Gardener nodded, his eyes watery, rimmed with pink. Bit his bottom lip. ‘Never gets any easier, does it?’ He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘I’m sorry, it’s…It’s been a tough couple of months.’
Logan laid a hand on his arm. ‘If we find your car I’ll let you know.’
‘Can I get a crime number for the insurance?’
‘I’ll get someone to phone it through…’ Logan trailed off. The hallway had a set of stairs leading up to the first floor. ‘Did you hear—’
There it was again: a soft gurgling noise.
Logan looked back at Gardner, then took a step towards the stairs.
‘Well…’ Gardner unsnibbed the front door. ‘Anyway, thanks for coming – I know you must be very busy.’
Upstairs, the gurgling stopped and the crying started, quickly building to anguished howls.
Gardner smiled, a single bead of sweat trickling down his pink neck. ‘I…must have left the TV on in the bedroom.’
Logan put his hand on the balustrade. The old man flinched.
‘If I search this place am I going to find a pushchair, a sawn-off sledgehammer, and a bag full of stolen jewellery?’
‘I don’t…Erm…’
‘Your car wasn’t stolen, was it?’
Gardner just sagged.
The upstairs bedroom seemed to be the only place in the whole house with any furniture. It had bright yellow walls, a pile of soft toys, a sparkly mobile, and a big wooden cot. A little girl, dressed in a tiny princess/fairy costume, was imprisoned inside, holding onto the bars.
Alan Gardner sat on the floor, clutching a floppy-eared toy bunny identical to the one on the security camera footage. ‘It’s under the crib.’
Logan squatted down and dragged out a black-and-red Adidas holdall. He dumped it on the pink carpet – it was full of watches, chains, rings, brooches, and bracelets, gleaming in the light of a Bob the Builder bedside lamp. A big wodge of cash stuffed in the side pocket.
‘What happened to the first lot, from Henderson’s?’
‘Sent it off to one of those cash-for-gold places you see on the telly. Haven’t even got the cheque back yet.’
‘Alan Gardner, I’m arresting you on suspicion of—’
‘I didn’t have any choice.’ He kept his eyes fixed on the bunny rabbit.
‘Where’s the sledgehammer?’
‘She’s my daughter, what was I supposed to do? Let him hurt her?’
Logan turned and looked at the fairy princess in the cot. ‘Who’d want to hurt a little girl?’
‘Not Nicole, her mum: Stacy, my daughter.’ Gardner creaked himself upright and handed the rabbit into Nicole’s sticky little fingers. ‘When Laura died, Stacy…Stacy got involved with the wrong kind of people. Started taking drugs, drunk all the time, she just couldn’t cope.’
Gardner reached down and ruffled his granddaughter’s hair. ‘So now I look after Nicole. She’s my little tattieheid, aren’t you?’ The girl grinned, still chewing on the bunny’s floppy ear.
And now Logan was supposed to feel all sorry for him? ‘You robbed two jewellery shops, threatened the assistants with a sledgehammer.’
Gardner looked up, eyes pink and damp. ‘What was I supposed to do? Stacy ran up a lot of debts: drugs. There’s a man who’s going to…cut her if she doesn’t pay it all back. Break her legs. Worse…The interest is crippling.’ He reached down and picked the fairy princess from her cot, holding her tight. ‘I sold everything, cashed in my life insurance, pension, sold my car, put the house on the market…She’s my little girl, what was I supposed to do?’
Damn.
‘How about call the police?’
‘He said if I went to the police they’d never find her body.’
Logan closed his eyes, ran a hand across his forehead. Swore.
‘What’s his name?’
‘I…I don’t know. I never spoke to him.’
‘But you said—’
‘He always made Stacy phone.’
They stood there in the gaily coloured bedroom, Logan swearing, Gardner crying, Nicole making nonsensical gibberysing-song noises.
Custody was busy – shouts and threats coming from the lower corridor of cells, where the female prisoners were normally kept. Logan hefted the sawn-off sledgehammer onto the desk, along with the Adidas holdall, both stuffed into oversize evidence bags.
‘Two exhibits to sign in, and one prisoner.’
The custody sergeant nodded, reached below the level of the desk, pulled out a clipboard, and clacked it down next to Logan’s evidence bags. Sergeant Downie’s skin was so pale it fluoresced slightly in the overhead light, his
