you redirect your energies to getting out there and bloody well finding them!’
Then the head of CID turned a thin smile on the PCSO. ‘And Marie, I
Pink crept up from the white collar of her shirt. ‘But-’
‘Don’t let it happen again.’
‘We didn’t do nothing.’ Wendy Leadbetter folded her arms across her chest. The white Tyvec SOC suit they’d given her to wear, while her own clothes were being examined, made rustling noises as she shifted in her seat. Up close she looked older than he’d been expecting, her face hard and cold, scowl lines already beginning to etch themselves around her eyes and mouth.
‘I am now showing Ms Leadbetter exhibits three, four, five, and six.’ Logan laid the photos out on the interview-room table, starting with the figure throwing the petrol bomb, then moving on to the reference shots of Wendy and her brother Ian in the crowd outside Knox’s home.
She shrugged. ‘Could be anybody. Got their face covered, like.’
‘We found traces of petrol on your jacket, your gloves, your jeans, and your shoes Wendy. See, petrol’s funny that way, it’s like glue: sticks to everything.’
‘Maybe I was filling up me car? Had a bit of an accident. Ever think of that?’
Logan packed the photos away again. ‘Fine. Lie. See if I give a toss.’ He stood. ‘We’ve got you on camera, we’ve got witnesses, we’ve got forensics, and we’ve got motive. You want to play the hardnut? Go right ahead, see how much it helps when you’re banged up for eight years.’
He glanced over Wendy Leadbetter’s shoulder to where PC Butler was leaning against the wall. ‘Get her out of here. We’ll do her brother for conspiracy, then we can all sod off to the pub.’
Butler stepped forward. ‘Up.’
She didn’t move. ‘Ian wasn’t involved in nothing.’
‘Yeah, right. He’s an innocent little lamb with…’ Logan flicked through the file. ‘Look at that: eighteen counts of criminal damage, six public order offences, and four warnings for sending threatening letters.’ He looked at Butler again. ‘Cells.’
‘I said, on your feet.’
‘Who says Ian had anything to do with it? Knox didn’t just rape
‘Yeah, well, you’re the only ones in Aberdeen, so-’
‘Shows how much
‘You really expect me to believe…’ Logan trailed to a halt. Then pulled out the photos and laid them out on the tabletop again — along with all the others he’d printed off — until there was just a big sea of angry faces staring up into the interview room. ‘Prove it.’
Leadbetter sniffed. Then leaned forward and stared, her hard green eyes sweeping back and forth. ‘Him.’ Her finger jabbed a pale-skinned older man in a leather jacket, red Man U scarf around his neck, mouth open shouting something. ‘Lowe, or Lovie, something like that. Knox raped his dad.’ Thirty seconds later she’d picked out another one: a heavy-set woman snarling beneath a ‘DIE — KNOX — SCUM!’ placard. ‘No idea what she’s called.’
Logan waited, but she couldn’t pick out anyone else.
Wendy Leadbetter scowled at him. ‘Our grandad was a good man, and that sick bastard tortured and raped him. You let Knox go, and now he’s out there, doing it to other families.’ She finally got to her feet. ‘They should’ve killed him in prison. More than he fucking deserves.’
And she was probably right.
While Butler was sticking Leadbetter back into custody, Logan apologized to Marie, the PCSO. Sorry for nicking her custody log. Sorry for getting her in trouble with Finnie. But mostly he was sorry for not breaking DI Beattie’s nose.
Butler was waiting for Logan outside the cells, running a hand through her short spiky blonde hair. ‘You want me to go get the brother now?’
Logan shook his head. ‘One mental family member at a time is enough for me. We need to go and…’ Logan frowned.
He pulled out the plastic bag with his crusty notebook in it, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and picked through the sour-smelling pages. Something about mental family members…
‘Sarge? I said, where are we going?’
‘Hmm? Oh…Cove: got to help DI Steel search for signs of Knox.’
Butler wilted slightly. ‘Oh God, not more tramping about in the snow.’
‘Might have to make a little diversion on the way…Nip upstairs and get us a pool car, will you?’
She stomped off as he worked his way backwards through the notebook, looking for his visit to Danny Saunders’s caravan. Then Logan went into his other pocket for the pilfered CV he’d been scribbling notes on since yesterday afternoon, and compared the two.
He closed his eyes and groaned. What a bloody idiot.
Logan’s rusty Fiat bumped to a halt outside the part-completed steading. PC Butler hauled on the handbrake and killed the engine, then sat there, looking at the peeling steering wheel, the dented dashboard, the passenger- side window covered in a patchwork of black plastic bag and duct tape, the buckled bonnet. ‘Bet you pull
‘Should have tried harder for a pool car then, shouldn’t you?’
‘I was doing fine till I told Big Gary it was for you.’
Logan peered out through the chipped windscreen. Danny Saunders had managed to cover all the roof joists with a skin of marine-ply. Right now he was balancing at the top of a long ladder, nailing batons down over some sort of black material.
‘Like driving an oil tanker. You never heard of power steering?’
‘Lucky the damn thing’s still going at all.’ Especially after being shunted into a ditch by a dirty big Transit van. At least the duct tape and string was still holding the bonnet in place…though the engine had developed a worrying burning smell to go with the growling exhaust.
Logan clambered out onto the crunchy snow. The sky was a bright blue lid with dark-grey clouds massing over the North Sea. Probably going to be another horrible night.
Especially if DCI Finnie had anything to do with it. The lecture on not attacking your colleagues from Chief Inspector Young had been bad enough, but the one from the head of CID would be a lot worse.
Logan slammed the car door.
Standing on top of the ladder, Danny flinched, the hammer and a plastic pouch of nails skittering down across the marine-ply, then off the edge of the roof. ‘Ah, shite!’
He turned, the expression freezing on his face when he saw who it was.
Logan picked his way through the snowy tufts. ‘Morning, Danny.’
‘I didn’t rob that jewellers on Huntly Street!’
‘Yeah, I know. I arrested someone for that yesterday.’
Behind him Logan could hear PC Butler climbing out of the car, scrunching over to back him up.
‘Oh aye?’
‘Funniest thing, but the guy was called “Alan Gardner”. Ring any bells?’
Danny coughed, then glanced over the ridge of the steading roof at the moss-streaked caravan, just visible around the corner. ‘Never heard of him.’
‘You told him you’d break his daughter’s legs if she didn’t pay off her drug debt.’
‘Got to get back to work. The roof gets all warped if it’s not-’
‘Danny? Why can’t I hear hammering?’ A woman’s voice, coming from the caravan. Logan turned to see the pregnant fiancee standing there with her hands on her hips, face flushed, mouth a hard line. ‘You know we need that roof waterproofed before it snows again. Don’t make me come up there!’
‘Oh Jesus…’ He straightened up and shouted back. ‘It’s the police.’
