘Shall we take a look inside then, Mr Nicholson?’ Logan pulled one of them open and was surprised to see a packet of bacon and a tin of beans staring back at him. The other one had crisps and chocolate biscuits. Frowning, he tipped them out onto the table. Chocolate and crisps, beans and bacon. . . And right at the very bottom a pair of thick manila envelopes. Logan’s frown turned into a smile.

      ‘What have we here?’

      ‘Never seen them before in my life!’

      It wasn’t rain dripping down Nicholson’s face now: it really was nervous sweat.

      Logan snapped on a pair of latex gloves and picked up one of the envelopes. It stank of cigarette smoke. ‘Anything you’d like to say before I open these?’

      ‘I just carry them. I don’t know what’s in them. . . They’re not mine!’

      Logan tipped the contents out onto the table. Photographs. Women hanging out the washing; women getting ready for bed. But mostly it was children. At school. Playing in the garden. One in the back seat of a car, looking scared. Whatever Logan had been expecting, it wasn’t this. Each of the pictures had a different name written on the back. No address, just a name. ‘What the hell is this?’

      ‘I told you: I don’t know nothing about what’s in them!’ His voice was getting higher, panicky. ‘I just carry them.’

      The grumpy DC grabbed hold of Duncan Nicholson’s shoulders, shoving him back into his seat with a crash.

      ‘You filthy wee shite!’ He grabbed a photo of a small boy, sitting in a sandpit with a stuffed rabbit. ‘Was this how you found him? Is it? Did you photograph David Reid? Decide you wanted him? You filthy fuck!’

      ‘It isn’t like that! It’s nothing like that!’

      ‘Mr Duncan Nicholson, I’m detaining you on suspicion of murder.’ Logan stood, looking down at the spread of children’s faces, feeling sick. ‘Read him his rights, Constable.’

      There wasn’t really room in the small house for four IB technicians, the video operator, photographer, Logan, the grumpy DC and two uniformed officers, but they squeezed in anyway. No one wanted to wait outside in the driving rain.

      The contents of the two envelopes were now all bagged and tagged. Envelope number two wasn’t full of pictures; it was full of money and little pieces of jewellery.

      Upstairs there was a cupboard, opposite the bathroom. Three foot long, four foot wide, just big enough to hold a computer, fancy-looking colour printer, and a barstool. And a bolt that only fastened from the inside.

      There were shelves of CDs on the wall, the kind you burn at home, all labelled and dated, and boxes of high-quality, glossy printouts under the bench the computer sat on. Women and children; mostly children. They found a top-of-the-range digital camera in the bedroom.

      There was a rattling sound from downstairs and everyone suddenly went quiet.

      Creak. And the front door opened.

      ‘Dunky? Can you give me a. . . Who the hell are you?’

      Logan poked his head down the stairs to see a heavily pregnant woman dressed in a black leather coat and carrying a stack of shopping bags staring in disbelief at the crowd of policemen filling her house.

      ‘Where’s Duncan? What have you bastards done with my husband?’

       25

      The news came over the police radio at three o’clock, just as Logan was getting back to Force Headquarters. The Gerald Cleaver trial had finally come to its verdict after four weeks in the media spotlight.

      ‘Not guilty? How the hell could they find him not guilty?’ asked Logan, as the grumpy DC stuffed their rusty pool car into the parking lot.

      ‘Hissing Bloody Sid,’ came the reply. Sandy Moir-Farquharson had struck again.

      They hurried out of the car and up through to the briefing area. The room was full of uniform, most of whom looked soaked to the skin.

      ‘Listen up!’ It was the Chief Constable himself, looking sharp as a pin in his neatly pressed dress uniform. ‘We are going to have a lot of angry people out there.’ That was an understatement: the crowd of protesters had been an almost permanent fixture outside the courthouse. They wanted to see Gerald Cleaver sentenced to life in Peterhead Prison. Letting him go free was like lighting the blue touch paper and stuffing the firework down your trousers.

      The police presence outside the court buildings had been minimal, just enough to keep everything under control; but that was about to change. The Chief Constable wasn’t taking any chances.

      ‘The eyes of the world are on Aberdeen,’ he said, striking an inspiring pose. ‘With every day that passes, the anti-paedophile movement grows. And quite rightly. But we cannot let a few, misguided, individuals turn the protection of our children into an excuse for violence. I want this to go peacefully. There will be no riot shields. This is a community policing initiative. Understood?’

      There were a few nods.

      ‘You will be out there representing the best of this proud city. Make sure everyone knows that Aberdeen takes law and order very seriously!’

      He paused for a second, as if expecting a round of applause, before yielding the floor to DI Steel who gave everyone their assignments. She looked stressed. She’d been responsible for the Gerald Cleaver case.

      Logan wasn’t uniform, so his name was left off the list, along with the rest of CID, but he shuffled along after the last team anyway, pausing at the front door to look out at the freezing rain and the angry mob outside the Sheriff Court building.

      The crowd was bigger than Logan had anticipated: about five hundred people, filling the space in front of the court, spilling down the stairs and into the ‘official business only’ car park. Television crews were visible as tiny islands of calm in the unhappy sea of faces and placards:

      ‘DOWN WITH EVIL CLEAVER!’

      ‘GIVE CLEAVER THE CHOP!’

      ‘PERVERT BASTARD!’

      ‘LIFE MEANS LIFE!’

      ‘DEATH TO PEDIPHILE SCUM!!!’

      Logan winced as he read that last one. Nothing like stupid people with righteous fury and a mob on their side. Last time there had been this kind of fervour three paediatricians had their surgery windows smashed. Now it looked like they were after the foot fetishists.

      Things were already beginning to get ugly.

      They chanted and shouted abuse at the court building: men, women, parents and grandparents, all gathered together, baying for blood. The only things missing were the pitchforks and burning torches.

      And then the crowd went quiet.

      The large glass doors swung open and out into the rain came Sandy Moir-Farquharson. Gerald Cleaver wasn’t with him: there was no way Grampian Police were going to turn Cleaver out into that mob, no matter how guilty they thought he was.

      Sandy the Snake smiled at the crowd as if they were old friends. This was his moment in the sun. Television cameras from around the world were here. Today he would shine on the global stage.

      A forest of microphones leapt up all around him.

      Logan stepped out into the rain, morbid curiosity dragging him on until he was close enough to hear the lawyer’s words.

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Moir-Farquharson, pulling folded sheets of paper from his jacket pocket, ‘my client will not be available for comment at this time but he has asked me to read the following statement.’