Logan rubbed tenderly at his throat. 'I'll post a PC to watch him,' he said, swallowing painfully.

The nurse gave him an uncertain smile, but the doctor was already poking and prodding Dougie's battered body. With a deep breath she squared her shoulders and went to work.

Logan arranged for someone to stay by Desperate Doug's bedside and left them to it. Out in the hall he almost fell over a nurse pushing a trolley covered with bottles of pills. He turned to apologize and found himself looking into a familiar face. Only this time Lorna Henderson's mother was sporting a huge black eye. She'd tried to cover it up with six inches of make-up, but the bruising still shone through. 'Are you OK?' he asked.

A nervous hand fluttered up to the puffy eye and she forced a smile onto her face. 'Fine,' she said, her voice brittle round the edges. 'Never better. How are you?'

'Did someone hit you, Mrs Henderson?'

She smoothed down her blue nurse's uniform and said no. She had walked into a door. It was an accident. That was all.

Logan gave her one of DI Insch's patented silences.

Slowly the fake smile slid away, leaving her pale and jowly again. 'Kevin came round. He'd been drinking.' She picked at the name badge pinned to her chest, not looking Logan in the eye. 'I thought he'd come back to me. You know, dumped that flat-chested tart. But he said it was all my fault that Lorna was dead. That I should have never made her get out of the car. That I killed her...' She looked up, tears making her eyes sparkle in the fluorescent lighting. 'I tried to make him understand we could get through it together. Be there for each other. That I still loved him. That I knew he still loved me.' A single fat tear spilled over the edge and down her cheek. She wiped it away on the back of her hand. 'He got upset and shouted even louder. Then he... I deserved it! It was all my fault! He's never coming back...' Tears spilling down her face, she abandoned her trolley and ran.

Logan watched her disappear through a set of double doors and sighed.

WPC Watson was sitting in the waiting area, with her head back and a scrunched-up handful of toilet paper jammed against her face. It was bright red.

'How's the nose?' asked Logan, plonking himself down on the next plastic chair along. Trying to keep himself from trembling.

'Sore,' she said, peering at him from the corner of her eye, not moving her head. 'Ad leasd I don'd thing id's broken. How's the prisoner?'

Logan shrugged and instantly regretted it. 'How's everyone else?' he asked, his voice coming out as a painful croak.

WPC Watson pointed off down the corridor to the treatment rooms. 'One of the dog-handlers is gedding his ribs checked out. Everyone else is OK.' She smiled and winced. 'Oww... Someone from the bookies G.o.d their front teeth knocked out.' She peered at him again, watching as Logan rubbed a hand around his throat for the umpteenth time since sitting down. 'You OK?'

Logan pulled down the collar of his shirt, exposing his neck in all its strangled glory.

Watson winced again, but this time for him. Desperate Doug's finger marks stood out against the pale skin in red and purple. The two biggest bruises sitting on either side of the windpipe, where the old man's thumbs had tried to squeeze the life out of him.

'Jesus, whad happened?'

'I kind of fell down and couldn't get up.' Logan went back to rubbing his throat. 'Mr MacDuff wanted to make it permanent.' The knife blade flashing in the light. He shivered again.

'The old b.a.s.t.a.r.d!'

Logan almost smiled; it was nice to have someone on his side for a change.

DI Insch was not so understanding. When they got back to Force Headquarters, Logan with another pocket full of painkillers and WPC Watson with confirmation that her nose wasn't broken, the message was delivered by the desk sergeant: Logan was to report to the inspector's office. Now!

The inspector was standing with his back to the door, hands clasped behind his back, his bald head shining in the overhead lighting as Logan entered. Insch was staring out of the window at the steadily falling snow. 'What the h.e.l.l did you think you were doing?' he asked.

Logan rubbed at his throat again and said he was trying to arrest George Stephenson's killer.

Insch sighed. 'Sergeant, you just beat an old man unconscious. The hospital say his condition is serious. What if he dies? Can you imagine how that's going to play in tomorrow's paper? "Policeman Beats Pensioner To Death!" What the h.e.l.l were you thinking?'

Logan cleared his throat and wished he hadn't. It hurt. 'I... I was defending myself.'

Insch spun around, his face beetroot-red. 'Reasonable force does not include battering old...' He stopped when he saw Logan's bruise-ringed neck. 'What happened? Watson go into a love-bite feeding-frenzy?'

'Mr MacDuff tried to strangle me. Sir.'

'That why you hit him?'

Logan nodded, wincing. 'It was the only way to make him stop.' He dug a clear plastic wallet out of his pocket and clunked it down on DI Insch's desk with a trembling hand. There was a Stanley knife inside. 'He was going to carve me up with that.'

Insch picked up the knife, twisting it around, examining it through the plastic. 'Nice to see the old ways aren't dying out,' he said at last before looking Logan square in the eye. 'You're probably going to be suspended from duty while this is investigated. If Desperate Doug decides to press charges...' he shrugged. 'You know what it's like around here right now. We don't need any more bad PR.'

'He was going to kill me...'

'You beat an OAP unconscious, Logan. It doesn't matter why. That's all they're going to see. Police brutality of the worst kind.'

Logan couldn't believe his ears. 'So you're hanging me out to dry?'

'Sergeant, I'm not doing anything. Professional Standards won't let me. This is all out of my hands.'

The incident room was empty except for Logan and his paperwork. He sat in the semidarkness, a cup of cold coffee on the table next to a half-eaten packet of Maltesers. Trying not to shake.

The knife.

Logan ran a hand over his face. He'd not thought about that night for a long time. Lying on the tower block roof, half-unconscious, while Angus Robertson stabbed and stabbed and stabbed... Desperate Doug MacDuff had brought it all screaming back.

Logan had filled in all the forms, explaining why he'd put an old age pensioner in the hospital. Had spent a happy hour and a half while Inspector Napier scowled at him, asked leading questions and left him in no doubt about what was going to happen next. Now there was nothing left to do but sit back and wait to be told he was suspended. One week back on the job and already his career was down the tubes. And it wasn't even his fault!

Sighing, he looked up at Geordie Stephenson's dead face. Worst of all Desperate Doug was going to be that much harder to convict now. The jury would see a poor old man, beaten by the police, fitted up for the murder of an Edinburgh hoodlum. How could that old man murder anyone? He was so frail! The Procurator Fiscal wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

Logan let his head sink forward until it clunked off the pile of papers. 's.h.i.t.' He banged his forehead on the table, in time with the words: 's.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t, s.h.i.t...'

He was interrupted by the blaring tune from his mobile phone. Sighing, he pulled the thing out, and stuck it to his ear. 'Logan,' he said, without enthusiasm.

'DS McRae? This is Alice Kelly, we met yesterday? At the safe house? We were looking after Mr Philips?'

Logan had the sudden image of a frumpy, plainclothes policewoman with too many rings. 'h.e.l.lo...' He stopped and sat up. 'What do you mean: you "were" looking after him? Where is he?'

'Ah, yes. You see that's the thing.' Embarra.s.sed pause. 'DC Harris went out to the shops for a pint of milk and some crisps while I was in the shower-'

'Don't tell me you've lost him!'

'We didn't really lose him. I'm sure he's just gone out for a walk. He'll be back as soon as it gets dark...'

Logan looked at his watch. It was three-thirty. It was already dark. 'Have you looked for him?'

'DC Harris's out there now. I'm staying here, in case he comes back.'

Logan banged his head off the table again.

'h.e.l.lo? h.e.l.lo? Is something wrong?'

'He's not coming back.' The words came out through gritted teeth. 'Have you told Control he's missing?'

Another embarra.s.sed pause.

'Oh for G.o.d's sake,' said Logan. 'I'll let them know.'

'What do you want me to do?'

Logan was a gentleman and didn't tell her.

Ten minutes later every patrol car in Aberdeen knew to keep an eye out for Roadkill wandering the streets. Not that Logan needed psychic powers to know where he would be going. He'd be making for the farm and its buildings full of dead things.

It was a fair walk to Cults from Summerhill, especially in the driving snow, but Roadkill was used to long walks. Pushing his own portable morgue along the highways and byways of the city. Collecting dead animals along the way.

But Bernard Duncan Philips didn't get that far. He was found three and a half hours later, lying in a pool of slowly freezing blood, in Hazlehead Woods.

The woods were fairytale black and white, old twisted trees frosted with ice, blanketed in snow. A single-track road twisted its way through the centre of the park and Logan crept his pool car along it, keeping the speed down trying to keep the thing from sliding off the road and into a tree.

A mile and a half into the woods there was a rough car park, no tarmac, just dirt compacted over years and years of use, hidden beneath the snow. A single, large beech tree sat in the middle, bedecked in winter and surrounded by policemen milling about with no real obvious purpose, breath pluming out into the bitter air. Freezing their nuts off.

Logan pulled up next to the grubby IB van, killed the engine and clambered out into the slippery, hard-packed snow. The cold air was like a slap in the face. He shivered his way to the crime scene tent, hoping to G.o.d it would be warmer inside. It wasn't. Blood was spattered out from the middle of the tent, where a big pool of dark red was thickening with ice crystals, making the surface glitter. There were footprints everywhere and a man-shaped depression, straddling the pool of blood. Roadkill had been lying on his side. Bleeding his life out into the snow.

Logan grabbed the photographer. It was Billy: the balding AFC fan who'd taken photos at the tip. He was still wearing the same red-and-white bobble hat.

'Where's the body?'

'A&E.'

'What?'

'He's no' dead.' The photographer looked down at the crimson stain and then at Logan. 'No' yet anyway.'

Which was how Logan ended up back at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for the second time that day. Bernard Duncan Philips had been admitted with a fractured skull, broken ribs, broken arms, one broken leg, fractured fingers and internal injuries consistent with someone repeatedly stamping on his stomach. He'd been taken straight into surgery, but the mob had done a thorough job this time. Roadkill wasn't expected to survive.

Logan waited at the hospital, because there wasn't really anywhere else for him to go. He wasn't going to go back to FHQ and wait for his suspension to become official. At least if he was out here, with his phone switched off, he could pretend it wasn't going to happen.

Four hours later a serious-looking nurse appeared and escorted Logan through the maze of corridors to intensive care. The doctor who'd dealt with Desperate Doug was standing at Roadkill's bed, reading a chart.

'How is he?'

The doctor looked up from his clipboard. 'You back again?'

Logan looked at the battered, bandaged figure. 'Is it as bad as it looks?'

'Well...' There was a sigh. 'He's suffered some brain damage. We won't know how much for a while yet. He's stable for now.'

They stood watching Roadkill's shallow breaths.

'Is there any chance?'

The doctor shrugged. 'I think we caught the internal bleeding in time. I can tell you one thing for sure though: he's not going to have any more children. Both t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es ruptured. But he'll live.'

Logan winced. 'What about the man I came in with earlier? Mr MacDuff?'

'Not good.' He shook his head. 'Not good at all.'

'Is he going to be OK?'

'I'm afraid I can't discuss that. Patient confidentiality. You'd have to ask Mr MacDuff.'

'OK I'll do that.'

The doctor shook his head again. 'Not tonight. He's an old man; he's been through a lot today. It's nearly midnight. Let him sleep.' He raised sad eyes to Logan's face. 'Trust me: he's not going anywhere.'

Outside, the snow had stopped and the sky was clearing: a bowl of inky-black, the stars blurred by the city's lights. Logan walked out of A&E and into the icy night.

An ambulance carefully pulled up to the entrance, its lights flashing away.

Turning his back on the scene, Logan climbed into his pool car, his breath instantly fogging up the windscreen, dug out his mobile phone and switched it back on. Might as well face the music, now that it was too late for anyone to be calling him.

He had five messages. Four of them were from Colin Miller, desperate to know what had happened to Roadkill. But one was from WPC Jackie Watson asking if he didn't have anything better to do that is, if he would, but it was OK if he didn't, like to maybe go see a film, or maybe not a film, maybe just have a drink, because it had been a rough day... And if he did want to, you know, do something, then he could maybe give her a call back? The message was left at eight. Right about when Logan was sitting down to wait for Roadkill to come out of surgery.

He stabbed her number into the phone. It was late: after midnight, but maybe not too late...

It rang and rang and rang. At last a tinny, metallic voice told him that the number he had called was not available, please try again later.

For the second time that day he punctuated a list of obscenities by banging his head on something. The steering wheel made little boinging noises as he bounced his forehead against the plastic.

It had not been a good day.

When the windscreen finally cleared Logan revved the engine, spinning the car out of the hospital car park in a foul mood. With his teeth gritted he slammed on the brakes as the car sailed up to the junction, taking grim pleasure as the car's back end decided it wanted to overtake the front. He floored the accelerator and steered into the skid, whipping the car back in line as it drifted round the corner and on to the main road. There was a truck stopped at the lights up ahead and Logan had the sudden desire to put his foot down and plough right into the back of it.

But he didn't. Instead he swore quietly to himself and slowed the car down to a crawl.

The sound of his mobile screeching in his jacket pocket made him jump. It was Jackie, WPC Watson calling back! Grinning, he scrabbled the phone out and up to his ear. 'h.e.l.lo?' he said, sounding as upbeat as he could.

'Laz? That you?' It was Colin Miller. 'Laz, I've been trying to get hold of ye for hours, man!'

Logan sat with the phone against his ear, watching the traffic lights change from red to amber. 'I know. I got your messages.'

'They beat the s.h.i.t out of Roadkill. Did you hear? What happened? Spill the beans!'

Logan said no.

'What? Come on, Laz, I thought you and me was friends here?'

Logan scowled out at the cold, empty night. 'After what you did? You're no b.l.o.o.d.y friend of mine!'

There was a stunned silence.