'Preliminary report won't be out till the end of the day, but there's a lot of bruising to the head, stomach, thighs and chest - he'd been repeatedly beaten. Looks like Brooks was held somewhere for about forty-eight hours before he ...' Logan tried to think of a tactful way to put it,'before he was thrown off the roof.' Silence. 'Sorry, sir.' The inspector's voice was a low rumble: distant thunder getting close fast. 'Wiseman.' 'We're doing door-to-doors in the tower blocks, going through the Castlegate CCTV--' 'That's why he didn't turn up. At the pub. Wiseman had him ...' Insch's face had gone beyond its normal angry red, into a previously undiscovered shade of trembling purple. Breath hissing out between clenched teeth. 'Get the IB round to his house. I don't care if they have to tear it apart, I want--' The DCS placed a hand on the inspector's arm. 'David, I need you to go home. Let us handle this.' Insch got as far as. 'Don't you--' 'Before you say it: I know. I worked with Brooks too. We'll get the bastard responsible, but you need to go home. If Professional Standards find out you've ignored your suspension they'll go ballistic.' Insch was on his feet. 'You can't send me--' 'I can, and I am. Go home, David. Have a pint for Brooks. Come in tomorrow and we'll discuss your caseload.' 'But--' 'That's an order, Inspector.'
Drizzle. It drifted down from a battleship-grey sky, slowly seeping its way into everything, making the IB team miserable as they searched Ex-DCI Brooks' back garden. Logan stood at the conservatory door, watching them get wet. On the other side of the high back wall, a development of nasty yellow-clad houses sat cheek-by-jowl with one another. Brand new and ugly in comparison to the stately granite buildings they'd been thrown up behind. McLennan Homes strikes again. If he stood on his tiptoes, Logan could just make out pairs of uniformed officers going door-to-door in the vague hope that someone might have seen something. A grumpy figure in a mud-smeared SOC suit trudged up to the conservatory, snapped off her latex gloves, dragged out a scabby handkerchief, and made horrible snottery noises. 'Bugger all,' she said when she'd finished. 'No hair, no fibres, no prints. We know he came over the back wall - got two goodsized indentations in the flowerbed, but nothing we can get a decent cast from. Best guess is he had plastic bags on over his shoes - that'd explain why there's no muddy footprints in the house.' The hanky came out for another performance. 'OK, finish it up and I'll get Rennie to stick the kettle on.' She sniffed. 'Looks like a professional job.' 'Get your team in out of the wet. We can--' 'Sir?' A panicked shout from the front of the house. 'Sergeant McRae?'
