Crown Prosecution Service isn't going to take this for criminal trial. One good psychiatric report and the whole thing goes nowhere. He hasn't done anything wrong. Not by his reckoning anyway. The girl was just another dead thing found at the side of the road. He was doing his job.'
Logan tried not to nod his head in agreement. Insch wouldn't have appreciated it.
The inspector ground his teeth and stared at Mr Turner, who shrugged. 'I'm sorry, but he's not guilty. If you don't release him I'm going to go to the press. There are still enough cameras out there to get this all over the morning news.'
'We can't let him go,' said Insch. 'Someone will rip his head off if we do.'
'So you admit that he's done nothing wrong then?' There was something distinctly patronizing about the way Turner said it, as if he was back in the classroom again and DI Insch had just been caught behind the bike sheds.
The inspector scowled. 'Listen, sunshine: I ask the leading questions in here, not you.' He rummaged in his pockets for something sweet and came up empty-handed. 'With Cleaver going free, the great, good and stupid of the community are on the lookout for anyone even slightly dodgy. Your boy had a dead girl in his shed. He's going to be top of their list.'
'Then you'll have to provide him with protective custody. We'll speak to the press: get them to understand that Bernard is innocent. That you've decided to drop all the charges.'
Logan cut in. 'No we haven't! He's still guilty of hiding the body!'
'Sergeant,' said Mr Turner with condescending patience, 'you have to understand how this works. If you try to take any of this to court, you're going to end up losing. The Procurator Fiscal won't stand for another cock-up. He's got enough egg on his face with the Cleaver fiasco. Mr Philips will go free. Question is: how much tax payers' money do you want to waste getting there?' Logan and DI Insch stood in the empty incident room, looking down at the growing bustle of activity in the car park. Mr Turner had been as good as his word. He was standing in front of the cameras, enjoying his moment in the spotlight. Telling the world that Bernard Duncan Philips had been absolved of all charges, that the system worked.
The ex-teacher had been right: the Procurator Fiscal didn't want to touch the case with a stick. And the Chief Constable wasn't that happy about it either. So Roadkill was off to stay at a safe house somewhere in Summerhill.
'What do you think?' asked Logan, watching as yet another camera crew joined the throng. It was almost eleven o'clock, but still they came.
Insch glowered down at the assembled press. 'I'm screwed, that's what I think. First the bloody panto thing, then Cleaver gets away with twelve years of systematic child abuse, and now Roadkill's back on the streets. How long did we have him banged up? Forty-eight hours? Maybe sixty at a push. They're going to eat me alive…'
'How about we go to the media too? I could have a word with Miller. See if he can put our side across?'
Insch gave a sad laugh. 'Small-town Journalist Saves Police Inspector's Career from the Toilet?' He shook his head. 'Don't see it coming off, do you?'
'Worth a shot though.'
In the end, Insch had to admit he had nothing to lose.
'After all,' said Logan, 'we've just prevented a serious miscarriage of justice. Surely that's got to count for something?'
'Aye. It should.' The inspector's shoulders sagged. 'But if it wasn't Roadkill and it wasn't Nicholson, then we've still got a killer out there, picking off children. And we haven't got a bloody clue who it is.'
27
By the time Logan climbed out of bed and into the shower, Sunday was tearing at the windows of his flat with wintry fingers. Snow, coming down in small icy flakes, whipped back and forth in the gusting wind. It was cold, it was dark, and it was no longer the day of rest he'd been promised.
Struggling into a grey suit, with matching expression, Logan doddered around his warm home, trying to put off the moment when he'd have to step out into the bloody awful weather. And then the phone went: the inimitable Colin Miller looking for his exclusive.
Logan grumbled his way down the communal stairs to the building's front door. Half a ton of flying ice tried to get in as he struggled his way out into the frigid morning. The snow attacked him like frozen razorblades, slashing at his exposed face and hands, making his cheeks and ears sting.
The day was dark as a lawyer's soul.
Miller's flash motor was waiting for him at the kerb, the interior lights on, something classical blaring out through the glass as the reporter hunched over a broadsheet newspaper. Logan slammed the apartment door shut, not caring if he woke his neighbours. Why the hell should he be the only one up and about on a crappy day like this? He slipped and slithered his way around the car to the passenger seat, bringing a flurry of icy, white flakes with him.
'Watch the leather!' Miller had to shout over the opera blaring from the car's stereo. He cranked down the volume a bit as the thin crust of snow slowly defrosted on Logan's heavy overcoat.
'What, no rowies today?' asked Logan, wiping ice out of his hair before it could turn into a frigid trickle down the back of his neck.
'Think I'm goin' tae let you spill greasy crumbs all over my nice new motor? This interview goes well an' I'll buy yous an Egg McMuffin. OK?'
Logan told him he'd sooner eat a deep-fried turd. 'And how come you can afford a flash car like this? Thought all you reporters lived in penury.'
'Aye, well,' Miller shrugged and pulled away from the kerb. 'I did this bloke a favour once. Didn't publish a story…'
Logan raised an eyebrow, but Miller wouldn't say any more.
Traffic was light at this time on a Sunday morning, but the weather slowed what little there was down to a crawl. Miller slotted his car in behind a once-white truck, the top covered with a foot of icy snow, the rest of it covered with three inches of dirt. Some wag had scrawled the usual 'I WISH MY WIFE WAS THIS DIRTY' and 'WASH ME' in the grime. The writing glowed in Miller's headlights as they slowly made their way across town to Summerhill.
The safe house didn't look any different to the others in the street: just another concrete box with a small garden out front, buried under a growing blanket of white. Asagging willow tree stood forlorn in the middle, bent under the weight of snow and ice.
'Right,' said Miller, parking behind a battered Renault. 'Let's go get us an exclusive.' The reporter's attitude towards Roadkill had changed dramatically since Logan told him about the road accident. Bernard Duncan Philips was no longer to be strung up by his balls until they popped. Now he was a victim of society's disposable culture, in which the mentally ill could be thrown out into the community to fend for themselves.
Bernard Duncan Philips was roused from his bed by a large, plainclothes policewoman and prodded downstairs to perform for the reporter. Miller's questioning technique was good, making Roadkill feel relaxed and important, while a snazzy digital recorder whirled silently in the middle of a coffee table that had seen better days. They went over his glittering academic career, ruined by his mother's ill health, then delicately tiptoed around the descent into mental illness and the death of Mrs Roadkill Senior, God rest her soul. There was nothing there Logan hadn't got from the files, so he spent his time drinking over-strong tea, poured from a cracked brown pot. And counting the roses on the wallpaper. And the blue silk bows. Between the pink stripes.
It wasn't until Miller got onto the subject of Lorna Henderson, the dead girl in steading number two, that Logan started paying attention again.
But, good though he was, Miller wasn't getting that much more out of his subject than DI Insch had. The whole topic made Roadkill twitchy. Agitated.
It wasn't right. They were his dead things. They were taking them away.
'Come on now, Bernard,' said the plainclothes WPC, womanning the teapot again. 'There's no need to get excited, is there?'
