Cold Granite (24 page)

But that wasn't the only thing Logan had to worry about now. Helping DI Steel on the Geordie Stephenson inquiry seemed to consist of DI Steel smoking lots of cigarettes while Logan did al the work.

There was a new map of Aberdeen pinned to the wal , this one covered with little blue-

and-green pins marking every bookmaker in town. The blue ones were 'safe' - not the kind of place that took your kneecaps if you failed to pay up. The green ones were kneecap territory.

The Turf 'n Track was marked in red. So was the harbour where they dragged the body out of the water. And next to it was a post mortem head-and-shoulders photo of Geordie Stephenson.

He wasn't much to look at. Not now he was dead anyway. The bouffant hairstyle was al flattened to his head and the porn-star moustache stood out, heavy and black, against the waxy skin. It was odd, but seeing the dead man's photograph Logan got the feeling he'd seen him somewhere before.

According to the information Lothian and Borders Police had sent up, Geordie Stephenson had been quite a character in his youth. Assault mostly. A bit of col ecting for smal loan sharks. Breaking and entering. It wasn't until he started working for Malk the Knife that he stopped getting caught. Malk was very particular about his employees staying out of prison.

'How'd you get on then?' It was DI Steel, hands rammed deep in the pockets of her grey trouser suit. Yesterday's ash-coated blouse was gone, replaced by something shimmery in gold.

The bags under her eyes were a deep, saggy purple.

'Not too great,' Logan plonked himself down on the desk and offered the inspector a chair. She sank into it with a sigh and a smal fart. Logan pretended not to hear.

'Go on then.'

'OK.' Logan pointed at the map. 'We went through al the bookies marked in green. The only one that looks likely is this one--' he poked the red pin, 'Turf 'n Track--'

'Simon and Colin McLeod. Lovely pair of lads.'

'Not as lovely as their clientele. We got to meet one of their regulars: Dougie MacDuff.'

'Shite! You're fucking kidding me!' She pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes. They looked as if she'd sat on them. 'Dirty Doug, Dougie the Dog...' she excavated a slightly flattened fag from the pack. 'What else did they use to cal him?'

'Desperate Doug?'

'Right. Desperate Doug. After he choked that guy with a rol ed-up copy of the Dandy.

You'd've stil been in nappies.' She shook her head. 'Fuck me. Those were the days. I thought he was dead.'

'Got out of Barlinnie three months ago. Four years for crippling a builder's merchant with a ratchet screwdriver.'

'At his age? Good old Desperate Doug.' She popped the cigarette in her mouth, and was at the point of lighting it when the WPC on the phones gave a meaningful cough and pointed at the 'No Smoking' sign. Steel shrugged and stuffed the offending fag in her top pocket. 'So how's he looking these days?'

'Like a wrinkly old man.'

'Aye? Shame. He was fucking tasty in his day. Quite the lady-kil er. But we couldn't prove it.' She drifted off into silence, her eyes focused on the past. Eventual y she sighed and came back to the here and now. 'So you think the McLeod brothers are our likely lads?'

Logan nodded. He'd read their files again. Hacking off someone's kneecaps with a machete was right up their street. The McLeods had always been hands-on when it came to debt control. 'Problem's going to be proving it. There's no way in hel either of them's going to admit kil ing Geordie and dumping him in the harbour. We need a witness, or some forensic evidence.'

Steel dragged herself out of the chair and gave an expansive yawn. 'Up al night shagging, you know,' she said with a conspiratorial wink. 'Get on to Forensics: have them run every bloody test they've got. And it wouldn't hurt to take another look at the body. It's stil in the morgue.'

Logan stiffened. That meant having to speak to Isobel again.

DI Steel must have seen him flinch, because she laid a nicotine-stained hand on his shoulder. 'I know it's not going to be easy. Not now she's got herself a bit of rough. But to fuck with her! You've got a job to do.'

Logan opened and closed his mouth. He didn't know she was seeing someone else. Not already. Not when he was stil on his own.

The inspector stuffed her hands back in her trouser pockets, clasping the squashed packet of cigarettes. 'Got to go. Fucking bursting for a fag. Oh, and if you see DI Insch: tel him I liked his picture in the papers this morning.' Another wink. 'Very sexy.'

Detective Inspector Insch didn't look very sexy when Logan saw him next. He was riding the elevator down from the top floor. And that meant a meeting with the Chief Constable.

Insch's nice new suit was stained darker grey under the arms and down the back.

'Sir,' said Logan. Trying not to make eye contact.

'They want me to give up the pantomime.' His voice was low and flat.

Guilt stampeded up Logan's back until it sat on top of his head, like a big sign saying: 'I DID I T! I T W AS M E!!!'

'The Chief Constable thinks it's not conducive to the image Grampian Police wants to portray. Says they can't afford to have that kind of negative publicity associated with a major murder enquiry...Either the panto goes, or I do.' He looked as if someone had pul ed the stopper out, leaving him to slowly deflate. This was not the DI Insch Logan knew. And it was al his fault.

'How long have I been doing Christmas panto for? Twelve, thirteen years? Never been a bloody problem before...'

'Maybe they'l forget al about it?' tried Logan. 'You know, when it al blows over. This time next year no one wil remember a thing.'

Insch nodded, but he didn't sound convinced. 'Perhaps.' He mashed his features round in a circle with his podgy hands. 'God, I'm going to have to tel Annie I can't go on tonight.'

'I'm sorry, sir.'

Insch tried a brave smile. 'Don't be, Logan. It's not your fault. It's that bastard Colin Mil er.' The forced smile turned into a scowl. 'Next time you see him you tel him I'm going to rip his bloody head off and crap down his neck.'

The morgue was quiet, just the hum of the air conditioning breaking the silence. Al the dead bodies had been tidied away, the dissecting tables lying empty and sparkling beneath the overhead lights. Not only were there no dead people in here, there were no living ones either.

Gingerly, Logan made his way across to the wal of refrigerated drawers. One by one he read the name cards on the drawer doors, looking for George Stephenson. He stopped when he reached the one marked 'UNKNOWN F EMALE C AUCASIAN C HILD: A PPROX 4 YEARS O LD', one hand on the cool metal drawer handle. The poor wee sod was lying in there, cold and dead without even a name.

'Sorry.' It was al he could think of to say.

He worked his way along the row. There was no sign of a George Stephenson, but there was an 'UNKNOWN M ALE C AUCASIAN: A PPROX 35 YEARS'. DI Steel hadn't told the morgue they'd IDed the body yet. Something else for Logan to do. He unlatched the drawer and pulled it open.

Lying on the flat steel surface of the drawer was a large, dead man, in a white plastic body-bag. Gritting his teeth, Logan pul ed on the zip.

The head and shoulders that appeared from the bag were the same as the photo pinned up on Logan's incident room wal . Only the real thing had a wrinklier look to it, as if someone had peeled the face down from the top of the head so they could open the skul with a bone-saw and extract the brain. The skin was waxy and pal id, deep purple bruises marking where the blood had pooled and congealed after death. There was another bruise on the left temple. In the photograph Logan always thought it was just a shadow.

The main attraction was stil hidden.

He pulled the zip al the way down, exposing a naked body that had been past its prime even when it was alive. According to Lothian and Borders Police, Geordie had been a keep-fit fanatic in his younger days. Someone who took a lot of pride in his appearance. The man on the slab had a beer bel y, his thick forearms and shoulders more fat than muscle. Even without the pal or of death he would have been pasty white. Milk-bottle skin, with moles and a faint scarlet rash.

And no kneecaps. Both hairy legs had ragged holes in them where a normal person would keep their knees. The flesh was torn and tattered around the joint, yel ow bone poking through the mess of hacked-up tissue. Whoever had done this hadn't been bothered about making a tidy job of it. This was unelective surgery by enthusiasm rather than skil .

Logan's eyes moved past the gore. There were distinct ligature marks around both ankles. The wrists too. Angry bruises, torn skin. The signs of a struggle. He winced. From the look of things Geordie had been tied up and awake while one of the McLeod boys took his kneecaps off. Hack after hack. And George Stephenson had been a big lad. He would've put up one hel of a fight. So it was both McLeods: Colin and Simon. One to hold him down, the other to wield the machete.

There were other marks too. Contusions, scrapes, damage from floating about in the harbour al night. What looked like teeth-marks.

Logan hadn't read the post mortem report yet, but he recognized bite-marks when he saw them. He squatted down beside the body and peered at the indentations. Dark purple weals in the pale skin. Slightly irregular, as if a few teeth were missing. He didn't think of the McLeods as being biters. Not Simon anyway. Colin? There always was something not right about that boy, from the moment he'd jammed a live cat onto the railings surrounding Union Terrace Gardens to the time he'd been caught taking a crap on his grandmother's tombstone. Not right.

And he didn't have a ful set of choppers, due to a bottle fight in a karaoke bar. He'd have to get Forensics to make a cast of the bite. See if they couldn't match it up to Colin McLeod's dental records.

The door banged behind him and he straightened up to see Isobel deep in conversation with her assistant, Brian, who finished saying something and made a big, expansive gesture with his hands. Isobel threw back her head and laughed.

Oh Brian, you're so damn funny with your floppy girl's hair and your massive nose. Was this the bit of rough DI Steel was talking about? Even with his stomach ful of stitches Logan could kick the shite out of him in two minutes flat. How was that for rough?

Isobel stopped laughing as soon as she saw him standing there over the naked body of Geordie Stephenson. 'Hel o?' she said, flushing slightly.

'I have an ID for this gentleman.' Logan's voice was slightly less warm than the corpse.

'Ah, right...' She looked at him, then at the body laid out on the slab. She gestured to her assistant. 'Wel ...Brian wil be able to help you.' She flashed a brittle smile, and then she was gone.

Brian took down George Stephenson's details, scribbling them down in a little pad.

Logan was finding it very difficult to keep his voice polite and even. Was this little shite of a man screwing Isobel? Did she make those smal mewing noises for him?

Brian spiked the last ful stop with a flourish and popped the pad back in his jacket. 'Oh, and before you go I've got something for you...' he said.

Logan had the sudden feeling he was going to pul a pair of Isobel's panties out of his pocket but instead Brian crossed the room and picked a large manila envelope out of the internal mail tray.

'Bloodwork on your unknown four-year-old girl. Some interesting stuff in there.' He handed the envelope over then busied himself zipping up Geordie's body-bag and tidying the corpse away while Logan flipped through the report.

Brian wasn't kidding. It was very interesting.

In the canteen at lunchtime there was only one topic of conversation: was DI Insch for the chop? Logan ate in silence at a table as far away from everyone else as possible. The lasagne tasted like damp newspaper to him.

A wave of silence went through the room and Logan looked up to see DI Insch walking up to the counter for his usual: scotch broth, macaroni cheese and chips, jam sponge and custard.

'Please God,' said Logan under his breath, 'let him sit somewhere else...'

But Insch took one look round the canteen, fixed his eyes on Logan and made a beeline for his table.

'Afternoon, sir.' Logan pushed the half-eaten lasagne away.

To his immense relief DI Insch just grunted a hel o and started in on his soup. And when that was al gone he launched himself at the macaroni, drowning the chips in salt and vinegar, smothering the cheesy pasta with black pepper. Munch, munch, munch.

Logan felt daft, just sitting there, watching the inspector eat. So he poked at his lasagne with a fork. Breaking down the layers into a big homogeneous mush. 'Got the bloodwork back on the little dead girl,' he said at last. 'She was pumped full of painkil ers. Temazepam mostly.'

Insch's eyebrow shot up.

'It wasn't enough to kil her. Not an overdose or anything, but it looked like she'd been on them for a while. The lab thinks it would have kept her spaced out. Docile.'

The last of the pasta disappeared into Insch and a chip used to mop up the remaining, vinegar-laced, cheese sauce. He chewed thoughtfully. 'Interesting,' he said at last. 'Anything else?'

'She had TB at some point.'

'Now we're getting somewhere.' Insch stacked his empty plate on top of the soup bowl and pulled his dessert to centre stage. 'Not that many places in the UK you can stil catch TB. Get onto the health boards. It's a notifiable disease. If our girl had it she'l be on their lists.' He scooped up a spoonful of custard and sponge, a smile on his lips. 'About bloody time we got some good luck.'

Logan didn't say anything.

20

Matthew Oswald had worked for the council for six months, straight out of school with fewer qualifications than his mother had been hoping for. His father didn't care that much. He'd never got a qualification in his life and it hadn't done him any harm, had it? So Matthew picked up his lunchbox and went to work for Aberdeen City Council's sanitation department.

The life of a scaffy wasn't as bad as a lot of people thought. You got out in the fresh air, the guys were a laugh, the pay wasn't that bad, and if you screwed up nobody died. And, since the invention of the wheelie-bin, there wasn't much heavy lifting. Not like in the old days, as Jamey, the driver of their wagon, liked to say.