Cold Granite (3 page)

I've got a command meeting from eight fifteen til eleven-thirty, so you'l have to give me the details when I get back.'

Logan looked at the door and then back again.

'Something on your mind, Sergeant?'

Logan lied and said no.

'Good. Given your little trip to A&E last night, I'm making WPC Watson your guardian angel. She'l be coming back in at ten. Do not let me catch you without her. This is not negotiable.'

'Yes, sir.' Great, he was getting a babysitter.

'Now get going.'

Logan was almost out the door before Insch added: 'And try not to piss Watson off. They don't cal her "Bal Breaker" for nothing.'

Grampian Police HQ was big enough to boast its own morgue, situated in the basement, just far enough from the staff canteen not to put people off their soup. It was a large, white, spotless room, with chil er cabinets for bodies along one wal , the floor tiles squeaky under Logan's shoes as he pushed through the double doors. An antiseptic reek fil ed the cold room, almost masking the odour of death. It was a strange mix of smel s. A fragrance Logan had grown to associate with the woman standing on her own by a dissecting table.

Dr Isobel MacAlister was dressed in her cutting gear: pastel-green surgeon's robes and a red rubber apron over the top, her short hair hidden beneath a surgical cap. She wasn't wearing a scrap of make-up, in case it contaminated the body, and as she looked up to see who was squeaking across her nice clean morgue Logan saw her eyes widen.

He stopped and tried a smile. 'Hi.'

She raised a hand and almost waved. 'Hel o Her eyes darted back to the little naked body stretched out on the dissecting table. Three-year-old David Reid. 'We've not started yet.

Are you attending?'

Logan nodded and cleared his throat. 'I meant to ask you last night,' he said. 'How have you been?'

She didn't meet his eyes, just re-ordered the gleaming row of surgical instruments on their tray. The stainless steel flashing in the overhead lights. 'Oh...' she sighed and shrugged.

'You know.' Her hands came to rest on a scalpel, the shiny metal contrasting with her matt latex gloves. 'How about you?'

Logan shrugged too. 'Much the same.'

The silence was excruciating.

'Isobel, I...'

The double doors opened again and in rushed Isobel's assistant Brian, trailing the deputy pathologist and Procurator Fiscal behind him. 'Sorry we're late. You know what these fatal accident enquiries are like, so much paperwork!' said Brian, brushing his floppy hair out of his eyes. He flashed an ingratiating smile at Logan. 'Hel o, Sergeant, nice to see you again!' He stopped and shook Logan's hand before scurrying off to strap on a red rubber apron of his own.

The deputy pathologist and the PF acknowledged Logan with a nod, apologized to Isobel and settled down to watch her work. Isobel would be the one doing al the cutting; the other pathologist, an overweight man in his early fifties with a bald head and hairy ears, was only here to make sure Isobel's findings were correct, as required by Scottish law. Not that he would have dared say anything to her face. And anyway, she was always right.

'Wel ,' said Isobel, 'we'd better get started.' She pul ed on her headset, checked the microphone and whisked through the preliminaries.

As Logan watched, she slowly picked her way over David Reid's remains. Three months in a ditch, covered with an old sheet of chipboard, had turned his skin almost black. His whole body was swol en like a bal oon as decomposition worked its corpulent magic. Little patches of white speckled the bloated skin like freckles where fungal growths had taken hold. The smel was bad, but Logan knew it was going to get a lot worse.

A smal stainless steel tray sat next to the tiny body and Isobel dropped any debris she found into it. Blades of grass, bits of moss, scraps of paper. Anything the corpse had picked up since death. Maybe something that would help them identify David Reid's kil er.

'Oh ho...' said Isobel, peering into the dead child's frozen scream. 'Looks like we have an insect guest.' Gently, she delved between David's teeth with a pair of tweezers and for a horrible moment Logan thought she was going to pul out a Death's Head Moth. But the tweezers emerged clutching a wriggling woodlouse.

Isobel held the slate-grey bug up to the light, watching its legs thrashing in the air.

'Probably crawled in there looking for a bite to eat,' she said. 'Don't suppose it'l tel us anything, but better safe than sorry.' She dropped the insect into a smal phial of preserving fluid.

Logan stood in silence, watching the woodlouse slowly drown.

An hour and a half later they were standing at the coffee machine on the ground floor, while Isobel's floppy-haired assistant stitched David Reid back together.

Logan was feeling distinctly unwel . Watching an ex-girlfriend turn a three-year-old child inside out on a dissecting table wasn't something he'd ever done before. The thought of those hands, so calm and efficient, cutting, extracting and measuring...Handing Brian little plastic phials with chunks and slices of internal organs to bag and tag...He shuddered and Isobel stopped talking to ask if he was al right.

'Just a bit of a cold.' He forced a smile. 'You were saying?'

'Death was caused by ligature strangulation. Something thin and smooth, like an electrical cable. There's extensive bruising to the back, between the shoulders, and lacerations to the forehead, nose and cheeks. I'd say your attacker forced the child to the ground and knelt on his back while he strangled him.' Her voice was businesslike, as if cutting up children was something she did every day. For the first time, Logan realized that it probably was. 'There wasn't any evidence of seminal fluid, but after al this time...' she shrugged. 'However, the tearing of the anus is indicative of penetration.'

Logan grimaced and poured his plastic cup of hot brown liquid into the bin.

She frowned at him. 'If it's any consolation the damage was post mortem. The child was dead when it happened.'

'Any chance of DNA?'

'Unlikely. The internal damage isn't consistent with something flexible. I'd say it's more likely to be a foreign object than the attacker's penis. Maybe a broom handle?'

Logan closed his eyes and swore. Isobel just shrugged.

'Sorry,' she said. 'David's genitals were removed by what looks like a pair of secateurs, curved blade, some time after death. Long enough for the blood to have clotted. Probably long enough for rigor mortis to have set in.'

They stood in silence for a moment, not looking at each other.

Isobel twisted her empty plastic cup round in her hands. 'I...I'm sorry...' She stopped and twisted the cup back the other way.

Logan nodded. 'Me too,' he said and walked away.

4

WPC Watson was waiting for him at the front desk. She was muffled up to the ears in a heavy black police-issue jacket, the waterproof fabric slick and glistening with raindrops. Her hair was tucked into a tight bun under her peaked cap; her nose was Belisha-beacon red.

She smiled at him as he approached, hands in pockets, mind on the post mortem.

'Morning, sir. How's the stomach?'

Logan forced a smile, his nostrils stil ful of dead child. 'Not bad. You?'

She shrugged. 'Glad to be back on days again.' She looked around the empty reception area. 'So what's the plan?'

Logan checked his watch. It was going on for ten. An hour and a half to kil before Insch got out of his meeting.

'Fancy a trip?'

They signed for a CID pool car. WPC Watson drove the rusty blue Vauxhal while Logan sat in the passenger seat, looking out at the downpour. They had just enough time to nip across town to the Bridge of Don, where the search teams would be trudging through the rain and mud, looking for evidence that probably wasn't even there.

A bendy bus rumbled across the road in front of them, sending up a flurry of spray, adverts for Christmas shopping in the west end of town splattered al over it.

Watson had the wipers going ful tilt, the wheek-whonk of rubber on the windscreen sounding over the roar of the blowers. Neither of them had said a word since they'd left Force HQ.

'I told the desk sergeant to let Charles Reid off with a warning,' Logan said at last.

WPC Watson nodded. 'Thought you would.' She slid the car out into the junction behind an expensive-looking four-by-four.

'It wasn't real y his fault.'

Watson shrugged. 'Not my cal , sir. You're the one he nearly kil ed.'

The four-wheel-drive, al -terrain vehicle - which probably never had to deal with anything more off road than the potholes in Holburn Street - suddenly decided to indicate right, stopping dead in the middle of the junction. Watson swore and tried to find a space in the stream of traffic flowing past on the inside.

'Bloody male drivers,' she muttered before remembering Logan was in the car. 'Sorry sir.'

'Don't worry about it...' He drifted back into silence, thinking about Charles Reid and the trip to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary last night. It hadn't real y been Charles Reid's fault. Someone phones your daughter up and asks how she feels about her three-year-old son's murdered body turning up in a ditch. Not surprising he took a swing at the first target that presented itself.

Whoever sold the story to the P&J: they were to blame.

'Change of plan,' he said. 'Let's see if we can't find ourselves a slimy journalist.'

'THE P RESS A ND J OURNAL. L OCAL N EWS S INCE 1748'. That's what it said at the top of every edition. But the building the paper shared with its sister publication, the Evening Express, looked a lot less venerable. It was a low, two-storey concrete-and-glass monstrosity just off the Lang Stracht, squatting behind a high, chainlink fence like a sulking Rottweiler. There being no access from the main road, WPC Watson drove them in through a tatty-looking industrial estate consisting of crowded car showrooms and double parking. The security guard took one look at Watson's uniform and raised the barrier, smiling a gap-toothed smile as he waved them through.

'ABERDEEN J OURNALS L TD' was written in gold lettering on polished granite next to the reception's revolving door, right above a brass plaque proclaiming the paper's history. 'F

OUNDED B Y J AMES C HALMERS I N 1748...' blah blah blah. Logan didn't bother to read the rest.

The pale lilac wal s of the reception area were bare. Only a carved wooden plaque, commemorating the paper's employees lost in World War Two, broke the monotony. Logan had been expecting something a bit more newspaper-ish: framed front pages, awards, photographs of the journalists. Instead it looked as if the paper had only just moved in and hadn't got around to decorating yet.

Weedy pot plants sat on the violently-coloured floor: big linoleum squares of bright blue fake marble, set in a gold-and-pink grid.

The receptionist didn't look much better: pink eyes, lank blonde hair. She reeked of mentholated cough sweets. Peering blearily up at them, she honked her nose on a scabby hanky.

'Welcome to Aberdeen Journals,' she said with zero enthusiasm. 'How can I be of assistance?'

Logan dragged out his warrant card and held it under her runny nose. 'Detective Sergeant McRae. I'd like to speak to whoever phoned the home of Alice Reid last night.'

The receptionist looked at his identification, looked at him, looked at WPC Watson and sighed. 'No idea.' She paused for a sniff. 'I'm only here Mondays and Wednesdays.'

'Wel , who would know?'

The receptionist just shrugged and sniffed again.

WPC Watson dug a copy of the morning's paper out of a display rack and slapped it down on the reception desk. 'MURDERED T ODDLER F OUND!' She stabbed her finger at the words: 'B Y C OLIN M ILLER'.

'How about him?' she asked.

The receptionist took the paper and squinted her puffy eyes at the by-line. Her face suddenly turned down at the edges. 'Oh...him.'

Scowling, she jabbed at the switchboard. A woman's voice boomed out of her speakerphone: 'Aye?' and she grabbed the phone from its cradle. Her accent suddenly switched from bunged-up polite to bunged-up broad Aberdonian.

'Lesley? Aye, it's Sharon...Lesley, is God's Gift in?' Pause. 'Aye, it's the police...I dinna ken, hang oan.'

She stuck a hand over the mouthpiece and looked up, hopefully, at Logan. 'Are you going to arrest him?' she asked, al polite again.

Logan opened his mouth and shut it again. 'We just want to ask him a couple of questions,' he said at last.

'Oh.' Sharon looked crestfal en. 'No,' she said into the phone again. 'The wee shite's no gettin' banged up.' She nodded a couple of times then grinned broadly. 'I'l ask.' She fluttered her eyelashes and pouted at Logan, doing her best to look seductive. It was an uphil struggle with a flaky red nose, but she did her best. 'If you're not going to arrest him, any chance of a little police brutality?'

WPC Watson winked conspiratorial y. 'See what we can do. Where is he?'

The receptionist pointed at a security door off to the left. 'Don't be afraid to cripple him.' She grinned and buzzed them through.

The newsroom was like a carpeted warehouse, al open plan and suspended ceiling tiles.

There must have been a couple of hundred desks in here, al clumped together in little cliques: News Desk, Features, Editorial, Page Layout...The wal s were the same pale lilac as reception and just as bare. There weren't any partitions and the desktops spil ed into one another. Piles of paper, yel ow Post-its and scribbled notes oozing from one desk to the next like a slow-motion avalanche.

Computer monitors flickered beneath the overhead lighting, their owners hunched over keyboards, turning out tomorrow's news. Apart from the ever-present hum of the computers and the whirr of the photocopier it was eerily quiet.

Logan grabbed the first person he could find: an older man in saggy brown corduroy trousers and a stained cream shirt. He was wearing a tie that sported at least three of the things he'd had for breakfast. The top of his head had said goodbye to his hair long ago, but a trapdoor of thin strands was stretched over the shiny expanse. He wasn't kidding anyone but himself.