Logan shrugged - it all looked like meat to him. 'Go on then,' she told the guy holding the box,'don't just stand there, get it tested.' The technician said,'Yes ma'am,' but Logan could hear him muttering 'silly old cow ...' under his breath as he carried it out to the IB van. Steel fidgeted about in her pockets. 'Got a bad feeling about this, Laz - something in me water. Like bloody cystitis.' She wandered through to the lounge and watched the whitesuited figures picking their way through the contents with tiny hoovers and fingerprint powder. 'Only thing stopping the press buggering us with a cactus is that everyone knows Wiseman's guilty.' She shifted from foot to foot. 'He is guilty, isn't he?' 'Faulds says they thought Wiseman had an accomplice twenty years ago. Maybe this is him working on his own?' Steel scowled at him. 'Thought you bloody caught the accomplice - what's-his-face, the brother-in-law?' 'Yeah, well ....' Cough. 'Maybe it wasn't him.' 'Gee, you think? ' The inspector turned on her heel and stomped upstairs, her SOC suit making zwip-zwop noises as she climbed. Logan followed her up, across the landing and into the master bedroom, where she cracked open the window and lit a cigarette. Outside, in the back garden, two uniformed officers in the ubiquitous white paper oversuits were rooting through the bushes and shed, the grass twinkling with early frost in the half light. 'Hairy bastarding arseholes.' Steel flicked a few grey flakes of dove-grey ash out into the cold morning. 'How the hell am I supposed to solve this one?' 'There's a press conference at half eleven. Do you--' 'I mean it's no' as if them other bastards managed, and they tried for years !' She ran a hand across her face, pulling it all out of shape. 'You know I had to phone the Chief Constable at half three this morning and tell him we'd screwed up on this one? 'Wiseman's no' the Flesher after all, terribly sorry old bean.' Went down like Mother Teresa in a brothel ...' Logan let her moan while he picked through one of the bedside cabinets. One drawer for socks, one drawer for underpants, one drawer for the assorted junk every man collected: handkerchiefs, playing cards, bookmarks, a little windup plastic nun that was probably supposed to walk, but just made obscene grinding motions instead. There was a photo next to the bedside light - Tom and Hazel Stephen, the Flesher's latest victims. They were at some sort of formal event, him in a suit and tie, her spilling out of a low-cut black cocktail dress. They looked happy. '--creek without a paddle. Why the hell did those bastards no' finish the damn case properly twenty years ago? How come it's my fault all of a sudden?' Steel sank down on the edge of the double bed and sagged. 'And that wee bugger Alec's been following me about for days. Everywhere I go - there's his bastarding camera. Can't even take a crap without the BBC filming it.' She pinged an inch of ash onto the oatmeal-coloured carpet and ground it in with her blue plastic bootie. 'Couple more days of this and I'm going to end up like Insch.' Steel collapsed back on the bed, hands clamped over her face, cigarette poking out of her mouth, spiralling smoke towards the ceiling. 'Come on then - one more time.' Logan stuck the photo back where he'd got it. 'Do we have to?' 'Yes.' 'Fine ... Next-door neighbour calls 999 at one fifteen and complains about the Stephens' dog barking. Calls back at two when the dog stops - says she was about to go round and give them a piece of her tiny mind when she looks out her window and sees someone dressed in a butcher's apron and Margaret Thatcher fright mask, loading plastic bags into the boot of the Stephens' car.
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