Cold Granite (41 page)

He stuffed everything relating to Geordie Stephenson's death into the file, including his report on yesterday's shenanigans. There would be some paperwork to tidy the thing off, but other than that the case was as dead as Geordie.

With that al packed away, the only thing left in Logan's little incident room was the unknown girl. Her dead face looked down at him with blank eyes.

One down, one to go.

Logan sat down and waded through the statements once more: everyone living within easy access of the communal bins. One of them had kil ed the girl, stripped her, tried to hack her up, wrapped her body in brown packing tape and stuffed it into the bin. And if it wasn't Norman Chalmers, who was it?

31

Sunset painted the sky above Rosemount in violent orange and scarlet flames. From street level, hemmed in on al sides by long lines of grey three-storey tenements, it was only visible as ribbons of iridescent colour. Here and there sulphurous-yel ow streetlights flickered and hummed in the crisp December air, giving the buildings a jaundiced pal or. It wasn't even five o'clock yet.

Against al the odds WPC Watson had managed to find them a parking spot in front of the building Norman Chalmers lived in. The communal bin stood directly in front of the front door. It was a large black barrel, chest height, flattened at the sides and chained to a post. That was where the girl must have been dumped. Where the scaffies col ected her from, taking her body to the council tip along with al the other garbage.

Forensics had been al over the bin and come up with nothing except the fact that someone in the building was into leather-fetish pornography.

'How many buildings we going to do?' asked Watson, balancing a pile of statements against the steering wheel.

'Start from the middle and work out. Three buildings each side: that's seven buildings.

Six flats in each...'

'Forty-two flats? God, it'l take us for ever!'

'Then there's the other side of the road.'

Watson looked up at the building next to her, then back at Logan. 'Can we not get some uniforms in to do it?'

Logan smiled. 'You are uniform, remember?'

'Yeah, but I'm doing something: driving you about and al that. This'l take ages!'

'Longer we sit here, longer it'l take.'

They started with the building Chalmers lived in.

Ground floor left: an old lady with shifty eyes, urine-yel ow hair and breath that stank of sherry. She refused to open the door until Logan had shoved his warrant card through the letterbox and she'd phoned the police station just to make sure he wasn't one of these paedophiles she'd heard about. Logan didn't point out she was about ninety years safe from people like that.

Ground floor right: four students, two of whom were stil asleep. No one had seen or heard anything. Too busy studying. 'My arse,' said Watson. 'Fascist,' said the student.

First floor left: timid single woman with big glasses and bigger teeth. No she hadn't seen anyone or heard anything and wasn't it al simply dreadful?

First floor right: no answer.

Top floor left: unmarried mother and three-year-old child. Another case of see, hear and speak no evil. Logan got the feeling you could commit regicide in her bathroom while she was taking a bath, and she'd stil swear she'd seen nothing.

Top floor right: Norman Chalmers. His story hadn't changed. They had no right to harass him like this. He was going to call his lawyer.

And back out onto the street again.

'Wel ,' said Logan, stuffing his hands into his pockets to keep out the chil . 'Six down, seventy-eight to go.'

Watson groaned.

'Never mind.' Logan gave her a smile. 'If you're very, very good I'l buy you a pint when we've finished.'

That seemed to cheer her up a bit and Logan was on the verge of adding an invitation to dinner when he caught sight of his reflection in the car windscreen. It was too dark to make out much detail on the building behind him, but the windows shone like cats' eyes in the dark mirror of glass. Al of them.

He turned and stared up at the building. Every single window on the front of the building was ablaze. Even the supposedly empty first floor right flat. As he watched a face appeared at the window, staring down at the street. For a heartbeat their eyes met and then the face was gone, wearing a terrified expression. A very familiar face.

'Wel , wel , wel ...' Logan patted WPC Watson on the shoulder. 'Looks like we have ourselves a contender.'

Back inside, Watson pounded on the door of the offending flat. 'Come on: we know you're in there. We saw you!'

Logan leaned back against the banister and watched her bash at the black-painted door.

He'd brought the pile of statements in with him and was flicking through them, looking for the one that fitted the address. First floor right, number seventeen...A Mr Cameron Anderson. Who came from Edinburgh and made ROVs.

WPC Watson mashed her thumb on the doorbel again, stil hammering away with her other hand. 'If you don't open this door I'm going to break the damn thing down!'

Al this racket out in the hal and not a single face peeked out from the other flats to see what was going on. So much for a sense of community.

Two minutes and stil the door remained resolutely shut. Logan was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. 'Kick it in.'

'What?' Watson turned and whispered loudly at him, the words hissing out. 'We don't have a warrant! We can't just break down the door! I was only bluffing--'

'Kick it in. Now.'

WPC Watson took a step back and slammed her foot into the door, just below the lock.

With an explosive bang the door flew open, slamming into the flat's hal and bouncing back, rattling photographs in their frames. They rushed in, Watson into the lounge, Logan taking the bedroom. No one.

Like Chalmers's flat, upstairs, there wasn't a door on the kitchen but it was empty anyway. That only left the bathroom and it was locked.

Logan rattled the door, banging the flat of his hand on the wooden door. 'Mr Anderson?'

From inside came the sound of sobbing and running water.

'Damn.' He gave the door one last try before asking Watson for a repeat performance.

She nearly kicked it off its hinges.

Clouds of steam bil owed out into the tiny hal way. Inside, the smal bathroom was clad in wood, like a sauna, partial y concealing a nasty avocado suite. The room was just big enough for the bath to fit along the far wal , on the other side of the toilet, a shower rigged up over it, the curtain drawn.

Logan yanked the curtain open to reveal a fully-dressed man on his knees in the rising water, hacking away at his wrists with a broken disposable razor.

They took Mr Anderson directly to A&-E, without waiting for an ambulance. The hospital was less than five minutes away. They wrapped his wrists in layers of fluffy towels before stuffing them into discarded plastic carrier bags from the kitchen so he wouldn't bleed al over the car.

Cameron Anderson hadn't done a very good job of kil ing himself. The cuts weren't deep enough to ful y open the veins, and he'd gone across, rather than down their length. A few stitches and a night's observation was al he needed. Logan smiled as he was told the news and promised the nurse that Mr Anderson would get al the observation he needed in a cel back at Force Headquarters. She looked at him as if he should be scraped off her shoe.

'What the hel is wrong with you?' she demanded. 'That poor man has just tried to kil himself!'

'He's a suspect in a murder enquiry--' was as far as Logan got before she scowled in recognition at him.

'I know you! You're that one was here yesterday! The one beat up that old man!'

'I don't have time for this. Where is he?'

She crossed her arms and refocused her scowl.

'If you don't leave I'm cal ing security.'

'Good for you. Then we'l see how you get on with a charge of obstruction. OK?'

Logan brushed past her heading into the row of curtained-off cubicles. He identified the one Anderson was in by the sound of snivel ing in an Edinburgh accent.

The man sat on the edge of the examination bed, rocking back and forth, crying to himself, snatches of words escaping through the tears. Logan pushed his way through the curtains and sat on a black plastic chair opposite the bed. Watson fol owed him in, taking up position in the corner, notebook at the ready.

'Hel o again, Mr Anderson,' said Logan in his best friendly voice. 'Or can I cal you Cameron?'

The man didn't look up. A smal patch of red had seeped through the bandage on his left wrist. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

'Cameron, I've been wondering about something,' said Logan. 'You see, there was this bloke who came up from Edinburgh and ended up in the harbour. We put his picture in al the papers and stuck posters up al over the shop, but no one came forward. Seems they didn't like the way his kneecaps were hacked off with a machete.'

At the words 'hacked off Mr Anderson flinched. 'Machete' elicited an anguished moan.

'Now the thing that confuses me, Cameron, is that you never gave us a cal . I mean you must have seen the picture. It was on the news and everything.' Logan pulled a rectangle of paper from his pocket, unfolding it into a photograph of Geordie Stephenson from when he was alive. He'd been carrying it about since they'd done their tour of Aberdeen's seedier bookies. He held it up in front of the weeping man. 'You do recognize him, don't you?'

Anderson's eyes flashed up to the photograph then back to the stain on his bandage. In that swiftest of glimpses Logan knew he'd been right. Cameron Anderson and Geordie Stephenson. They didn't share the same surname, but they shared the same heavy features, the same bouffant hair. The only thing missing was the porn-star moustache.

Anderson said something, but it was too low and muffled to make out.

Logan laid the photograph on the floor, positioning it so Geordie's dead eyes stared up at the man on the bed. 'Why'd you try to kil yourself, Cameron?'

'Thought you were him.' The words were mumbled rather than spoken, but at least this time they were audible.

'Him who?'

Anderson shivered. 'Him. The old man.'

'Describe him.'

'Old. Grey.' He made scratchy, claw-like gestures at his throat. 'Tattoos. One eye al white. Like a poached egg.'

Logan settled back. 'Why him, Cameron? What does he want with you?'

'Geordie was my brother. The old man...he...' One hand went up to his mouth. He started methodical y biting the nails on each finger down to the quick. 'He came to the flat. Told Geordie he had a message for him. From Mr McLennan.'

'Mr McLennan? Malk the Knife?' Logan scooted forward in his chair. 'What was the message?'

'I let him in and he hit Geordie with something. And then he started kicking him when he was on the ground.' Red-rimmed eyes darted imploringly at Logan. Tears tumbled down the pasty cheeks. 'I tried to stop him, but he hit me...' That explained the bruise he'd been sporting the day he'd let them into the building.

'What was the message, Cameron?' The mysterious message that Simon McLeod said al of Aberdeen knew about. Everyone except the police.

'He spat on me...' A sob escaped, fol owed by a silvery trail that leaked out of Cameron's nose. 'He dragged Geordie out of the flat. He said he'd be back for me! I thought you were him!'

Logan examined the man sitting in front of him, rocking back and forward on the edge of the bed, eyes and nose running freely. He was lying. He'd looked out his front window and seen Logan and WPC Watson standing in the street. He knew it wasn't Desperate Doug back to finish him off. 'What was the message?'

Cameron waved a hand in random circles, the red smudge on his bandaged wrist growing ever larger. 'I don't know. He just said he was coming back!'

'What about the little girl?' Logan asked.

Anderson acted as if Logan had slapped him across the face. It took him a good ten seconds to recover enough to say, 'Girl?'

'The girl, Cameron. The one that ended up dead, wearing a bin-bag belonging to your upstairs neighbour. You remember her? A nice man from the police came round and took your statement.'

Anderson bit his lip and wouldn't meet Logan's eyes.

They couldn't get anything more out of him. Instead they al sat there in silence until a pair of uniformed constables arrived to take him away.

The PC guarding Desperate Doug MacDuff's room was halfway through his novel when Logan and WPC Watson turned up at the door. He'd had a boring day, except for flirting with a couple of the nurses. Logan sent him off to fetch coffees again.

Doug's room was buried in semidarkness, the flickering television screen casting its green-and-grey glow, making shadows writhe and jump. It was like being back in the Turf 'n Track again. Only this time no one was trying to kick the living hel out of them. The only sound came from the air conditioner, the humming machinery, and the pal id, wheezing old man lying on the hospital bed, gazing up at the silent TV. Logan sat himself down at the foot of the bed again. 'Evening, Dougie,' he said with a smile in his voice. 'We brought grapes.' He plonked a paper bag on the blankets by the old man's feet.

Doug sniffed and went on staring at the television screen.

'We've just had a very interesting chat with someone, Dougie. About you.' Logan leaned forward and helped himself to a grape from the bag. In the light of the TV they looked like little gangrenous haemorrhoids. 'He's fingered you for assaulting and abducting the late Geordie Stephenson. He watched you do it! How about that, Dougie? First we get forensic evidence and now we've got a witness.'

No reaction.

Logan helped himself to another grape. 'Witness says you also kil ed that little girl.' It was a lie, but you never knew your luck. 'The one we found in a bin-bag.'

That took Doug's attention off the television set. He sat, propped up with half a dozen pil ows, glaring at Logan with his one good eye. And then he went back to the television. 'Little fucker.'

The silence stretched out in the gloom. Lit by the TV's ghostly glow, Desperate Doug looked like a skeleton, al sunken cheeks and dark-ringed eye sockets. His teeth were stil floating in a glass.