Cold Granite (5 page)

WPC Watson said something, but Logan was too busy thinking about the Mastrick Monster to pick anything up. From her expression, he got the feeling he'd just been asked a question. 'Hmmm...' he said, stal ing for time. 'In what way?' It was a standard fal -back.

WPC Watson frowned. 'Wel , I mean, what did the doctor say last night? At A&-E?'

Logan grunted and dug a plastic bottle out of his inside jacket pocket, rattling it. 'One every four hours, preferably after meals. Not to be taken with alcohol.' He'd already had three that morning.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

Two minutes later they were pul ing into the multi-storey car park at the back of Force Headquarters, making for the section reserved for patrol and CID pool cars. Command officers and senior staff got to use the car park. Everyone else had to make do with what they could get, usual y abandoning their cars on the Beach Boulevard, a five-minute walk from the station. It paid to be an Assistant Chief Constable when it was pissing with rain.

They found Detective Inspector Insch perched on the edge of a desk in the incident room, swinging one large leg back and forth, listening to a PC carrying a clipboard. The news from the search teams wasn't good. It was too long since the body had been dumped. The weather conditions were terrible. If, by some miracle, any forensic evidence had managed to survive the last three months it would have washed away in the last six hours. DI Insch didn't say a word as the constable went through his list of negative results, just sat there, munching his way through a packet of fizzy cola bottles.

The PC finished his report and waited expectantly for DI Insch to stop chewing and say something.

'Tel the teams to keep going for another hour. If we've not found anything by then we're cal ing it a day.' The inspector proffered the almost-empty bag of sweets and the PC took one, popping it into his mouth with obvious delight. 'No one can say we've not taken the search seriously.'

'Yes, sir,' he mumbled, stil eating.

DI Insch dismissed the munching constable and beckoned Logan and WPC Watson over.

'Post mortem,' he said without preamble, listening to Logan's account of the desecration of David Reid's body in the exact same way he'd listened to the search team progress reports.

Silent. Impassive. Stuffing his face. He finished off the cola bottles and brought out a packet of wine gums.

'Wonderful,' he said when Logan had finished. 'So we've got a paedophile serial kil er running around Aberdeen.'

'Not necessarily,' said Watson, accepting a little orange lozenge with 'Sherry' embossed on the top. 'There's only one body, not a series, and the kil er may not even be local...'

Insch merely shook his head.

Logan took a 'Port'.'The body lay undisturbed for three months. The kil er even went back, long after rigor mortis had set in, and took a souvenir. He had to know his hiding place was safe. That screams "local". The fact that he came back and took a bit of the body means this is something special to him. Your man's not done this on a whim: he's been thinking about it for a long time. This is some sort of ritual fantasy he's acting out. He's going to do it again. If he hasn't already.'

Insch agreed. 'I want al missing child reports for the last year pul ed. Get the list up on the wal over there. Chances are some of them may have crossed this sick bastard's path.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Oh and, Logan,' said the DI, careful y folding the wine gum packet shut and stuffing it back in his pocket. 'I had a cal from the Journal. They tel me you've been up there leaning on their new golden boy.'

Logan nodded. 'Colin Mil er: used to work on the Scottish Sun. He's the one that--'

'Did I ask you to go antagonizing the newspapers, Sergeant?'

Logan's mouth snapped shut. Pause. 'No, sir. We were in the neighbourhood and I thought--'

'Sergeant,' said DI Insch, slowly and deliberately. 'I'm glad you're thinking. That's a good sign. Something I encourage in my officers.' There was a big 'but' coming: Logan could feel it.

'But I don't expect them to go off and annoy the local press without permission. We're going to have to put out appeals to the public. We're going to have to do damage limitation if someone screws something up in the investigation. We're going to need these people on our side.'

'This morning you said--'

'This morning I said I'd nail whoever spoke to the press. And I wil . This is our screw-up, not the paper's. Understand?'

He'd screwed up. WPC Watson suddenly took a great deal of interest in her shoes as Logan said, 'Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.'

'OK.' Insch picked a sheet of paper off the desk and handed it to a suitably chastised Detective Sergeant McRae. 'The search teams haven't found a thing. Surprise, surprise. There's an underwater search unit doing the river, but the rain's made it almost impossible. The damn thing's already broken its banks in about a mil ion places. We're lucky the body was found at al .

Another couple of days and the river would've swamped the ditch and whoosh...' He swept his hand past, the fingertips sparkling with little grains of sugar from the cola bottles. 'David Reid's body would've been washed right out into the North Sea. Next stop Norway. We'd never have found it.'

Logan tapped the post mortem report against his teeth, his eyes focused on a spot just above DI Insch's bald head. 'Maybe it's too much of a coincidence?' he said, frowning. 'David Reid's been lying there for three months, but if no one finds him before the river bursts its banks, he's never going to be found.' His eyes drifted back to the inspector. 'He gets swept out to sea and the story never hits the papers. No publicity. The kil er can't read about his achievements. There's no feedback.'

Insch nodded. 'Good thinking. Get someone to drag the finder...' He checked his notes.

'Mr Duncan Nicholson. Get him in here and give him a proper gril ing, not the half-arsed one he got last night. If the man's got any skeletons in his closet I want to know about them.'

'I'l get an area car to--' was as far as Logan got before the door to the incident room burst open and a breathless PC screeched to a halt.

'Sir,' he said. 'Another kid's gone missing.'

6

Richard Erskine's mother was overweight, overwrought and not much more than a child herself. The lounge of her middle terrace house in Torry was packed with photos in little wooden frames, al showing the same thing: a grinning Richard Erskine. Five years old. Blond hair, squint teeth, dimpled cheeks, big glasses. The child's life was mapped out in the claustrophobic room, from birth right through to...Logan stopped that thought before it could go any further.

The mother's name was Elisabeth: twenty-one, pretty enough if you ignored the swol en eyes, streaked mascara and bright red nose. Her long black hair was scraped back from her round face and she paced the room with frantic energy, eating her fingernails until the quicks bled.

'He's got him, hasn't he?' she was saying, over and over again, her voice shril and panicky. 'He's got Richie! He's got him and he's kil ed him!'

Logan shook his head. 'Now we don't know that. Your son might just have forgotten the time.' He scanned the photograph-laden wal s again, trying to find one in which the child looked genuinely happy. 'How long has he been missing?'

She stopped pacing and stared at him. 'Three hours! I already told her that!' She flapped a chewed hand in WPC Watson's direction. 'He knows I worry about him! He wouldn't be late!

He wouldn't.' Her bottom lip trembled and tears started to wel up in her eyes again. 'Why aren't you out there finding him?'

'We've got patrol cars and officers out there right now looking for your son, Mrs Erskine.

Now I need you to tel me what happened this morning. When he went missing?'

Mrs Erskine wiped her eyes and nose on the back of her sleeve. 'He was supposed...supposed to come straight back from the shops. Some milk and a packet of chocolate biscuits...He was supposed to come straight back!'

She started to cross the lounge again, back and forth, back and forth.

'Which shops did he go to?'

'The ones on the other side of the school. It's not far! I don't normal y let him go on his own, but I had to stay in!' She sniffed. 'The man was coming to fix the washing machine. They wouldn't give me a time! Just some time in the morning. I never would have let him out on his own otherwise!' She bit down on her lip and the sobbing intensified. 'It's al my fault!'

'Have you got a friend or a neighbour who could stay with...'

Watson pointed at the kitchen. A used-looking older woman emerged carrying a tray of tea things: two mugs only. The police weren't expected to stay for tea, they were expected to get out there and start looking for the missing five-year-old.

'It's a disgrace, so it is,' said the older woman, putting the tea tray down on top of a pile of Cosmopolitans on the coffee table. 'Letting perverts like that run around! They should a' be in prison! It's no as if there's no one handy!' She was talking about Craiginches, the wal ed prison just around the corner from the house.

Elisabeth Erskine accepted a mug of milky tea from her friend, shaking so much that the hot liquid slopped over the edge. She watched the drops seep into the pale blue carpet.

'You, eh...' She stopped and sniffed. 'You don't have a cigarette on you, do you? I...I gave up when I got pregnant with Richie...'

'Sorry,' said Logan. 'I had to give up too.' He turned and picked the most recent-looking photo off the mantelpiece. A serious little boy, staring at the camera. 'Can we take this with us?'

She nodded and Logan handed it over to WPC Watson.

Five minutes later they were standing in the smal back garden, sheltering beneath a ridiculously little porch bolted on above the back door. The tiny square of grass was disappearing under a spreading network of puddles. About a dozen child's toys were scattered about the place, the bright plastic shapes washed clean by the downpour. On the other side of the fence more houses stared back at him, grey and damp.

Torry wasn't the worst bit of the city, but was in the top ten. This was where Aberdeen's fish processing factories were. Tons of white fish landed every week, al to be gutted and fil eted by hand. Good money if you could handle the cold and the smel . Huge blue plastic bins of discarded fish guts and bones squatted on the roadside, the rain doing nothing to dissuade fat seagul s from swooping in to snatch a fish head or a beakful of innards.

'What you think?' asked Watson, sticking her hands deep in her pockets, trying to keep warm.

Logan shrugged, watching water overflowing the seat of a bright yellow digger. 'The house been searched?'

Watson pulled out her notebook. 'We got the cal at eleven oh five. Mother was hysterical. Control sent round a couple of uniforms from the local Torry stationhouse. First thing they did was go through the place with a fine-toothed comb. He's not hiding in the linen cupboard and his body's not been stashed in the fridge freezer.'

'I see.' That digger was way too smal for a five-year-old. In fact a lot of the toys looked as if they belonged in the age three-and-up bracket. Maybe Mrs Erskine didn't want her little baby growing up?

'You think she kil ed him?' asked Watson, watching him stare out at the drenched garden.

'No, not real y. But if it turns out she has and we didn't look...the press would crucify us.

What about the father?'

' Cording to the neighbour he's been dead since before the kid was born.'

Logan nodded. That would explain why the woman was so overprotective. Didn't want her son going the same way as his father. 'So what's the state of the search?' he asked.

'We've phoned his friends: no one's seen him since Sunday afternoon.'

'What about his clothes, favourite teddy bear, that kind of thing?'

'Al present and accounted for. So he's probably not run away.'

Logan gave the discarded toys one last look and went back into the house. The inspector would be here soon, looking for an update. 'Er...' He looked at Watson out of the corner of his eye as they walked through the kitchen and down the hal way towards the front door. 'You've worked with DI Insch before, right?'

WPC Watson admitted that she had.

'So what's with the--' Logan mimed stuffing his face with fizzy cola bottles. 'He trying to give up smoking?'

Watson shrugged. 'Dunno, sir. Maybe it's some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder?'

She paused, brow furrowed in thought. 'Or maybe he's just a big fat bastard.'

Logan didn't know whether to laugh or look shocked.

'Tel you one thing though, sir, he's a damn good policeman. And you don't fuck with him twice.'

Somehow Logan had already come to that conclusion al on his own.

'Right.' He stopped at the front door. The hal way was festooned with photographs, just like the lounge. 'Get that picture down to the nearest newsagents. We'l need about a hundred photocopies and--'

'The local boys have already done it, sir. They've got four officers going door to door al along the route Richard would have taken to the shops, handing them out.'

Logan was impressed. 'They don't hang about.'

'No, sir.'

'OK, let's get half a dozen uniform down here to give them a hand.' He pul ed out his mobile phone and started dial ing, his finger freezing over the last number. 'Oh, ho...'

'Sir?'

A flash-looking motor had pulled up at the kerb and out bustled a familiar, short figure, al wrapped up in a black overcoat, wrestling with a matching umbrel a.

'Looks like the vultures are circling already.'

Logan grabbed a brol y from the hal way and stepped out into the rain. The icy water thrummed off the umbrel a as he stood and waited for Colin Mil er to climb the stairs.

'Sergeant!' said Mil er, smiling. 'Long time no see! You stil carting that tasty...' The smile became even broader as he saw WPC Watson scowling from the doorway. 'Constable! We was just talking about you!'

'What do you want?' Her voice was even colder than the grey afternoon.