novel when Logan and WPC Watson turned up at the door. He'd had a boring day, except for flirting with a couple of the nurses. Logan sent him off to fetch coffees again.
Doug's room was buried in semidarkness, the flickering television screen casting its green-and-grey glow, making shadows writhe and jump. It was like being back in the Turf 'n Track again. Only this time no one was trying to kick the living hell out of them. The only sound came from the air conditioner, the humming machinery, and the pallid, wheezing old man lying on the hospital bed, gazing up at the silent TV. Logan sat himself down at the foot of the bed again. 'Evening, Dougie,' he said with a smile in his voice. 'We brought grapes.' He plonked a paper bag on the blankets by the old man's feet.
Doug sniffed and went on staring at the television screen.
'We've just had a very interesting chat with someone, Dougie. About you.' Logan leaned forward and helped himself to a grape from the bag. In the light of the TV they looked like little gangrenous haemorrhoids. 'He's fingered you for assaulting and abducting the late Geordie Stephenson. He watched you do it! How about that, Dougie? First we get forensic evidence and now we've got a witness.'
No reaction.
Logan helped himself to another grape. 'Witness says you also killed that little girl.' It was a lie, but you never knew your luck. 'The one we found in a bin-bag.'
That took Doug's attention off the television set. He sat, propped up with half a dozen pillows, glaring at Logan with his one good eye. And then he went back to the television. 'Little fucker.'
The silence stretched out in the gloom. Lit by the TV's ghostly glow, Desperate Doug looked like a skeleton, all sunken cheeks and dark-ringed eye sockets. His teeth were still floating in a glass.
'Why'd you kill her, Dougie?'
'You know,' said the old man. His voice was low and gravelly, a whisper forced through broken glass. 'I was a fuckin' stallion when I was young. Aye, no that much younger mind. Women fallin' over themselves to get a bit of it Dougie-style. Women mind. Women. No like them sick fucks.'
Logan watched as Doug coughed: a wet, rattling sound that ended with a globule of dark phlegm being spat into a bedpan.
'I gets word Geordie's stayin' with his faggot half-brother in Rosemount. So I go round. Pay them a little visit. Geordie tries to come off all hard to start with, you know? He's the man. I'm just some old fuck. 'Go home, granddad or I'll break your zimmer…' 'A toothless smile turned into a laugh that turned into another fit of coughing. Doug lay back on the mound of crunchy hospital pillows, breathing hard. 'So I kicked the shit out of him. Right there in the lounge. Then his poof-bastard-brother comes bargin' in from the bedroom, all wrapped up in this pink dressin' gown. And I'm thinking nothin' of it. You know, figure he's going for a bubble bath or some shite like that. Only I can hear somethin', like a kid cryin'.' He shook his head at the memory. 'Fucker's standing there shouting at me: 'You can't come in here! You can't do this!' Like I give a shit. And I can still hear the cryin'. So I go see what it is, only poof-boy's no gettin' out of the way: 'You've got no right…' 'He smacked a fist into his palm. 'Bang. There's this little girl in the bedroom. Wearin' nothin' but a fuckin' Mickey Mouse hat. You know, with the ears?' He looked at Logan for confirmation, but Logan was too shocked to answer. 'So I'm lookin' at this naked wee girl and that bastard's in there, barely dressed.' He grimaced. 'Went back in the lounge and kicked the shite out of him too. Sick bastard.'
Logan finally recovered enough to say, 'What happened to the girl?'
Desperate Doug MacDuff dropped his eyes to his hands. They lay curled in his lap like wizened talons. Arthritis, just beginning to turn the joints into swollen balls of pain. 'Aye. The girl…' He cleared his throat. 'She…came in as I'm givin' the sick bastard a goin' over. And she's foreign. You know, like German or fuckin' Norwegian. Somethin' like that. And she's lookin' up at me with these big brown eyes, an' she's cryin' and sayin' fuckin' filthy things: 'I suck your dick.' 'Fuck me in the ass…' Over and over again.' The old man gave a shuddering breath and dissolved into a bed-shaking fit of coughing. He was white as milk when he finally stopped. 'She's…She's holding onto my leg, cryin' and snotterin' everywhere, bare naked, and tellin' me she wants me to fuck her in the arse. I…I pushed her away…' His voice dropped. 'Fell against the fireplace. Bang. Head into the brick.'
They sat in silence once more. Doug lost in thought, Logan and Watson trying to come to terms with what they'd just heard. It was Doug who spoke first.
'So I picked up Geordie, took him somewhere nice and quiet, and fucked him over. You should have heard him scream when I hacked off his fuckin' knees. Filthy bastard.'
Logan cleared his throat. 'How come you let his brother live?'
Doug looked at him with sadness written in the deep lines of his face. 'Had a job to do. Message to deliver. I was goin' to go back the next day. Show him what happened to sick bastards like him. You know, with a Stanley knife? Only when I went back there was all these pigs clamberin' all over the place. And the next day and the day after that…'
Logan nodded. The first lot of policemen must have been his team arresting Norman Chalmers. The rest doing door-to-doors, trying to find witnesses. While all the time Desperate Doug MacDuff was hovering in the shadows, watching them.
'Standin' like a fuckin' idiot in the snow and rain, gettin' myself some pneumonia to go with the cancer.' Doug lapsed back into silence, a faraway look in his good eye, the milky one shimmering in the television's glow.
Logan stood. 'Before we go there's one thing that's been bothering me: what was the message?'
'The message?' A smile spread across Desperate Doug's toothless face. 'You don't steal from your employer.'
32
The interview room was close and stuffy, the radiator in the far corner belching out heat, the opaque window resolutely refusing to let fresh air in. A smell of cheesy feet and nervous armpits filled the room as Cameron Anderson sat on the other side of the table and lied.
Logan and Insch sat opposite, listening with deadpan faces as Cameron Anderson once more placed the blame for everything on Desperate Doug MacDuff. The dead girl was nothing to do with him.
'So,' said Insch, his heavy arms crossed over his barrel-like chest. 'You're telling us that the old man brought the child with him.'
Cameron tried an ingratiating smile. 'That's right.'
'Desperate Doug MacDuff, a man who has killed dozens of people, a man who hurts people for a living, took a four-year-old girl with him when he turned up to drag your brother away and hack his kneecaps off? What was it: Take Your Granddaughter To Work Week?'
Cameron licked his cracked lips and said, 'I can only tell you what happened,' for about the twentieth time. He was doing surprisingly well. Like this wasn't his first police interview. As if he'd been through it all before. Only there was no record of him ever having been arrested.
'That's funny,' said Insch, pulling out a packet of jelly babies. He offered one to Logan, took one himself and then stuffed the packet back in his pocket. 'You see, Doug says that you were in the bedroom with the girl when he arrived. He says that you were wearing nothing under your dressing gown. He says you were screwing her.'
'Douglas MacDuff is lying.'
'So if he's lying, how did the girl end up dead?'
'He pushed her and she fell against the fireplace.'
It was about the only bit of Cameron's story that matched what Desperate Doug had told Logan.
'And how did she end up in your neighbour's bin-bag?'
'The old man wrapped her in packing tape and hid her body in the bag.'
'He says you did it.'
'He's lying.'
'Really…' Insch sat back and sucked at his teeth, letting the silence grow. He'd tried it a couple of times already, but Cameron wasn't as stupid as he looked. He kept his mouth shut.
Insch leaned over the table, staring Cameron Anderson down. 'You really expect us to believe Desperate Doug got rid of the girl's body? A man who's quite happy to hack off your brother's kneecaps with a machete can't
