Inspector Insch stood up on the other side of the bed and pulled out his warrant card. 'You see this?' he said, holding it under her nose. 'It says "Detective Inspector". That means I expect you to behave like a grown up and not take whatever your problem is out on my officers. OK?'

She glowered at him, but didn't say anything. Slowly her face softened. 'Sorry,' she said at last. 'It's been a long, s.h.i.tty day.'

Insch nodded. 'If it's any consolation I know how you feel.' He stepped back and pointed at Roadkill's pincushion corpse. 'Care to hazard a guess at the time of death?'

'Easy: some time between quarter to nine and quarter past ten.'

Insch was impressed. 'Not often we get an estimated time of death within ninety minutes.'

The doctor actually smiled at him. 'That's when the last shift was through. The beds get checked regularly. He wasn't dead at quarter to nine. Quarter past ten, he was.'

DI Insch thanked her and she was about to say something else when the pager at her hip let out a series of bleeps. She grabbed it, read the message, cursed, apologized, and ran from the room.

Logan stared down at the b.l.o.o.d.y remains of Bernard Duncan Philips and tried to figure out what was nagging him about all this. And then it hit him. 'Lumley,' he said.

'What?' Insch looked at him as if he'd grown an extra head.

'Peter Lumley's stepdad. Remember him? He walks round this area of town the whole time. Last time I saw him he was walking away from the hospital. He blamed Roadkill for his son's death.'

'So?'

Logan gazed down at the blood-soaked body lying on the bed. 'Looks like he's got his own back.'

33.

Hazlehead was dark and cold as midnight rolled in. The snow was lying thicker here than it had been in the middle of town, the trees standing out like Rorschach inkblot tests. Streetlights cast yellow pools of light, the flickering blue flash of patrol car lights making dark shadows dance. Most of the tower block was shrouded in darkness, but here and there a twitching curtain showed a neighbour peering out, trying to see what the police wanted.

The police wanted Jim Lumley.

The Lumley's flat looked nothing like it had the last time Logan had been here. It was a pigsty. Discarded carryout containers lay in piles on the carpet, joined by empty tins of Special and cheap lager. All the photos had been taken down from the rest of the flat and put back up again in the lounge: one big montage of Peter Lumley's life.

Jim Lumley hadn't put up any sort of struggle when Insch rang the doorbell and barged his way in, dragging Logan and a couple of uniformed PCs with him. He'd just stood there in his filthy overalls, unshaven and rumpled, his hair sticking out like an electrocuted hedgehog. 'If you're looking for Sheila, she's not here,' he said and collapsed onto the couch. 'Went two days ago. Staying with her mother...' He pulled a tin of Special free of its plastic handcuff and cracked it open.

'We're not here to see Sheila, Mr Lumley,' said Insch. 'We're here for you.'

The ragged man nodded and took another swig. 'Roadkill.' He didn't bother to wipe away the beer dripping down his stubbly chin.

'Yes, Roadkill.' Logan settled down on the other end of the settee. 'He's dead.'

Jim Lumley nodded slowly and then stared hard at his tin of beer.

'Want to tell us all about it, Mr Lumley?'

Lumley threw his head back and drained the tin, froth spilling down the sides of his mouth and onto the front of his grubby overalls. 'Not much to tell...' he said, shrugging. 'I was walking around, looking for Peter and there he was. Just like his picture in the paper. Right there.' He pulled another tin of Special free, but Insch liberated it before he could pop the top.

The inspector told the two uniforms to search the place for the murder weapon.

Lumley picked a cushion off the couch and clutched it to his chest like a hot water bottle. 'So I follows him. Into the woods.'

'Into the woods?' This wasn't quite what Logan had been expecting, but Insch cast him a warning glance before he could say anything more.

'He was just walking along like nothing had happened. Like Peter wasn't dead!' Lumley's face flushed red, the crimson rising from the dirty neck of his overalls. 'I grabbed him ... I ... I was only going to talk to him. Tell him what I thought of him...' He bit his lip and stared down at the st.i.tching holding his cushion together. 'He started to yell and I hit him. Just to shut him up. Make him stop. Only I couldn't. Stop. Just kept on hitting and hitting and hitting...'

Jesus, thought Logan, and we'd thought he'd been attacked by a mob. It was only one man!

'And then ... then it started to snow again. It was cold. I washed the blood off my hands and face with handfuls of snow and then I went home.' He shrugged. 'Told Sheila what happened and she packed her bags and left.' A tear ran down his cheek, leaving a thin trail of clean skin behind. He sniffed and tried to take another drink out of his empty beer can. 'I'm a monster ... just like him...' He looked into the empty tin and saw only darkness. 'So he's dead, eh?' Lumley crushed the can in his fist.

Insch and Logan shared a frown. 'Of course he's b.l.o.o.d.y dead,' said Insch. 'Someone turned him into a sieve.'

A bitter smile twisted Lumley's tear-streaked face. 'Good f.u.c.kin' riddance.'

Outside, tiny flakes of delicate white drifted out of the dark orange sky. Grey clouds lit from below by the city streetlights. Logan and Insch watched Jim Lumley being bundled into the back of a patrol car and driven away.

'Well,' said the inspector, his breath pluming out in great clouds of white. 'Wrong man, right reason. Fifty, fifty.' He pointed the open end of a packet of fizzy cola bottles at Logan. 'No? Ah well.' Insch helped himself to a handful, popping them into his mouth one at a time as they walked back to his mud-splattered Range Rover.

'You think they'll do him?' asked Logan as Insch started the car up and set the heaters going full pelt.

'Aye. Probably. Shame he didn't do the stabbing though. Would've been nice and neat.'

'Back to the hospital?' asked Logan.

'Hospital?' Insch checked the clock on the dashboard. 'It's nearly one in the morning! She'll string me up.' The inspector's wife was not known for her generous nature when it came to late nights. 'I've got uniforms taking statements. We'll go through them in the morning. Half the place is asleep anyway.'

Insch dropped him off at his flat, and Logan watched the car scrunch its way carefully down the street and away before letting himself in. The little red light was flashing away on his answering machine. For a brief second, Logan thought it might be WPC Jackie Watson, but when he pressed play it was Miller's voice that crackled out of the speakers. He'd heard about Roadkill being stabbed and wanted an exclusive update.

Grunting, Logan hit 'DELETE' and slumped off to bed.

Wednesday started as it meant to go on. Just out of the shower, Logan was too slow to get the phone before the answering machine kicked in. Another call from Miller wanting Logan to spill the beans. Logan didn't bother picking up; just let the reporter prattle away to himself as he went through to the kitchen to fix himself some tea and toast.

On the way out of the flat he paused for just long enough to delete Miller's message without listening to it. He doubted it would be the last call he'd get from the reporter today.

The morning briefing was a subdued affair, with DI Insch doing a lot of yawning as he took everyone through the events of last night, both at the hospital and in interview room number three. The order of the day was going to be door-to-door. Again.

Logan hung back at the end of the briefing, sharing a smile with WPC Watson as she filed out to start questioning doctors, nurses and patients. He still owed her a pint.

Insch was parked in his usual spot, on the edge of the desk, one haunch up on the wood while he rummaged through his suit pockets for something sweet. 'Sure I had some fruit pastilles...' he muttered as Logan came up and asked him what the plan was for the morning. Coming up empty on the confectionery front, he asked Logan to get Cameron Anderson into an interview room on his own. 'You know the drill,' he said. 'Nice burly PC standing in the corner glowering at him for a bit. That'll make his sphincter clench.'

By the time nine o'clock came around Cameron Anderson had been sitting in a baking-hot interview room, with a hostile-looking PC for nearly an hour and, as Inch had predicted, he was squirming.

'Mr Anderson,' said Insch with zero warmth as they finally sat down to begin the interview. 'How nice of you to take time out of your busy, busy schedule!' Cameron looked terrified and exhausted, as if he'd been up all night crying.

'I take it,' said Insch, helping himself to a fruit sherbet, 'that you've concocted some other miraculous interpretation for the evening's events? Perhaps aliens did it?'

Cameron's hands trembled on the tabletop. His voice was thin and quiet, shaking like his hands. 'Geordie and me never met until I was ten. His mum went down with breast cancer, so he came to live with us. He was bigger than me...' Cameron's voice dropped so low that Logan had to ask him to speak up for the tape. 'He did things. He...' A single tear ran down his cheek. Cameron bit his lip and told them about his brother.

Geordie had come up from Edinburgh three weeks earlier. He was doing some business for his boss. Something to do with getting planning permission. He was spending money like it was going out of fashion. Gambling mostly. Only he wasn't winning. Then the thing with the planner didn't work. He'd spent all the bribe money by then anyway. So he tried threats. And then he had to get out of town quick.

'He pushed the planner under a bus,' said Insch. 'He's in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary with a shattered skull and pelvis. He's going to die.'

Cameron didn't look up, just went on with his story. 'A week later Geordie comes back. Said his employer wanted to know what had happened to all the money. He didn't have it and there were people from the bookies coming round to my flat. They took Geordie away. When he came back the next day he was peeing blood.' He shuddered, his eyes glistening. 'But Geordie had a plan. He said someone was looking for something special. Something he could get his hands on.'

Logan scooted forward in his chair. That was what Miller had said. That someone was after 'livestock'.

'I didn't see him again for a couple of days. He had this big suitcase with him and there was this girl inside. She was drugged. He ... he said she was the answer to all our troubles. He was going to sell her to this man and get enough to pay off the bookies and give his boss the bribe money back. No one was going to miss her.'

'What was her name?' asked Logan, his voice cold in the oppressive heat of the room.

Cameron shrugged, the tears beginning to well up over his bottom lid, a small sparkling drip forming at the end of his nose. 'I ... I don't know. She was foreign. From somewhere Russian I think. Her mother was a tart in Edinburgh, brought over special. Only she died of an overdose. So the kid was, you know, going spare...' He sniffed. 'Geordie bagged her up before anyone else came to claim her.'

'So you and your brother were going to sell a four-year-old girl to some sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d?' The menace in Insch's voice wasn't very well concealed. Colour had risen up the fat man's cheeks and his eyes sparked like black diamonds.

'I had nothing to do with it! It was him! It was always him...'

Insch glowered, but said nothing more.

'She couldn't speak any English, so he taught her to say things. You know,' he buried his head in his trembling hands, 'dirty things. She didn't know what they meant.'

'And so you abused her. You taught her to say: "f.u.c.k me in the a.s.s" and then you made her do it.'

'No! No! We couldn't...' A blush raced over his face. 'Geordie said she had to be, you know, still a virgin.'

Logan's face creased up in disgust. 'So you made her suck your d.i.c.k?'

'It was Geordie's idea! He made me do it!' The tears spilled down Cameron's face. 'Only once. I only did it once. When the old man came round. He was beating up Geordie and I tried to stop him. Then the girl came in and she's saying these things Geordie taught her. And she grabs the old man and he pushes her away and she falls and hits her head and she's dead.' He looked imploringly into Insch's cold eyes. 'He told me he was going to kill Geordie, then he was coming back for me!' Cameron rubbed the back of his sleeve over his eyes, wiping away the tears. But more sprang up in their place. 'I had to get rid of her! She was lying on the fireplace and she was naked and dead. I tried to cut her up, but I couldn't. It was... it was...' he shuddered and wiped at his eyes again. 'So I wrapped her up in tape. I ... poured bleach in her mouth to ... you know ... make it clean again.'

'Then you had to find a bin-bag to put her in.'

Cameron nodded and a sparkling drop fell from his nose, splashing onto the tabletop between his trembling hands.

'And then you threw her out with the trash.'

'Yes ... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...'

After his statement, after Cameron Anderson had admitted s.e.xually abusing a four-year-old girl, they put him back into his cell and arranged for him to appear in the Sheriff Court the next day. There wasn't any celebration. Somehow, after Cameron's confession, no one was in the mood.

Back in the incident room Logan sighed and unpinned the little girl's photo from the wall, feeling hollow inside. Catching the man who had abused her and disposed of her body as if it was nothing more than household rubbish, had left him feeling dirty by a.s.sociation. Ashamed to be human.

Insch settled himself down on the edge of the table and helped Logan stack up the statements. 'Wonder if we'll ever know who she was?'

Logan scrubbed at his face with his hands, feeling the first rasp of stubble under his fingers. 'I doubt it,' he said.

'Anyway,' Insch dumped the statements into the case file and gave an expansive yawn, 'we've still got enough on our plate to worry about.'

Roadkill.

This time they took one of the pool cars to the hospital, WPC Watson driving.

Aberdeen Royal Infirmary was a lot busier than it had been the night before. They arrived just in time to see lunch getting served: something boiled with boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage.

'Remind me to go private,' said Insch as they pa.s.sed a housekeeper trundling a steaming trolley that reeked of cabbage.

They gathered all the PCs who'd been questioning the patients and staff together in an empty day room to get their updates. There wasn't much worth listening to, but they went through them all anyway, thanking the uniformed officers for their work. No one had seen, or heard anything. They'd even been through the security tapes: no blood-soaked figures running off into the night.

The inspector gave something like a rousing speech, and sent them all back to work. That left only Logan and Watson. 'You two better go make yourselves useful too,' said Insch, beginning the familiar hunt through his suit. 'I'm off to speak to that doctor we saw last night.' He ambled off, still hunting for the elusive confectionery.

'So,' said WPC Watson, trying to sound efficient. 'Where do you want to start?'

Logan thought about her legs, poking out from beneath his T-shirt in the kitchen. 'Er...' he said, deciding that now was neither the time nor the place. 'How about we go take a look at those security tapes. See if there's anything that's been missed.'

'You're the boss,' she said and threw in a jaunty little salute.

Logan tried to keep his mind on work as they walked through the hospital, making for the security guard's station. But it wasn't working. 'You know,' he finally mustered the courage to say as they reached the lift. 'I still owe you a pint from last night.'

Watson nodded. 'I hadn't forgotten, sir.'

'Good.' He punched the lift b.u.t.ton and tried to look casual, resting against the railing that ran round the inside of the elevator. 'How about tonight?'

'Tonight?'

Logan felt the colour starting to rise into his cheeks. 'If you're busy it's OK. You know, some other night...' Idiot.

The lift shuddered to a halt and WPC Watson smiled at him. 'Tonight would be good.'

Logan was too happy to say anything else until they got to the security room. It was compact: a long black desk with a wall of little television screens above it. A bank of video recorders whirled away, taping everything that went on. And in the middle of all this sat a youngish man with bleached-blond hair and spots dressed in standard security-guard brown with yellow tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs and a peaked cap. Looking like a jobbie in a hat.

He explained that there were no security cameras watching the room where the murder took place, but they did have them in all the main corridors, A&E, and all the exits. Some of the wards had them too, but there were 'issues' with videoing sick people getting medical attention. Privacy and stuff.

There was a pile of tapes from the previous night. The search team had already been through them, but if Logan wanted to have another pa.s.s it was OK by him.

That was when Logan's mobile phone went off, the sound loud and intrusive in the small room.

'You know,' said the guard sternly, 'mobile phones have to be switched off!'

Logan apologized, but this would only take a minute.

It was Miller again. 'Laz! Beginning to think you'd fallen off the a.r.s.e of the earth, man.'

'I'm kind of busy right now,' said Logan, turning his back on the spotty youth with the t.u.r.d-brown uniform. 'Is it urgent?'

'Kinda depends on what your point of view is. You anywhere near a telly?'