Inspector Insch is buying.' He stopped. 'Not that I wouldn't want you to come if I was paying…It's…' He clamped his mouth shut to keep any more babble from falling out.
She looked at him for a moment. 'Right,' she said at last. 'I'll go get changed then. See you out front.'
As she disappeared Logan was sure she was laughing at him. He stood alone in the corridor, blushing furiously.
At the front desk, Big Gary was settling down to another night shift. He smiled and waved Logan over.
'Hey, Lazarus, nice to see you getting the recognition you deserve!'
Logan frowned and Gary whipped out a copy of the day's Evening Express, the Press and Journal's sister paper. There on the front page was a photograph of figures in blue rubber suits, picking through blurry animal carcases by hand.
'HOUSE OF HORROR: BRAVE POLICE HUNT FOR EVIDENCE'
'Let me guess,' Logan sighed, 'Colin Miller again?' He must have worked fast.
Gary smacked the side of his nose with a finger. 'Got it in one, Mr Local Police Hero.'
'Gary, as soon as I outrank you I'm going to have you out there,' he pointed out into the snow, 'pounding the beat again.'
Gary winked. 'And until then you'll just have to put up with it. Biscuit?' He held up a packet of Kit Kats and despite himself Logan smiled. And took one.
'So what else is Mr Miller saying?'
Gary puffed out his chest, flipped the paper over and read aloud, in his best Shakespearean voice: 'Blah, blah, blah, snow and ice, blah, blah. Flowery shite about how brave all the police are for digging through 'a gruesome mine of death'. Blah, blah, searching for 'the vital evidence that will make our children safe from this beast'. Oh, you'll like this bit. 'Local Police Hero Logan 'Lazarus' McRae was not above helping his team sort through the carcases by hand'. Apparently you also saved Constable Steve Jacobs' life when a huge rat attacked him. God bless you, sir!' Gary cracked a salute.
'PC Rennie did all the work. All I did was tell someone to get him to hospital!'
'Ah, but without your firm leadership no one else might have thought of it!' He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. 'You're an inspiration to us all, so you are.'
'I hate you.' But Logan was smiling when he said it.
WPC Watson was easier to think of as 'Jackie' when she was out of uniform. The austere black had been replaced by a pair of jeans and a red sweatshirt, her curly brown hair falling down over her shoulders. She cursed and tugged at it as she struggled into a thick padded jacket.
At least one of them would be dressed for the snow. Logan was still in his working suit. He never got changed at the station. With his house only two minutes' walk away there never seemed any point.
She joined them at the desk, begged a Kit Kat off Big Gary and consumed it with delight.
Logan waited until she had a good mouthful before asking, 'How'd your prisoner get on this morning?'
She munched and crunched and eventually mumbled that he'd been given forty-two hours' community service with the council's Parks Department, as usual, and put on the sex offenders' register.
'As usual?'
Watson shrugged. 'Turns out he always gets the Parks Department,' she said, producing a small shower of chocolate crumbs. 'Planting, weeding, fixing stuff. You know.' She swallowed and shrugged. 'Judge took pity on him, what with giving evidence in the Gerald Cleaver case and all. Went through the whole thing again, only without Sandy the Snake making out it's all some weird, twisted fantasy. Got to confess I kinda feel sorry for the kid. Can you imagine getting treated like that? Abusive father, drunkard mother and when you go to hospital you get Gerald bloody Cleaver fiddling about with you under the sheets.'
Silence settled in as they considered the flabby male nurse with a thing for little boys.
'You know,' said Big Gary, 'if it wasn't for Roadkill, I'd've put money on Cleaver for the dead kiddies.'
'How? He was in custody when Peter Lumley went missing.'
Gary flustered. 'Might have had an accomplice.'
'And he was a fiddler, not a killer,' chipped in Jackie. 'He liked them alive.'
Logan winced. It wasn't a nice image, but she was right.
But Big Gary wasn't going to let go of it that easily. 'Maybe he can't get it up any more? Maybe that's why he kills them!'
'It doesn't change the fact that he's been locked up for the last six months. It's not him.'
'I'm not saying it was him. I'm just saying it could have been.' Gary scowled. 'And to think I let you buggers eat my biscuits! Ungrateful sods.'
24
One drink turned into two. Two turned into three. Three turned into a curry and four more. By the time Logan said goodnight to DI Insch and WPC Watson, all was right with the world again. OK, with the inspector there he and Jackie couldn't get up to anything, but Logan got the feeling they might have. If Insch hadn't been there.
None of which mattered at four-thirty in the morning when he staggered out of bed to drink his own bodyweight in water before falling queasily back to sleep. Lorna Henderson's post mortem report was sitting on DI Insch's desk when Logan got in to work. Seven o'clock on the dot, even if it was a Saturday morning. The inspector was already there, sitting behind his desk looking slightly more pink than usual.
Henderson had died from blunt trauma. The cracked ribs would have crushed her left lung, the impact to the left temple shattering her skull, the one to the back of her head finishing off the job. The leg break was jagged, just above the knee. A four-year-old girl, beaten to death. Roadkill had really gone to town.
'You think we're going to get anything out of him?' asked Logan, turning the pathology photographs face down so that he wouldn't have to look at them any more.
Insch snorted. 'Doubt it. Doesn't matter though. We've got so much forensic evidence there's no way he's going to beat this one. Not even Slippery Sandy can get him off. Mr Philips is going to spend the rest of his life in Peterhead Prison with all the other sick bastards.' He pulled a packet of sherbet fruits from his pocket and offered them round the incident room. That done he settled down to working his way through the remainder. 'You taking Miller back up to the farm today?' The reporter's name came out as if Insch was describing a foul smell.
'No,' Logan grinned. 'For some reason he's not too keen. Can't think why.'
Friday's little expedition had been quite enough for the reporter. Today's Press and Journal had nothing but nice words for the police. It was much the same as the Evening Express story, only with more editorializing. At least DI Insch was out of the spotlight.
'What about you?' he asked. 'How's your floater going?'
'Getting there.'
'DI Steel tells me you're keen on the McLeod brothers?'
Logan nodded. 'It's their kind of gig. Hands on. Brutal.'
Insch almost smiled. 'Take after their dad, that pair. Going to get them for it?'
Logan tried not to shrug, but he knew it wasn't a foregone conclusion. 'Doing my damnedest. I've got Forensics crawling all over the clothes they found the body in. Might get something out of it. If not, maybe one of their punters will cough…' He stopped, remembering Duncan Nicholson running into the shop, out of the rain.
Insch popped something green and fizzy into his mouth. 'Not likely. Can you imagine anyone stupid enough to rat on the McLeod brothers? They'd tear him apart.'
'What?' Logan was dragged back from Nicholson: that plastic bag. 'Oh, yeah. Probably. Simon McLeod said the whole thing was a warning. A message. That everyone in the city knew what it meant.'
'Everyone in the city, eh?' Insch crunched as he chewed. 'How come I've no heard anything about it then?'
'No idea. I'm hoping Miller can shed some light on that one.' Twelve o'clock and Logan was sitting down to a big plate of steak-and-ale pie, chips and beans.
The Prince of Wales was an old-fashioned place: all wood panelling and real ale, the low ceiling yellowed by generations of cigarette smokers. It was busy, full of men press-ganged into Saturday morning shopping by their wives and girlfriends. This was their reward: a pint of cold beer and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps.
