Cold Granite (31 page)

'DI Steel tel s me you're keen on the McLeod brothers?'

Logan nodded. 'It's their kind of gig. Hands on. Brutal.'

Insch almost smiled. 'Take after their dad, that pair. Going to get them for it?'

Logan tried not to shrug, but he knew it wasn't a foregone conclusion. 'Doing my damnedest. I've got Forensics crawling al over the clothes they found the body in. Might get something out of it. If not, maybe one of their punters wil cough...' He stopped, remembering Duncan Nicholson running into the shop, out of the rain.

Insch popped something green and fizzy into his mouth. 'Not likely. Can you imagine anyone stupid enough to rat on the McLeod brothers? They'd tear him apart.'

'What?' Logan was dragged back from Nicholson: that plastic bag. 'Oh, yeah. Probably.

Simon McLeod said the whole thing was a warning. A message. That everyone in the city knew what it meant.'

'Everyone in the city, eh?' Insch crunched as he chewed. 'How come I've no heard anything about it then?'

'No idea. I'm hoping Mil er can shed some light on that one.'

Twelve o'clock and Logan was sitting down to a big plate of steak-and-ale pie, chips and beans.

The Prince of Wales was an old-fashioned place: al wood panel ing and real ale, the low ceiling yel owed by generations of cigarette smokers. It was busy, ful of men press-ganged into Saturday morning shopping by their wives and girlfriends. This was their reward: a pint of cold beer and a packet of prawn cocktail crisps.

The pub was made up of little rooms stitched together by short corridors. Logan and Mil er sat in one at the front, next to the window. Not that the view was up to much, just the other side of a tal al ey, the granite grey and dul and wet from the freezing-cold rain.

'So,' said Mil er spearing a mangetout. 'Have you got the bastard tae confess yet?'

Logan munched his way through a mouthful of beef and crispy pastry, wishing he'd gone for a pint of beer to wash it down and take the final edge off his hangover. But drinking on duty was tantamount to raping sheep in the Chief Constable's eyes, so Logan was stuck with a pint of fresh orange and lemonade. 'We're pursuing our enquiries.' The words came out muffled.

'Nail his bloody arse to the wall. Sick wee shite that he is.' Mil er wasn't on duty, so he could drink. Only he didn't have a nice pint of Dark Island, but a large glass of chil ed Semil on Chardonnay with his salmon en croute.

Logan watched the reporter take a delicate sip at his wine and smiled. Mil er was a weird fish and to be honest, Logan was starting to like him. Even if he had come within a whisker of getting DI Insch fired. The clothes and the wine and the croissants and the chunky gold jewel ery just added to the pantomime.

Logan waited until the reporter had a mouthful of salmon before asking, 'What about George Stephenson then?'

'Mmmph...' Smal flakes of pastry fel down the front of Mil er's delicate ivory shirt.

'What about him?'

'You said you stil had information. Stuff I didn't know?'

Mil er smiled, letting even more pastry fal free. 'How 'bout the last place he was seen alive?'

Logan took a guess: 'Turf 'n Track?'

Mil er's smile became impressed. 'Aye: spot on. Turf 'n Track.'

Logan knew it would be. Now al they had to do was prove it. 'One of the McLeod brothers told me, "everyone knows you don't do what Geordie did", that it was a warning. Want to fil me in?'

Mil er played with his wine glass, letting the light filter through it onto the wooden tabletop, making a little golden spotlight that danced across the grain.

'You know he was into the local bookies for a fair chunk of money?'

'You said that. How much?'

'Two hundred and fifty thousand, six hundred and forty-two pounds.'

It was Logan's turn to be impressed. That was a hel of a lot of money. 'So how come they kil ed him? Why not just cripple him a little? He can't pay up if he's dead. Not to mention they're kil ing off one of Malk the Knife's boys. I hear Malkie doesn't take kindly to that kind of thing.'

'Aye, risky. If you do in one of Malkie's boys without his permission he's going tae come down on you like a ton of shite.'

Logan's heart sank: the last thing Aberdeen needed was a spate of tit-for-tat kil ings.

Gang warfare in the Granite City. Wouldn't that be fun? 'So why did they kil him then?'

Mil er sighed and put his knife down. 'They kilt him because everyone knows that you don't do what he did.'

'What the hel does that mean?'

'It means...' Mil er looked around the little room. A smal corridor led off towards where they'd picked up lunch and another, out of sight in the opposite corner, led back through into the bar. Everyone else was chatting away, eating, drinking, enjoying being out of the horrible weather. No one was paying them the slightest bit of attention.

'Listen, you know who Geordie worked for. You don't piss him off twice, OK? Maybe you can get away with it once, but you do it twice and you're no in for a good time, know what I mean?'

'We've been over that!'

'Aye, we have.'

Mil er was looking increasingly uncomfortable. 'You know how come I ended up in sunny Aberdeen?' He waved his fork at the dreich weather on the other side of the window.

'How come I gave up a post on the Sun tae come to this shite-hole?' But he dropped his voice, so no one would hear him cal Aberdeen a shite-hole. 'Drugs. Drugs and whores.'

Logan raised an eyebrow.

Mil er scowled. 'No me, you dirty bastard. I was doin' a story about al this crack comin'

intae Glasgow from Edinburgh. They wis smugglin' it over from Eastern Europe inside prossies.

You know: the old plastic-bag-up-the-fanny routine. Do it when they're on the blob and the sniffer dogs don't smel it. An' even if they do smel some-thin' everyone's too fuckin'

embarrassed to say anything.' He took another sip of his wine. 'And you'd be surprised how much crack cocaine you can stuff up a Lithuanian tart's minge. Fuckin' heaps of the stuff.'

'What's this got to do with Geordie?'

'I'm comin' to that. So anyways, I'm doin' my Clark Kent routine: diggin' up the dirt, real y fuckin' great stories. I mean I'm gettin' nominated for awards left right and centre.

Investigative Journalist of the Year, book deals, the whole works. Only I find out who's runnin'

the scam, don't I? I come up with a name. The big man in charge of flyin' al these tarts, packed full of drugs, into the country.'

'Let me guess: Malcolm McLennan.'

'These two great big fuckers grabbed me on Sauchiehal Street. In broad daylight, but!

Bundles me into a big black car. I am politely requested to drop the story like a radioactive tattie. If I'm fond of my fingers. And my legs.'

'And did you?'

'Course I fuckin' did!' Mil er emptied half his wine glass in a single gulp. 'No bastard's hackin' off my fingers with a butcher's knife.' He shivered. 'Malk the Knife put the word about and next thing I know I'm out of a job. No paper in the central belt'd touch me with a bargepole.'

He sighed. 'So here I am. Don't get me wrong: it's no that bad a place to wind up. Good job, lots of front page inches, nice car, flat, met a nice woman...Money's no what I'm used to, but stil ...An' I'm stil alive.'

Logan settled back in his seat and examined the man sitting opposite him: the tailored suit, the gold baubles, the silk tie, even on a pissing-down Saturday in Aberdeen.

'So that's why I've not seen anything in the papers about Geordie's body turning up in the harbour with no knees? You're scared to publish anything in case Malk the Knife finds out about it?'

'I go putting his business on the front page again and it's goodbye to al ten little piggies.' The reporter waved his fingers at Logan, the rings sparkling in the pub's overhead lights.

'No, I'm keepin' my mouth shut on this one.'

'Then why are you talking to me?'

Mil er shrugged. 'Just 'cos I'm a journalist, it don't mean I'm an amoral, parasitic wanker.

I mean it's no like I'm a lawyer or anything. I got a social conscience. I'm givin' you information so you can catch the kil er. I'm keepin' my head down so it doesn't cost me my fingers. Come time for court you're on your own: I'm off to the Dordogne. Two weeks of French wine and haute cuisine. I'm no tel in' any bugger anythin'.'

'You know who did it, don't you?'

The reporter finished off his wine and smiled lopsidedly. 'No. But if I find out you'l be the first to know. No that I'm lookin' any longer. Got safer fish to fry.'

'Like what?'

But Mil er just smiled. 'You'l read about it soon enough. Anyway, gotta dash.' He stood and shrugged his way into his thick black overcoat. 'I've got a meetin' with this bloke from the Telegraph. Lookin' for a four-page spread in tomorrow's Sunday supplement. "In Search Of The Dead: Catching The Aberdeen Child-Kil er." Very classy.'

Danestone had started out as farmland, like most of the outer regions of Aberdeen, but it had held out against the developers longer than the rest. So, by the time its green fields fel beneath the bulldozer, the mantra was build 'em quick and build 'em close together. The traditional grey granite blocks and gunmetal roof slates were nowhere to be seen: here it was al oatmeal harling and pantiles, winding cul-de-sacs and deadend roads. Just like every other anonymous suburb.

But unlike the middle of Aberdeen, where the tenements and tal granite buildings cut the daylight down by an hour, the sun shone in abundance, the whole development sitting on a south-facing hil along the banks of the River Don. The only drawback was the proximity of the chicken factory, paper mil s and sewage treatment plant. But you couldn't have everything. As long as the wind didn't blow from the west you were fine.

The wind wasn't blowing from the west today. It was howling in from the east, straight off the North Sea, and ful of icy horizontal rain.

Shivering, Logan wound the car window back up again. He'd parked a little down the road from a compact two-up two-down, the smal garden looking half-dead in the battering rain.

They'd been there for an hour, him and a bald DC in a parka jacket and there was stil no sign of their target.

'So where is he then?' asked the DC, wriggling deeper into his insulated coat. Al he'd done since they'd left the station was bitch about the weather. About the fact they were working on a Saturday. That it was raining. That it was cold. That he was hungry. That the rain was making his bladder twitchy.

Logantried not to sigh. If Nicholson didn't turn up soon there was going to be another murder in the papers tomorrow. 'W HINGING P OLICE B ASTARD T HROTTLED W ITH O WN G

ENITALS I N P ARKED C AR!' He was just deciding whether it should be an OBE or a knighthood he'd get for kil ing the moaning wee sod when a familiar, battered, rust-encrusted, green Volvo growled its way past. The driver mounted the kerb in his enthusiasm to park, before scrambling about in the back seat of the car for something.

'Show time.' Logan opened his door and hurried out into the freezing rain. Grumbling, the DC fol owed.

They got to the Volvo just as Nicholson clambered out, clutching a pair of plastic bags.

His face went white when he saw Logan.

'Afternoon, Mr Nicholson.' Logan forced a smile, even though there was icy water streaming down his neck, soaking into his shirt col ar. 'Mind if we look in the bags?'

'Bags?' The rain glittered on Duncan Nicholson's shaven head, running off him like nervous sweat. He shoved the bags behind his back. 'What bags?'

The unhappy DC stepped forward and growled from within his parka's fur-lined hood.

'I'l give you what fucking bags!'

'Oh these!' They were produced again. 'Shopping. Been to Tesco, haven't I? Something for lunch. Now if you'l excuse me--'

Logan didn't move. 'They're Asda carrier bags, Mr Nicholson. Not Tesco's.'

Nicholson looked from Logan to the grumpy DC. 'I...I...er...recycling. I recycle my plastic bags. Gotta do our bit for the environment.'

The DC took another step. 'I'l fucking do for your environment--'

'That's enough, Constable,' said Logan. 'I'm sure Mr Nicholson is as keen as we are to get out of the rain. Shal we go inside, Mr Nicholson? Mind, it's nice and dry down at the station. We could give you a lift.'

Two minutes later they were sitting in a smal green kitchen, listening to the kettle boil.

It was a nice enough house on the inside, if you didn't mind concussing your cat. The wal s were covered with patterned wal paper, borders and friezes, expensive olive carpeting, big, framed, mass-produced oil paintings. Not a book in sight.

'What a lovely home you have,' said Logan, looking at Nicholson. Shaved head, tattoos and enough metalwork in his ears to set off every metal detector from here to Dundee.

'Decorate it yourself, did you?'

Nicholson mumbled something about his wife being keen on those makeover shows.

Everything was co-ordinated: kettle, toaster, blender, tiles and oven. Al of it green. Even the linoleum was green. It was like sitting inside a huge bogey.

The two carrier bags were sitting on the tabletop.

'Shal we take a look inside then, Mr Nicholson?' Logan pulled one of them open and was surprised to see a packet of bacon and a tin of beans staring back at him. The other one had crisps and chocolate biscuits. Frowning, he tipped them out onto the table. Chocolate and crisps, beans and bacon...And right at the very bottom a pair of thick manila envelopes. Logan's frown turned into a smile.

'What have we here?'

'Never seen them before in my life!'

It wasn't rain dripping down Nicholson's face now: it real y was nervous sweat.

Logan snapped on a pair of latex gloves and picked up one of the envelopes. It stank of cigarette smoke. 'Anything you'd like to say before I open these?'

'I just carry them. I don't know what's in them...They're not mine!'

Logan tipped the contents out onto the table. Photographs. Women hanging out the washing; women getting ready for bed. But mostly it was children. At school. Playing in the garden. One in the back seat of a car, looking scared. Whatever Logan had been expecting, it wasn't this. Each of the pictures had a different name written on the back. No address, just a name. 'What the hel is this?'