Cold granite lm-1

by Stuart MacBride

  'Welcome to Aberdeen Journals,' she said with zero enthusiasm. 'How can I be of assistance?'

  Logan dragged out his warrant card and held it under her runny nose. 'Detective Sergeant McRae. I'd like to speak to whoever phoned the home of Alice Reid last night.'

  The receptionist looked at his identification, looked at him, looked at WPC Watson and sighed. 'No idea.' She paused for a sniff. 'I'm only here Mondays and Wednesdays.'

  'Well, who would know?'

  The receptionist just shrugged and sniffed again.

  WPC Watson dug a copy of the morning's paper out of a display rack and slapped it down on the reception desk. 'MURDERED TODDLER FOUND!' She stabbed her finger at the words: 'BY COLIN MILLER'.

  'How about him?' she asked.

  The receptionist took the paper and squinted her puffy eyes at the by-line. Her face suddenly turned down at the edges. 'Oh…him.'

  Scowling, she jabbed at the switchboard. A woman's voice boomed out of her speakerphone: 'Aye?' and she grabbed the phone from its cradle. Her accent suddenly switched from bunged-up polite to bunged-up broad Aberdonian.

  'Lesley? Aye, it's Sharon…Lesley, is God's Gift in?' Pause. 'Aye, it's the police…I dinna ken, hang oan.'

  She stuck a hand over the mouthpiece and looked up, hopefully, at Logan. 'Are you going to arrest him?' she asked, all polite again.

  Logan opened his mouth and shut it again. 'We just want to ask him a couple of questions,' he said at last.

  'Oh.' Sharon looked crestfallen. 'No,' she said into the phone again. 'The wee shite's no gettin' banged up.' She nodded a couple of times then grinned broadly. 'I'll ask.' She fluttered her eyelashes and pouted at Logan, doing her best to look seductive. It was an uphill struggle with a flaky red nose, but she did her best. 'If you're not going to arrest him, any chance of a little police brutality?'

  WPC Watson winked conspiratorially. 'See what we can do. Where is he?'

  The receptionist pointed at a security door off to the left. 'Don't be afraid to cripple him.' She grinned and buzzed them through.

  The newsroom was like a carpeted warehouse, all open plan and suspended ceiling tiles. There must have been a couple of hundred desks in here, all clumped together in little cliques: News Desk, Features, Editorial, Page Layout…The walls were the same pale lilac as reception and just as bare. There weren't any partitions and the desktops spilled into one another. Piles of paper, yellow Post-its and scribbled notes oozing from one desk to the next like a slow-motion avalanche.

  Computer monitors flickered beneath the overhead lighting, their owners hunched over keyboards, turning out tomorrow's news. Apart from the ever-present hum of the computers and the whirr of the photocopier it was eerily quiet.

  Logan grabbed the first person he could find: an older man in saggy brown corduroy trousers and a stained cream shirt. He was wearing a tie that sported at least three of the things he'd had for breakfast. The top of his head had said goodbye to his hair long ago, but a trapdoor of thin strands was stretched over the shiny expanse. He wasn't kidding anyone but himself.

  'We're looking for Colin Miller,' said Logan, flipping out his warrant card.

  The man raised an eyebrow. 'Oh aye?' he said. 'You goin' to arrest him'

  Logan slipped his identification back in his pocket. 'Wasn't intending to, but I'm starting to think about it. Why?'

  The old reporter hitched up his trousers and beamed innocently at Logan. 'No reason.'

  Pause, two, three, four…

  'OK,' said Logan, 'so where is he'

  The old man winked at him, jerking his head towards the toilets. 'I have no idea where he is, officer,' he said slowly, one innuendo-laden word after another. He finished off with another couple of significant glances towards the gents and a grin.

  Logan nodded. 'Thanks, you've been a great help.'

  'No I haven't,' said the reporter. 'I've been "vague and rambling" like the "senile old fart" I am.'

  As he ambled off back to his desk, Logan and WPC Watson made a beeline for the toilets. To Logan's surprise Watson stormed straight into the gents. Shaking his head, he followed her into the black-and-white-tiled interior.

  Her shout of 'Colin Miller?' produced assorted journalistic shrieks as full-grown men scrabbled at their flies and scurried out of the toilets. Finally only one man was left: short, heavily-built, wearing an expensive-looking dark-grey suit. Broad-shouldered, with a pristine haircut, he whistled tunelessly at the urinals, rocking back and forth.

  Watson looked him up and down. 'Colin Miller?' she asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder, a nonchalant smile on his lips. 'You want tae help me shake this?' he asked with a wink, Glaswegian accent ringing out loud and proud. 'Ma doctor says I'm no to lift anythin' heavy…'

  She scowled and told him exactly what he could do with his offer.

  Logan stepped between them before Watson could demonstrate why she was called 'Ball Breaker'.

  The reporter winked, shoogled about a little, then turned from the urinal, zipping himself up, gold signet rings sparkling on almost every finger. A gold chain hung around his neck, lying over the silk shirt and tie.

  'Mr Miller?' asked Logan.

  'Aye, you wantin' an autograph' He strutted his way to the sink, hitching up his sleeves slightly as he did so, exposing something chunky and gold on his right wrist and a watch big enough to sleep four on the left. It wasn't surprising the man was well-muscled: he had to be to cart about all that jewellery.

  'We want to talk to you about David Reid, the three-year-old who-'

  'I know who he is,' said Miller, turning on the taps. 'I did a front page spread on the poor wee sod.' He grinned and pumped soap into his hands. 'Three thousand words of pure journalistic gold. Tell ya, kiddie murders: pure gold, so they are. Sick bastard kills some poor kid and suddenly everyone's dyin' tae read about the wee dead body over their cornflakes. Fuckin' unbelievable.'

  Logan resisted the urge to grab Miller by the scruff of the neck and smash his face into a urinal. 'You called the family last night,' he said instead, fists jammed deep in his pockets. 'Who told you we'd found him?'

  Miller smiled at Logan's reflection in the mirror above the sink. 'Didn't take a genius, Inspector…?'

  'Sergeant,' said Logan. 'Detective Sergeant McRae.'

  The journalist shrugged and wriggled his hands under the hand-drier. 'Only a DS, eh?' he had to shout over the roar of warm air. 'Never mind. You help me catch this sick bastard and I'll see you make DI.'

  'Help "you" catch…' Logan screwed his eyes shut and was assailed by visions of Miller's broken nose bleeding into urinal cakes. 'Who told you we'd found David Reid?' he asked through gritted teeth.

  Click. The drier fell silent.

  'Told you: didn't take a genius. You found a wee dead kiddie, who else could it have been?'

  'We didn't tell anyone the body was a child!'

  'No? Ah well, must've been a coincidence then.'

  Logan scowled. 'Who told you?'

  Miller smiled and shot his cuffs, making sure there was a fashionable inch of starched white visible at the end of both sleeves.

  'You never heard of journalistic immunity? I don't have tae reveal my sources. And you can't make me!' He paused. 'Mind you, if the tasty WPC wants tae do a Mata Hari I might be persuaded…Gotta love a woman in uniform!'

  Watson snarled and pulled out her collapsible truncheon.

  The door to the gents burst open, breaking the moment. A large woman with lots of curly dark-brown hair stormed into the toilets, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. 'What the hell is going on here?' she said, glowering at Logan and Watson. 'I've got half the news desk out there with piss all down the front of their trousers.' She rounded on Miller before anyone could respond. 'And what the hell do you think you're still doing here? They're giving a press conference on the dead kid in half an hour! The tabloids are going to be all over the damn thing. This is our bloody story and I want it to stay that way!'

  '
Mr Miller is assisting us with our enquiries,' said Logan. 'I want to know who told him we'd found-'

  'You arresting him?'

  Logan only paused for a second, but it was long enough.

  'Didn't think so.' She stabbed a finger at Miller. 'You! Get your arse in gear. I'm not paying you to chat up WPCs in the bogs!'

  Miller smiled and saluted the glowering woman. 'You got it, chief!' he said and winked at Logan. 'Gotta go. Duty calls and all that.'

  He took a step towards the door, but WPC Watson barred his path. 'Sir?' She fingered her truncheon, desperate for an excuse to use it on Miller's head.

  Logan looked from the smug journalist to Watson and back again. 'Let him go,' he said at last. 'We'll talk later, Mr Miller.'

  The journalist grinned. 'Count on it.' He made his right hand into a gun and fired it at WPC Watson. 'Catch ya later, investigator.'

  Thankfully she didn't reply.

  Back in the car park, WPC Watson stomped through the rain to their Vauxhall, wrenched the car's door open, hurled her hat in the back seat, thudded in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut again, and swore.

  Logan had to admit she had a point. There was no way Miller was going to volunteer his source. And his editor, the curly-haired harridan, had made it perfectly clear, in a ten-minute tirade, that there was no way in hell she was going to order him to do so. There was about as much chance of that happening as Aberdeen Football Club winning the Premier League.

  A knock on the passenger window made Logan jump and a large, smiling face beamed in at him from the rain, a copy of the Evening Express held over his head to keep his thin comb-over dry. It was the reporter who 'hadn't' told them the repulsive Mr Miller was hiding in the men's toilets.

  'You're Logan McRae!' said the man. 'See? I knew I recognized you!'

  'Oh aye?' Logan shrank back in his seat.

  The man in the saggy, faded-brown corduroys nodded happily. 'I did a story, what wis it: a year ago? "Police Hero Stabbed in Showdown with Mastrick Monster!"' He grinned. 'Shite, that wis a damn good story. Nice headline too. Shame "Police Hero" didn't alliterate…' A shrug. Then he stuck his hand in through the open car window. 'Martin Leslie, Features Desk.'

  Logan shook it, feeling more and more uncomfortable with every second.

  'Jesus, Logan McRae…' said the reporter. 'You a DI yet'

  Logan said no, he was still a DS, and the older man looked outraged. 'You're kidding! Bastards! You deserved it! That Angus Robertson was one sick bastard…You hear he got himself a DIY appendectomy in Peterhead?' He lowered his voice. 'Sharpened screwdriver, right in the stomach. Has to crap in a wee bag now…'

  Logan didn't say anything, and the reporter leaned on the open window, poking his head in out of the rain.

  'So what you workin' on now' he asked.

  Logan stared straight ahead, through the windscreen at the dismal grey length of the Lang Stracht. 'Er…' he said. 'I, ehmmm…'

  'If you're interested in Colin the Cunt,' the older man started in a near-whisper. He stopped, slapped a hand over his mouth and mumbled to WPC Watson, 'Sorry love, no offence.'

  Watson shrugged: after all, she'd been calling Miller much worse just minutes ago.

  Leslie gave her an embarrassed smile. 'Aye, well, the wee shite swans up here from the Scottish Sun thinkin' he's God's fuckin' gift…Got kicked off the paper from what I hear.' His face darkened. 'Some of us still believe in the rules! You don't screw your colleagues. You don't phone up a dead kid's mum until you know the police have broken the news. But the little bastard thinks he can get away with murder, just as long as there's a story at the end of it.' There was a bitter pause. 'And his spellin's bollocks.'

  Logan gave him a thoughtful look. 'You have any idea who told him we'd found David Reid?'

  The old reporter shook his head. 'No idea, but if I find out you'll be the first to know! Be a pleasure to screw him over for a change.'

  Logan nodded. 'Right, that's great…' he forced a smile. 'Well, we're going to have to get going…'

  WPC Watson pulled the car out of the space, leaving the old reporter standing on his own in the rain.

  'They should make you a DI!' he shouted after the car. 'A DI!'

  As they drove out past the security gate Logan could feel his face going red.

  'Aye, sir,' said WPC Watson, watching him turn a lovely shade of beetroot. 'You're an inspiration to us all.'

  5

  Logan was starting to get over his embarrassment by the time they were fighting their way across Anderson Drive, heading back to Force Headquarters. The road had started life as a bypass, but the city had suffered from middle-aged spread and oozed out to fill in the gaps with cold grey granite buildings so that it was more of a belt, stretched across the city and groaning at the seams. It was a nightmare during rush hour.

  The rain was still hammering down and the people of Aberdeen had reacted in their usual way. A minority trudged along, wrapped up in waterproof jackets, hoods up, umbrellas clutched tight against the icy wind. The rest just stomped along getting soaked to the skin.

  Everyone looked murderous and inbred. When the sun shone they would cast off their thick woollens, unscrew their faces, and smile. But in winter the whole city looked like a casting call for Deliverance.

  Logan sat staring morosely out of the window, watching the people trudge by. Housewife. Housewife with kids. Bloke in a duffle coat and stupid-looking hat. Roadkill with his shovel and council-issue wheelie-cart full of dead animals. Child with plastic bag. Housewife with pushchair. Man in a mini-kilt…

  'What the hell goes through his mind of a morning?' Logan asked as Watson slipped the car into gear and inched forward.

  'What, Roadkill?' she said. 'Get up, scrape dead things off the road, have lunch, scrape more dead things-'

  'No not him.' Logan's finger jabbed at the car window. 'Him. Do you think he gets up and thinks: "I know, I'll dress so everyone can see my backside in a light breeze"?'

  As if by magic the wind took hold of the mini-kilt and whipped it up, exposing an expanse of white cotton.

  Watson raised an eyebrow. 'Aye, well,' she said, nipping past a shiny blue Volvo. 'At least his pants are clean. His mum won't have to worry about him getting knocked down by a bus.'

  'True.'

  Logan leaned forward and clicked on the car radio, fiddling with the buttons until Northsound, Aberdeen's commercial radio station, blared out of the speakers.

  WPC Watson winced as an advert for double-glazing was rattled out in broad Aberdonian. They'd somehow managed to cram about seven thousand words and a cheesy tune into less than six seconds. 'Jesus,' she said, her face creased in disbelief. 'How can you listen to that crap?'

  Logan shrugged. 'It's local. I like it.'

  'Teuchter bollocks.' Watson accelerated through the lights before they could turn red. 'Radio One. That's what you want. Northsound, my arse. Anyway, you're not supposed to have the radio on: what if a call comes in?'

  Logan tapped his watch. 'Eleven o'clock: time for the news. Local news for local people. Never hurts to find out what's going on in your patch.'

  The advert for double-glazing was followed by one for a car firm in Inverurie done in Doric, Aberdeen's almost indecipherable dialect, then one for the Yugoslavian Ballet and another for the new chip shop in Inverbervie. Then came the news. Mostly it was the usual rubbish, but one piece caught Logan's attention. He sat forward and cranked up the volume.

  '…earlier today. And the trial of Gerald Cleaver continues at Aberdeen Sheriff Court. The fifty-six-year-old, originally from Manchester, is accused of sexually abusing over twenty children while serving as a male nurse at Aberdeen Children's Hospital. Hostile crowds lined the road outside the courthouse, hurling abuse as Cleaver arrived under heavy police escort…'

  'Hope they throw the book at him,' Watson said, cutting across a box junction and speeding off down a little side road.

  '…The parents of murdered toddler David Reid have been
flooded with messages of support today, following the discovery of their three-year-old son's body near the River Don late last night…'

  Logan poked a finger at the radio, switching it off in mid-sentence. 'Gerald Cleaver is a dirty little shite,' he said, watching as a cyclist wobbled out into the middle of the road, stuck two fingers up and swore at a taxi driver. 'I interviewed him for the rape murders in Mastrick. Wasn't really a suspect, but he was on the "dodgy bastards" list, so we pulled him in anyway. Had hands like a toad, all cold and clammy. Pawing himself the whole time…' Logan shuddered at the memory. 'Not going to beat this one, though. Fourteen years to life: Peterhead.'

  'Serve him right.'

  Peterhead Prison. That was where they sent the sex offenders. The rapists, paedophiles, sadists, serial killers…People like Angus Robertson. People who had to be protected from normal, respectable criminals. The ones that liked to insert makeshift knives into sex offenders. Ta-da. Colostomy bag time for poor old Angus Robertson. Somehow Logan couldn't feel too sorry for him.

  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, stalling for time. 'In what way?' It was a standard fall-back.

  WPC Watson frowned. 'Well, I mean, what did the doctor say last night? At A amp;-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 pulling 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, usually 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.