else while I’m feeling generous?’
‘Where are they sticking Knox this time?’
‘Strictly need to know.’
‘What, and I don’t-’
‘Right now, Danby’s arse is eating his panties: thinks the fewer people know where Knox is the better. And don’t look at me like that, this is for your own good. Trust me, if I could get out of knowing where the raping wee shite was staying, I would. Sooner or later Knox is going to go back to his bad old ways — the less involved you are, the better.’
Logan settled into his office chair.
The little detective sergeants’ cupboard was littered with boxes of files, all radiating out from Doreen’s desk. She was on the phone, haranguing the lab about how long it was going to take them to analyse all the samples she’d brought in, and how much of the CID budget it was going to cost.
Biohazard Bob helped himself to one of Logan’s prawn cocktail crisps, crunching and talking at the same time. ‘You’d think she’d been asked to solve the Great Train Robbery, wouldn’t you?’ He nudged one of the file boxes with a scuffed shoe. ‘I mean, look at all this crap.’ Sniff. ‘And how come she gets all the classy cases? She gets “contract killing with expensive set of golf clubs”, I get “junkie booted half to death”. Where’s the bloody justice in that?’
‘Yeah, because you’re
Just because Steel was foretelling doom didn’t mean he didn’t still want to know.
‘That Liverpool psychologist was with him for a couple of hours. Apparently he’s worried our visiting rapist’s on a — ’ Bob put on a big dramatic voice, ‘- “COUNTDOWN TO DISASTER!”. I swear to God, he even said it like that. “COUNTDOWN TO DISASTER!”’
Doreen swivelled round in her chair and shushed them, then went back to her phone call. ‘How can it take all week to analyse half a dozen blood spatters?’
Bob grinned. ‘She’s cute when she’s pissed off, isn’t she?’
‘Goulding leave a report?’
‘Nah, went back to his lair to write it up. Says we should keep an extra close eye on young Master Knox. Apparently all this stress is going to send him right back to his auld-mannie-raping ways. Should’ve hacked his bollocks off in Newcastle when they had the chance-’
‘Here we go…’
‘Look, I’m just saying OK? Everyone who ends up on the Sex Offenders’ Register should be castrated. You remember that bloke from Banchory we did for kiddie-fiddling? What did he do, soon as he got out?’
‘Not listening, Bob.’ Logan powered up his computer.
‘Or that rapist who liked pregnant women. Remember him?’
‘Anyone say what they’re doing about security at Knox’s new place?’
‘Or what about the bloke who…’ Frown. ‘Oh, you know: in Duthie Park. What was it, “The Winter Gardens Wanker”?’
‘Hmm? Oh, no idea. Ask Steel, that’s her poison chalice full of turds.’ The phone went and he snatched up the receiver. ‘Big Bob’s House of Sexual Deviancy, Big Bob speaking…’
Idiot.
Logan called up his email and waited for it to chug through the backlog on the server. Buried in the usual office-related dross was a message from an admin officer at HM Prison Frankland, with a spreadsheet attached of everyone who’d ever shared a cell with Richard Knox. The officer had even included a breakdown of what each of them had been convicted of. It wasn’t exactly edifying reading.
Near the bottom of the list was one Oscar Renwick: he’d got seven years for breaking into a family home and ‘forcing the husband to perform fellatio on him by means of threatening the wife with a serrated hunting knife’. Exactly the MO Knox had told them about on the drive out to see his granny’s grave.
Logan opened up the list of murders he’d downloaded — where the victims had been burned to try and hide the evidence. First get rid of any that happened after Oscar Renwick was arrested. And Renwick was only twenty- four when he was sent down, which meant his raping career couldn’t be more than, what, eleven, twelve years? So anything before that could go too. Which left about three dozen. Eliminate any where the victims weren’t stabbed or slashed and Logan was down to eight.
Do a quick analysis on the victims — make sure there was an adult male
Logan settled back in his seat and smiled at the blinking cursor. Less than thirty-six hours in and he was already on the brink of solving a twenty-year-old murder from 230 miles away.
All he’d have to do was call up the case files for the six cases, check to see where Knox’s cellmate was on those days, and wait for the commendations to come rolling in.
Result.
He was putting in a request to South Wales Police when the door thumped open and DC Rennie lumbered into the room, carrying a plastic crate full of files. ‘Golf club murder?’
Logan pointed at Doreen’s collection. ‘Anywhere over there.’
‘Ta.’ He dumped the crate on the carpet, then stood, rubbing his hands on his trousers. ‘Thought you were supposed to be at some meeting Beattie’s been banging on about?’
Logan frowned, then checked his watch. 16:35.
Shite. Completely lost track of time.
He jumped to his feet, stabbed the button to switch off his monitor, then grabbed the big square tin from the shelf by the ‘UNSOLVED’ whiteboard. ‘Stealing the biscuits!’ And charged out of the door.
32
Broad Street was like a wind tunnel. The snow not so much falling as hammering sideways. St Nicholas House loomed on the other side of the street, a fourteen-storey slab of concrete and glass, the upper floors hidden by the howling weather.
Cars and buses crept past, headlights on full, windscreen wipers thunking back and forth. Logan hurried across the road, ground his cigarette out in the little receptacle by the automatic door and shivered inside. Stomped his feet on the coconut matting, shook the snow off his coat and the tin of biscuits. Wiped the meltwater from his stinging face.
Five minutes later he was steaming quietly next to the radiator in reception, flicking through a copy of that morning’s
Logan held out the damp tin. ‘Brought biscuits.’
Dildo sniffed. ‘Not digestives are they?’ He popped off the lid, ‘Ooh, Jammie Dodgers…’
He handed Logan a visitor’s pass. ‘Your guv’nor’s a randy old sod, by the way — been trying to chat up Susanna since she got here.’
‘Please, tell me you’re kidding.’ Trust Beattie to find a way to make things even more awkward.
‘I wish.’
Dildo turned on his heel and marched towards the stairs.
Logan didn’t move. ‘Any chance we can take the lifts for a change?’
‘It’s only four floors, you lazy bugger. Anyway, the lifts are playing Russian Roulette again. Anne’s ended up in the basement twice today, doors wouldn’t even open the second time.’
Four flights later, Logan was puffing and wheezing, lurching after Dildo as he pushed through a set of double doors into the dark heart of Trading Standards. Which was about sixteen desks arranged back-to-back in the near left corner, sectioned off from Bereavement Services by a wall of shoulder-height partitions in a grubby shade of burgundy.
