When he replied it was little more than a whisper.
The morning briefing was a pretty dismal affair - DI Steel standing in for Insch who hadn't turned up that morning. Probably hungover after a night in the Redgarth, drinking to DSI Brooks' memory. So Steel was just going through the motions till he turned up: no new leads, no new victims, no sign of Wiseman. Same as yesterday and the day before. She wrapped up the meeting with a half-hearted chorus of 'We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up!' then let them all get back to whatever jobs Insch had given them before he'd been suspended. Which left Logan and Rennie back in the Flesher history room, clambering up the north face of Ancient Paperwork Mountain.
By half past ten Rennie was off making tea again - anything to escape all those INTERPOL reports - when Faulds reappeared. The Chief Constable dumped his suitcase by the radiator, stretched, yawned, and slouched into his seat. 'Sorry I'm so late, but I couldn't face the redeye.' He fumbled the top off a waxed cardboard cup of coffee. 'Why does everyone have to go feral on Guy Fawkes night?' Logan looked up from the latest in a long line of crime scene reports. 'Fireworks?' 'It'll make my life a lot easier when they ban the bloody things. Seven children with first-degree burns. One little girl lost most of her left hand ... mind you, she was trying to stuff a rocket up some poor dog's bum at the time: wanted to see if it would explode. What's wrong with people today?' There was no answer to that, so Logan went back to work. But he could feel Faulds watching him. It took the Chief Constable nearly five minutes to pop the question:'So ... what happened to your face?' 'I'd rather not talk about it, sir.' Faulds stared at him for a while, shrugged, then asked for an update on the case, nodding and groaning as Logan went through everything that had happened since the CC left for Birmingham on Friday. 'So basically,' said Faulds, when Logan had finished,'I go away for three days and it all goes to rat-shit.' 'Something like that.' The Chief Constable sniffed. 'I can't believe Wiseman threw Brooks off a roof. I mean, he was a Neanderthal and his methods were ... questionable, but he didn't deserve that.' It was hard to imagine who did. 'We've got CCTV footage of someone helping Brooks into the tower block. He looks plastered - post mortem turned up traces of heroin in his system, Isobel only found one injection site.' 'Poor sod. At least we've got CCTV--' 'We can't make an ID. It's a council system so the resolution's terrible, and the guy's wearing a hoodie, never looks at the camera.' Logan pointed at a fresh collection of photos on the wall of death. 'We found the flat he kept Brooks in; according to council records the last tenant was a Mrs Irene Grey. She went into hospital for a cataract operation, caught MRSA. Died two months ago.' 'And?' 'Turns out her son is one Martin Grey - doing twelve years in Peterhead Prison for abduction, rape and forced imprisonment. Grabbed a sixteen-year-old boy and kept him chained and drugged for nearly a week.'