Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organisations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental. The only exceptions to this are the characters Allan Doig, Danielle Smith, and Kim Fraser who the author has been authorised to fictionalise and include within this volume. All behaviour, history, and character traits assigned to their fictional representations have been designed to serve the needs of the narrative and do not necessarily bear any resemblance to the real person.

The quotation ‘Heav’n has no rage…’ is from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride, published in 1697.

This book contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. – specifically section 4.3.1 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016.

HarperCollinsPublishers,

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Stuart MacBride 2018

Stuart MacBride asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019

Cover design © Blacksheep-uk.com

Cover image © Magdalena Russocka/Trevillion Images (road);

Shutterstock.com (clouds)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

SOURCE ISBN: 9780008208240

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2018 ISBN: 9780008208233

Version: 2020-05-20

Dedication

In loving memory of Peggy Reid,

a friend to cats, arranger of flowers,

and producer of the best cheese straws known to man.

1937–2017

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Without Whom

Chapter 0

— mice (and other vermin) —

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

— the widows’ waltz —

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

— the mortuary songbook —

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

— a dish of wasps in aspic —

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

— in the dark woods, screaming —

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

— secondhand children —

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By Stuart MacBride

About the Publisher

Without Whom

As always I received help from a lot of people while I was writing this book, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank: Sergeant Bruce Crawford, star of Skye and screen, who answers far more daft questions than anyone should ever have to, as does Professor Dave Barclay and the magnificent Professor Lorna Dawson; Christine Gordon, Geoff Marston, Lynda McGuigan, and Michael Strachan, who were a massive help with research (for a different story); Fiona Culbert, who helped with Social Work questions; ex-Detective Superintendent Nick Brackin, for ‘the shed’; Sarah Hodgson, Jane Johnson, Julia Wisdom, Jaime Frost, Anna Derkacz, Isabel Coburn, Charlie Redmayne, Roger Cazalet, Kate Elton, Hannah Gamon, Sarah Shea, Louis Patel, Damon Greeney, Finn Cotton, Anne O’Brien, Marie Goldie, the DC Bishopbriggs Super Squad, and everyone at HarperCollins, for doing such a stonking job; Phil Patterson and the team at Marjacq Scripts, for keeping my numerous cats in cat food; and let’s not forget Danielle Smith, Kim Fraser (née McLeod), and Andrew McManus, all of whom raised money for some very good causes in order to inspire fictionalised characters in this book.

Of course, writers, like me, wouldn’t be here without people like you (yes, YOU – the person reading this book), booksellers, and bookshops too. You’re all magnificent!

And saving the best for last – as always – Fiona and Grendel.

0

Duncan’s eyes snapped open and he grabbed the steering wheel, snatching the car away from the edge of the road. The headlights glittered back from the rain-slicked tarmac, sweeping past drystane dykes and hollow trees.

Don’t fall asleep.

Don’t pass out.

LIVE!

Madre de Dios, it hurt… Fire and ice, spreading deep inside his stomach, burning and freezing its way through his spine, squeezing his chest, making every breath a searing rip of barbed wire on raw flesh.

The wipers screeched back and forth across the windscreen – marking time with the thumping blood in his ears – the blowers bellowing cold air into his face.

He switched on the radio, turning it up to drown them out.

A cheesy voice blared from the speakers: ‘…continues for missing three-year-old Ellie Morton. You’re listening to Late Night Smoothness on Radio Garioch, helping you through the wee small hours on a dreich Friday morning…’

Duncan blinked. Bared his teeth. Hissed out a breath as the car swerved again. Wrestled it back from the brink. Wiped a hand across his clammy forehead.

‘We’ve got Sally’s O.M.G. it’s Early! show coming up at four, but first, let’s slow things down a bit with David Thaw and “Stones”.’

His left hand glistened – dark and sticky.

He clenched it over the burning ache in his side again. Pressing it into the damp fabric. Blood dripping from his fingers as he blinked…

Teresa walks across the town square, brown hair teased out by the warm wind. Little Marco gazes up from her arms, worshipping her for the goddess she is. The sky is blue as a saltire flag, the church golden in the summer sun.

Duncan wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in for a kiss – warm and smoky from her mother’s estofado de pollo.

She cups a hand to his cheek and smiles at him. ‘Te quiero mucho, Carlos.’

He beams back at her. ‘Te quiero mucho, Teresa!’ And he does. He loves her with every beating fibre of his heart.

The car lurched right, heading for the drystane dyke.

Duncan dragged it back. Tightened his right hand on the steering wheel. Hissed out a barbed-wire breath. Shook his head. Blinked again…

— mice (and other vermin) —

1

Drizzle misted down from a clay sky. It sat like a damp lid over a drab grey field at the base of a drab grey hill. The rising sun slipped between the two, washing a semi-naked oak tree with fire and blood.

Which was appropriate.

A brown Ford Focus was wrapped around its trunk, the bonnet crumpled, the windscreen spiderwebbed with cracks. A body slumped forward in the driver’s seat. Still and pale.

Crime-scene tape twitched and growled in the breeze, yellow-and-black like an angry wasp, as a handful of scene examiners in the full SOC kit picked their way around the wreck. The flurry and flash of photography and fingerprint powder. The smell of diesel and rotting leaves.

Logan pulled the hood of his own suit into place, the white Tyvek crackling like crumpled paper as he zipped the thing up with squeaky nitrile gloves. He stretched his chin out of the way, keeping his neck clear of the zip’s teeth. ‘Still don’t see what I’m doing here, Doreen.’

Detective Sergeant Taylor wriggled into her suit with all the grace of someone’s plump aunty doing the slosh at a family wedding. The hood hid her greying bob, the rest of it covering an outfit that could best be described as ‘Cardigan-chic’. If you were feeling generous. She pointed at the crumpled Ford. ‘You’ll find out.’

Typical – milking every minute of it.

They slipped on their facemasks then she led the way down the slope to the tape cordon, holding it up for him to duck under.

Logan did. ‘Only, RTCs aren’t usually a Professional Standards kind of thing.’

She turned and waved a hand at the hill. ‘Local postie was on his way to work, sees skidmarks on the road up there, looks down the hill and sees the crashed car. Calls one-oh-one.’

A pair of tyre tracks slithered and writhed their way down the yellowing grass to the Ford Focus’s remains. How the driver had managed to keep the thing from rolling was a mystery.

‘See, we’re more of an “investigating complaints made against police officers when they’ve been naughty” deal.’

‘Traffic get here at six fifteen, tramp down the hill and discover our driver.’

Logan peered in through the passenger window.

The man behind the wheel was big as a bear, hanging forward against his seatbelt, the first rays of morning a dull gleam on his bald head. His broad face, slack and pale – even with the heavy tan. Eyes open. Mouth like a bullet wound in that massive thicket of beard. Definitely dead.

‘Still not seeing it, Doreen.’

She gestured him over to the driver’s side. ‘Course it looks like accidental death, till they open the driver’s door and what do they find?’

Logan stepped around the driver’s open door… And stopped.

Blood pooled in the footwell, made deep-red streaks down the upholstery. Following it upwards led to a sagging hole in the driver’s shirt. So dark in there it was almost black.

‘Oooh…’ Logan hissed in a breath. ‘Stab wound?’

‘Probably. So they call it in and we all scramble out here like good little soldiers. Body’s searched: no ID.’

‘Give the hire company a call. They wouldn’t let him have the car without ID.’

She turned and stared at him. ‘Yes, thank you Brain of Britain, we did actually think of that. Car was booked out by one Carlos Guerrero y Prieto.’

‘There you go: mystery solved.’ Logan stuck his hands on his hips. ‘Now, make with the big reveal, Doreen: why – am – I – here?’

Little creases appeared at the sides of her eyes. She was smiling at him behind her mask. Dragging it out.

‘Seriously, I’m going to turn around and walk away if—’

‘While we were waiting on Trans-Buchan Automotive Rentals to get their finger out and stop moaning about data protection, someone had the bright idea of taking the deceased’s fingerprints with one of the wee live scan machines. We got a hit from the database. Dramatic pause…’

The only sounds were the clack-and-whine of crime-scene photography as she waggled her eyebrows at him.

‘Were you always this annoying? Because I don’t remember you being this annoying.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m surprised you don’t recognise him. OK, so he’s lost a bit of weight and shaved his head, and the Grizzly Adams beard and tan are new, but it’s still him.’

‘Doreen…’

‘Carlos Guerrero y Prieto’s real name is Duncan Bell, AKA: Ding-Dong, late Detective Inspector of this parish.’

Logan stared.

The hairy hands dangling at the end of those bear-like arms. The rounded shoulders. The heavy eyebrows. Take off the beard. Add a bit more hair. Put him in an ill-fitting suit?

‘But … he’s dead. And I don’t mean “just now” dead – we buried him two years ago.’

Doreen nodded, radiating smugness. ‘And that’s why we called you.’

The duty undertakers lifted their shiny grey coffin, slipping and sliding in the damp grass. Two of the scene examiners broke off from collecting samples and grabbed a handle each, helping them carry it away from the crashed Ford.

Logan unzipped his suit a bit, letting the trapped heat out, and shifted his grip on his phone. ‘We’ll need a DNA match to be a hundred percent, but they’ve done the live scan on his fingerprints five times now and it always comes up as DI Bell.’

‘I see…’ Superintendent Doig made sooking noises for a bit. When he came back, his voice was gentle, a tad indulgent. ‘But, you see, it can’t be him, Logan. We buried him. I was at his funeral. I gave a speech. People were very moved.’

‘You tripped over the podium and knocked one of the floral displays flying.’

‘Yes, well. … I don’t think we need to dwell on every little aspect of the service.’

‘If it is DI Bell, he’s been lying low somewhere sunny. Going by the tan and new name, maybe Spain?’

‘Why would Ding-Dong fake his own death?’

‘And having faked his own death, why come back two years later? Why now?’

One of the examiners wandered up and pulled down her facemask, revealing a mouthful of squint teeth framed with soft pink lipstick. ‘Inspector McRae? You might wanna come see this.’

‘Hold on a sec, Boss, something’s come up.’ Logan pressed the phone against his chest and followed the crinkly-white oversuited figure to the crashed Ford’s boot.

A shovel and a pickaxe lay partially unwrapped from their black plastic bin-bag parcels – metal blades clean and glittering in the dull light.

She nodded at them. ‘Bit suspicious, right? Why’s he carting a pick and shovel about?’

Logan inched forwards, sniffing. There was a strange toilety scent – like green urinal cakes undercut by something darker. ‘Can you smell that?’

‘Smell what?’

‘Air freshener.’

She leaned in too, sniffing. ‘Oh… Yeah, I’m getting it now. Sort of pine and lavender? I love those wee plug-in—’

‘Get the pick and shovel tested. He’s been digging something up, or burying it, I want to know what and where.’

The other scene examiner sauntered over, hands in his pockets, glancing up at the hill. ‘Aye, aye. We’ve got an audience.’

A scruffy Fiat hatchback lurked at the side of the road above, not far from where the crashed car’s tyres scored their way down the mud and grass. Someone stood next to it peering through a pair of binoculars. Auburn curls made a halo around her head, tucked out of the way behind her ears. A linen suit that looked as if she’d slept in it. But she wasn’t looking at them, she was following the duty undertakers and the coffin.

‘Bloody press.’ The examiner with the pink lipstick, howked, then spat. ‘It’ll be telephoto lenses in a minute.’

Logan went back to his phone. ‘Boss? DCI Hardie’s running the MIT, any chance you can have a word? Think we need to be involved on this one.’

‘Urgh… More paperwork, just what we need. All right, I’ll see what I can do.’

He hung up before Doig launched into his ‘bye, bye’ routine and stood there. Watching the figure up on the road. Frowned. Then turned away and poked at the screen of his phone, scrolling through his list of contacts. Set it ringing.

The woman with the curly hair pulled out her phone, juggling it and the binoculars, then a wary voice – laced with that Inverness Monarch-of-the-Glen twang – sounded in Logan’s ear. ‘Hello?’

‘Detective Sergeant Chalmers? It’s Inspector McRae. Hi. Just checking that you’re remembering our appointment this lunchtime: twelve noon.’

‘What? Yes. Definitely remembering it. Couldn’t be more excited.’

Yeah, bet she was.

‘Only you’ve missed the last three appointments and I’m beginning to think you’re avoiding me.’

‘Nooo. Definitely not. Well, I’d better get back to it, got lots of door-to-doors to do. So—’

‘You’re on the Ellie Morton investigation, aren’t you?’

The woman was still following the duty undertakers with her binoculars. They struggled up the hill with the coffin, fighting against the slope and wet grass. One missed step and they’d be presiding over a deeply embarrassing and unprofessional toboggan run.

‘Yup. Like I said, we’re—’

‘Any leads? Three-year-old girl goes missing, her parents must be frantic.’

‘We’re working our way through Tillydrone as I speak. Nothing so far.’

‘Tillydrone?’

‘Yup, going to be here all morning… Ah, damn it. Actually, now I think about it, I’ll probably be stuck here all afternoon too. Sorry. Can we reschedule our thing for later in the week?’

‘You’re in Tillydrone?’

‘Yup.’

‘That’s odd… Because I’m standing in a field a couple of miles West of Inverurie, and I could swear I’m looking right at you.’ He waved up the hill at her. ‘Can you see me waving?’

‘Shite…’ Chalmers ducked behind her car. ‘No, definitely in Tillydrone. Must be someone else. Er… I’ve got to go. The DI needs me. Bye.’

The line went dead. She’d hung up on him.

Those auburn curls appeared for a brief moment as she scrambled into her car, then the engine burst into life and the hatchback roared away. Disappeared around the corner.

Subtle. Really subtle.

Logan shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’

Something rocky thumped out of the Audi’s speakers as it wound its way back down the road towards Aberdeen. Past fields of brown-grey soil, and fields of drooping grass, and fields of miserable sheep, and fields flooded with thick pewter lochans. On a good day, the view would have been lovely, but under the ashen sky and never-ending rain?

This was why people emigrated.

The music died, replaced by the car’s default ringtone.

Logan pressed the button and picked up. ‘Hello?’

‘Guv? It’s me.’ Me: AKA Detective Sergeant Simon Occasionally-Useful-When-Not-Being-A-Pain-In-The-Backside Rennie. Sounding as if he was in the middle of chewing a toffee or something. ‘I’ve been down to records and picked up all of DI Bell’s old case files. Where do you want me to start?’

‘How about the investigation into his suicide?’

‘Ah. No. One of DCI Hardie’s minions already checked it out of the archives.’

Sod.

‘OK. In that case: start with the most recent file you’ve got and work your way backwards.’

‘Two years, living it up on the sunny Costa del Somewhere and DI Bell comes home to dreich old Aberdeenshire? See if it was me? No chance.’

‘He had a pick and shovel in the boot of his car.’

‘Buried treasure?’

A tractor rumbled past, going the other way, its massive rear wheels kicking up a mountain of filthy spray.

Logan stuck on the wipers. ‘My money’s on unburied. You don’t come back from the dead to bury something in the middle of nowhere. You come back to dig it up.’

‘Ah: got you. He buries whatever it is, fakes his own death, then sods off to the Med. Two years later he thinks it’s safe to pop over and dig it up again.’

‘That or whatever he buried isn’t safe any more and he has to retrieve it before someone else does.’

‘Hmm…’ Rennie’s voice went all muffled, then came back again. ‘OK: I’ll have a look for bank jobs, or jewellery heists in the case files. Something expensive and unsolved. Something worth staging your own funeral for.’

‘And find out who he was working with. See if we can’t rattle some cages.’

A knot of TV people had set up outside Divisional Headquarters, all their cameras trained on the small group of protestors marching round and round in the rain. There were only about a dozen of them, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for with enthusiasm – waving placards with ‘JUSTICE FOR ELLIE!’, or ‘SHAME ON THE POLICE!’, or ‘FIND ELLIE NOW!’ on them. Nearly every single board had a photo of Ellie Morton: her grinning moon-shaped face surrounded by blonde curls, big green eyes crinkled up at whatever had tickled her.

Logan slowed the Audi as he drove by. Someone in a tweed jacket was doing a piece to camera, serious-faced as she probably told the world what a useless bunch of tossers Police Scotland were. Oh why hadn’t they found Ellie Morton yet? What about the poor family? Why did no one care?

As if.

The Audi bumped up the lumpy tarmac and into the rear podium car park. Pulled into the slot marked ‘RESERVED FOR PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS’. Some wag had graffitied a Grim Reaper on the wall beneath the sign. And, to be fair, it actually wasn’t a bad likeness of Superintendent Doig. Always nice to be appreciated by your colleagues…

Logan stuck his hat on his head, climbed out, and hurried across to the double doors, swerving to avoid the puddles. Along a breeze-block corridor and into the stairwell. Taking the steps two at a time.

A couple of uniformed PCs wandered downwards, chatting and smiling.

They flattened themselves against the wall as Logan approached, all talk silenced, both smiles turned into a sort of pained rictus.

The spotty one forced a little wave. ‘Inspector.’

Logan had made it as far as the third-floor landing when his phone dinged at him. Text message.

He pulled it out and frowned at the screen.

The caller ID came up as ‘HORRIBLE STEEL!’ and his shoulders sagged a bit. ‘What do you want, you wrinkly monster?’

He opened the message:

Come on, you know you want to.

Nope. Logan thumbed out a reply as he marched past the lifts:

Told you – I’m busy. Ask someone else.

He pushed through the doors and into a bland corridor that came with a faint whiff of paint fumes and Pot Noodle.

A tiny clump of support officers were sharing a joke, laughing it up.

Then one of them spotted Logan, prompting nudges and a sudden frightened silence.

Logan nodded at them as he passed, then knocked on the door with a white plastic plaque on it: ‘DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR STEPHEN HARDIE’.

A tired voice muffled out from inside. ‘Come.’

Logan opened the door.

Hardie’s office was all kitted out for efficiency, organisation, and achievement: six whiteboards covered in notes about various ongoing cases, the same number of filing cabinets, a computer that looked as if it wasn’t designed to run on coal or hamster power. A portrait of the Queen hung on the wall along with a collection of framed citations and a few photos of the man himself shaking hands with various local bigwigs. Everything you needed for investigatory success.

Sadly, it didn’t seem to be working.

Hardie was perched on the edge of his desk, feet not quite reaching the ground. A short middle-aged man with little round glasses. Dark hair swept back from a high forehead. A frown on his face as he flipped through a sheaf of paperwork.

He wasn’t the only occupant, though. A skeletal man with thinning hair was stooped by one of the whiteboards, printing things onto it in smudgy green marker pen.

And number three was chewing on a biro as she scanned the contents of her clipboard. Her jowls wobbling as she shook her head. ‘Pfff… Already got requests coming in from Radio Scotland and Channel 4 News. How the hell did they get hold of it so quickly?’

Hardie looked up from his papers and grimaced at Logan. ‘Ah, Inspector McRae. I would say “to what do we owe the pleasure?” but it seldom is.’

Number Three sniffed. ‘Only positive is they don’t know who our victim was.’

Number Two held up his pen. ‘Yet, George. They don’t know yet.’

George sighed. ‘True.’

Logan leaned against the door frame. ‘I take it Superintendent Doig’s been in touch?’

‘Urgh.’ Hardie thumped his paperwork down. ‘You know this is going to be a complete turd tornado. Soon as they find out we’ve got a murdered cop who faked his own death, it won’t just be a couple of TV crews out there. It’ll be all of them.’

‘Did you ever hear rumours about DI Bell? Backhanders, evidence going missing, corruption?’

‘Ding-Dong? Don’t be daft.’ Hardie folded his arms. ‘Now: we need to coordinate our investigations. PSD and MIT.’

‘Honest police officers don’t run off to Spain and lie low while everyone back home thinks they’re dead.’

‘You can have a couple of officers to assist with your inquiries.’ Hardie pointed at his jowly sidekick. ‘George will sort that out.’

She smiled at Logan. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t lump you with the neeps.’

‘Should think not. And I could do with a copy of the investigation into DI Bell’s so-called suicide, too.’

‘I think Charlie’s got that one.’

Sidekick number two nodded. ‘I’ll drop it off.’

Logan wandered over to the whiteboards and stood there, head on one side, running his eyes down all the open cases.

Hardie was trying on his authoritative voice: ‘My MIT will be focusing on catching whoever stabbed Ding-Dong. You can look into … his disappearance.’

Logan stayed where he was. ‘You’re running the search for Ellie Morton?’

‘I expect you to share any and all findings with my team. You report to me first.’

Aye, right. ‘And Superintendent Doig agreed to that? Doesn’t sound like him. I’d probably better check, you know: in case there’s been a misunderstanding.’

A harrumphing noise from Hardie. Busted.

Logan gave him a smile. ‘Ellie’s been missing for, what: four days?’

DS Scott tapped his pen on the whiteboard. ‘DI Fraser’s working that one. My money’s on the stepdad. Got form for indecent exposure when he was young. Once a pervert…’

A nod. ‘I’ll give Fraser a shout.’

Hardie harrumphed again. ‘If I can drag you back to the topic for a brief moment, Inspector: DI Bell’s files. Where are they?’

‘DS Rennie’s going through them.’ Logan turned and pulled on a smile. ‘You wanted us to look into the historic side of things, remember? Bell’s disappearance?’

A puzzled look. ‘But I only just told you that.’

Logan’s smile grew. ‘See: we’re already acting like a well-oiled machine.’

2

The canteen was virtually deserted. Well, except for Baked Tattie Ted, in his green-and-brown tabard, worrying away at the deep-fat frier while Logan plucked a tin of Irn-Bru from the chiller cabinet.

Logan pinned his phone between ear and shoulder while he went digging in his pocket for some change. ‘Anything?’

The sound of rustling paper and creaking cardboard came from the earpiece, followed by a distracted-sounding Rennie. ‘Nada, zilch, zip, bugger-and-indeed-all. Not that screams “lots of money went missing!” anyway.’

Two fifties, a ten and a couple of pennies. They jingled in Logan’s palm as he walked to the counter. ‘Of course it might not be about an old case. Maybe his personal life was what made him up sticks and disappear?’

A groan. ‘Please don’t tell me I’m wading through all this stuff for nothing!’

The canteen door thumped open and in strutted a woman made up like something off the cosmetics counter at Debenhams. Jane McGrath: in a smart trouser suit, perfect hair, folder under one arm, phone to her ear, and a smile on her face. ‘That’s right, yes. … Completely.’

She waved at him and helped herself to a cheese-and-pickle sandwich and a can of Coke. Tucked a packet of salt-and-vinegar under her arm. ‘That’s right. … Uh-huh. … Yes. I know, it’s terrible. Truly terrible.’ She pinned the phone to her chest and her smile blossomed into an evil grin – mouthing the words at Logan: ‘Isn’t it great?’ Then back to the phone. ‘It’s a miracle their injuries weren’t even more serious. I don’t need to tell you how many police officers are hurt in the line of duty every year. … Yes. … Yes, that’s right.’

Rennie whinged in his ear. ‘Guv? You still there? I said, tell me I’m not—’

‘Don’t be daft, Simon: it’s not for nothing if you find something. And see if you can text me a list of DI Bell’s sidekicks.’

‘Hold on…’ The sound of rustling papers. ‘OK. Let me see… Here we go. Most recent one was Detective Sergeant Rose Savage. God that’s a great police name, isn’t it? Sounds like something off a crime thriller. Detective Sergeant Rose Savage!’

Jane dumped her sandwich, Coke, and crisps on the countertop. ‘I’ll talk to the hospital, but I’m pretty sure we can get you in for a ten-minute interview: “brave bobbies suffer broken bones chasing cowardly criminal!” … Yes, I thought so. … OK. … OK. Thanks. Bye.’ She hung up and sagged, head back, beaming at the ceiling tiles. ‘Ha!’

‘Find out where this Sergeant Savage works now and text me.’

‘Guv.’

Logan put his phone away as Jane launched into a little happy dance.

‘Guess who just got all that crap about us being rubbish off the front page. Go on, I’ll bet you can’t.’

Logan frowned. ‘Hospital?’

‘Two uniforms were chasing down a burglar last night, he wheeches through some back gardens then up and over a shed. They clamber after him and CRASH! Pair of them go straight through the shed roof.’

‘Ooh… Painful.’

‘One broken arm, one broken leg. Which was lucky.’

She had a point. ‘Especially given the amount of pointy things people keep in sheds. Shears, axes, forks, rakes, bill hooks—’

‘What?’ She pulled her chin in, top lip curled. ‘No, I mean: lucky they got hurt in the line of duty. Newspapers love a good injured copper story.’ That kicked off another bout of happy dancing.

Logan paid for his Irn-Bru. ‘Working in Media Liaison’s really changed you, hasn’t it?’

‘And with any luck they’ll have a couple of good bruises as well. That always plays well splashed across the front page.’ She turned and danced away.

Logan shook his head. ‘Why do we have to keep hiring weirdos? What’s wrong with normal—’

His phone dinged at him and he dug it out again.

A text message from ‘IDIOT RENNIE’:

Sargent ROSE SAVAGE!!! (crim fiter 2 the stars) wrks out the Mastrick staton. On duty nw. U wan me 2 get hr 2 com in??

Talking of weirdos…

Logan typed out a reply:

No, I’ll go to her. She’s less likely to do a runner if it’s a surprise. And stop texting like a schoolgirl from the 1990s: you’ve got a smartphone, you idiot!

North Anderson Drive slid by the car’s windows, high-rise buildings looming up ahead on the right, their façades darkened by rain. A couple of saggy-looking people slouched through the downpour, dragging a miserable spaniel on the end of an extendable leash.

‘…heightened police presence in Edinburgh this weekend as protestors are expected to descend on the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference…’

He took the next left, past rows of tiny orangey-brown houses and terraces of pebble-dashed beige.

‘…avoid the area as travel chaos is extremely likely until Tuesday. Local news now, and the Aberdeen Examiner has its sights set on a Guinness World Record next week as it hosts the world’s largest ever stovies-eating contest…’

Three teenaged girls hung about on a small patch of grass, sheltering beneath the trees to share what was quite possibly a joint. Passing it back and forth, holding the smoke in their lungs and pulling faces.

Logan slowed the Audi and wound down the passenger window. Waving at them. ‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello, what’s all this then?’

‘Scarper!’

They bolted in three different directions, their hand-rolled ‘cigarette’ spiralling away into the wet grass.

Logan grinned and wound his window back up again.

And people said community policing was a waste of time.

‘…and I’m sorry to say that it looks like this rain’s going to stay with us for the next few days as low pressure pushes in from the Atlantic…’

He turned down the next side street, past more tiny terraces, and right on to Arnage Drive in time to see one of the scarpering teenagers barrel out from the side of another grey-beige row. She scuttered to a halt in the middle of the road and stood there with her mouth hanging open, before turning and sprinting back the way she’d come. Arms and legs pumping like an Olympian.

Ah, teenagers, the gift that kept on giving.

He pulled into the car park behind the little shopping centre, designed more for delivery vans and lorries than members of the public. The front side might have been OK, but the back was a miserable slab of brick and barred windows on the bottom and air-conditioning units and greying UPVC on top. All the charm of a used corn plaster.

A handful of hatchbacks littered the spaces between the bins, but Logan parked next to the lone patrol car. Hopped out into the rain.

It pattered on the brim of his peaked cap as he hurried across to the station’s rear door, unlocked it, and let himself in.

The corridor walls were covered in scuff marks, a pile of Method Of Entry kit heaped up beneath the whiteboard for people to sign out the patrol cars, a notice not to let someone called Grimy Gordon into the station, because last time he puked in Sergeant Norton’s boots.

‘Hello?’

No reply, just a phone ringing somewhere in the building’s bowels.

The reception area was empty, a ‘CLOSED’ sign hanging on the front door. No one in the locker room. No one in the back office.

Might as well make himself comfortable, then.

The station break room was bland and institutional, with an air of depression that wasn’t exactly lifted by the display of ‘GET WELL SOON!’ cards pinned to the noticeboard, almost covering the slew of official memos and motivational posters. A window would have helped lift the gloom a bit, instead the only illumination came from one of those economy lightbulbs that looked like a radioactive pretzel. A dented mini-fridge, food-spattered microwave, and battered kettle populated the tiny kitchen area.

Logan dumped his teabag in the bin and stirred in a glug of semi-skimmed from a carton with a ‘STOP STEALING MY MILK YOU THIEVING BASTARDS!!!’ Post-it note on it.

He sat back down at the rickety table and poked out a text message on his phone:

As it’s Friday, how about Chinese for tea? Bottle of wine. Bit of sexy business…?

SEND.

It dinged straight back.

TS TARA:

Make it pizza & you’ve got a deal.

Excellent. Now all he needed was—

A strangled scream echoed down the corridor and in through the open break-room door.

Logan put his tea down and poked his head out.

‘Stop bloody struggling!’ The sergeant was missing her hat, teeth bared and stained pink – presumably from the split bottom lip. Hair pulled up in a bun. Arms wrapped around the throat of a whippet-thin man in filthy trainers and a tracksuit that was more dirt than fabric. Both hands cuffed behind his back. Struggling in the narrow corridor.

A PC staggered about at the far end, by the front door, one hand clamped over his nose as blood bubbled between his fingers and fell onto his high-viz jacket. ‘Unnnngghh…’

All three of them: drenched, soggy, and dripping.

Captain Tracksuit lashed his head to the side, broken brown teeth snapping inches from the sergeant’s face.

She flinched. ‘Calm down, you wee shite!’

He didn’t. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’ Bellowing it out in an onslaught of foul fishy breath. It went with the bitter-onion stink of BO.

Logan pointed. ‘You need a hand?’

The sergeant grimaced at him. ‘Thanks, sir, but I think we’ve got this. So if you don’t mind—’

Captain Tracksuit McStinky shoulder-slammed her against the wall, hard enough to make the whiteboard jitter and pens clatter to the floor. ‘GETOFFME, GETOFFME, GETOFFME!’

‘You sure you don’t want a hand?’

‘Quite sure.’

McStinky spun away and she snatched a handful of his manky tracksuit. It ripped along the zip, exposing a swathe of bruised xylophone ribs. Then he lunged, jerking his forehead forward like a battering ram.

She barely managed to turn her face away – his head smashed into her cheek instead of her nose. She stumbled.

‘Because it’s no trouble, really.’

McStinky kept on spinning, both hands still cuffed behind his back. ‘I never touched him! It was them! IT WAS THEM!’ Dance-hopping back a couple of paces then surging closer to bury one of those filthy trainers in her ribs. Then did it again.

‘Aaaaargh! OK! OK!’

Logan stepped out of the break room and grabbed the chunk of plastic that joined both sides of McStinky’s handcuffs and yanked it upwards like he was opening a car boot.

McStinky screamed as his arms tried to pop out of their sockets. He pitched forward onto the floor, legs thrashing. Bellowing out foul breaths as Logan kept up the pressure. Leaning into it a bit. Up close, the BO had a distinct blue-cheesiness to it and a hint of mouldy sausages too.

The sergeant scrambled backwards until she was sitting up against the corridor wall. Spat out a glob of scarlet.

McStinky roared. ‘DON’T LET THEM EAT ME!’

The PC with the bloody nose staggered over and threw himself across McStinky’s legs, struggling a set of limb restraints into place. ‘Hold still!’

Logan held out his hand to the other officer. ‘Let me guess: Sergeant Savage? Logan McRae. I need to talk to you about DI Bell.’

Logan leaned against the corridor wall, mug of tea warm against his chest. The station’s rear door was wide open, giving a lovely view of PC Broken Nose and Sergeant Savage ‘assisting’ McStinky into the back of the patrol car parked next to Logan’s Audi.

Rain bounced off the cars’ roofs, sparked up from the wet tarmac, hissed against the world like a billion angry cats.

Ding.

He pulled out his phone and groaned.

HORRIBLE STEEL:

Come on, it’s only one night. One wee teeny weeny night.

A quick reply:

I’m busy.

Sergeant Savage slammed the patrol car’s door shut, then lurched into the station again. Wiped the rain from her face. Scowled. ‘God, I love Fridays.’

Logan nodded at the car. ‘He’s nice.’

McStinky thrashed against his seatbelt, screaming – muffled to near silence by the closed car door – while PC Broken Nose stuck two fingers up to the window.

Savage peeled off her high-viz jacket. ‘You wanted to talk about DI Bell.’

‘Don’t you want to take your friend straight to the cells?’

‘Jittery Dave? Nah, he’s off his face. They won’t let us book him in till they know he won’t OD or choke on his own vomit. And the hospital won’t take him: not while he’s violent. So he can sit there and chill out for a bit. Smithy’ll keep an eye on him.’ She prodded at her split lip and winced. There was blood on her fingertip. ‘Why the sudden interest in Ding-Dong?’

‘You hear what happened this morning?’

‘Been chasing Jittery Dave since I got on shift. I’ve run a sodding marathon already today – never mind Mo Farah, we should put a couple of druggies in for the next Olympics.’

‘OK.’ Logan led the way back into the break room. ‘You were Bell’s sidekick.’

She bristled a bit. ‘I worked with him, yes.’

‘How was he as a boss?’

‘Good. Yeah. Fair. Didn’t hog all the credit. Actually listened.’

Logan stuck the kettle on and dug a clean mug from the cupboard. ‘What about his state of mind?’

‘He blew his brains out in a caravan. What do you think?’

Teabag. ‘I think someone wouldn’t do that without a very good reason. What was his?’

She looked away. Shrugged. ‘The last case we worked on. It was … tough for him.’

‘Tough how?’

‘Ding-Dong… Look: Aiden MacAuley was three when he was abducted. He was out with his dad, in the woods near their house. Fred Marshall attacked them. Killed the father, abducted Aiden.’

‘Fred Marshall?’

‘And we couldn’t lay a finger on him. We know he did it – he boasted about the attack to a friend of his down the pub. Told him all the grisly details about bashing Kenneth MacAuley’s brains out with a rock. Never said what happened to the kid, though. So we dragged Marshall in and grilled him. Again and again and again. But in the end, we didn’t have a single bit of evidence to pin on him.’

The kettle rattled to a boil and Logan drowned the teabag.

Savage prodded at her split lip again. ‘Course, we couldn’t tell Aiden’s mother any of that. We’re banging our heads against the Crown Office, but far as she’s concerned it looks like we’re doing sod-all to find her son and catch the guy who killed her husband.’

‘So what happened with Fred Marshall?’

‘It really weighed on Ding-Dong. We were a good team, you know? And now he can’t get it out of his head: he can’t sleep, he’s stressed all the time…’ Another shrug. ‘Then Ding-Dong’s whole personality changes. He’s jumpy, nervous, irritable. Shouting at you for no reason.’

She stared at the tabletop. Shook her head.

Somewhere in the station, that phone started ringing again.

‘He… He came to my house … about two in the morning. Told me I was to look after his wife. That I had to protect her from the press and the rest of the vermin. And that was the last time I saw him.’ Savage cleared her throat. ‘Until I had to ID his body in the mortuary.’

She shook her head. Blinked. Wiped at her eyes. Huffed out a breath. ‘Anyway… Nothing we can do about it now, is there?’

‘You ID’d the body?’

‘What was left of it. According to the IB, he rigged the caravan to burn before sticking a shotgun in his mouth. The whole thing went up like a firelighter.’ Deep breath. ‘The smell was… Yeah.’

Logan let the silence stretch.

The station phone went quiet for a couple of seconds, then launched into its monotonous cry for attention again.

Savage shook her head. ‘Couldn’t get any usable DNA off the remains – you know what it’s like when you cook everything.’ She shuddered. ‘Had to do it from his possessions: rings, watch, wallet. But we had his car at the scene, the suicide notes, what was left of his dad’s shotgun; even managed to lift some of Ding-Dong’s prints off the caravan…’ Savage’s eyes narrowed. ‘You still haven’t explained: why the sudden interest?’

Logan fished out the teabag and sloshed in a glug of milk. Added two sugars and stirred. ‘Did you ever think he was involved in something? Maybe got in over his head?’

‘Ding-Dong? No. He was a good cop. Most honest guy I’ve ever worked with.’

‘Hmmm…’ He handed her the mug of hot sweet tea. ‘I might have some bad news for you.’

3

Logan stepped into the Major Investigation Team office and closed the door behind him.

Chief Superintendent Big Tony Campbell prowled the line of electronic whiteboards at the front of the room like a horror-film monster: big and bald, bushy black eyebrows scowling over small dark eyes. He barely fit into his police-issue black T-shirt, his bare arms forested with salt-and-pepper fur.

Hardie didn’t look much happier, perched on the edge of someone’s desk in one of the cubicles that lined the other three walls, enclosing the meeting table in the middle. ‘Honestly, if you’ve got any suggestions I’m all ears.’

Big Tony jabbed a hand at the windows. ‘Well he must’ve been staying somewhere!’

‘I’ve got teams out canvassing every hotel and B-and-B in the area. Media Liaison are putting together “Have you seen this man?” posters. There’s another team at Aberdeen Airport going through the CCTV and every passenger manifest for the last two weeks. What else can I do?’

Logan knocked on a cubicle wall. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’

A harrumph from Big Tony, then, ‘Inspector McRae, please tell me you’ve got something.’

‘We’re pursuing several lines of inquiry at the moment.’

‘Wonderful. So you’ve got sod-all too.’

‘Early days, sir. Early days.’

Big Tony lumbered over to the window, peering down at the gathered TV people and protestors below. ‘Look at them, grubbing about, sneering at us, doing their snide pieces to camera about how NE Division couldn’t find a fart in a sleeping bag.’

Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘I want to get someone exhumed.’

‘Ellie Morton’s mother’s giving a press conference at twelve. No points for guessing what her main theme will be. She’s…’ Big Tony frowned. ‘Wait, what? You want to exhume someone? Who?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

Hardie sniffed. ‘How can you not know who you’re going to exhume?’

‘We buried DI Bell two years ago, remember? Only he wasn’t really dead: he faked the whole thing. So who did we bury?’

Big Tony’s eyes widened as it sank in. ‘Oh for… CHRIST’S SAKE!’ He booted the nearest wastepaper basket, sending it flying, crumpled-up sheets of paper and sweetie wrappers exploding out like cheap confetti.

Hardie covered his head with his hands and groaned. ‘Not again.’

‘Why did no one think of this till now? What the fffffff…’ Big Tony screwed up his face, marched over to the dented bin and booted it away again. It clattered off a filing cabinet. ‘Aaaaargh!’

‘Now…’ Hardie peeked out between his fingers. ‘To be fair, there’s been a lot going on and—’

‘So let’s get this straight: not only do we have the PR disaster of DI Bell faking his own death then turning up stabbed in a crashed car, now we’ve got to investigate him for murder as well? We buried him with full police honours!’

Logan nodded. ‘So I can dig up whoever-it-is?’

‘The media are going to love this…’ Big Tony sagged. ‘Our beloved bosses at Tulliallan are already pulling on their hobnail boots to give my arse a kicking. When this hits… Argh!’ He gave the wastepaper basket one last whack and stormed from the room, flinging his arms about like a man on fire. ‘Dig him up. Dig them all up! Every single last bloody one of them!’

The door slammed shut.

Hardie stared at it for a moment. ‘I would really like to make it clear that none of this is my fault.’

‘I know how you feel.’ Logan settled back against the meeting table. ‘Speaking of which: have you heard of someone called Fred Marshall?’

A frown. ‘Possibly. Probably… I think so. Wasn’t he one of those rent-a-thug-have-baseball-bat-will-travel types? Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

The office they’d given him wasn’t exactly huge: lined with half a dozen manky old desks, a couple of scuffed whiteboards, and a collection of swivel chairs that looked as if they’d fallen off the back of a lorry. And then been driven over. Twice. Everything looked shabby and used, especially the carpet.

Logan sat back in one of the creaky chairs, phone to his ear, case file open on the scarred desktop in front of him. Frowning at the pathologist’s report on what was left of whoever it was they’d buried in DI Duncan Bell’s grave. ‘According to this, cause of death was indeterminable, but likely to be due to the extensive shotgun wound to the cranium.’

On the other end of the phone, Rennie gave a little sarcastic laugh. ‘“Likely”? Thought it took half of Ding-Dong’s head off!’

‘Turns out DI Bell had stashed about fifteen litres of petrol about the caravan, set fire to the place, then tried to gargle his dad’s shotgun.’ Logan turned the page. A crime-scene photo popped and crackled with reds and blacks and pinks. Like a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed barbecue. ‘Urgh… What was left of the remains isn’t pretty.’ He turned the page, hiding the image. ‘Do me a favour: run a PNC check on a Fred Marshall, IC-One male, thug for hire.’

‘Hold on, have to excavate my keyboard.’ The sound of rustling paperwork. ‘Fred Marshall. Fred Marshall… Why does that sound familiar?’

‘Prime suspect in the Aiden MacAuley case.’

‘Ah, that Fred Marshall. Here we go. Clickity, clickity … Fred Marshall.’ A low whistle came down the earpiece. ‘Well he does seem like every girl’s dream date. Five counts of threats and extortion, four aggravated assaults, three possessions with intent, two thefts from a lockfast place, one arson, and a partridge in a pear tree.’

‘And where’s Prince Charming now?’

The clatter of computer keys went on and on and on and on…

‘Rennie? You still there?’

‘Going digging.’

‘You better not be searching for porn on the office computers. This isn’t the Houses of Parliament.’

‘Moi? Never. Well, maybe that once… Right – I’ve got nothing for Fred Albert Marshall for … call it twenty-six months.’

Sounded unlikely.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not so much as a parking ticket. Hang on, I’ll check Twitter and Facebook…’ More clattering. ‘Nothing. Nada. His last status update was going from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated” and his last post … here we go: a picture of a monkey peeing into its own mouth with the caption “Police Scotland’s finest”. Two years and two months ago.’

Logan nodded. Frowned at the wall for a bit. Two and a bit years. So Fred Marshall was definitely a contender for ‘Most Likely To Have Been Buried In A Police Officer’s Grave’.

‘Guv?’

‘Yeah, I need you to get me everything you can about Fred Marshall: dental records, hospital X-rays, everything.’

‘And do you want that before or after the other four million things you’ve asked me to do?’

‘Thanks, Simon.’ He hung up, and had almost got the phone back in his pocket when it dinged at him.

HORRIBLE STEEL:

Stop being such a dick. They’re your kids too – wouldn’t kill you to babysit the little monsters now and then!

He thumbed out a reply.

I’m not being a dick, I’m busy. I have plans. And I babysat them two nights ago, you ungrateful lump.

Logan closed the case file.

Ding:

OK: you can bring Ginger McHotpants with you as long as you don’t leave dirty heterosexual stains on the couch again.

Reply:

That was hummus and you know it. And I’m busy. Find someone else.

And with any luck, that would be that.

Logan called up the inter-department contact list on his steam-powered computer. ‘Right: exhumation.’

‘OK. Thanks. Bye.’ Logan hung up and pocketed his phone. Swaggered over to the whiteboard and put a big red tick next to the words ‘EXHUMATION REQUEST’.

The other whiteboard was covered in maps; post-mortem photos; photos of a burned-out caravan in a clearing somewhere; and photos of a large, hairy, middle-aged man. DI Duncan Bell. Heavy, rounded shoulders, a thick pelt of hair on his head, more hair escaping from the neck of his shirt. Skin like boiled tripe.

Logan dumped the pen back in the tray beneath the whiteboard and grabbed his fleece. Pushed through into the corridor.

A couple of support staff were gossiping outside the stationery cupboard. Both of them shrank back as he passed, their voices dropped to hushed whispers.

He nodded and kept going.

So what if they were all terrified of him. Wasn’t his fault, was it? Just because he worked for Professional Standards now, that didn’t make him a monster. Not often anyway.

The stairwell echoed with the sound of laughter, coming from one of the landings above.

Logan headed downward, digging out his car keys with one hand and… Stopped.

DI Fraser came marching up the stairs – late twenties, not that tall, in a black denim shirt-dress. Black leather jacket. Long red hair with a pair of sunglasses perched on the top. Massive handbag. She was trailing a pair of plainclothes officers. One, a small wrinkly woman in a wrinkly suit. Hair like someone had run over Albert Einstein with a ride-on lawn mower. The other, a thin short-arse in the full Police Scotland ninja-black uniform, with a ginger buzz-cut and a pointy nose. Detective Sergeant Steel and Police Constable Quirrel. North East Division’s answer to Blackadder and Baldrick.

All three froze as soon as they saw Logan, making a strange mini-me tableau there on the stairs.

He gave them a smile. ‘Ah, Kim, I was on my way to see you.’

DI Fraser narrowed her eyes. ‘Were you now?’

He nodded at her miniature friends. ‘Roberta, Tufty.’

Tufty beamed back. ‘Hi, Sarge. I mean, Inspector. Sorry, force of habit.’

Steel made a cross with her fingers, as if she was trying to ward off vampires, and hissed at him like an angry cat.

‘OK…’ He turned back to Fraser instead. ‘You’re running the Ellie Morton case. Can we have a word?’

‘I’m a bit busy trying to track down a missing three-year-old.’

Logan stayed where he was. Saying nothing.

She rolled her eyes and slumped. ‘Urgh… Go on then.’

‘Somewhere a bit more private?’

Fraser snapped her fingers. ‘Tufty: one tea, so milky it’s borderline offensive; two coffees, one with sugar, one black. Roberta: go chase up the media office about that appeal.’

Tufty scurried away, but Steel lingered.

‘Now, Roberta.’

Another hiss, and Steel stomped off back down the stairs.

‘And stop hissing at people!’ Fraser grimaced at Logan. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘She’s upset because I won’t babysit tonight.’ He lowered his voice. ‘What’s happening with Ellie Morton?’

‘Why?’

‘You put in a complaint about DS Chalmers.’

‘Ah.’ Pink flushed Fraser’s cheeks. She cleared her throat. ‘Maybe we should talk about this in private.’

Photos covered Fraser’s office walls. Most were family gatherings, but pride of place went to a big portrait of a black Labrador by the name of Maggie, going by the plaque mounted on the frame.

Fraser dumped her huge handbag on the desk and settled into the chair behind it. ‘Ellie Morton went missing Monday morning. The mother leaves her alone in the back garden and nips to the shops for a pack of fags and four tins of own-brand lager. It’s a Co-op at the end of the street: so a five-minute trip, tops. She stops to talk to a friend on the way back, which means Ellie – and I can’t stress this strongly enough – a three-year-old girl was left unsupervised for approximately twenty, twenty-five minutes.’

Logan leaned against the short row of filing cabinets. ‘Forensics?’

‘Nothing useful. No fingerprints, no footprints, no sign of fibres or a struggle. Garden backs onto a path that sees a fair bit of traffic.’ Fraser dug her iPhone out of The Gargantuan Handbag Of Doom and fiddled with it. ‘You know what it’s like with child abduction cases: if you don’t get a major break in the first twenty-four hours…’ Was she Tweeting? ‘No one saw Ellie run away, no one saw someone take her. We’ve got a few reports of a red car, or maybe a blue one, estate and-slash-or hatchback in the vicinity, but that’s it.’

‘And DS Chalmers?’

A hard sigh. ‘I thought she’d turned herself around, I really did. Yes, she’s always been ambitious, driven, but… I don’t know.’ Fraser put her phone down. ‘I ask her to go interview someone, she doesn’t do it. I tell her to do door-to-doors, she never shows up. I order her to help search the neighbourhood sheds and garages, she goes AWOL.’

No surprises there, then.

‘Where is she now?’

‘Tillydrone: breaking the stepfather’s alibi. Or at least she’s supposed to be. God knows, half the time.’

Logan softened his voice. ‘What happens when you talk to her about it?’

‘Might as well paint a penguin on your willy and call it Antarctica. She’s sorry; she’ll change; she’s going through a rough time right now.’ Fraser reached into her desk drawer and produced a blue folder. Thumped it on the desk. ‘I documented every infraction, every meeting, and every outcome.’

‘You should’ve come to me earlier.’

‘I know, I know. But … sometimes they just need a slap on the wrist. Getting your lot involved isn’t…’ She went back to fiddling with her phone again. ‘They’re still my people.’

‘Professional Standards aren’t here to screw people, Kim. We’re here to help.’ Logan picked up the folder and stuck it under his arm. ‘Do you still want her in your team?’

Fraser kept her eyes on her phone’s screen. ‘I… We’re looking for a wee girl, Inspector McRae. We can’t afford to lose this time.’ She finally looked up. ‘And loyalty has to go both ways.’

Why did everything require nine million forms to be completed in triplicate? Couldn’t go for a pee in the police without a Three-Sixty-Nine B, two corroborating witnesses, and a—

Logan’s phone dinged.

HORRIBLE STEEL:

Look, how about a compromise? You babysit J&N tonight and I’ll look after Cthulhu if you want to take Ginger McHotpants on a dirty weekend later.

Reply:

No. And stop calling her ”Ginger McHotpants”!

He’d barely hit ‘SEND’ when the office door thumped open and Steel slouched in. The phone in her pocket chirruped as she settled on the edge of his desk.

‘That better be you texting me back in the positive, Laz.’

Logan put his phone down, sat forwards in his seat, steepled his fingers, and stared at her. ‘Ah, Detective Sergeant Steel, I wanted a word with you.’

‘If the word’s no’ “I’d be delighted to babysit” I don’t want to hear it.’

‘DS Lorna Chalmers: tell me about her.’

A shrug. ‘Magnificent breasts, so-so arse. But overall? I’d still ride her like a broken donkey.’

Oh God, there was an image.

‘No! What’s she like to work with?’

‘Aye, because I’m going to clype on one of my team to you sneaky Professional Standards scumbags.’

‘Scumbags?’

‘With all due blah, blah, blah, etcetera. Now what about that babysitting?’

He folded his arms. ‘I’m busy.’

‘No you’re no’. You have all the social life of a garden gnome.’

‘Yes I am. But maybe if you scratched my back…?’ Leaving it hanging.

‘Lorna Chalmers is a pain in the hoop,’ Steel stood, ‘but I’m still no’ clyping on her.’

Interesting.

‘But you admit there’s something to clype about?’

‘I’m admitting sod-all.’ She stuck her chin out. ‘And if you didn’t want to babysit your own kids you shouldn’t have got my wife pregnant.’

‘Not this again.’ He pointed at the door. ‘Away with you. Out. Go. Depart. Before I do you for insubordinating a superior officer.’

‘Pfff…’ She flounced out, nose in the air, leaving the office door hanging open. Then her hand appeared in the doorway, did a wee mime turny flourish, then flashed two fingers and flipped him the Vs before disappearing.

‘You’re supposed to be a grown-up!’

No reply.

‘Typical.’ Logan checked his watch: 12:10. Oops… Should’ve been back at Bucksburn for that meeting with Chalmers ten minutes ago. Assuming she’d bothered to turn up this time. He pulled out his phone and called Rennie. ‘Have I got any visitors?’

A strange, wet, slurping noise came down the line, followed by a muffled, ‘Have you noticed that no one visiting ever brings us biscuits?’

‘Are you eating something?’

Another slurp. ‘… No?’

‘Visitors, Simon. Specifically, DS Lorna Chalmers: we’ve got a twelve o’clock scheduled.’

‘But it’s ten past.’

‘I know. That’s why I’m—’

‘Ah, I get it. You’re making her stew in her own guilty gravy for a bit. Ratchet up the tension.’

‘No. I got caught up with these—’

‘Hold on.’ One more slurp, then a scrunching sound – the background noises changing as Rennie wandered off somewhere. ‘Nope: no sign of her in reception. Well, not unless she’s hiding under the coffee table.’

‘Damn it.’ Of course she wasn’t there. When did she ever turn up? ‘What about Fred Marshall?’

‘His doctor and dentist won’t give me anything without warrants, so I asked the Warrant Fairy for some and do you know what she said?’

Logan groaned.

‘That’s right, she said, “Naughty DS Rennie! You know you can’t have a warrant to seize people’s medical records without probable cause. Bad DS Rennie! Back in your box!”’

‘Then get me a last known address. And stop eating whatever it is you’re eating: it sounds obscene.’

‘Nothing obscene about Pot Noodles.’ Rennie gave his noodles an extra-loud slurp. ‘You know, when you asked me to come be a plainclothes gruntmonkey for you at Professional Standards I thought that was a playful euphemism for “valued colleague and important member of the team”.’

‘Diddums. Now be a good gruntmonkey and text me that address.’

4

Laughter and voices filled the station canteen as a collection of about two dozen uniforms, plainclothes, and support staff gorged on lunch. They filled all the tables but one. The one Logan sat at, all on his own, Billy Nae Mates in the middle of his own private bubble.

Good job he had a dirty-big plate of macaroni cheese and chips to console him.

He helped himself to a forkful of soft cheesy goodness as the phone in his other hand rang and rang and rang and—

‘This is Lorna Chalmers’ voicemail. Leave a message.’ Curt and to the point.

‘DS Chalmers, it’s Inspector McRae. Again. We had an appointment this afternoon. Please call me back.’ He hung up. ‘Not that you will, because you haven’t the last three bloody times.’

Logan balanced another gobbet of macaroni, on the end of a crisp golden chip. Crunching as he scowled at his phone. ‘Fine, there’s more than one way to skin a snake.’ He picked another name from his contacts and set it ringing.

‘Ahoy-hoy?’ What sounded like rain hissed in the background.

‘Tufty? It’s Logan. I need a favour.’

There was a small pause, then, ‘Aunty Jane, how you doing?’

More macaroni, chewing around the words, ‘Have you fallen on your head again?’

‘No, no. I’m at work, though, so I can’t talk for long.’

‘Steel’s there, isn’t she?’

‘That’s right, the party’s tonight, isn’t it? Don’t know if I can make it though, depends on the case.’

‘Fine.’ Logan shook another dash of vinegar into the puddle of cheese sauce. ‘DS Lorna Chalmers didn’t show for her appointment. You’re on the same team: where is she?’

‘Ah… Don’t really know. I could find out though, if you like?’

Then Steel’s voice blared out in the middle distance. ‘Come on, Tufty, you gimp-flavoured spudhammer, make with the chicken curry pies! I’m starving here.’

‘Text me.’

‘Will do. OK, got to go. It’s—’

‘Aren’t you going to tell your aunty you love her, before you hang up, Tufty? How very rude.’

A groan crawled out of the earpiece. ‘OK, Aunty Jane. Love you. Bye.’

‘Should think so too.’

He ended the call and dug back into his macaroni again. Cheesy vinegary crunchy potatoey goodness.

Over by the canteen counter, the lone figure of DI Kim Fraser peeled away from the till and wandered into the middle of the room. Clearly looking for a seat. But everything was taken, except for Logan’s table. Even then she kept looking.

Logan slid one of the chairs out with his foot. ‘It’s OK, I don’t bite.’

She stood there, staring at him for a beat, then settled into the proffered seat. The heady smell of spices wafted up from her plate – heaped with Friday’s curry special: chicken madras, rice, vegetable pakora, and naan bread, according to the board on the wall.

Logan gave her a wee shrug. ‘After all, no one wants to sit with either of us.’

‘People want to sit with me. Why wouldn’t people want to sit with me?’

‘People look at me, all they see is Professional Standards. People look at you and they see fast-tracked graduate-scheme “tosspot”.’ He held up a hand. ‘Not what I see, it’s what they see. We’ve got guys who’ve been on the job for twenty years and they still haven’t made it as far as sergeant. You’re, what, twenty-six?’

A blush darkened her cheeks. ‘Twenty-nine.’

‘And already a detective inspector. Some people feel threatened by that.’

‘Hmmph…’ Fraser crunched down one of the veggie pakora. ‘I take it you saw Ellie’s mum’s press conference.’

‘How can you eat that when there’s perfectly good macaroni cheese and chips on offer?’

‘How is it our fault? Tell me that!’

‘And if you go near my chips I will stab you with a fork.’

‘She’s the one abandoned her three-year-old daughter in the back garden to nip out for booze and fags! If she’d been a halfway decent parent, Ellie wouldn’t have been snatched.’

Logan put down his fork and looked at her. Silent.

Fraser groaned. ‘All right, all right: I know. But still… That doesn’t make it our fault.’

‘Imagine if you were her. Would you want to admit you were responsible? How would you live with yourself?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ Fraser chewed on her curry for a bit. ‘And I’m not a “tosspot”, thank you very much. I had to do a law degree to get on the fast-track programme. You try it if you think it’s so easy.’

‘Whoever took Ellie, it has to be someone who knows the area, right?’

‘Back garden’s got a path behind it. Anyone walking past would see Ellie’d been left on her own.’

Logan scooped a chip through the cheese sauce. ‘You run a check on sex offenders living nearby?’

‘And not just Tillydrone. We did Hayton, Hilton, Sandilands, Powis, and Ashgrove too. Interviewed the lot of them. Checked alibis. Nothing.’

Over in the corner someone launched into ‘Happy Birthday to You’. One by one the other tables took it up and belted it out. The only ones not joining in were Logan and Fraser.

She dug into her curry again. ‘Of course the smart money is on the stepfather, but he interviews clean.’

‘Alibi?’

‘Playing video games, drinking Special Brew, and smoking dope at a friend’s house.’

‘Sounds like an excellent role model.’

‘Tell you, Inspector, I’ve scraped things off the bottom of my shoe with more—’

The song reached a deafening climax, complete with operatic wobbling harmonies and a hearty round of applause with extra cheering.

Fraser shrugged when it was quiet again. ‘Five to one, when Ellie’s body turns up, her stepdad’s DNA is all over her.’

‘If her body turns up.’

‘Yeah. If.’ She jabbed a pakora with her fork and gesticulated with it. ‘Course, if we can break his alibi it’s a different story. Assuming DS Chalmers has bothered her backside to even try. And before you say anything: I know. I should’ve sent someone else. She’s had enough last chances.’

Logan put his fork down. ‘Why didn’t you come to me sooner?’

‘Because… When you were in CID, would you have shopped one of your team to the Rubber Heelers? Of course not. No one…’ She cleared her throat. Ate her pakora. ‘Bad example. But the rest of us wouldn’t. Not unless there was no other option.’

‘There wasn’t. And I did it for the same reason you are. Sometimes people don’t leave us any choice.’

His phone dinged, a new message filling the screen.

TUFTY:

It is I, SUPERTUFTY! Scourge of naughty people! A tiny birdy tells me the GPS on DS Chalmers’s Airwave puts her at/near Huge Gay Bill’s Bar & Grill, Northfield.

Logan polished off the last glistening tubes of macaroni and stood. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the pub.’

The building was set back from the road – an oversized mock Northeast farmhouse, long and low, with white walls, gable ends, a grey slate roof, and dormer windows. The Scottish vernacular charm was somewhat undermined by the big neon sign towering over the entrance in shades of yellow and green: ‘HUGE GAY BILL’S BAR & GRILL!’ It steamed and fizzed in the drizzle.

Only two vehicles sat in the large car park, a gleaming Land Rover Discovery and a mud-spattered Fiat. Chalmers’ Fiat. Logan parked two spaces down. Clambered out and hurried into the pub.

Inside, the place had a soulless, unloved feel. Like an abandoned Wetherspoons. A soulless mix of polished wood and psychedelic carpet. Lots of small round tables with chairs. Menus everywhere.

Something romantic oozed out of the jukebox.

The only two people in here were slow dancing in front of it – all wrapped up in each other – one a large, white-haired woman, the other a Victoria Wood look-alike. Oblivious to everything else.

Logan went across to the vacant bar and rapped his knuckles on the wood. ‘Shop!’

A grunt preceded a huge, broad-shouldered man who looked like the answer to the question, ‘What do you get if you cross a cage fighter with a gorilla?’ The lump of gristle clinging onto the middle of his face barely qualified as a nose. Somehow, the pristine-white shirt and dark-blue tie made him seem even more dangerous. He nodded at Logan. ‘Inspector.’

‘Bill. How’s Josh?’

Bill bared his teeth – teeny, like Tic Tacs. ‘Joshua is a scum-sucking arsehole.’ He grabbed a bottle of Bell’s whisky and shoved it into an empty optics slot, gripping the thing so tight his knuckles were white. ‘Why do I have to keep giving my heart to arseholes?’ Trembling, face darkening. ‘Tell me that. Go on!’

‘Don’t look at me, my track record’s not much better.’ Logan counted them off on his fingers. ‘One emotionally distant pathologist with intimacy issues; one PC with violent tendencies; a self-harming, Identification Bureau tech, tattoo addict in a coma; and a Trading Standards officer.’

Bill folded his massive arms. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Good question.

Logan shrugged. ‘Don’t know yet. Early days.’ He pulled a photo from his police fleece and placed it on the bar. Lorna Chalmers. ‘Her car’s parked outside.’

‘The scabby Fiat?’ Bill picked up the photo and squinted at it. ‘This your Trading Standards woman?’

‘No: colleague. I’m worried about her.’

‘Hmph… Well, suppose someone should be. State of her.’ He dumped the photo back down again and jerked his head to the side. ‘Ladies.’

‘Thanks.’ Logan had to detour around the slow dancers in front of the jukebox; they didn’t even look up.

Bill’s voice boomed out after him. ‘And take it from me, the crazy ones might be great in bed, but they’ll screw you over every time! Every – single – time.’

He had a point.

Logan pushed through the grey door marked ‘POUR FEMME’ and into something off of a film set. Dark grey slate tiles, a plush red chaise longue against one wall, individual mirrors in heavy gilt frames above the marble sinks.

A lone figure was hunched over one of the sinks – DS Chalmers. She held her mass of auburn curls back with one hand as she spat something frothy and pink into the marble bowl. Her other hand clutched at her ribs. Holding them in as she washed her face. Grunting and groaning.

Logan settled onto the chaise longue. ‘Having fun?’

She flinched, whipping around with a strangled scream, fists up. Ready.

He held his hands in the air. ‘Whoa. Calm.’

Chalmers lowered her fists, voice all muffled and lispy. ‘Inspector McRae. Oh joy.’ Either she’d fallen under a bus, or someone had given her a serious going-over. Scrapes darkened her cheeks, chin, and forehead. The first flush of bruises beginning to spread around them. Face damp where she’d washed the blood off. Or most of it anyway.

Logan pointed. ‘Want to tell me who did that?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You were out breaking Russell Morton’s alibi, so it was either him or his mates.’

‘I said it’s nothing. Leave it.’

The awkward silence grew. Then Chalmers turned her back on him and splashed another handful of water on her battered face. Winced. Prodded at her gums.

A tooth clattered into the marble sink.

‘You’ve been married, what, five years? If it wasn’t Russell Morton…?’

She froze. ‘Leave Brian out of this.’

‘There are people out there you can talk to. Domestic abuse isn’t—’

‘Christ, you don’t listen, do you? It wasn’t Brian. It wasn’t anyone.’

‘Ah…’ Logan nodded. ‘The first rule of Fight Club.’

More silence.

Chalmers dabbed at the scrape beneath her right eye. ‘And you shouldn’t be here.’

‘Huge Gay Bill’s? Bill and I go way back. One of his ex-boyfriends broke into his mum’s house while she was in hospital and cleaned her out. Bill got his hands on him. Was going to rip the guy’s arms and legs off, till I talked him down. He’s always had terrible taste in men.’

She limped over to the driers and patted at her face, ignoring him as they roared at her.

Logan stretched out on the chaise longue, making himself comfortable. ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’

She tucked in her torn shirt. ‘Are they firing me?’

‘I’m not your enemy, Lorna.’

‘Could’ve fooled me.’

‘I’m here to help. We can—’

‘Then keep them off my back, OK?’ She limped back to the mirror and took out a small make-up kit. ‘Tell them everything’s fine. I’ve apologised and promise to be a good little girl from now on.’

Logan sighed. ‘It doesn’t work like that. You’ve been disappearing when you’re meant to be on the job. Ducking assignments. Not doing what DI Fraser tells you.’

‘DI Fraser’s an idiot.’

‘No she isn’t. And you know what? Even if she was, right now she’s your superior idiot and if she tells you to go interview someone you actually have to go interview them.’

A wodge of foundation got slathered on, covering up the scrapes and bruises. Wincing as she did her best to blend it in. You could still tell, though.

Eventually she stood back and stared at the result. Grimaced. ‘It’ll do.’ Her make-up clattered into the bag again. ‘Russell Morton’s alibi’s sound. He was where he said he was, when he said he was. I spoke to the guy who delivered one fourteen-inch four seasons with extra anchovies, one mushroom feast, a spicy American, two garlic breads, and three six-packs of Peroni.’

‘A lot of food.’

‘Morton paid him from a big roll of cash. Ten-quid tip, too.’

‘Flashy.’

‘Especially for someone on the dole.’ She examined herself in the mirror again. ‘So you can tell DI Kim Fraser I’ve been doing my job. Did it yesterday before she even asked. Just because I’m not grubbing around her feet, begging for titbits like those idiot sidekicks of hers, doesn’t mean I’m slacking.’

‘No one’s asking you to grub about, Lorna, but this is the police. You have to follow procedure. The chain of command’s there for a reason!’

She stared at him from the mirror, face blank. ‘Are we done, Inspector?’

‘Have you forgotten what happened with the Agnes Garfield case? You could’ve died. You very nearly got me and PC Sim killed! All because you couldn’t stand the thought of sharing the glory.’ Logan stood. ‘Police Scotland doesn’t need lone wolves, Lorna. That’s not how this works!’

Nothing back. Not even a flicker.

Then, ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to have a wee now. Or do you want to follow me in there as well?’ She turned and barged into one of the cubicles. Slammed the door. Clacked the latch.

Logan knocked on the cubicle door. ‘They’re going to suspend you. Is that what you want?’

The sound of piddling hissed out from inside. Accompanied by what might have been muffled sobs…

Great. That went well.

Bill shook his head. ‘…so Shoogly Dave says, “Wasnae me, it was like that when I found it.” And he’s staggering about the stock room surrounded by two thousand…’ Bill pointed over Logan’s shoulder. ‘Your friend’s back.’

Logan turned and there was Chalmers, coming out of the ladies. Grimacing as she saw them.

He went back to his cappuccino, watching her in the mirror behind the bar as she marched over.

She stopped right behind him. Put on what was probably meant to be a reasonable voice. ‘You can’t let them take this away from me. Do you have any idea what I’ve sacrificed for this job? Not just the hours: I barely see Brian. I’ve put everything on hold for this. Everything.’

‘We all make sacrifices, it’s part of—’

‘Oh that’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You didn’t even have to have your own kids, did you? You farmed them out to someone else!’

‘That’s not—’

‘If you really want to help, keep Fraser off my back for a couple of days.’ A frown. ‘Better make it three.’

Funny.

He took a sip of warm milky coffee. ‘Twenty-four hours.’

She gave him a pained smile in the mirror. ‘No, it has to be seventy-two. I need—’

‘It’s not an offer, it’s the cliché.’ Putting on an American accent for, ‘“Ya gotta give me twenty-four hours to crack the case, Lieutenant.”’ Then back to normal again. ‘And no. If you’ve got information that might save Ellie Morton, you tell me or you tell DI Fraser. You do not keep it secret so you can grab the glory. A wee girl’s life is at stake!’

‘I know what’s at stake!’

Logan thumped his mug down. ‘Then grow up and stop playing Sam Sodding Spade!’

She glared at his reflection in the mirror. Turned. And marched out the front door.

Logan shouted after her. ‘I mean it, Lorna, this isn’t a game!’

The door slammed shut.

Bill stared at it. ‘Told you – great in the sack, but they’ll screw you over every time.’

5

Patronising, holier-than-thou, big-eared, wanker. Lorna stared through the windscreen at Huge Gay Bill’s Bar and Grill, teeth bared. Blood fizzing in her ears as the rain battered down and—

A boot thuds against the small of her back, another one into her shoulder. Lorna curls up tighter, arms wrapped around her head as the pair of bastards lay into her. First it was shoving. Then fists. Now boots.

Two against one.

‘Aaaargh!’ She bites it down. Don’t scream. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

More kicks, on her arms and legs. One to the kidneys that erupts around her torso like it’s full of angry wasps. Another to the hand covering her face and the world tastes of rust and hot batteries.

Lorna coughs and splutters out a spattering of bright scarlet.

And the beating stops.

She can hear them backing away. Panting.

Then Danners leans in close, her breath warm on Lorna’s skin. ‘Take a telling, you two-faced bitch. Next time we won’t be so polite.’

There’s the scuffing of feet on tarmac and she flinches, waiting for the blows to start again… But they don’t. Instead the sound of a Portakabin door slamming booms out into the rain.

She risks a look.

They’ve gone.

They’ve gone. She almost laughs, but her ribs hurt too much. So instead she struggles up to her knees, setting the wasps off again, then to her feet. Lurching across the car park to her little Fiat. Fumbling her keys from her pocket with fingers that are already starting to swell and stiffen. Unlocks the door and does her best not to fall inside.

Rows and rows of Northfield tenements drone by the car window, bricks and harling stained by the downpour. Everything aches.

Lorna’s mobile phone buzzes in her pocket, then launches into Radiohead’s ‘The Bends’. She pulls it out with one aching hand and squints at the screen: ‘BRIAN’.

Sod off, Brian.

She hits ‘IGNORE’ and keeps on driving.

Should get him a ringtone of his own. Something good. Then at least she can enjoy ignoring his calls.

The car park’s nearly empty as she pulls up outside Huge Gay Bill’s Bar And Grill. Turns the engine off. Sniffs. Blinks. Wipes a sore hand across her damp eyes.

Sits there and cries for a while.

Her phone goes into ‘The Bends’ again, the word ‘BRIAN’ filling the screen like a corpse. She hits ‘IGNORE’ again. Sags. Then grits her teeth and winces her way out of the car.

Locks it and lurches across the rain-puddled tarmac and in through the front door. Straight across the revolting carpet.

Huge Gay Bill looks up from stacking the fridge with alcopops and stares at her. ‘Dear God, are you OK? Do you need me to call a—’

‘NO!’ Storming right past him and into the ladies.

It’s all very fancy and fashionable in here, but the only thing that matters are the mirrors and the sinks. She grips the marble with blood-smeared swollen fingers and stares at the animal in the glass. Her left eye’s beginning to puff up – a thin purple line underneath it promising to blossom into a full-on shiner over the next couple of days. More scrapes and lumps on her cheek and forehead. A swollen bottom lip.

Her jacket’s torn at the shoulder and scraped through at the elbow – straight through the shirt too, all the way down to a raw patch of skin flecked with grit that starts stinging as soon as she sees it.

She turns on the taps and fills the sink with warm water. Splashes it on her face. Working her tongue along her bottom jaw. Flinching as it finds a rough bit of gum and a tooth that won’t sit still when she touches it.

How could it all go wrong? She’s been doing so well, and now this?

It isn’t fair…

The woman in the mirror blurs. Lorna drags in a serrated breath that tastes of blood. What does it matter if she cries in here? Isn’t as if there’s anyone to see it. Why shouldn’t she cry if she wants to?

She splashes her face with water again.

It’s a setback, that’s all. Nothing she can’t handle.

Bright red drips into the water, turning it pink.

Nothing she can’t handle.

Just breathe deep and calm down.

Stop shaking.

She folds forward and tries. And tries. And tries.

Then the door clunks behind her. And when she looks up – there, in the mirror, is Inspector Logan Bloody McRae. Because today isn’t enough of a crapfest.

Lorna glowered up at the neon sign above Huge Gay Bill’s, closed her eyes, and dragged in a deep breath. ‘AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!’

Turned the key in the ignition, wrenched the car into gear, hauled the steering wheel around, and drove for the exit.

‘The Bends’ jarred out of her phone and when she checked the screen, there it was: ‘BRIAN’. Again.

‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’

Lorna stabbed ‘IGNORE’ and tossed the phone on the passenger seat.

It was time to stop feeling sorry for herself and do something about it.

Lorna pulled up at the kerb opposite the house and frowned. There was a car in the driveway – a new-looking Mini Cooper, parked on her driveway. Brian’s precious midlife-crisis Alfa Romeo was right outside the house, two wheels up on the pavement.

Thought he was meant to be at work today?

She winced her way out of the car and limped across the road. Ignoring the rain.

The Mini had to be new – the number plate was that year’s. Metallic red, with a white roof. A child seat in the back, about the right size for a toddler.

Why park here? Why not park in front of someone else’s nasty little matchbox house on the nasty little matchbox street with its nasty little matchbox people? Bland three-up two-downs with built-in garages that no one ever parked their car in, because they were too small. Putting fake stonework around the windows and edges, didn’t make it any less like an undiscovered circle of Dante’s Inferno. Where dreams went to be punished.

She huddled under the porch, pulled out her keys, and unlocked her front door.

Stepped inside.

The sound of a kids’ TV show jangled out of the open living room door, cheerful idiots singing a stupid song:

‘Now Doris had a friend called Morris, he was a tyrannosaurus,

He had teeny tiny arms and couldn’t brush his teeth,’

A new coat had joined the fleeces and waterproofs behind the front door: pale pink, checked, feminine and fitted. Not hers. The material was soft between her fingers, and it smelled of … sandalwood and roses?

‘His breath was vile, he had no style, his cavities: an awful trial,

So Doris asked a stegosaurus how they could fix his smile,’

Lorna looked around the open living room door.

A toddler was imprisoned in front of the TV in a collapsible travel-playpen thing. Jiggling and gurgling in time with the song, beaming up at a bunch of really crap puppets, and a pair of morons dressed in overalls.

‘And he said,

We haven’t invented soap, so that’s why we’re all smelly,

There’s no toothpaste, it’s a disgrace, that’s why we can’t eat jelly,’

Lorna eased the door closed and limped down the short hall to the kitchen – small, cluttered, but no one there. Maybe…

A creak came from somewhere overhead.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs. Listening.

The only noise was the muffled song in the living room.

She climbed up to the landing.

Stopped with one hand on the bannister as all the air hissed out of her lungs. Staring.

Brian’s bedroom door was ajar.

Oh God…

A mousey blonde lay spreadeagled on the double bed, naked, one arm thrown over her eyes, nipples brown and swollen like Ferrero Rocher. Biting her bottom lip and moaning, because Brian – Brian who was supposed to be in meetings all day – was on his knees at the foot of the bed, going down on her. Chubby little Brian, with his hairy arse and bald bit at the back of his head. And this … woman had her hand hooked behind his ear. Guiding him as she squirmed and moaned.

Lorna turned and walked downstairs. Across the hall and through the door to the tiny garage that they’d lined with cheap metal modular shelving units, because neither of their cars would fit in here. Packing the place with all the things that wouldn’t fit in the kitchen or any of the other rooms. Bleach, scouring pads, boxes of lightbulbs and oatmeal and dishwasher tablets. The food processor and the bread machine they never used, the skis for the skiing holidays they never went on, old sporting equipment from her university days – back when she used to have dreams! Before she buried them away, out here in suburbia, with the domestic detritus of a marriage that had died years ago, leaving nothing but this rotting corpse behind.

She hauled a hockey stick from the rack of sports kit. Old and dusty and solid. Perfect.

Lorna marched to the garage door and twisted the mechanism, pulling the whole thing up-and-over. The springs and hinges squealed – probably the first time it’d been opened since they moved in. She kept going, down the driveway and across the road to her manky little Fiat. No midlife-crisis sports car for her. No baby for her. No promotion for her.

Nothing – but – crap.

She yanked open the back door and hurled the hockey stick into the footwell.

Stood there, staring at it.

Then Danners leans in close, her breath warm on Lorna’s skin. ‘Take a telling, you two-faced bitch. Next time we won’t be so polite.’

Not any more.

Lorna grabbed the hockey stick again, turned, and stomped back across the road to the brand-new Mini Cooper, with its shiny red body and its jaunty white roof. She swung the stick like a sledgehammer, right into the windscreen, sending cracks spidering out from the centre as the impact juddered up her arm and the car alarm screeched. Hazard lights flashing as she battered the hockey stick into the glass again. One more go and the whole windscreen sagged inwards.

Good enough.

Lorna went back to her Fiat, tossed the stick inside. Slammed the door. Got in the front and drove off.

Grinding her teeth, gums aching, the taste of blood in her mouth, hands tight on the steering wheel.

‘Take a telling, you two-faced bitch. Next time we won’t be so polite.’

Yes, well: two could play at that game.

‘Ready or not, here I come!’

6

Superintendent Doig placed a bag of currants on his desk and followed it up with one of candied peel. Then one of dates. Making sure they stood in a straight line, as if they were on parade. ‘Now, you see, Logan, the trick is to get your fruit in to soak early.’ A tall man with a big forehead surrounded by closely cropped hair. The wee bald patch at the crown glowing with fine little hairs, deep creases around his eyes as he smiled and added a packet of suet to his fruity soldiers. Doig frowned at a bit of fluff on his black police T-shirt. ‘Tsk…’ He picked it off and dropped it into the bin – a rectangular one, presumably because it was easier to align with the desk.

Everything in its proper place: the photo of a British Blue cat on his desk, precisely lined up with keyboard, pen holder, monitor, and notepad; the framed commendation from the Chief Constable exactly equidistant between the filing cabinets and the whiteboard; the perfect crease in his trousers, the perfect shine on his superintendent’s pips, the perfect mirror gloss of his boots.

His smile faltered when he looked at Logan slumped there in one of the visitors’ chairs. ‘Is something wrong?’

Logan rubbed his face with both hands. ‘Urgh…’

‘A Christmas cake can be a tricky thing, Logan. It’s important to follow proper procedure.’

‘One: it’s October. Two: I’m not “Urgh”ing about your cake, I like cake, I’m “Urgh”ing about Detective Sergeant Lorna Sodding Chalmers.’

‘Ah, I see. Well … I’m sure you did your best.’ A bag of dried cherries joined the ranks. ‘Now, as I was saying: it’s important to get your cake prepared in plenty of time so you can feed it. You want your cake nice and moist and boozy.’

‘I hate to do it, but I’m going to have to recommend disciplinary action.’

‘I like a mixture of brandy and whisky. Sherry’s too … trifley for me.’ Sultanas appeared next.

‘She’d clearly been in a fight today, but denied the whole thing. Lied right to my face. We didn’t even get onto what she was doing at the crash site this morning.’

‘And of course, it has to be black treacle.’ The tin joined the growing battalion.

‘I got Rennie to go digging. There’s no sign she ever worked with DI Bell. So why was she at the crash site?’

Superintendent Doig looked up from his troops. ‘And how is Simon getting on?’

‘Rennie?’ Logan pulled his chin in. ‘Why?’

‘I know he’s only on temporary loan from CID, but if he’s fitting in, perhaps we should make it permanent?’

‘Yeah… Anyway: about DS Chalmers—’

‘I do love Christmas, don’t you?’ Doig went back to smiling at his packets of fruit.

‘Allan, can we focus on my problems for a minute?’

‘People think it’s a bit odd, a grown man obsessed by Christmas, but when you’re adopted you know how important human kindness is. Everyone needs a bit of hope.’

Logan sat up. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t recommend disciplinary action?’

‘Oh God, no. If DS Chalmers really is sitting on intel that could save Ellie Morton she needs a short sharp shock, not mollycoddling.’ Next up: a packet of ground almonds. ‘What’s happening with DI Bell?’

‘Early days, Guv. Early days.’

‘Hmm…’ Doig blinked what had to be the longest eyelashes known to man. ‘I know it’s petty of me, Logan, but it’d be nice if Professional Standards discovered something useful before DCI Hardie and his troops.’

‘Whatever Chalmers knows, it probably won’t save Ellie Morton. A three-year-old girl, missing for four days with no ransom note? Chances are she’s already dead.’

‘Well, you might as well get it over with, then.’

Logan groaned, pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contacts. Selected ‘DS LORNA CHALMERS’ and listened to it ring. And ring. And ring. And—

‘This is Lorna Chalmers’ voicemail. Leave a message.’

He hung up. ‘No answer. Shock horror. She’s been avoiding me for days.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk. Chief Superintendent Napier used to say that getting hold of you was like trying to catch oiled eels in a barrel of slippery socks.’ A bag of demerara sugar took up position at the rear of the column.

Logan pulled over Doig’s desk phone, knocking over a couple of soldiers – much to their commander’s distress – and dialled Chalmers’ number. Listened to it ring again. ‘Come on… Pick up the damn—’

‘Who’s this?’

‘DS Chalmers, it’s Inspector McRae.’

The response was muttered, but still clearly audible. ‘Oh for God’s sake…’ There was a pause, filled with what sounded like engine noises. ‘What do you want? I’m busy.’

‘They want to suspend you, Lorna, but I’ve talked them into giving you one last chance.’

Doig raised an eyebrow at that.

OK, so it was maybe a bit of artistic licence. Still worth a go, though. ‘Go into the office right now and tell DI Fraser what you know, or suspect, or whatever it is you’re chasing about Ellie Morton.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Work with me; I’m trying to help you here!’

The contempt virtually dripped from the earpiece. ‘Remind me to send you a thank you card and a medal.’ Another pause. ‘Now, if you’re finished being beneficent and condescending, I’ve got work to do.’

God’s sake, she was impossible.

‘Lorna, don’t be…’ Logan stared at the phone. ‘She’s hung up.’

Superintendent Doig shrugged. ‘Some people just don’t want to be helped.’

Lorna turned off the main road, into the little industrial estate, ignoring the five miles an hour speed limit as she roared past the line of warehouses. Slamming on her brakes so the Fiat slithered to a halt outside one of the Portakabins at the far end of the car park.

A big sign decorated the front wall: ‘ABERRAD INVESTIGATION SERVICES LTD. ~ FAST, EFFICIENT, & DISCREET’ with a ram’s head above it for a logo.

She climbed out into the rain and nothing hurt any more, adrenaline singing through her veins. She slammed the car door, pulled the hockey stick from the back seat and strode over there. Rolling her shoulders. Loosening up. Getting ready.

She swung the stick, smashing its head into the glass panel that made up the top half of the Portakabin’s door, shattering it, sending the ‘COME ON IN, WE’RE OPEN!’ sign flying.

Yes. This was more like it.

Lorna backed away, cricking her neck from side to side, feet planted shoulder-width apart, stick at the ready. Took a deep breath ‘COME ON THEN! LET’S SEE HOW BRAVE YOU ARE NOW!’

The door opened.

Logan tucked the packet of Penguin biscuits under his arm, picked up the two mugs of tea, and wandered out into the PSD office. They’d taken over half of the floor, stuck a couple of offices down one side, a reception area, put in a cupboard-sized kitchen, and left the rest open plan. Divided up by the ubiquitous Police Scotland cubicles.

A poster adorned one wall – a kitten climbing out of an old boot, beneath the slogan, ‘GO GET ’EM, TIGER!’

Someone definitely go-getting-’em was Shona. Logan nodded at her as he passed, keeping his mouth shut. Because if you said anything to her she’d drag you into her ongoing battle with the office printer. She was belting it with a packet of Post-it notes, teeth gritted, her brown fringe flopping with every blow – exposing the toast-rack wrinkles that crossed her forehead.

She gave it another thwack. ‘Print both sides, you useless pile of junk!’

Brandon was on the phone, one foot up on his return unit, rocking his chair from side to side. ‘…only, and here’s the problem, I don’t think that was a wise thing to say to a member of the public, do you, Constable?’ He looked over at Logan’s mugs and raised two massive hairy eyebrows. Hopeful.

Logan kept on going.

The eyebrows fell again. ‘Because, Constable, when you tell someone to “bleep” off “bleeping” filming you on their “bleep-bleeping” mobile phone and stuff it up their “bleeping bleephole”, they tend to make formal complaints!’

Rennie’s cubicle lurked in the corner, mostly hidden by a wall of file boxes, archive crates, stacks of paperwork, and a faint miasma of beef-and-tomato. Its occupant sat hunched over, tongue poking out the side of his mouth as he traced a finger through a document and typed with his other hand.

Logan stuck one of the mugs on Rennie’s desk. ‘Milk, two sugars.’

A beaming smile. ‘Ooh, ta.’ Slurp. ‘And does one spy biscuits?’

‘One does, but only if one has actually discovered something useful.’

‘Oh.’ He poked at the papers spread across his desk. ‘I’ve been through all of DI Bell’s cases for the last ten years. Nothing with missing evidence. No gold bullion, or jewellery, or nonsequentially numbered banknotes, or works of art. If he was digging up loot I’ve no idea where it came from.’

‘What about forensics? They get anything off the car, or the pick and shovel?’

‘Tried chasing them up this morning: they laughed at me. Apparently we’re not the only case they’re working on.’ Rennie dug into his stacks of paper and came out with a ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?’ poster. He handed it over. ‘Media Department released that at lunchtime.’ Someone had done an e-fit picture of DI Bell, looking like he had when they found his body in his crashed car this morning. Only less dead. Above the e-fit, in big block capitals, was, ‘CARLOS GUERRERO Y PRIETO AKA: DUNCAN BELL’.

Logan frowned at the poster. ‘Please tell me someone’s been to see his next of kin?’

‘Dunno, Guv.’

‘How much do you want to bet?’ He pulled out his phone and called Hardie. It rang for a bit, then crackled.

Hardie’s voice had a strange hollow echo to it, the words broken and fuzzy. ‘Inspector McRae?’

‘DI Bell: has anyone delivered the death message yet?’

‘What? I can barely hear you. Hold on…’ A couple of thumps. A click. Some rustling. Then, ‘Urgh… Are you there?’

‘I said, has anyone delivered the death message to DI Bell’s next of kin?’

‘Reception’s terrible in the mortuary.’

‘Only I’m pretty sure his wife’s still alive. He’s got grown-up kids too: boy and a girl.’

‘Inspector McRae, did you drag me out of Ding-Dong’s post mortem for a sodding reason, because—’

‘And if we’re going to plaster the Northeast in posters with his face on them and “have you seen this man?”, they’re probably going to notice.’

A moment’s silence, broken only by what might have been a muffled swear word.

Logan took a sip of tea. ‘Would be nice if she heard it from us, before the press find out and go after her.’

‘All right, all right.’ Then a sigh. ‘I’ll get a Family Liaison Officer sorted.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Professor McAllister says Bell probably bled to death as a result of the stab wound to his right side. Straight through his ascending colon and severed a chunk of his small intestine. Wasn’t a whole heap of fun watching her remove that lot.’ Hardie huffed out a breath. ‘Anyway: knife went in deep enough to nick the common iliac vein, if that means anything to you? The hilt left a narrow rectangular bruise on the skin too, so we’re looking at a six-inch knife with a wide blade tapering to a point. Maybe a kitchen knife.’

Wow.

‘Isobel said all that? Used to be you couldn’t prise a diagnosis out of her without a crowbar and two weeks’ notice.’

‘Not that it helps.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it does.’

‘Anyway, better get back to it. Still got the urogenital block to dissect.’ What sounded like a shudder. ‘Always a favourite.’ And Hardie was gone.

Logan hung up and stared out of the window.

Cars and lorries and trucks and buses crawled their way along the dual carriageway outside Bucksburn station. Backed-up westbound by the roadworks and roundabout, eastbound by the traffic lights and potholes.

Kitchen knife. So probably untraceable, unless they already had a suspect and something to match the stab wound with. Which they didn’t. And that—

Rennie poked him. ‘So, about those biscuits?’

Logan checked his watch. 16:30. Ah, why not. He opened the packet and tossed a Penguin onto the desk. ‘Here. Got to keep your strength up: big day tomorrow. Interviews and an exhumation.’

‘But … it’s Saturday tomorrow! I’ve got to take Donna swimming, then we’re off to KFC and ballet classes.’

A shrug. ‘Ah well. I suppose we’ll just have to cope without you.’

‘No, but I want to come with!’ Rennie stood, arms spread in true martyr style as he gestured at his piles of paper and boxes. ‘All I ever do is go through files and stuff. I want to be out there, where the action is. Solving crimes!’

‘Well we can’t just put everything on hold for the weekend, Simon, I’ve got a JCB digger booked for half-nine tomorrow.’

‘Argh…’ He slumped back into his chair, hands over his face. ‘Emma’s going to kill me…’

‘Then man-up and take your daughter swimming.’ Logan pointed at the paperwork. ‘And when you’ve finished whatever it is you’re doing, you can pack up for the night. Whoever’s buried in DI Bell’s grave will still be dead on Monday.’

7

Rain sparkled in the Audi’s headlights as he pulled into his driveway, illuminating the yellow bulk of the skip sitting on the weed-flecked lock-block. Logan parked in front of it and sat there.

Need to get that guttering fixed. And do something about the garden. Compared to the rest of the street it was a bit … well, ‘shabby’ was probably being generous. Call it an overgrown jungle instead. The rattling spears of rosebay willowherb shook beside a rhododendron bush big enough to swallow a caravan. A couple of beech trees lurked in the gloom, dropping their pale-cream leaves in the tussocked grass.

Never owned trees before. Or rhododendrons. Or a garden, come to that.

Still, one thing at a time.

He climbed out and hurried up the drive, past the skip, to shelter under the porch.

Ivy wound its way around the granite pillars supporting the little roof, reaching out from a massive wodge of the stuff that choked the living room window and curled into the gutters, hiding the blockwork. That would have to go too.

He plipped the Audi’s locks and let himself in.

‘Cthulhu?’

Click – the bare lightbulb showered the hallway in cold white light.

Scuffed floorboards clunked beneath his feet, tiny tufts of fabric still sticking to the gripper rods where he’d torn the carpet up. Walls stripped to the bare plaster, white blobs of Polyfilla making it look like a child undergoing treatment for chicken pox.

Logan peeled off his Police Scotland fleece and hung it over the newel post at the foot of the stairs. Tried not to think too much about the patch of brand-new floorboards surrounding it.

At least the smell had gone.

More or less…

‘Cthulhu? Daddy’s home!’

He unbuttoned the flaps on his T-shirt and slid the epaulettes free on his way into the living room.

It was almost pitch-black in here, the yellow glow of the streetlights dimmed to a septic smear by the ivy outside.

Click – more chicken-pox walls, and bare floorboards.

But at least he was making a start. Rolls of fresh paper lay piled up on the floor, by the wallpaper table. Two stepladders with a scaffolding board slotted into the steps between them. Pots of paint. A couple of cheap camping chairs, a sofa that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the skip on the driveway, and a decent-sized TV – even if it was propped up on breeze blocks.

‘Cthulhu? Where the hell are you, you…’ Logan smiled as she padded into the room. He squatted down and held out his hand.

She prooped and meeped her way across the floorboards, huge fluffy tail straight up, white bib and paws almost fluorescent in the harsh overhead light. Cobwebs sticking to her brown-and-grey stripes. Fur so soft it was like stroking smoke.

‘How’s Daddy’s bestest girl?’

She did her little cat dance, treadling on the floor as she turned around him.

‘Oh, you’ve been hunting mouses? Good girl! Did you catch any?’

She thumped her head into his thigh and purred.

‘Well, that is exciting.’ He scooped her up with a grunt, holding her upside down and rubbing her tummy as he wandered back through to the hall.

More purring.

‘What? No, not really. It was a horrible day.’

Up the stairs and along the landing. More chicken pox. Probably have to replace a few of the floorboards here too.

‘Someone abducted a little girl. Four days and there’s still no ransom note.’

At least the master bedroom was finished: nice thick carpet, cheerful yellow walls, some framed photos above the double bed.

‘I know, I know: if they didn’t snatch her for ransom, then it’s probably sexual, isn’t it?’ He lowered Cthulhu onto the bed and stripped off his Police Scotland T-shirt. The scar tissue crisscrossing his stomach shiny and pink. Might be an idea to invest in some of those warm-white lightbulbs instead? Something a bit less intense and guard-towery.

Cthulhu treadled on the duvet cover, making delighted noises.

‘That’s what I was thinking.’ He changed out of his boots and police-issue trousers. ‘Oh, you think she’s been abducted to order? Could be. Amounts to the same thing, I suppose.’

A pair of paint-spattered jeans came out of the wardrobe.

‘Or maybe someone abducted her to sell on? A little girl’s got to be worth a fair bit on the open market. If you had somewhere to sell her.’ He did up the buttons. Fastened his belt. Frowned. ‘That’s a very good point. Maybe it is the fabled northeast Livestock Mart…’

Cthulhu started in on a wash.

‘Or maybe it’s the obvious answer? The stepfather abused her, killed her, and hid the body somewhere.’ An equally painty T-shirt joined the jeans. ‘I knew you’d say that, but Chalmers interviewed him. His alibi’s sound.’

Cthulhu washed her tummy in a barrage of shlurpy noises.

‘True… I don’t think I’d trust Lorna Chalmers either.’ Logan perched on the end of the bed and pulled on a pair of painty trainers. ‘Tara’s coming over later for pizza. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’

One last shlurp and Cthulhu stopped washing and stared at him.

‘What?’

More staring.

‘Oh come on, not this again. There’s nothing wrong with talking to your cat. People do it all the time.’ He leaned over and kissed her on her fuzzy little head. ‘And it’s not as if you’re actually answering back, is it? Only crazy people own talking cats.’ Another frown. ‘Which reminds me.’

Logan stood and wandered down the landing again, into the bathroom.

Still have to finish tiling those other two walls. Just because the shower was usable, didn’t mean the room was done.

Blah, blah, blah.

He opened the medicine cabinet, took out the box of Aripiprazole and popped two small orange tablets out of their blister pack and onto his hand.

Cthulhu appeared in the cabinet’s mirrored door as he shut it – following him into the bathroom and jumping up onto the toilet lid. More staring.

‘I know: I’m taking them, see?’

He popped the pills in his mouth, washing them down with a full glass of water before the taste hit. Then turned and opened his mouth wide for Cthulhu to see.

‘Look: all gone. So if Doctor Goulding asks, you can tell him I’m definitely taking my antipsychotics.’

She didn’t move.

‘Because I know you’re in cahoots with him, that’s why.’

A long slow blink of those big yellow-and-black eyes.

Logan sagged. ‘I know. I love you too.’ He blinked back at her. ‘Now, do you want to help Daddy wallpaper the living room?’

She jumped down from the toilet and padded off towards the bedroom.

‘Lazy sod!’

Ah well, she’d only make the wallpaper paste all hairy anyway.

Logan smoothed down the lining paper’s edges with his brush, making the seam disappear. Might even get this wall finished tonight. Which would be—

His phone launched into its generic ringtone.

‘Arrrgh! Leave me alone!’

But it kept on ringing.

He gave the lining paper one last flourish, then dumped the brush on the table and wiped his fingers clean on his painty T-shirt. ‘Pfff… Almost finished as well.’

When he picked his phone off the couch, the words ‘DS LORNA CHALMERS’ glowed in the middle of the screen.

Interesting.

He prodded the ‘ANSWER’ button then stuck the thing on speakerphone. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello?’

Lorna sagged back in her seat. Outside, the North Sea boomed and crashed against the beach, the spray a grey smear in the night. Lights flickered in the gloom, small and distant – huge supply boats anchored down to wait out the storm. If only it could be that simple…

The tower blocks of Seaton rose up on the left, windows shining as normal people went about their normal evenings as they did every single day of their normal little lives.

When did she forget what that felt like?

Most of her ached. And what didn’t ache, hurt. Stung. Burned.

‘Hello? DS Chalmers? Are you there?’

She dragged in a breath, ribs squealing in protest at the movement. Her voice came out muffled and lisping. Weak. Pathetic. ‘All I ever wanted to do was help.’

A sigh came from her phone’s speaker. ‘Then come in tomorrow and help. Ellie Morton might still be out there, alive.’

She wiped her other hand across her eyes. Do not give him the satisfaction of hearing you cry! ‘Why does it always have to be so hard?’

Headlights swept around the corner, getting closer, making her squint.

The woman in the rear-view mirror was a disaster: her face covered in scrapes and fledgling bruises. A black eye. Shirt collar ripped. Jacket too. Blood smeared around her nose and mouth.

Then the car was past and she was in darkness again.

‘Because it’s about people. Nothing about people is easy.’ McRae put on one of those fake, gentle voices – pretending he cared about her. When he didn’t. No one did. ‘Come in, Lorna. We can find her. Together. We can save a wee girl’s life.’

Lorna swallowed. Blew out a breath. Blinked at the car’s roof. ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Lorna? Lorna, it’s—’

She hung up. Put her phone on the passenger seat.

Fumbled a half-dozen painkillers into her palm, swallowing them with a mouthful of Ribena. Grimacing as they clawed their way down her throat. Chased them with another mouthful.

Lorna curled forward, till her forehead rested on the steering wheel, and let the tears come. Why did everyone hate her? Why did everything go wrong? Why wasn’t—

Her phone burst into ‘The Bends’ and there was his name on the screen again: ‘BRIAN’.

She stared at it. Snarled. Picked the thing up.

‘AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAAAA‌AAAAAAAARGH!’ Then hurled it into the passenger footwell.

Enough!

She turned the key in the ignition, scrubbed a hand across her eyes, turned on the headlights, and pulled away from the kerb.

There was going to be a reckoning, and it was going to happen right now.

‘Sure you don’t want any wine?’ Tara waggled the half-empty bottle again, making the tips of her long, dark-orange hair jiggle.

Logan gave her a pained smile. ‘Sorry the kitchen’s kind of a tip.’

That was gilding the jobbie a bit. The walls hadn’t even made it as far as the chicken pox stage – instead seventies brown-and-green wallpaper lined the room, faded so much that the pattern looked more like mould than anything else. Dark shapes lurked around the edges where he’d ripped out all the kitchen units. Sockets and switches dangled from their wiring. All the skirting removed to reveal holes in the lathe and plaster. The whole thing topped off by the decorative sculptural presence of an electric cooker straight out of the Flintstones and a battered stainless-steel sink.

Tara settled back in one of the six nonmatching chairs arranged around the rickety kitchen table and looked at him over the top of her glass. Piercing blue eyes, a bit like a wolf’s, surrounded by smokey make-up and freckles. Heart-shaped face with a strong jaw. And, let’s face it, slightly out of his league. The unattainable goddess vibe was only undermined by the big red blob of sauce on her fitted white shirt.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘No. No. Not at all.’ He took another slice of pizza from his box. Shrugged. ‘It’s just … my day’s been all errant cops and a missing child. It’s not really … you know.’

Cthulhu jumped up onto the table and plonked herself down between Logan’s ham-and-mushroom and Tara’s vegan Giardiniera with prosciutto. Stuck a leg in the air and started washing her tail.

Tara took a sip of wine. ‘Mine’s been all lockups stuffed to the rafters with counterfeit vodka and cigarettes. So I think you probably win.’

He took a bite. ‘Can’t help wondering what happened to Ellie Morton. Maybe it’s better if she isn’t still alive.’ He followed it with a mouthful of fizzy water. Stifled a burp. ‘You ever heard of something called the “Livestock Mart”?’

‘What, Thainstone?’

‘No, not Thainstone. This one’s highly illegal: supposed to be a place where you can buy and sell abducted children. Moves about the countryside so no one can find it unless they know where to look.’

‘Yeah…’ She lowered her glass. Curled her lip. ‘Not really the kind of thing we deal with in Trading Standards.’

‘Been rumours doing the rounds for years. Decades, probably. But no one’s ever—’

Cthulhu sat bolt upright on the table, staring off into the corner of the room at a large hole gnawed through the lathe and plaster.

Logan scooted forward on his chair. ‘Oh ho, here we go.’

Cthulhu thumped down from the table like a dropped washing machine and prowled across the kitchen floorboards. Hunting.

‘Mice.’ Another bite of ham-and-mushroom. ‘Rotten wee sods have eaten half the wiring and nearly all the pipe insulation.’

‘So let’s get this straight: you invited me round to your vermin-infested house to eat takeaway pizza and talk about people buying and selling kids – and you think you’re getting lucky tonight?’

He pointed at the bottle in front of her. ‘There’s more wine, if that helps?’

Tara shook her head. ‘I’m a fool to myself.’

‘Hopefully…’ A grin. ‘And what’s a few mice between friends?’

Tara shuddered. ‘I hate mice.’

Ellie hugged her knees to her chest and pulled the blankie tight. It wasn’t easy, cos the man had tied her hands together with itchy rope. She sucked a breath in around the big red ball stuck in her mouth. And she couldn’t even spit it out cos it was all buckled at the back of her head.

The buckle pulled at her hair whenever she leaned against the wall of the crate.

A wooden crate, made of bits of wood, with spaces between the bits of wood so she wouldn’t stuffocate. And she could peer out, through the gaps, into the Scary Room that was all dark and smelled of dirt and nasty things and crying.

Dirty-orange light glowed through a manky-pants window, thick with spiders’ webs and the shiny black lumps of dead flies. It was barely bright enough to see the edges of boxes and piles of stuff and dead bicycles hiding in the shadows. And the other crates…

Seven crates and her one made eight – same as the number of tentapoles on an octopus.

Mouses skitter-pattered across the dirt floor between them, on teeny pink feet, their eyes shiny as black marbles, teeny pink noses twitching, teeny pink ears swivelling.

One of them crept closer to Ellie’s crate, sniffing, whiskers twitching.

It slid between two of the wooden bits, even though the gap was only big enough to poke a finger.

A tiny mousey, with its twitchy tail and its sniffy nose.

She held her breath as it stared at her, then inched towards what was left of her sammitch – just the crusts, because they were icky.

Soft and fluffy mousey.

Ellie tried to make a smile, but the big red ball in her mouth was all difficult, so she did gentle crooning noises instead. Grubby fingers reaching, reaching…

The mousey looked at her, pointy head on one side as her fingers got closer and closer.

Then she’d got him! She’d got the mousey! And he was all soft and fuzzy and warm and she would call him Whiskers and Whiskers would be her best—

Whiskers squeaked and sank his teeth into her thumb and it stung and it hurt and teeny drops of blood fell out of her thumb and she dropped Whiskers cos he’d bitted her!

Bad mousey!

She snatched her hand away and he tumbled to the floor, scampering back out through a gap in the wooden boards.

He bitted her…

Her thumb thumped and stung and throbbed and there was nobody to kiss it better.

Ellie slumped against the crate walls as big snottery sobs rattled out of her.

She only wanted a friend.

Everything was horrid and cold and unfair and her thumb hurt and SHE WANTED TO GO HOME!

And outside, in the Scary Room, someone else started crying too – all muffled and sniffy. Then the other someone, till all three of them were snuffling in the darkness. Like little piggies, waiting to be turned into sausages.

— the widows’ waltz —

8

The letterbox went chlack, and that morning’s Aberdeen Examiner thumped onto the bare floorboards. Logan bent to pick it up, as the light on the papergirl’s bike faded through the rippled glass.

He held his mug against his chest, its warmth seeping into the bare skin. Probably should have put on a bit more than jammie bottoms, but hey-ho.

A noise mumbled out from the bedroom upstairs.

Logan took a sip of coffee and unrolled the newspaper, heading back through into the living room.

The Examiner’s front page carried a big picture of DI Bell’s crashed hire car, beneath the headline ‘“SUICIDE COP”’ FAKED OWN DEATH’.

A grunt. ‘“By Colin Miller.” Of course it is.’

Logan tossed the paper onto the couch and kept going to the open patio doors. Had another sip of coffee.

Twenty past seven and the sky was a dirty shade of charcoal, the first rumours of dawn catching at the horizon. A thin drizzle misted its way across the gloomy expanse of grass and weeds and bushes and trees. Going to be an absolute nightmare getting all that whipped in to shape. No point worrying about it now, though – had the house to do first.

He scratched at his checked jammie bottoms and yawned – a proper jaw-cracking one – then sagged. ‘Pfff…’

Cthulhu sat right at the edge of the veranda, on a little stump of log, just out of reach of the rain. Logan wandered over and squatted beside her. Tried to ignore the popping sounds his knees made. Goosebumps rippled his bare arms as he rubbed the fur between her ears. Soft and warm. She mrowped.

‘Don’t start – I’ve taken my pills, OK? Did it first thing, so Tara wouldn’t see.’ He smiled. ‘What makes you think that? Was it the sleeping together? Of course I like her.’

Cthulhu turned big dark eyes on him.

‘Well, yes, I know she snores, but so do you.’ More between-the-ear rubbing. ‘That’s very true, she is less of a nutjob than my usual.’

A stretch, then Cthulhu thumped down from her perch and sashayed back into the living room.

‘Yes, OK. You’re right: “so far”.’ Logan stood. ‘But we can always—’

‘Logan?’

He turned and there was Tara, wearing one of his old baggy hoodies. Bare legs poking out from underneath. Her hair was …huge. Haystack huge.

She yawned. Shuddered. ‘Who are you talking to?’

‘Cthulhu. She likes you.’

‘Are you not cold?’ Tara’s finger was warm as it traced its way down his chest to the collection of twenty-three shiny lines that criss-crossed his stomach. ‘This is a lot of scar tissue for one man.’

‘I was dead for five minutes on the operating table, if that makes me sound windswept and interesting?’

‘Makes you sound like a zombie. Or a vampire.’ She narrowed her eyes and poked him with the finger instead. ‘You better not be the sparkly kind!’

‘So technically you’ve had sex with a dead person. You dirty necrophiliac pervert.’

She poked him again. Then stole his coffee, padding across the bare floorboards to where Cthulhu waited at the kitchen door – one paw up on the wood. Expectant.

Logan cleared his throat. ‘I have to head off soon. Got an exhumation organised and a couple of widows to talk to. You can stay here and keep Cthulhu company if you like? There’s a spare key by the kitchen door.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Why, Inspector McRae, are you giving me a key to your house?’

‘Lending. On the condition that you don’t turn out to be a complete nutjob.’

A smile made little dimples in her cheeks. ‘I promise nothing.’

Logan hurried through the rear entrance to Bucksburn station, shaking the rain from his peaked cap. No sign of anyone as he walked down the corridor, past closed office doors.

Water rippled the stairwell windows, distorting the romantic view of the station car park – almost empty – and the main bulk of the building itself. Two storeys of rectangular brown-and-grey blockwork, devoid of character or charm. Like a miserable primary school, only without the swings and roundabouts.

His phone dinged at him and he hauled it out.

HORRIBLE STEEL:

Hope you’re happy with yourself, McRae. We had to spend the night watching kids’ TV instead of dinner and a shag! I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE!!!

He thumbed out a quick reply on his way up the stairs:

Tough. I was busy.

His footsteps echoed back at him – still no sign of anyone – through the doors at the top and into another empty corridor. Ten to eight on a rainy Saturday morning and the place was like the Mary Celeste… At least that meant he might actually get some work done for a change, free from the distraction, whingeing, and general all-round pain-in-the-backside-ishness of his fellow officers.

Logan punched in the door-code and let himself into the Professional Standards office. Stopped. Suppressed a little groan.

So much for the Mary Celeste.

Rennie was slouched in his chair, surrounded by his file-box battlements, staring at the ceiling tiles as he swivelled left and right.

Logan stripped off his fleece and hung it on the coatrack. ‘Thought you were taking Donna swimming?’

‘Guv.’ Rennie snapped upright.

‘You’re an idiot; it’s Saturday morning. Go home.’

A frown. ‘You didn’t hear?’

Logan sank into his own chair and powered up his computer. ‘Get the kettle on. And there better be some of those Penguins left.’

‘Yeah, but…’ Rennie grabbed a sheet of paper from his in-tray and hurried over. Held it out. ‘It’s DS Chalmers.’

He didn’t bother suppressing this groan. ‘What’s she done now?’

Sobbing howled out of the living room in jagged painful stabs. He was just visible, through the open door, hunched up on the floor in the corner of the room slumped against a set of DVD racks. A slightly chubby man, going bald at the back, arms wrapped around himself. Face buried in his knees, shoulders shaking.

Logan eased the door shut.

A uniformed PC stood at the other end of the hall, talking into the Airwave handset attached to her shoulder. ‘…no, Sarge, no sign of forced entry I can see, but the SE haven’t finished with the back garden yet.’

Past her, a patrol car sat at the kerb, its lights flickering blue and white in the rain.

Logan stepped through the plain door and into the garage again.

It probably hadn’t been big enough to park an actual car in to start with – ‘Executive Family Homes’ being developer-speak for ‘Tiny Rabbit-Hutch Houses You Can’t Swing A Cat In’ – but it definitely wasn’t big enough now. Lorna Chalmers and her husband had filled the garage with metal shelving, leaving a four-foot-wide path down the middle. Tins of beans, soup, tomatoes, fruit, and sweetcorn. Semi-transparent boxes of crockery, others of spices, towels, clothes, cleaning products, and unidentifiable things. Various items of kitchen gadgetry, still in the original boxes. Cartons of washing powder, rice, macaroni-and-cheese mix, cereal… As if they’d tried to pack their lives away out here.

And Lorna Chalmers had finally succeeded.

She was halfway down the space between the shelving units, the toes of her socks grazing the concrete floor. Scuffing the fabric as her body turned in the draught that slipped in beneath the garage door. A thick electrical cord made a makeshift noose around her neck, the other end tied to the exposed rafters above. Arms slack by her sides. Eyes open. Mouth too. Face covered in scrapes and the faded remains of bruising on waxy yellow flesh.

The hard clack of a camera’s flash caught a bluebottle as it landed on her bottom lip. Then wandered inside.

Definitely dead.

9

Logan leaned against the open doorway as a couple of scene examiners got Lorna Chalmers down. One hugged her around the middle while the other clambered up onto a chair, holding a pair of snips. Their white SOC suits rustled and crumpled.

Snips took hold of the electrical lead in her other hand. ‘You ready?’

Hugs kept his head as far away from Chalmers’ remains as possible without letting go. ‘Gawd… Soon as you like, Shirley. She reeks of booze!’

A click and the body dropped, but didn’t sag.

So still in the throes of rigor mortis, then.

Snips – Shirley – jumped down from the chair and helped her colleague wrestle Chalmers into a body bag. She zipped it up and backed off, waving a hand in front of her face. ‘Pfff… You weren’t kidding.’

Logan shook his head and turned away.

Shirley shouted after him. ‘Hoy! You SIO then?’

‘Nope.’

‘You’re Senior, you’re an Officer, and you’re Investigating. Sounds like SIO to me.’

Logan kept going. ‘Yeah, nice try. But the answer’s still no.’

Logan leaned his forehead against the bedroom window, breath making a foggy crescent on the glass.

Outside, the duty undertakers wheeled their shiny grey coffin down the driveway, then lifted it into the back of their shiny grey van. The name of the firm was picked out in discreet white letters, ‘CORMACK & CALMAN ~ FUNERAL DIRECTORS’ above the words ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, but other than that there was nothing to indicate that Lorna Chalmers’ remains were on the way to the mortuary.

What a bloody waste…

‘Guv?’

‘Mmm?’ Logan turned, and there was Rennie waving at him from the bedroom doorway.

‘I know you don’t want to be SIO, but do you think … maybe…?’ He raised his eyebrows and mugged it up a bit.

‘You want to be SIO?’

‘Come on, Guv, got to be good practice, right?’ Rennie shrugged. ‘For the old CV? Even if it’s only a suicide.’

‘You know it’s mostly paperwork, right?’

‘And maybe people would say, “You remember that police officer who hanged herself? DS Rennie was the SIO on that. Did a bang-up job. Let’s give him something exciting to be in charge of next time!”’

Logan puffed out a breath. ‘I suppose I can ask. But no promises.’

Swear to God, the little sod did a wee jig. ‘Cool biscuits!’ Then stopped and pointed over his shoulder. ‘Oh, and you might want to come see this.’ He led the way across the hall and into a bathroom barely big enough for the bath, sink, and toilet that had been squeezed into it. Nearly every flat surface was littered with assorted shampoos and conditioners and body butter and talc and moisturisers. A small mountain of empty toilet-roll middles lay slumped against the loo brush.

Rennie opened the medicine cabinet above the sink, exposing a huge stash of pill tubs, boxes, and blister packs that all seemed to have Lorna Chalmers’ name on them. He pulled out a white box with a pharmacist’s label stuck to the front. ‘Tranylcypromine sulphate: Emma was on this stuff after Donna was born, they’re antidepressants. And so are these: Venlafaxine hydrochloride, and Nortriptyline, and Moclobemide too. And yes, you should be impressed that I managed to pronounce all that.’ He returned the first box to the cabinet, then pulled out another one and frowned at it. ‘Not sure what Aripiprazole is though.’

Good old Aripiprazole, banishing visions of dead girlfriends and other assorted hallucinations for nearly two years now.

Logan took the packet off him. ‘It’s a second generation – or atypical – antipsychotic. Possible side effects include anxiety and suicidal thoughts.’

‘Really?’ Rennie raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh. Right. Wow.’

Logan replaced the box and shut the mirrored door. Stepped out onto the landing again.

Rennie followed him. ‘Her husband says there was a “sort of fight” yesterday. She stormed off, he didn’t hear her come back. Look at this.’ A smartphone appeared from Rennie’s pocket and he held it out. A text message sat in the middle of the screen. ‘Had his phone on to charge, so he didn’t get her text till an hour ago. Came down and found her.’

Logan accepted the phone, reading the message out loud. ‘“I’m sorry. I just can’t take it any more. I can’t.” Sent at ten thirty last night.’ He scrolled down to the earlier text messages. ‘Long time to be left hanging there.’

‘I had a snoop round.’ Rennie hooked a thumb over his shoulder at another small bedroom. ‘Someone’s definitely sleeping in this one: got loads of women’s things in it. Lipsticks and jars of stuff. Women’s underwear in the chest of drawers. Women’s clothes in the wardrobe. No man things.’

A chain of yesterday’s texts swept up onto the screen.

BRIAN:

I can’t wait to see you today!

STEPH:

I miss the touch of your strong hands on my body! Searching and probing my most intimate secret places.

BRIAN:

I miss the warmth of your tongue on my neck. The hot swell of your bosom against my bare chest.

STEPH:

I miss your hardness deep inside me. Thrusting. Thrusting!

There was more of the same, each one more flowery than the last.

‘God, it’s like a bargain-basement Mills and Boon.’ Logan stepped back into the master bedroom again. Slid the door to the fitted wardrobe all the way across.

It was full of men’s clothes: no dresses, skirts, or high heels. Nothing feminine at all.

He pointed at the bedside cabinet. ‘Have a squint in there.’

Rennie did. ‘Man socks, man pants, man hankies. No lady things.’

Logan nodded. Slid the wardrobe door closed. ‘Then I think it’s time we had a word with the grieving husband.’

A tiny conservatory clung to the side of the tiny living room – its doors closed, trapping inside a small herd of clothes horses draped with washing.

Brian had moved himself to the couch, sitting there as if someone had rammed their hand down his throat and ripped out everything inside him. He kept his eyes on his knees, as Logan handed him a mug of tea.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

He didn’t look up. ‘It’s… I never…’

Logan put a bit of steel in his voice. ‘Mr Chalmers, someone assaulted your wife yesterday. Twice. I want to know who.’

‘I don’t… I didn’t see her. She went out before I got up and—’

‘Would you say Lorna was happy at home?’

Oh, he looked up at that. ‘What? I…’ Pulled his chin in. ‘Hey, no, wait – I didn’t do that! I would never do that!’

‘And yet Lorna texted you a suicide note at half ten last night, but you didn’t call the police till after seven this morning.’

‘No!’ Looking from Logan to Rennie. Bottom lip trembling. ‘I told your constable—’

‘Constable?’ Rennie folded his arms. ‘I’m a detective sergeant.’

Brian blinked at the pair of them, getting smaller. ‘Sorry. It… I was recharging my phone. I didn’t check it till I got up!’

The central heating gurgled.

Rain pattered on the conservatory roof.

‘I didn’t!’

‘Really?’ Logan loomed over him. ‘Are you expecting us to believe your wife was hanging there for nine hours and you didn’t notice?’

Rennie put a hand on Logan’s arm. ‘Guv?’

‘We didn’t… She has her own bedroom. It’s the antisocial hours. We decided it’d be better if we didn’t wake each other up.’

‘Who’s Stephanie?’

Brian flinched as if he’d been slapped. ‘I don’t…’

‘Don’t you?’ Logan held up the phone again, reading from the screen. ‘“The milk of your passion fizzes inside me like finest champagne.” If that helps jog your memory?’

‘Oh God.’ Brian wrapped his hands around his head.

‘You said there’d been “a sort of fight”.’

‘You don’t know what it was like. She was never here. Not properly. Even when she was physically in the room, she was somewhere else. I was…’ Deep breath. ‘Stephanie is… I met her at work. She’s the account manager. We… Her husband isn’t there either. We were lonely.’

Logan stepped back. ‘And Lorna found out you were having an affair.’

The heating gurgled. The rain fell.

Brian shrugged. ‘Steph was here yesterday afternoon. We were in the bedroom when her car alarm went off. Someone had smashed the windscreen and the garage door was lying wide open. It’s… It’s not like Lorna and me had a sex life of our own, is it? We don’t even sleep in the same room any more!’ He ran a hand across his face. Bit his lip. ‘I was going to ask Lorna for a divorce next week, once we’d got her birthday out of the way. It would’ve been Wednesday.’

And with that, Brian dissolved into tears again.

The garage looked strangely empty without Chalmers’ body hanging there. Like a living room after the Christmas decorations had been taken down… Now the only sign that she’d ever been there were the scuff marks on the concrete floor – tiny tufts of fabric stuck to the rough surface where her socks had dragged across it.

Logan turned and stared at the shelving unit by the door. Chalmers’ glasses sat on a shelf next to the dishwasher tablets. Her shoes were on the shelf below lined up side by side.

Rennie pointed at them. ‘Why do people do that? Why take off your shoes and glasses before topping yourself?’

The glasses were cold to the touch. Surprisingly heavy. ‘Suppose it’s like getting ready for bed.’

‘See if it was me? If I was crossing the great dark veil? I’d want to see where I was going.’

Logan put the glasses back on their shelf. ‘Her husband’s having an affair; she’s about to be suspended; she’s on antidepressants; she’s sacrificed having a family for her career, but her career’s going nowhere.’

‘And I wouldn’t want to tread in anything either.’

‘She’s getting into fights…’

Rennie nodded. ‘Sounds like she had a proper, full-on, card-carrying meltdown.’

‘Yup.’ Logan walked out into the hall. No point wasting any more time here. Still had to figure out what Chalmers knew about Ellie Morton’s disappearance. He opened the front door. Paused on the threshold. ‘Do me a favour: soon as we hit the station, have a word with the CCTV team and see if they can place her car anywhere. Find out where she went yesterday. Maybe we can dig up who she spoke to.’

‘Guv.’

Logan hurried down the driveway, shoulders hunched against the rain, Rennie trotting along behind him.

Pale faces gazed out at them from the surrounding houses. The nosy ghosts of suburbia, haunting the lives of their neighbours. Feeding on their tragedy.

He clambered into the PSD pool car and checked his watch. A little after nine. ‘Probably got time to pick up coffee on the way to the cemetery. If we’re quick.’

Rennie clunked his door shut and sat there, looking up at the house. ‘Guv… Not being funny or anything, but back there, with the husband, was that not a bit … harsh?’

‘Good.’

‘No, but what if he makes a complaint?’

‘Brian Chalmers was screwing around on his wife. A wife he knew was on antidepressants. He was going to ask for a divorce the day after her birthday.’ Logan fastened his seatbelt. ‘So yes: I gave him a hard time. What do you think I should’ve given him, biscuits and a cuddle?’

Rennie started the car. ‘Sure you weren’t just punishing him because you feel guilty about what happened to her?’

Idiot.

‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘So, let’s get this straight,’ Rennie turned, voice and face deadpan, ‘being investigated by Professional Standards had nothing to do with her topping herself.’

The little sod might have a point.

‘Oh … shut up and drive.’

Hazlehead Cemetery stretched down towards the Westhill road. They’d made an effort to lay this bit of it out in long sweeping curves, but there was a lot of ground to fill. Space for thousands more bodies.

And soon, there would be space for one more.

A bright-yellow JCB sat by a bend in the road that wound through the middle of the cemetery – presumably so the hearses could deliver their passengers to their allotted spots. The digger hunched over one of the graves. Like an expectant beast. Growling.

Logan and Rennie stood beneath a row of trees, on the very edge of the cemetery. Not that they provided a lot of shelter from the thick drifts of pewter-grey drizzle that coated everything with a sheen of cold and damp. But at least it was somewhere to drink their coffee.

Next to the JCB, three SOC-suited figures were busy erecting a Scene Examination tent – big enough to plonk over the grave when it was excavated.

Rennie sucked a breath in through his teeth. ‘You ever had a shot on a digger? I’d love that. Gouging huge great clods out the surface of the earth… Oh, ho. Clap hands, here comes Charlie.’

A man in a brown suit and council-issue tie worried his way up the hearse road towards them, clutching his fluorescent-yellow waterproof jacket shut. Woolly hat jammed low over his ears, a scowl pulling his jowls into a disappointed-scrotum shape.

His glasses were all steamed up too. ‘Closing the cemetery… I don’t see why this couldn’t have been done last night!’

Logan had another sip of lukewarm coffee. ‘Health and safety.’

‘There are people wanting to visit their loved ones and they expect the council to facilitate that. If you’re a bereaved relative, what are you going to think about all this?’

Logan leaned over to one side, looking across the cemetery to the car park. Its only occupants were the PSD pool car, Scene Examination’s grubby white Transit, the duty undertaker’s discreet ‘PRIVATE AMBULANCE’, and the battered rattletrap Mr Scrotumface had arrived in. Other than that, the place was deserted. Logan stood up straight again. ‘Please don’t let us stop you comforting them. We’ll let ourselves out.’

‘Hmmph!’ An imperious sniff, then he turned and marched off into the drizzle again, nose held high. Walking as if his buttocks were tightly clenched. Presumably to stop the stick from falling out.

Rennie sidled closer, keeping his voice down. ‘Bet he’s the kind of guy who can’t get it up unless he’s filled out a requisition in triplicate to boink his girlfriend.’

Logan’s Airwave handset gave four bleeps. He answered it. ‘McRae. Safe to talk.’

‘Bet he’s a riot in the bedroom too.’ Rennie put on a droning nasal voice. ‘Tonight, Jean, you’ll observe that we’re departing from our usual missionary position due to roadworks on the A944 outside Dobbies Garden Centre.’

Down by the JCB, one of the white-oversuited figures waved at them. Then her voice crackled out of the Airwave’s speaker. ‘That’s us ready.’

Logan pressed the button. ‘Off you go then.’

‘Instead we’ll be attempting the “Reverse Cowgirl” in honour of John Gordon MP, the 178th Lord Provost of Aberdeen – 1705 to 1708.’

She turned and gave the digger driver a wave.

The great beast roared.

‘And I know it’ll cause you a great deal of sexual excitement, Jean, when I say that John Gordon was also the 185th Lord Provost of Aberdeen. He served two nonconsecutive terms in office. Hmmm? Hmmm? Yes, I thought you’d like that.’

The digger’s yellow arm reached forward, its claw digging deep into the turf, peeling it back to expose the dark-brown soil beneath.

‘Now, enough foreplay, Jean. Let us commence with having “the sex” as per council regulation fifty-four, paragraph six, subsection—’

Logan hit him.

10

The JCB towered over the opened grave, glistening in the drizzle. Its claw thick with dark-brown earth.

Logan inched closer.

One of their three-person Scene Examination team peered down into the pit, hands on her knees. ‘You ready?’

Her two colleagues hunched at the bottom of the hole, fiddling with thick tie-down straps. Then the bigger of the two stood and gave her the thumbs up, his white oversuit clarty with dirt.

She passed the signal on to the digger driver and the JCB’s engine growled again – the arm lifting over the hole. A chain with a hook on the end of it dangled from the claw.

Clarty the Examiner reached up and fastened the straps onto the hook, before he and his filthy friend scrambled out of the grave.

‘OK.’ The scene examiner in the clean suit pointed a few graves down. ‘If we can all retreat to a safe distance, please.’ She ushered Logan and Rennie to step away from the hole, and all five of them gathered around a shiny black headstone – like a chunk of kitchen worktop with gold lettering on it: ‘NOW ANNOYING THE ANGELS’.

She took off her facemask and raised her eyebrows at Logan. Shirley, from Chalmers’ garage that morning. ‘This your first exhumation?’

‘Third.’

Rennie leaned against the headstone. ‘I’ve never done one before. It’s kinda like Burke and Hare, only with a JCB. And in daylight. And not Edinburgh. Or 1828.’

Everyone stared at him.

The tips of his ears went a darker shade of pink. ‘Sorry.’

Shirley raised a hand to shoulder height and pointed at the sky. Then made small circles with her finger, the other hand held flat just beside it.

A deeper growl and the digger’s arm went up, slow and steady.

She smiled at Logan. ‘And, as if by magic…’

A mud-covered shape rose from the grave. It wasn’t a standard wooden coffin – a chunk of dirt fell off exposing what looked like wickerwork. One of those trendy woven-from-sustainable-materials biodegradable jobs.

It cleared the lip of the grave and kept going … five, maybe six foot into the air … and that was when the bottom gave way. The remains cascaded down into the pit. Bones and chunks of stuff and plastic bags swollen with internal organs. Everything slithery and glistening and dark. As they spattered back into the earth, the stomach-clenching stench of rotten meat exploded out from the pit and everyone recoiled, coughing and gagging.

Rennie slapped both hands over his nose and mouth. ‘Aw… God!’

Shirley hurled her facemask to the ground. ‘Low-carbon-footprint, saving-the-planet, eco-friendly, recycling bollocks!’

A purple nitrile glove appeared over the lip of the grave, its fingers dark and slimy with mud. It dumped a chunk of … was that a pelvis? It was. It was a pelvis, still partially encased in stinking…

Nope.

Logan backed away even further from the grave as a handful of finger bones joined the pile of yuck on the filthy tarpaulin they’d spread out beside the hole.

A muffled voice rose from the grave. ‘Oh for… Urgh, I’ve stood in it!’

‘Yeah…’ Shirley grimaced at Logan. ‘This is going to take us a while.’

Logan patted her on the shoulder. ‘It’s all yours. Give us a shout when you’ve got everything back at the mortuary.’

‘Will do.’

As he walked away, down the hearse road, Shirley’s voice took on that irritating over-the-top enthusiastic tone kids’-TV-show presenters always used. ‘Come on, guys, I know it’s horrible, but we can do this!’

The reply from the grave was a bit more to the point: ‘Sod off.’

Rennie started the pool car’s engine. ‘Let’s never do that again. Exhumations are horrible.’

Logan fastened his seatbelt and waved at Mr Scrotumface from the Council. ‘Look at him: standing there in his high-viz jacket and woolly hat, presiding over his empty car park like an impotent gnome.’

The man glowered back at them.

‘Told you, he needs his bonking chits filled out in triplicate.’ Rennie pulled out of the space. ‘Back to the ranch?’

‘No. We’re off to see Bell’s widow.’

He launched into song. ‘The wonderful widow of Bell.’

‘And if we’re lucky, she’ll be able to give you a brain.’

Aberdeen faded in the rear-view mirror as Rennie took the second exit and accelerated up the dual carriageway. Fields. Fields. And more fields. All of them a drab sodden green.

Logan’s phone dinged in his hand.

TS TARA:

Yuck! Cthulhu caught a mouse in the kitchen! It’s still alive! She’s torturing it!

Rennie overtook a mud-encrusted flatbed truck. ‘You ever met Bell’s wife before?’

‘Barbara?’ Back to thumbing out a reply on his phone. ‘Only at the funeral.’

Good. Serves the insulation & wire eating monsters right. Make sure you tell her she’s a good girl!

SEND.

‘Babs was in the am-dram group DI Insch used to run. I saw her in that musical version of Shaun of the Dead they put on. She was the mother. Very convincing.’

‘Hmm.’

Ding.

Oh God she’s eating it now!!!!

Rennie let out a long sigh. ‘It’s got to be hella weird, doesn’t it? Your husband kills himself, only he doesn’t really, and two years later someone else kills him again, but for the first time.’

Ding.

It’s like something off a horror movie!!! She’s eating the brains! THE BRAINS!!!!

‘I mean, put yourself in her shoes: he’s been hiding away somewhere sunny all that time and she’s been stuck here in Aberdeen with the drizzle and the cold, thinking he’s dead.’

Ding.

The only bits left are the tail, some revolting looking green kidney bean thing, & the bits of head she didn’t eat! I’m going to barf!

Another sigh from the bleached-blond philosopher behind the wheel. ‘That’s the kind of thing that’ll really screw you up.’

The housing estate could have been any new-build one in Aberdeenshire. Identical houses on an identical road with identical speedbumps and identical driveways. Tiny patches of miserable soggy grass masquerading as lawns. Trees that would probably still look like twigs for years to come. Four-by-fours parked on bricked-over front gardens. Grey harling with fake-stone details.

Three houses down, the road was packed with outside broadcast vans and journalists’ cars. No way through. A lone uniformed PC stood outside the front door, two down. Holding the mob at bay.

Rennie pulled into the kerb. ‘Pffff… Maybe we should come back later, when they’ve all got bored and sodded off?’

‘Don’t be so damp.’ Logan climbed out into the rain and strode along the pavement on the other side of the road, skirting the scabby Saabs and fusty Fiats parked half-on-half-off of it. Keeping his head down.

Didn’t work though.

He’d barely made it level to the house when someone spotted his uniform and they all crowded in on him. Shouting over the top of each other.

A curly blonde weather-girl-made-good type forced her way to the front. Pekinese perky. A red-topped microphone in her hand. ‘Inspector? Inspector, Anne Darlington, BBC: is it true you suspect DI Bell of murder?’

A ruddy-faced man who looked as if he’d fallen off the back of a tractor. Sounded like it too: ‘Come on, min, oor readers have a right to know what’s goin’ oan here. Have you got a suspect yet or no’?’

An androgynous woman in a shabby suit and short-back-and-sides. Deep voice: ‘Angela Parks, Scottish Daily Post: are you aware of the rumours that DI Bell was involved in people trafficking in Spain?’

A well-dressed short bloke with a bushy beard – like an Ewok off for a job interview at a bank. English accent: ‘Phil Patterson, Sky News: why won’t Police Scotland come clean about DI Bell’s previous whereabouts? What are you hiding?’

Anne Darlington pushed past him. ‘Police Scotland exhumed a body this morning – is that connected to this case?’

Angela Parks shoved her iPhone in Logan’s face, a red ‘RECORDING’ icon glowing in the middle of the screen. ‘Is it true that DI Bell was stabbed during a drug deal that went wrong?’

Logan kept his chin up and his face forwards, pushing through them, not slowing down. ‘We are pursuing several lines of inquiry and I can’t say any more than that at this juncture.’

Rennie struggled on at his shoulder. ‘’Scuse me. Pardon. Sorry. Oops. ’Scuse me…’

Anne Darlington pushed her microphone in front of Logan again. ‘Was DI Bell under investigation at the time of his alleged death?’

‘Fit’s the deal, min? Fit lines of inquiry are ye followin’?’

Another eight feet and they reached the relative safety of the tiny porch – more an extension of the garage roof than anything else.

‘Inspector, was it a drug deal gone wrong or not?’

The PC at the door opened it, shifting to one side so Logan and Rennie could squeeze past, hissing out the side of her mouth as they did. ‘It’s like a swarm of sodding leeches.’ Then stepped forward with her arms extended, blocking the way. ‘All right, you heard the Inspector: everyone away from the house. Let’s give Mrs Bell some privacy.’

Anne Darlington stayed where she was. ‘If you didn’t bury DI Bell in that grave two years ago, who did you bury?’

Phil Patterson was right behind her. ‘Was DI Bell involved in organised crime? Is that why—’

Rennie thumped the front door shut, cutting the rest of it off. ‘Now I know how rock stars feel. Only without the ever-present threat of group sex and free drugs.’

The hallway was an antiseptic-white colour with a single family photo next to the light switch. DI Bell, his wife and their two children at the youngest’s graduation ceremony. Everyone looking very proud and alive.

A door was open at the end of the hall, murmured voices coming from within.

Logan stepped into a gloomy little living room. The blinds were down, shutting out the rain and the media, but a standard lamp cast just enough light to see the dark patches on the walls where pictures must have hung for years, leaving nothing behind but the unfaded wallpaper and a capstone of dust. Most of the shelves were empty too, as if they’d had a clear-out recently. The only thing left was a single photo in a black frame: Mrs Bell and her husband. Her in a blue frock and him in his dress uniform, taken at some sort of official ceremony.

She was sitting on the couch now, by the electric fire, bottom jaw twitching as if she was trying to work something out from between her teeth. Eyes focused on the fake flames.

But Barbara Bell wasn’t the only one in here.

Sitting in the armchair opposite was a wee hardman in a well-fitted suit. Broad shouldered with a good haircut, even if his head was going a bit threadbare on top. Colin Miller. A trio of gold chains glinted around his neck, signet rings on over his black-leather-gloved fingers. And standing behind him: an older lady in a safari-type waistcoat – its pockets bulging with photographic equipment. A huge Cannon DSLR hanging around her neck.

Last, but by all means least: a young male PC, face covered with a moonscape of pockmarks, sitting in the other armchair. He struggled to his feet. ‘Inspector. I know this isn’t—’

Logan pointed at Miller. ‘Colin. Should you not be outside with the rest of your lovely Fourth Estate mates?’

A grin, followed by a Glaswegian accent so strong you could have stood on it. ‘Laz, my man, you’re lookin’ well, but. We’ve been expressing our sympathy to poor Barbara here. Haven’t we, Debbie?’

The photographer nodded, one side of her mouth clamped shut as if there were a fag poking out of it. ‘Terrible shame.’

Logan stood in front of the couch. ‘Mrs Bell?’

She didn’t even look at him. Just made a shooing gesture, batting away an invisible fly. Saggy and defeated.

He nodded. ‘Well, I’m sure everyone would like a nice cup of tea. Colin, why don’t you lend a hand?’ Then marched from the room, thumping Rennie on the way past. ‘You too.’

Rennie filled the kettle at a Belfast sink that was far too big for the small kitchen. Colin Miller leaned back against the working surface, crossing his arms and smirking.

Logan gave him a loom. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘Easy, Tiger.’ He held up his hand in self-defence – some of the fingers stiff and twisted in his black leather gloves. ‘That any way to talk to an old friend?’

‘She’s just discovered that her husband died. Again. Bad enough you splashed it all over the front page this morning – she doesn’t need—’

‘Speaking of suicides,’ he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper, ‘a wee birdy tells us you’ve got another deid copper on your hands.’

‘I mean it, Colin: leave Barbara Bell alone!’

‘So did Lorna Chalmers really kill herself, or did she do a DI Ding-Dong Bell? Enquiring minds and all that.’

Logan backed off a step. ‘Who told you about Lorna Chalmers?’

‘Cos, see, it’s no’ hard to put two and two together, is it? Babs is sitting there in her gloomy wee living room and even she knows what’s coming. Her beloved deid husband killed someone to take his place in the grave.’

‘I’m going to count to three, then you either tell me who told you about Lorna Chalmers or I hurl you out of here on your arse.’

A grin slashed its way across Miller’s face. ‘That the quote you want me to use when this is all over the Examiner’s front page tomorrow? Cos I’m cool with that.’

The kettle rumbled to the boil and clicked off.

Silence.

Logan glowered at Miller. Miller grinned back at him.

Then Rennie broke the moment by hauling a bunch of mugs out of a cupboard and clattering them down by the kettle.

Miller shrugged. ‘It’s no’ goin’ all that well for Northeast Division, is it? You can’t find Ellie Morton, DI Bell turns up not-dead-but-dead-again, and now DS Lorna Chalmers tops herself.’ He tried on a casual, innocent voice: ‘You were investigating her for something, weren’t you?’

‘DS Rennie, make sure one of those mugs has extra spit in it.’

‘All right, all right. Easy, big man. Me and Debbie got all we need from Babs already. Was only hanging about to be nice to the poor dear. Keep her company and that.’ Miller pushed himself upright. ‘She’s all yours.’

Logan settled back on the couch as Rennie laid out four mugs of milky tea on the coffee table.

The thump of a closing door came from the hall and Family Liaison Officer McCraterface stepped into the room again. ‘That’s them gone now.’

Logan smiled at Mrs Bell. ‘Barbara, you didn’t have to speak to them.’

She flexed her hands into fists. ‘He lied to me.’

‘Of course he did, he’s a journalist.’

‘He left a bloody suicide note!’ Mrs Bell bared her teeth at the electric fire. ‘I memorised it. I thought I’d done something. Two bloody years and I thought… I thought if only I’d done something. If only I’d noticed how depressed he was. If only I’d got him some help!’ She picked up one of the mugs and hurled it at DI Bell’s photo. Knocking it flying, the mug shattering. Tea exploded across the wall. ‘And he wasn’t even dead! He was living it up in the sunshine, drinking sangria and shagging some Spanish tart!’

Logan shook his head. ‘Barbara, we don’t know that.’

‘Oh, we bloody well do! Mr Miller got someone to track down Duncan’s new family in Villaferrueña.’

Wonderful. The wee sod never mentioned that.

Mrs Bell ground her fists into her lap. ‘Duncan and his Spanish tart have a one-year-old son. I thought he was dead and he’s been making bloody babies!’ She snatched up another mug and hurled it to join the first. Another sharp-edged shattering and beige tea sprayed the wall.

Rennie grabbed his tea before it went flying too.

Logan took out his notebook. ‘We need to ask you some questions about what happened two years ago.’

She was still scowling at the tea-drenched wallpaper. ‘I boxed up all his crap. Did it last night, soon as they told me he hadn’t really killed himself.’ A sniff. She wiped at her eyes. Voice brittle. ‘I’ve been keeping this house like some sort of bloody shrine. Like he’d magically come back from the dead and everything would be fine again. I’m such a bloody idiot.’ Her whole face crumpled.

‘Can you remember him talking about a case he was working on at the time? Maybe something that was preying on his mind?’

‘Well, you know what? I’m happy he’s dead. I’m glad someone stabbed him. I hope they get away with it!’

11

Logan was last in line, barely able to see over the top of his large cardboard box. At least it wasn’t that heavy. He followed the FLO and Rennie out through the front door and into a lightning storm of camera flashes.

‘Inspector? Anne Darlington, BBC.’ Her blonde curls bounced as she fell into step, dragging a cameraman after her. ‘Inspector: is it true you’ve uncovered the identity of the individual who died in that caravan two years ago?’

Logan shifted his box, turning it into a cardboard shield between himself and the rampaging hordes of the media. ‘Please get out of the way.’

The Ewok man – Patterson? – jogged alongside as they hurried towards the pool car. ‘Is this case linked to the recent suicide of Detective Sergeant Lorna Chalmers?’

The thin androgynous one hadn’t gone away either. ‘Angela Parks, Scottish Daily Post. Will there be a public inquiry into the handling of DI Bell’s alleged suicide? Were you involved in the investigation?’

Rennie plipped the locks and they stuffed their boxes in the back of the car.

Anne Darlington tried to block Logan’s way. ‘Why won’t Police Scotland respond to any of our questions, Inspector? What are you trying to hide?’

The teuchtery one shoved himself to the front of the scrum. ‘Yer DS Chalmers was working on the Ellie Morton case – fit did she discover that led her to kill hersel’?’

The Family Liaison Officer put a hand against the teuchter’s chest. ‘Come on, back up please.’

Logan pushed around to the passenger side, Angela Parks close on his tail.

‘Is the Ellie Morton case connected to the disappearance of Stephen MacGuire this morning?’

Anne Darlington grabbed at his arm, but he blocked her with the passenger door. ‘Inspector, do you have an ID for the body, or don’t you? It’s a perfectly simple question: yes, or no?’

‘It’s an ongoing investigation.’ And inside.

The Parks woman wasn’t giving up. ‘There’s been a string of child abductions in the last two weeks, hasn’t there? Are they linked to Ellie Morton?’

He hauled the door shut with a thump and snibbed the lock.

Rennie clambered in behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘Gah… It’s like something off The Walking Dead!’

Anne Darlington knocked on the window. Voice muffled by the glass. ‘Yes, or no, Inspector?’

Logan fastened his seatbelt, talking to Rennie out the side of his mouth, so they couldn’t film it. ‘Drive. And if you accidentally run over three or four of the bastards on the way, that’s fine with me.’

‘Done.’ But as soon as he put the car in gear, the horde backed away, cameras filming, flashguns flashing, recording Rennie’s three-point turn for posterity. Then Darlington primped her hair and launched into a piece to camera.

Rennie grimaced, accelerating down the road. ‘Well, that was fun.’

‘Bloody Colin Bloody Miller!’ Logan pulled out his phone and poked at the screen. Listened to it ring. ‘Pick up, you rancid little…’ A click. ‘Colin? Why the hell didn’t you tell me you’d tracked down DI Bell’s Spanish family?’

Miller tutted a couple of times, then, ‘You used to be a lot more polite on the phone.’

‘You should’ve told me he had another family in Villafff…weren…’

‘Villaferrueña. It’s a middle-of-nowhere teeny-wee village. Population about a hundred and fifty? Boring. You’d love it.’

‘This is an ongoing investigation!’

‘Aye, and you can read all about it in tomorrow’s Aberdeen Examiner. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’m away to that nice butcher in Rosemount to pick up some steaks for tea. You know how Isobel loves a good slab of meat when she’s been post-morteming all day, but.’

‘Colin!’

A laugh rattled down the phone. ‘I know stuff you don’t. If you want to play quid pro quo at some point, you know where to find us.’ Then the connection went dead. He’d hung up.

‘Damn it.’ Logan lowered his phone.

Rennie looked across the car at him. ‘We could get a warrant?’

‘Yes, because we’ve done such a great job of that recently.’ Logan shook his head. ‘You know what? Not my case: not my problem. DCI Hardie can deal with it.’

The identikit houses and identikit streets drifted past the car windows as Rennie made for the dual carriageway again. ‘Guv? That reporter– the one who looks like a really thin bloke – she said, “was the Ellie Morton case connected to Stephen MacGuire going missing?”’

‘And?’

‘Who’s Stephen MacGuire?’

Good point.

‘No idea.’ Logan pulled up a web browser on his phone and thumbed in the name. Set it searching.

A link to the Clydebank Herald and Post website came up and he followed it. Waiting for the page to load. ‘Here we go.’ The headline ‘FAMILY’S FEAR FOR MISSING STEPHEN’ filled the screen. Scrolling down revealed a photo of a small blond boy, smiling a gap-toothed smile. Lots of freckles. A dark-purple birthmark spread itself across one cheek and along the side of his nose.

‘“Stephen MacGuire, brackets four, went missing from outside his East Kilbride flat at half past eight this morning.” Blah, blah, blah. “‘A wonderful little boy who lights up every room he walks into,’ said his distraught mother, Janice, brackets twenty-three.”’

Rennie nodded. ‘Any word of a stepdad?’

‘No, but the mother’s partner says, “Stephen would not just wander off, I am sure someone must have taken him.”’

‘There you go – it’ll be him. The partner.’

‘“We are desperate to get our beloved son home. Please, if you have any idea where Stephen is, get in touch with the authorities before it is too late.” Why do newspapers have to make everyone sound like robots? “Before it is too late.” Who talks like that?’

Another nod. ‘It’s always the mum’s new bloke.’

Logan put his phone away. ‘Don’t see how a kid getting abducted in East Kilbride has anything to do with a wee girl snatched from Tillydrone.’

‘All that “Stranger Danger” stuff is a waste of time. We’d be better off teaching kids to run away from their stepdads.’

‘…appealing for any information on missing four-year-old, Stephen MacGuire. Stephen was last seen outside his home on Telford Road at eight thirty-two this morning…’

God, it was a lovely day. Not so nice back home with its wind and rain, of course, but out here? With the mighty Cairngorms rising on either side of the road, purpled with heather? The majestic Scottish sky a bright saphire blue? The sun shining down on natives and tourists alike? Who wouldn’t love this?

‘…distinctive port wine stain birthmark on his left cheek. Stephen was wearing blue jeans, a red sweatshirt with a panda on it, brown trainers, and a light-blue jacket…’

The sign went past on the left, ‘FÀILTE DON GHÀIDHEALTACHD ~ WELCOME TO THE HIGHLANDS’ above a stylised illustration of the landscape, complete with trees and a shining loch.

Lee grinned as his trusty old beige Volvo grumbled past it at a sensible 58 miles per hour: some wag had added a wee Nessie to the loch. Had to love the imagination of these people.

‘…morning. Police are keen to trace anyone who was in the area at the time, especially the drivers of a green Citroën Picasso and a grey Nissan Micra…’

An idiot in a BMW overtook him, even though there was clearly a coach-load of day-trippers coming the other way. Roaring past, then slamming on its brakes to screech back into the left lane. Idiot. It was people like that who caused accidents.

‘…following statement.’

A rough woman’s voice replaced the newsreader’s more professional tones. ‘While we can’t rule out a connection with the disappearances of Ellie Morton in Aberdeen, and Lucy Hawkins in St Andrews, I have to say that it’s very unlikely.’

Aw, bless.

‘We have a considerable number of officers out searching the area as we speak, but I have to stress: if you saw Stephen MacGuire this morning, or have any idea where he is, I urge you to come forward and talk to us.’

It was all rather sweet, really. Pointless, but sweet.

‘Stephen’s family are obviously very distressed at this time, so if you have any information, please get in touch by calling one zero one. Help us bring Stephen home.’

And the newsreader was back. ‘Sport now and Aberdeen are looking to bring home three points from their Ibrox fixture this weekend. The Dons have been riding high since the start of the season and—’

Lee switched the radio off.

A full-scale manhunt – well, full-scale child-hunt – was excellent news. Nothing like a bit of publicity to whet people’s appetites.

He took his eyes off the road for a brief moment and looked in the rear-view mirror – at the pet carrier in the boot, partially covered by a tartan blanket. ‘Did you hear that, Stephen? You’re famous!’

A pair of watery green eyes blinked back at him through the pet carrier’s grille door. Freckles and tears on the wee boy’s pale cheeks. That distinctive port wine birthmark. The chunk of duct tape across his mouth.

‘Isn’t that exciting? All those policemen out looking for you? I bet they’ll have your picture on the lunchtime news and everything.’

Stephen snivelled and cried.

Which was only to be expected. He’d had a pretty big day after all: being bundled into a car boot by a woman he thought was his mum’s friend, then sold on at a disused-petrol-station in the middle of a run-down industrial estate. It was probably quite overwhelming for a wee lad.

Still, that was no reason to mope, was it?

‘How about a sing-song to pass the time? Come on then, all together now: A hundred green bottles, hanging on the wall,’ belting it out, with a smile in his heart and his voice, ‘A hundred green bottles, hanging on the wall, and if one green bottle, should accidentally fall, there’d be…?’

He glanced in the mirror again. Stephen stared back with his tear-stained cheeks and duct-tape gag.

‘Oh, that’s right. Sorry.’ Lee shrugged. ‘Never mind.’ Deep breath: ‘There’d be ninety-nine green bottles, hanging on the wall…’

‘But how?’ DCI Hardie’s voice whined out of the phone, making him sound as if someone was slowly beating him to death with a haddock. ‘How did they find out so quickly?’

The Asda car park was getting busier as workers in Dyce’s industrial estates and oil offices rolled up to buy something for lunch. At least it had stopped raining.

‘No idea, but you know what the press are like. They don’t have to go through official channels, they can just bribe people.’ Logan hunched over the pool car’s boot. Shifted his phone – freeing up his other hand to rummage about in one of the cardboard boxes from DI Bell’s house. Well, ex-DI Bell’s ex-house.

This one was nearly all clothes, suits and shirts and trousers, crumpled and mangled where they’d been rammed in.

‘And he was living in Verti…?’

‘Villaferrueña.’ There were socks in here too. And Y-fronts. ‘There’s probably more info, but Miller’s saving it for the front page tomorrow. Unless we’ve got something we can trade?’

‘I’ll get on to the Spanish cops, see what they can dig up.’

‘The press are having a feeding frenzy outside Mrs Bell’s house, by the way. And from the sound of things they’ve started making stuff up.’ Some ties. A ten-pin bowling trophy sat at the very bottom of the box; the little man on top’s head had been snapped clean off.

‘Wonderful. Well, I’ve got a press conference starting in half an hour. Looking forward to that about as much as my last colonoscopy.’

Should probably go through all the jacket and trouser pockets too.

‘When Rennie gets back, we’re off to speak to Sally MacAuley. Bell was obsessed with her case, so maybe…?’

‘But probably not.’

‘Probably not.’

And talking of Rennie – he was bumbling his way out through the supermarket’s main doors, pushing a small trolley with a wonky wheel. Not a care in the world.

Must be nice to be that divorced from reality.

Logan dipped into the box again. A handful of serial-killer thriller paperbacks with cheesy predictable titles on a ‘DARK DEADLY DEATH BLOOD DEATHLY DYING’ theme. ‘While I’ve got you: you’ll need a Senior Investigating Officer for the Chalmers suicide. Because she was a police officer?’

‘Are you volunteering?’

‘No. But what about DS Rennie?’

‘As SIO?’ A laugh barked out of the phone. ‘I’d rather put drunken hyenas in charge of my granddaughter’s third birthday party.’

‘Yes, but he’s done the training course; he’s worked on several murders; he’s not got himself suspended, demoted, or fired; and it’s an open-and-shut suicide. Not even Beardie Beattie could screw this one up.’

‘Hmmmm…’

Rennie made a massive detour around a puddle, trolley juddering and rattling away as if it was having a seizure. The idiot was grinning like this was the most fun he’d had in ages.

Maybe Hardie was right? Maybe making Rennie SIO was asking for—

‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but OK. On the strict condition that he goes nowhere near the media and you supervise him the whole time. And I mean the whole time.’

Rennie arrived with his wobbly trolley. He pointed at the contents and waggled his eyebrows.

‘Do we have a deal?’

Oh God… He was going to regret this, wasn’t he?

‘Fine. If that’s what it takes.’ Logan pointed at Rennie, mouthing the words in silence: ‘You owe me!’ Then back to the phone. ‘Got to go. Good luck with the press conference.’

‘We’ll need it.’ And Hardie was gone.

Logan put his phone away.

Rennie frowned. ‘Owe you for what?’

‘You’re now officially SIO on Lorna Chalmers’ suicide.’

His eyes bugged and a wonky grin lopsided itself across his face. ‘Woohoo!’ He even did a little dance between the puddles, finishing with a half-arsed pirouette. Pointing at his purchases again. ‘And to celebrate: one pack of spicy rotisserie chicken thighs, hot. One four-pack of white rolls. One squeezy bottle of mayonnaise. One bag of mixed salad. Bottle of Coke, bottle of Irn-Bru. Six jammy doughnuts for a pound. Luncheon is served.’

The pool car’s engine pinged and ticked as it cooled, the bonnet dulled by a thin film of drizzle. From here the view was … interesting: looking down, past a couple of fields to the massive concrete lumps of the new bridge over the River Don. The fabled Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, rising from the earthworks slow and solid. A dark slash across the countryside, trapped beneath the dove-grey blanket of cloud. About forty years after they should have started building the damn thing. Back when the area was awash with oil money. Before the industry tanked.

Ah well, better late than never.

Rennie passed in front of the car again, pacing round it in the rain. Idiot.

The windows were getting foggy, so Logan wound his one down, letting in the distant roar of construction equipment and passing traffic.

Rennie did another lap. ‘No, I’m not kidding, they made me SIO!’ A pause, then his voice went all deadpan. ‘Oh: ha, ha, ha. No, it doesn’t stand for “Seriously Idiotic Onanist”. Thank you, Sarah Millican.’

Logan poked away at his phone again:

Did DS Chalmers say anything to you about any leads she was following about Ellie Morton’s disappearance?

SEND.

‘Senior Investigating Officer, Emma! They made me Senior Investigating Officer on the Lorna Chalmers case. … Yeah, it is a pretty big deal.’

Ding.

HORRIBLE STEEL:

Nice try. I’m still not clyping on her. Or speaking to you.

‘I guess they finally recognised all the great work I’ve been doing. … Oh yeah.’

Logan frowned and picked out a reply:

She’s DEAD, Roberta. Whatever secrets she had aren’t hers to keep any more.

SEND.

‘Who’s your daddy?… Damn right I am.’

No reply from Steel.

Probably sulking. Or sodded off for a vape.

Some things never changed.

‘OK, yeah. … Love you, Fluffkins. … OK, bye. … Bye. … Bye, bye.’ Rennie blew a half-dozen kisses, then hung up. Turned to see Logan staring at him. ‘What?’

‘You’ve got a mayonnaise moustache.’ Logan took another bite of chicken-thigh buttie – savoury and salty and spicy and creamy. Talking with his mouth full. ‘And that’s not a euphemism.’

‘Ta.’ Rennie wiped his face with a napkin, scrumpled it up and tossed it over his shoulder into the back of the car. ‘So far we’ve had a suicide, a collapsed coffin, a baying mob of reporters, and I’ve got my first SIO gig.’ He performed a little bum-wriggling dance in the driver’s seat. ‘Best day at work for ages.’

‘When we get back to the Big Top, write up your report on Chalmers’ suicide and submit it to the Procurator Fiscal. Then I want you to go through the boxes in the boot. See if you can find any of DI Bell’s old notebooks in there. Maybe we’ll get lucky for a change?’

Rennie peered across the car at the bag on Logan’s lap. ‘You wanting that bit of skin?’

‘Nope.’

He grabbed the slab of chicken skin and wolfed it down. ‘How come you always call him “DI Bell” now instead of “Ding-Dong”? Always used to call him “Ding-Dong”.’

‘Because you shouldn’t use friendly nicknames for police officers who kill people.’

‘Ah. Point.’

Outside, a crane lowered another chunk of grey onto the massive Lego set crossing the river. A handful of sheep skirted the chunk of flooded grass at the bottom of the field. The sound of chewing and slurping filled the car.

Rennie had another scoof of Coke. ‘Yeah, but maybe he didn’t mean to kill whoever it was we buried? Maybe it was, like, a fight to the death!’

‘Then why use the body to fake your own suicide?’

‘Convenience? Wasn’t like anyone else was using it.’ Another mouthful, bits of salad falling into his lap.

‘And the person who attacked him coincidentally happened to be a good enough match for height and weight that everyone would be fooled?’

‘Another point.’ Rennie polished off his buttie and sooked his fingers clean. Checked his watch. ‘Oops, nearly missed it!’ He clicked on the car radio, stabbing the buttons until ‘NORTHSOUND 1’ appeared on the dial and a horrifically upbeat pop song belted out of the speakers.

Logan turned it down a bit. ‘My money’s still on Fred Marshall.’

Rennie dipped into the doughnut bag. ‘Nah, can’t be. I read his file: Marshall was six-two and built like a whippet. Ding… DI Bell was five-ten tops and built like a grizzly bear. No way you’d get them mixed up. Not even after a fire.’

The song on the radio faded out, replaced by a teuchter accent so thick it had to be fake. ‘Ah, michty me, another Dougie’s Lunchtime Listening Classic there. Gets better every time I hear it! But it’s one o’clock now and we ken fit that means: here’s Claire with the news and weather. Aye, aye, Claire, fit like the day, quine?’

Claire didn’t even try to do the accent. ‘Nae bad, Dougie. Commuter chaos came to Aberdeen this morning when a burst water main flooded the Denburn roundabout…’

Logan frowned. ‘Six foot two?’

‘Well, probably a bit less once you took the top of his head off with a shotgun. But yeah, not the same body type at all.’

‘Good job we didn’t get those warrants then.’

‘…for missing three-year-old Ellie Morton, local businesswoman Jerry Whyte has put up a five thousand pound reward for any information…’

Logan helped himself to a doughnut. ‘Better go through all the missing person reports for the month DI Bell allegedly killed himself.’

‘Assuming it was someone anyone would miss.’

A woman’s voice thumped out of the radio, positive and confident. ‘I’m glad to be in a position to help. And if we all chip in, I’m sure we can make a difference.’

Then Claire was back. ‘And we can go live now to Northeast Divisional Headquarters.’

Rennie licked the granulated sugar from his lips. ‘What if he offed a homeless person? Or a crim?’

‘Thank you all for coming.’ DCI Hardie didn’t sound as if he meant that. ‘I can confirm that the body of a man found in a crashed car yesterday morning was that of Duncan Bell, a former detective inspector with Police Scotland.’

Logan’s doughnut popped with sharp-sweet raspberry jam. ‘Then we’re screwed.’ He caught the drip with a finger. ‘They couldn’t get any viable DNA the first time round, and I doubt we’ll do any better. Bell didn’t set fire to that caravan by accident, he knew it’d cook the remains and cover his tracks.’

‘Mr Bell had been living in Spain under an assumed name, having apparently staged his own suicide two years ago.’

‘Tooth pulp cavity?’

Logan shook his head. ‘Blew them all out with a shotgun, remember?’

‘…currently working with the Spanish authorities to establish his whereabouts during that time.’

‘Maybe someone picked them up?’

‘Maybe.’

‘We are treating Mr Bell’s death as murder and have set up a Major Investigation Team to look into his death.’

‘But knowing our luck?’ Logan washed the last chunk of doughnut down with a mouthful of Irn-Bru. Suppressed a belch. ‘If Bell hadn’t set fire to the caravan you could’ve just dug them out of the walls, but mixed in with all that burnt wreckage?’

‘Anne Darlington, BBC: have you identified the body buried in DI Bell’s grave?’

‘Investigations are ongoing and I would urge anyone with information about Mr Bell’s murder to get in touch.’

Rennie held out the doughnut bag. ‘Better eat another one before I scoff the lot.’

‘No, I’m good thanks.’ Logan wiped his hands together, showering the footwell with sugar. ‘Where’s the MacAuley case file?’

‘Back seat.’

‘You haven’t answered my question, DCI Hardie. Do you know who it is or not?’

Logan turned in his seat and picked up the file. Opened it and skimmed through the contents.

‘As I said, investigations are ongoing. So—’

‘Colin Miller, Aberdeen Examiner. Are you aware that DI Bell had returned to Aberdeenshire on at least three prior occasions?’

He flipped through to the end, then back again. ‘Didn’t she write a book, or something? Thought I remembered a book.’

Hardie cleared his throat. ‘As I say, investigations are ongoing and if you, or anyone else, has any information they should get in touch.’

‘Or you could buy a copy of tomorrow’s Aberdeen Examiner?’

‘Yeah, there was definitely a book: I read it.’ Rennie plucked another doughnut free. ‘Cold Blood and Dark Granite. Subtitled, “A Mother’s hunt for her husband’s killer and her missing child.” Doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue.’

‘I would strongly advise against withholding information from a murder investigation, Mr Miller.’

Rennie bit into his doughnut, getting sugar all down his front. ‘Pretty sure she co-wrote it with a retired P-and-J journalist. There’s talk of a film, but you know what Hollywood’s like.’

‘Tom Neville, Dundee and Perthshire Advertiser: are you threatening the press, DCI Hardie?’

‘I’m asking for its cooperation.’

Logan drummed his fingers against the paperwork. Frowning at it. His fingertips making little greasy circles. ‘Three and a half years ago, someone kills Sally MacAuley’s husband and abducts her three-year-old son. Eighteen months later, DI Bell kills someone and uses the body to fake his own death.’

‘Aye, tell you what: why don’t you and me sit down after this and see if we can’t help each other, but?’

‘Eighteen months.’ Logan stopped drumming. ‘A long time to let something fester… Guilty conscience?’

‘Angela Parks, Scottish Daily Post: there are rumours DI Bell was involved in a so-called “Livestock Mart” where children were bought and sold. Is this—’

‘I’m not here to talk about rumours, Ms Parks.’

Rennie crammed in about half his doughnut in one go. Mumbling through it. ‘You don’t think Bell killed Kenneth MacAuley and abducted the wee boy, do you?’

‘Philip Patterson, Sky News: DS Lorna Chalmers committed suicide last night, is it true she was under investigation for corruption?’

‘No, it’s not. Thank you all for your time. No more questions.’

Logan closed the file. ‘He was definitely running from something.’

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