Logan blanched. 'Whad? I did'n do adythig! It wasn't--' 'You must have done something for the Inspector to punch you.' 'He ...' Logan snuck a glance at the pair of them - Insch and Steel, sitting there as if butter wouldn't melt. 'I slibbed and fell against the cubigle door.' Napier took off his glasses and squeezed the bridge of his nose. 'Do I look stupid, Sergeant?' Logan didn't want to answer that one. 'Very well,' said Napier at last,'McRae, Steel, you may go. And take ... that,' he pointed at the smelly cameraman,'with you. DI Insch and I have some things to discuss.'
Without Faulds and Rennie making the place look untidy, the Flesher history room was nice and quiet, giving Logan peace to groan and dab at his blood-encrusted nostrils. The whole front of his head felt like a bouncy castle full of rats. Technically he should have gone home after being dismissed from Chief Inspector Napier's Lair of Doom, but he wanted to know what Professional Standards had in store for Insch. Unable to decide if he wanted the fat git suspended or not. Loyalty to your superior officer was all well and good, until they punched you on the nose. A knock at the door and one of the station's Family Liaison officers stuck her head into the room. 'Rennie says ...' she trailed off, staring at Logan's puffy face. 'Damn, I had a tenner on Wednesday.' She held up a small sheaf of paperwork. 'Are you in charge till Insch ... you know?' Logan sighed and stuck out a hand. It was the initial victimology report on the Leith attack, trying to build up a picture of Valerie Leith's life before Wiseman put an end to it. It wasn't easy to concentrate with both nostrils stuffed full of tissue paper, but he did his best. The FLO couldn't stop staring at Logan's nose. 'Haven't got any ibuprofen have you? Six hours in a hospital visitor's chair and my back's sodding killing me.' Logan pointed at a desk in the far corner. 'Tob left drawer, helb yourself.' He'd already had four. According to the FLO's report, Valerie Leith was a creature of habit: shopped at Sainsbury's every Saturday, Debenhams every Tuesday; worked in a solicitor's office doing house sales; had no close friends, but did have a number of people she spoke to on a regular basis. It would take a while, but the Family Liaison officers would interview each and every one of them. Logan pulled out the rough family tree they'd managed to piece together - other than the husband: William, there was a brother in Canada and an aunt in Methyl. Not much help there. So he flicked through the day-to-day stuff, trying to figure out what Wiseman had seen in Valerie Leith that made him want to chop her into little pieces. Ten years they'd had Wiseman in Peterhead Prison, and still no one had been able to figure out what made him do it. What made him pick one person over another. 'I think he's still in shock, by the way.' 'Who?' It took Logan a second to realize who the FLO was talking about. 'Oh, the husband. Not surprisig.' 'Poor bastard. Physically he's doing OK, doctors say it looks worse than it is, but emotionally ...' She swallowed a couple of pills. 'We've been up to our sodding ears trying to keep the press away. Can you believe they offered some nurse two thousand pounds to sneak a video camera in and film him talking about his wife? How sick is that?' 'What aboud the timbline?' 'Still working on it. No pre-cursor incidents that we can see so far. Loving couple, married for fifteen years, and then bang: Wiseman.' She stretched, puffed out her cheeks, sagged ... 'Better get back to it I suppose. Don't want to leave Norman up there on his own for too long with all them pretty nurses. You know what he's like.' Logan didn't, but he nodded anyway and stuck the FLO's report away with the ones on the Fittie family. One for
