The pub was made up of little rooms stitched together by short corridors. Logan and Miller sat in one at the front, next to the window. Not that the view was up to much, just the other side of a tall alley, the granite grey and dull and wet from the freezing-cold rain.
'So,' said Miller spearing a mangetout. 'Have you got the bastard tae confess yet?'
Logan munched his way through a mouthful of beef and crispy pastry, wishing he'd gone for a pint of beer to wash it down and take the final edge off his hangover. But drinking on duty was tantamount to raping sheep in the Chief Constable's eyes, so Logan was stuck with a pint of fresh orange and lemonade. 'We're pursuing our enquiries.' The words came out muffled.
'Nail his bloody arse to the wall. Sick wee shite that he is.' Miller wasn't on duty, so he could drink. Only he didn't have a nice pint of Dark Island, but a large glass of chilled Semillon Chardonnay with his salmon en croute.
Logan watched the reporter take a delicate sip at his wine and smiled. Miller was a weird fish and to be honest, Logan was starting to like him. Even if he had come within a whisker of getting DI Insch fired. The clothes and the wine and the croissants and the chunky gold jewellery just added to the pantomime.
Logan waited until the reporter had a mouthful of salmon before asking, 'What about George Stephenson then?'
'Mmmph…' Small flakes of pastry fell down the front of Miller's delicate ivory shirt. 'What about him?'
'You said you still had information. Stuff I didn't know?'
Miller smiled, letting even more pastry fall free. 'How 'bout the last place he was seen alive?'
Logan took a guess: 'Turf 'n Track?'
Miller's smile became impressed. 'Aye: spot on. Turf 'n Track.'
Logan knew it would be. Now all they had to do was prove it. 'One of the McLeod brothers told me, 'everyone knows you don't do what Geordie did', that it was a warning. Want to fill me in?'
Miller played with his wine glass, letting the light filter through it onto the wooden tabletop, making a little golden spotlight that danced across the grain.
'You know he was into the local bookies for a fair chunk of money?'
'You said that. How much?'
'Two hundred and fifty thousand, six hundred and forty-two pounds.'
It was Logan's turn to be impressed. That was a hell of a lot of money. 'So how come they killed him? Why not just cripple him a little? He can't pay up if he's dead. Not to mention they're killing off one of Malk the Knife's boys. I hear Malkie doesn't take kindly to that kind of thing.'
'Aye, risky. If you do in one of Malkie's boys without his permission he's going tae come down on you like a ton of shite.'
Logan's heart sank: the last thing Aberdeen needed was a spate of tit-for-tat killings. Gang warfare in the Granite City. Wouldn't that be fun? 'So why did they kill him then?'
Miller sighed and put his knife down. 'They kilt him because everyone knows that you don't do what he did.'
'What the hell does that mean?'
'It means…' Miller looked around the little room. A small corridor led off towards where they'd picked up lunch and another, out of sight in the opposite corner, led back through into the bar. Everyone else was chatting away, eating, drinking, enjoying being out of the horrible weather. No one was paying them the slightest bit of attention.
'Listen, you know who Geordie worked for. You don't piss him off twice, OK? Maybe you can get away with it once, but you do it twice and you're no in for a good time, know what I mean?'
'We've been over that!'
'Aye, we have.'
Miller was looking increasingly uncomfortable. 'You know how come I ended up in sunny Aberdeen?' He waved his fork at the dreich weather on the other side of the window. 'How come I gave up a post on the Sun tae come to this shite-hole?' But he dropped his voice, so no one would hear him call Aberdeen a shite-hole. 'Drugs. Drugs and whores.'
Logan raised an eyebrow.
Miller scowled. 'No me, you dirty bastard. I was doin' a story about all this crack comin' intae Glasgow from Edinburgh. They wis smugglin' it over from Eastern Europe inside prossies. You know: the old plastic-bag-up-the- fanny routine. Do it when they're on the blob and the sniffer dogs don't smell it. An' even if they do smell some-thin' everyone's too fuckin' embarrassed to say anything.' He took another sip of his wine. 'And you'd be surprised how much crack cocaine you can stuff up a Lithuanian tart's minge. Fuckin' heaps of the stuff.'
'What's this got to do with Geordie?'
'I'm comin' to that. So anyways, I'm doin' my Clark Kent routine: diggin' up the dirt, really fuckin' great stories. I mean I'm gettin' nominated for awards left right and centre. Investigative Journalist of the Year, book deals, the whole works. Only I find out who's runnin' the scam, don't I? I come up with a name. The big man in charge of flyin' all these tarts, packed full of drugs, into the country.'
'Let me guess: Malcolm McLennan.'
'These two great big fuckers grabbed me on Sauchiehall Street. In broad daylight, but! Bundles me into a big black car. I am politely requested to drop the story like a radioactive tattie. If I'm fond of my fingers. And my legs.'
'And did you?'
'Course I fuckin' did!' Miller emptied half his wine glass in a single gulp. 'No bastard's hackin' off my fingers with a butcher's knife.' He shivered. 'Malk the Knife put the word about and next thing I know I'm out of a job. No paper in the central belt'd touch me with a bargepole.' He sighed. 'So here I am. Don't get me wrong: it's no that bad a place to wind up. Good job, lots of front page inches, nice car, flat, met a nice woman…Money's no what I'm used to, but still…An' I'm still alive.'
Logan settled back in his seat and examined the man sitting opposite him: the tailored suit, the gold baubles, the silk tie, even on a pissing-down Saturday in Aberdeen.
'So that's why I've not seen anything in the papers about Geordie's body turning up in the harbour with no knees? You're scared to publish anything in case Malk the Knife finds out about it?'
'I go putting his business on the front page again and it's goodbye to all ten little piggies.' The reporter waved his fingers at Logan, the rings sparkling in the pub's overhead lights. 'No, I'm keepin' my mouth shut on this one.'
'Then why are you talking to me?'
Miller shrugged. 'Just 'cos I'm a journalist, it don't mean I'm an amoral, parasitic wanker. I mean it's no like I'm a lawyer or anything. I got a social conscience. I'm givin' you information so you can catch the killer. I'm keepin' my head down so it doesn't cost me my fingers. Come time for court you're on your own: I'm off to the Dordogne. Two weeks of French wine and haute cuisine. I'm no tellin' any bugger anythin'.'
'You know who did it, don't you?'
The reporter finished off his wine and smiled lopsidedly. 'No. But if I find out you'll be the first to know. No that I'm lookin' any longer. Got safer fish to fry.'
'Like what?'
But Miller just smiled. 'You'll read about it soon enough. Anyway, gotta dash.' He stood and shrugged his way into his thick black overcoat. 'I've got a meetin' with this bloke from the Telegraph. Lookin' for a four-page spread in tomorrow's Sunday supplement. 'In Search Of The Dead: Catching The Aberdeen Child-Killer.' Very classy.' Danestone had started out as farmland, like most of the outer regions of Aberdeen, but it had held out against the developers longer than the rest. So, by the time its green fields fell beneath the bulldozer, the mantra was build 'em quick and build 'em close together. The traditional grey granite blocks and gunmetal roof slates were nowhere to be seen: here it was all oatmeal harling and pantiles, winding cul-de-sacs and deadend roads. Just like every other anonymous suburb.
But unlike the middle of Aberdeen, where the tenements and tall granite buildings cut the daylight down by an hour, the sun shone in abundance, the whole development sitting on a south-facing hill along the banks of the River Don. The only drawback was the proximity of the chicken factory, paper mills and sewage treatment plant. But you couldn't have everything. As long as the wind didn't blow from the west you were fine.
