And then Faulds burst out laughing. 'You are so easy to wind up!' He settled back in his seat. 'Come on then, I know you're dying to ask.' 'Sir?' Faulds just smiled at him. 'Well ... I was ...' Logan snuck a glance at his passenger: the clothes, the earring. 'You're not exactly what I expected, sir.' 'You heard the words 'Chief Constable' and you thought: doddery old fart with no sense of humour, who dresses up like a tailor's dummy because he's got an embarrassingly small penis and truncheon envy.' 'Actually, I was wondering why someone as senior as you would come all the way up here to sit in on a local murder enquiry.' 'Were you now?' 'Yes, sir.' Logan accelerated into the maelstrom of traffic, swung round the roundabout - trying not to get squashed by the articulated lorry heading straight for them - and finally they were on North Anderson Drive. Halleluiah! He put his foot down, overtaking a doddering old biddie in a clapped-out Mercedes. 'I mean, why not send a DI, or a Superintendent?' There was a pause. 'Well, Logan, there are some things you just can't delegate.' He checked his watch. 'This raid DI Insch is on?' 'That's where we're going now.' 'Excellent.' Faulds pulled out his phone again and started dialling. 'Don't mind me, just got a couple of calls to make, we-- Fiona? ... Fiona, it's Mark: Mark Faulds ... course I do, darling ...'
They abandoned the pool car down a little side road and hurried out into the drizzle. 'You know,' said Faulds as they crossed at the traffic lights outside Country Ways, collars up and heads down,'I've been to Aberdeen about a dozen times, and it's always sodding raining.' 'We do our best.' 'You buggers must be born with webbed feet.' 'Only the ones from Ellon, sir.' Holburn Street had been brought to a virtual standstill - two uniformed officers pretending to be traffic lights as they funnelled the backed-up traffic down one side of the road. The butcher's shop had been hidden behind a cordon of eight-foot-high white plastic screens that reached out into the middle of the street. A BBC outside broadcast van was parked on the double yellow lines just down from the scene, a woman with a pony tail, an umbrella, and a strange orange tan trying to convince a traffic warden not to give the van a ticket. There was a strobe-light flicker of flash photography and shouted questions as Logan and Faulds ducked under the blue-and-white POLICE tape, then they were through and behind the wall of plastic sheeting. The IB's filthy Transit van was parked inside the cordon, its back doors open while someone rummaged about inside for SOC suits for Logan and the Chief Constable. Inside, the shop walls were peppered with recipe cards hung at jaunty angles: goulash, rib roast, minty lamb kebabs ... A deli section and a mini greengrocer's sat opposite an empty glass-fronted counter festooned with colourful stickers. The place was full of people in white paper oversuits and the smell of meat. They found DI Insch in the cold store through the back, with a pair of IB technicians and Isobel, examining yet more chunks of meat.
