Cold Granite (28 page)

Insch nodded, but his eyes were like coals in his angry pink face.

The superintendent smiled. 'Excel ent. We can make this al go away. We just need a conviction. Philips is in custody. We know he's the kil er. Al we have to do is get forensic evidence and witnesses. You've got that in hand.' He stood up behind his desk.

'You'l see. Two weeks from now this wil al be over and we'l be al back to normal.

Everything wil be fine.'

Wrong.

22

DI Insch walked Logan back to the main incident room, grumbling and swearing under his breath the whole way. He wasn't happy. Logan knew the superintendent's idea to butter Colin Mil er up didn't sit wel with Insch's view of the world. The reporter had the whole country cal ing him incompetent. Insch wanted revenge, not his DS off playing patty cake.

'Honestly, I didn't talk to Mil er,' said Logan.

'No?'

'No. I think that's why he did it. The thing with the panto and now this. I wouldn't give him anything without going through you. He didn't like that.'

Insch didn't say anything, just pulled out a packet of jel y babies and started biting their heads off. He didn't offer the bag to Logan.

'Look, sir. Can't we just issue a statement? I mean: the body had been there for years.

Letting him go after he was beaten up couldn't change that.'

They'd reached the incident room door and Insch stopped. 'That's not the way it works, Sergeant. They've sunk their teeth into my arse; they won't let go that easily. You heard the super: if this goes on much longer, I'm off the case. Lothian and Borders wil be running the show.'

'I didn't mean for this to happen, sir.'

Something like a smile flickered onto Insch's face. 'I know you didn't.' He offered the open bag of jel y babies and Logan took a green one. It tasted like five pieces of silver. Insch sighed. 'Don't worry: I'l have a word with the troops. Let them know you're not a rat.'

But Logan stil felt like one.

'Listen up!' said DI Insch, addressing the uniforms sitting at desks, answering phones, taking statements. They went quiet as soon as they saw him. 'You've al seen my picture in the paper this morning. I let Roadkil go on Wednesday night, and the next day a girl's body turns up in his col ection of dead things. Turns out I'm an incompetent arse with a penchant for dressing up in funny clothes when I should be out fighting crime. And you'l also have read that DS McRae told me not to let Roadkil go. But being an idiot I did it anyway.'

Angry murmurs started, al directed at Logan. Insch held up a hand and there was instant silence. But the glaring continued.

'Now I know you think DS McRae's a shitebag right now, but you can forget it. DS McRae did not go to the papers. Understood? If he tel s me any of you have been giving him grief...'

Insch made a throat-cutting gesture. 'Now get your arses back to work and tel the rest of the shift. This investigation wil continue and we wil get our man.'

Half past ten and the post mortem was wel underway. It was a nasty, rancid affair and Logan stood as far from the dissecting table as he could. But it wasn't far enough; even with the morgue's extractor fan going full belt the smel was overpowering.

The body had burst when the IB tried to lift it out of the pile at the farm. They'd had to scrape what was left of the internal organs off the steading floor.

Everyone in the room was wearing protective gear: white paper boiler suits, plastic shoe-covers, latex gloves and breathing masks. Only this time Logan's mask wasn't ful of menthol chest rub. Isobel paced slowly up and down the table, prodding the corpulent flesh with a double-gloved finger, making detailed and methodical notes into her dictaphone. The bit of rough - Brian - trailed along after her like some sort of demented puppy. Floppy-haired wanker. DI Insch was again conspicuous by his absence, having used Logan's guilty conscience to get out of it, but the PF and the back-up pathologist were there. Keeping as far away from the rotting corpse as possible without being somewhere else.

It was impossible to tel if the child had been strangled like David Reid. The skin was too heavily rotted around the throat. And something had been nibbling away at the flesh. Not just little wriggly white things either, and God knew there were enough of those, but a rat or a fox or something. A cold sweat beaded Isobel's forehead as her running commentary faltered.

Careful y, she lifted the internal organs out of the plastic bag they'd been shovel ed into, trying to identify what it was she held in her hands.

Logan was convinced he'd never get the smel out of his nostrils. Little David Reid had been bad, but this one was a hundred times worse.

'Preliminary findings,' said Isobel when it was final y over, scrubbing and scrubbing at her hands. 'Four cracked ribs and signs of blunt trauma to the skul . Broken hip. One broken leg.

She was five. Blonde. There's a couple of fil ings in her rear molars.' More soap, more scrubbing.

It looked as if Isobel was trying to get clean al the way down to the bone. Logan had never seen her so shaken up by work before. 'I'd estimate the time of death between twelve and eighteen months ago. It's hard to be sure with so much decomposition...' She shivered. 'I'l need to run some laboratory tests on the tissue samples to be sure.'

Logan placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. 'I'm sorry.' He wasn't sure what for. That their relationship had fal en apart? That once Angus Robertson was put away, they had nothing in common? That she'd had to suffer what she suffered on that tower block rooftop? That he hadn't got to her sooner...That she'd just had to carve up a badly decomposed child like a turkey?

She smiled sadly at him, but tears sparkled at the edges of her eyes. For a moment there was a connection between them. A shared moment of tenderness.

And then Brian, her assistant, ruined it al . 'Excuse me, Doctor, you have a phone cal on line three. I've put it through to the office.'

The moment was gone and so was Isobel.

Roadkil was undergoing psychiatric evaluation by the time Logan was heading across town to the steadings and their gruesome contents. He didn't hold out any hopes of Bernard Duncan Philips being found fit to stand trial. Roadkil was a nutjob and everyone knew it. The fact he kept three farm buildings ful of dead animals he'd scraped off the road was a bit of a giveaway. Not to mention the dead child. The smel was stil clinging to him.

Logan wound the car's windows down as far as he dared, wisps of snow flickering in to melt in the heat of the blowers. That post mortem was going to stay with him for a long, long time. Shuddering, he turned the heat up again.

The city was grinding to a halt in the heavy snowfal . Cars slithered and stal ed al the way down South Anderson Drive, some up on the kerb, others just churning away in the middle of the four-lane road. At least his police-issue, rustacned Vauxhal wasn't having too much difficulty.

Up ahead he could see the yel ow on-off flash of a gritter spraying salt and sand across two lanes. The cars behind were hanging back, trying to avoid getting their paintwork scratched.

'Better late than never.'

'Sorry, sir?'

The PC doing the driving wasn't someone Logan had recognized straight away. He would have preferred WPC Watson, but DI Insch wasn't having any of it. He'd picked the new PC to accompany Logan because he was less likely to give Logan a hard time for the story in the morning paper. Besides, WPC Jackie Watson was in court again today with her changing-room wanker. Last time he was giving evidence against Gerald Cleaver, this time he was there to be tried. Not that it was going to take long. He'd been caught red-handed. Literal y. Grimacing away in the ladies' changing room, dick in hand, banging away for al he was worth. It'd be in, plead guilty, mitigating circumstances, community service order and out again in time for tea. Maybe she'd be more inclined to speak to him with a successful prosecution under her belt?

It took them twice as long as it should have done to get across the Drive and out to Roadkil 's farm on the outskirts of Cults. Visibility was so bad they couldn't see more than fifty yards in front of the car. The snow took everything away.

A crowd of reporters and television cameras was huddled outside the entrance to Roadkil 's farm, shivering and sneezing in the snow. Two PCs, dressed up in the warmest gear they could get under their luminous yel ow coats, guarded the gate, keeping the Press out. Snow had piled up on their peaked caps making them look slightly festive. The expression on their faces spoiled the image. They were cold, they were miserable and they were fed up with the army of journalists poking microphones in their faces. Asking them questions. Keeping them out of their nice warm patrol car.

The smal lane was clogged with cars and vans. BBC, Sky News, ITN, CNN - they were al here, the television lights making the snow leap out in sharp contrast to the dark grey sky.

Earnest pieces to camera stopped as soon as Logan's car pulled into view; then they descended like piranhas. Logan, stuck at the centre of the feeding frenzy, did just what DI Insch had told him: kept his bloody mouth shut as microphones and cameras were pushed through the open windows.

'Sergeant, is it true you've been given control of this case?'

'DS McRae! Over here! Has Inspector Insch been suspended?'

'Has Bernard Philips kil ed before?'

'Did you know he was mental y unstable before the body was discovered?'

There was more, but it was lost in the cacophonous barrage of noise.

The PC drove gently through the crowd, al the way to the locked gate. Then came the voice Logan was waiting for: 'Laz, 'bout time, man. I'm freezin' ma nuts off out here!' Colin Mil er, rosy cheeks and red nose, dressed up in a thick black overcoat, thick padded boots, and furry hat. Very Russian.

'Get in.'

The reporter clambered into the back seat, and another heavily wrapped-up man joined him.

Logan turned sharply, wincing as his stomach reminded him of the staples holding it together.

'Laz, this is Jerry. He's ma photographer.'

The photographer peeled a hand out of a thick snow glove and extended it for shaking.

Logan didn't take it. 'Sorry, Jerry, but this is a one-man-only deal. There wil be official police photographs available for the story, but we can't have unauthorized photos doing the rounds. You have to stay here.'

The reporter tried his friendliest smile. 'Come on, Laz, Jerry's a good lad. He'l no take any gore shots, wil you, Jerry?'

Jerry looked momentarily confused and Logan knew that was exactly what he'd been told to take.

'Sorry. You and you only.'

'Shite.' Mil er pul ed off his furry cap, shaking the snow into the footwel of the back seat. 'Sorry, Jerry. You go wait in the car. There's some coffee in a thermos under the driver's seat. Don't eat al the gingersnaps.'

Swearing under his breath, the photographer clambered out of the car, into the crowd of journalists and the steadily fal ing snow.

'Right,' said Logan as they drove slowly through the blizzard. 'Let's make sure we're clear on the rules here: we get editorial rights over any story. We supply the photographs. If there's something we don't want you to print because it jeopardizes the investigation, you don't print it.'

'An' I get full exclusive rights. You don't do this for anyone else.' Mil er's smile was positively obscene.

Logan nodded. 'And if you say one bad word about DI Insch I wil personal y kil you.'

Mil er laughed, holding up his hands in mock surrender. 'Whoa there, Tiger. No taking the piss out the Pantomime Dame. It's a deal.'

'The constables on duty have been told to answer your questions. As long as they're appropriate.'

'Is that fit-looking WPC of yours going to be here?'

'No.'

Mil er shook his head sadly. 'Shame. I had an inappropriate question for her.'

They started by getting into full biohazard boiler suits, complete with gas masks. Then Logan began the tour. Steading number one: empty but for the residue of slime and ooze.

Steading number two was where Mil er got the first real lungful of the stench. He went surprisingly quiet as they stepped in amongst the decaying, furry corpses.

The scale of the pile was truly staggering. Even with half the dead animals removed to the waste containers outside, there were stil hundreds of them in here. Badgers, dogs, cats, rabbits, seagul s, crows, pigeons, the occasional deer. If it had died on Aberdeen's roads, it was here. Decaying slowly.

A hole in the pile was cordoned off. This was where they'd found the little girl.

'Christ, Laz,' said Mil er, his voice muffled by the breathing mask. 'This is fuckin' grim!'

'Tel me about it.'

They found the search team in steading number three. They were dressed in the same blue protective suits, working their way through the mound of decaying carcases by hand.

Corpse by corpse they picked them up, placed them on a table for examination and then piled them for disposal in the waste containers.

'Why this one?' asked Mil er. 'How come they're not emptying the one where the girl was?'

'Philips kept the steadings sequential y numbered.' Logan pointed out through the door.

'One through five. Six is the farmhouse. His plan must've been to fil them al . One by one.'

A pair of constables pul ed a mangy-looking spaniel/labrador cross from the pile and carried it between them to the table.

'This is the building he was in the middle of fil ing. If he took Peter Lumley, this is where he'l be.'

Logan could see Mil er frowning behind his safety goggles. 'If you're looking for another kid, how come you're doing it like this? Why examine al the things one by one? Why no just turf the shite out til you find him?'

'Because we might not be looking for al of him. There's stil a bit of David Reid missing.'

Mil er looked at the pile of dead things and the police men and women going through the lot by hand. 'Jesus. You're looking for his dick? In this? Fuck me, but you bastards deserve a medal! Or your heads examined.' Another rabbit was added to the table, given a brief inspection, and then thrown in the pile for disposal. 'Fuck...'