'What happened to Jimmy?' 'Hmm? Oh, I suppose he just went away, like all imaginary friends .' Logan frowned at the phone. 'Imaginary--' 'Kelley Elizabeth Souter was a very disturbed young lady when we took her into care, Sergeant. I understand she named 'Jimmy' after her father. Any time she did anything wrong it was always Jimmy's fault .' Thirty seconds later, Logan was back on the phone to Rennie. 'Just shut up and listen, OK? There's a fax on my desk from Garioch United something-or-other, I need you to cross-reference all the dates and locations with those incidents you got from INTERPOL.' 'But that'll takes ages, I'm --' 'You've got it all in HOLMES, haven't you? Just run a search. It'll take twenty minutes!' 'All right, all right. Jesus .' 'And call me back soon as you've got anything!' 'What do I tell Bain? ' Logan started down the basement stairs again. 'Just let him know ...' 'What ab ...' Scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' ... ed? Hello?' Hisssssssssssssss' ... in tr ...' He hung up. At least that would buy him some time. The DCS wasn't going to be too pleased when he found out Logan had sparked a nation-wide manhunt for Elizabeth Nichol's childhood imaginary friend. The basement was cluttered: tea chests full of mildewed clothing; cardboard boxes of paperback books, bloated and blackened by damp; disintegrating furniture; rusty bicycles. 'Fuck!' Alec spun round, the spotlight on his camera raking the debris. 'Was that a rat?' Logan picked his way into the middle of the rotting maze. The building might have been sandstone, but the basement walls were granite. No wonder there was no signal. He peered into one of the boxes: Mills and Boon, Catherine Cookson, Barbara Cartland ... Alec did another panicky pirouette. 'I bet it's rats. I bet there's hundreds of them down here ... feeding on the abattoir's leftovers ...' 'Will you calm down?' The cameraman shivered. 'You never read James Herbert?' Logan ran his torch across the walls again. 'Is that a door under the stairs?' 'Probably just a fuse-box, or something. Can we get out of here before something eats us please? I fucking hate rats.' 'Tell them your Fruit-tella story, that'll put them off.' Logan fought his way round to the door and opened it. 'Bloody hell ...'
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