Dark Blood

the guest bedroom. Family’s cleared out, so we’ve got the run of the place.’

‘Door-to-doors?’

He blinked, then did a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn, staring out at the snow-covered fields. ‘Erm…There’s no one living anywhere near, if you don’t count the sheep, so—’

‘Back there, where the lane joins the main road. There’s houses overlooking the entrance – they might’ve seen a car coming or going.’

The rest of Constable Meerkat’s face turned as pink as his nose and ears. ‘Ah, OK. I’ll get that organized…’

The Airwave handset clipped to Butler’s shoulder started bleeping and she moved away a couple of paces to answer it, then came back and handed the thing to Logan. ‘Control.’

‘McRae.’

‘Aye, hud oan, puttin’ you through…’

Click.

‘Sergeant, it’s Dr Frampton, we met at the—’

‘Steve Polmont crime scene, yes, I remember.’

‘I tried getting in touch with DI Steel, but it seems she’s unavailable?’

‘Yeah…’ According to the paperwork, there wasn’t so much as a footprint beyond the back garden.

‘We’ve got a result from the soil sample we took yesterday, from the flat where Knox escaped. A footprint just inside the hallway?’

‘Uh-huh?’ Logan handed the search reports back to the POLSA. Steel was right – the search was a waste of time, but at least it looked as if they were doing something. Knox was long gone.

‘We ran it against the national soil database, and there’s about a dozen places it could have come from in Aberdeenshire, I’ve emailed the results to you.’

‘Hold on…’ He pulled out the scrap of paper he was using as a surrogate notebook, and pinned it to the roof of the nearest patrol car with the side of his hand, pen poised. ‘Want to give me the edited highlights?’

Pause. ‘The sample has a pH of five-point-five and carbon’s sitting around three-point-six percent. Add in silt at eleven percent and that makes it Cairnrobin. You see, the general SSKIB values for soils like these—’

‘Place names. Honestly, it’ll be quicker if you just give me place names.’

‘Oh. I see.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, well Cairnrobin is a pretty small series – there’s only three hundred and ninty-five hectares in the whole of Scotland – in isolated pockets around Cove, Menie House, and near the mouth of the Ythan at Sleek of Tarty.’

Logan crabbed them out on the paper, then put his hand over the mouthpiece, leant over to the POLSA. ‘Any signs of a break in?’

‘Back door – the lock’s been gouged with a screwdriver.’

He went back to the call.

‘…time. You see, a soil sample is like a fingerprint—’

‘Thanks Doctor. That’s great. I’ll be in touch.’ He hung up before she could launch into anything else.

Logan stood there, tapping the handset against his chin.

Butler raised an eyebrow. ‘Something?’

He turned to the POLSA, and slapped his hand on the roof of the patrol car. ‘You got keys for this?’

Turned out it wasn’t even locked. Logan slipped into the passenger seat and fired up the little grey laptop mounted on the dashboard, using it to log into his Grampian Police email address.

Half a dozen messages from Beattie – which he ignored – and right after them the one from Dr Frampton. He opened it, then clicked on the .jpg attachment, shifting in his seat as the picture file downloaded.

It was a high-resolution map that looked as if it was made from stitched together screenshots. The areas where the soil matched the print in the flat highlighted in red. One cluster of red blobs sat north of Balmedie, near Donald Trump’s golf resort; one was about halfway to Peterhead; but the biggest concentration lay along the coast just south of Cove.

Logan frowned at the screen.

Most were just fields, but two of the blobs had houses in them.

Logan zoomed in on the Cove section. ‘See this?’

Constable Itchy squinted. ‘No, that’s wrong.’ He stuck his finger on the laptop’s screen and drew a little greasy circle inside the red bit. ‘That’s the search area: Steel only wanted a hundred meters. Are we meant to search the rest of it? Only it’s bloody freezing out there, and it’ll be dark soon.’

Why was there mud from around the victim’s home on the carpet of Knox’s Sacro flat?

Maybe whoever helped him escape stopped off on the way up to check on potential targets…?

Logan looked up at the house. ‘I need to speak to the victim, Evans.’

The POLSA shook his head. ‘Like I said – the family’s cleared out. Son took the old man back to Sunderland, said they didn’t want him being on his own, you know, with Knox on the loose.’