yelled: ‘Cut!’
‘You did that on purpose,’ whispered Logan as the sounds of a swearing television journalist erupted. WPC Watson just smiled and barged her way through the crowd gathered at the foot of the stairs. Logan hurried after her, trying not to hear the howls of complaint mixed in with the shouted questions and demands for comment.
A Family Liaison Officer was through in the living room with Richard Erskine’s mother and the bitter old woman from next door. There was no sign of DI Insch.
Logan left Watson in the lounge and tried the kitchen, helping himself to an open packet of Jaffa Cakes lying on the worktop next to the kettle. A half-glazed door led from the kitchen out into the back garden, the light blocked by a large figure standing outside.
But it wasn’t Insch. It was a sad-looking, overweight detective constable with half-past-two o’clock shadow, chain-smoking under the tiny porch.
‘Afternoon, sir,’ said the DC, not bothering to straighten up, or put his cigarette out. ‘Shitty weather, eh?’ He wasn’t a local lad: his accent was pure Newcastle.
‘You get used to it.’ Logan stepped out onto the back step next to the DC to do as much passive smoking as he could.
The constable took the cigarette out of his mouth and stuck a finger in, working a nail up and down between his back teeth. ‘Don’t see how. I mean I’m used to rain like, but Jesus this place takes the fucking biscuit.’ He found whatever it was he was digging for and flicked it away into the downpour. ‘Think it’s going to keep up till the weekend?’
Logan looked out at the low, dark-grey clouds. ‘The weekend?’ He shook his head and took in another scarred lungful of second-hand smoke. ‘This is Aberdeen: it won’t stop raining till March.’
‘Bollocks!’ The voice was deep, authoritative and coming from directly behind them.
Logan twisted his head round to see DI Insch standing in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.
‘Don’t you listen to DS McRae, he’s pulling your leg.’ Insch stepped out onto the already crowded top step, forcing Logan and the DC to shuffle precariously sideways.
‘Won’t stop raining till March?’ Insch popped a fruit sherbet into his mouth. ‘March? Don’t lie to the poor constable: this is Aberdeen.’ He sighed and stuck his hands back in his pockets. ‘It never stops fuckin’ raining.’
They stood in silence, watching the rain do what rain does.
‘Well, I’ve got a bit of good news for you, sir,’ said Logan at last. ‘Mr Moir-Farquharson is receiving death threats.’
Insch grinned. ‘Hope so. I’ve written enough of them.’
‘He’s representing Gerald Cleaver.’
Insch sighed again. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? Still that’s DI Steel’s problem. Mine is: where’s Richard Erskine?’
They found the body in the council tip at Nigg, just south of the city. A two-minute drive from Richard Erskine’s house. A party of school children had been out on a field trip: ‘Recycling and Green Issues’. They arrived by minibus at three twenty-six and proceeded to don little white breathing masks, the kind with the elastic band holding them on, and heavy-duty rubber gloves. Everyone wore waterproofed jackets and Wellington boots. They signed in at the Portacabin office next to the skips at three thirty-seven, before squelching their way into the tip. Walking through a landscape of discarded nappies, broken bottles, kitchen waste and everything else chucked out by hundreds of thousands of Aberdonians every day.
It was Rebecca Johnston, eight, who spotted it. A left foot, sticking up out of a pile of shredded black plastic bags. The sky was full of seagulls – huge, fat bloated things that swooped and screamed at each other in a jagged ballet. One was tugging away at a bloodstained toe. This was what first grabbed Rebecca’s attention.
And at four o’clock, on the dot, they called the police.
The smell was unbelievable, even on a wet and windy day like today. Up here on Doonies Hill the rain was bitterly cold. It hammered against the car, gusts of wind rocking the rusty Vauxhall, making Logan shiver even though the heater was going full pelt.
Both he and WPC Watson were soaked to the skin. The rain had paid no attention to their police-issue ‘waterproof’ jackets, saturated their trousers and seeped into their shoes. Along with Christ knew what else. The car windows were opaque, the blowers making little headway.
The Identification Bureau hadn’t turned up yet, so Logan and Watson had built a makeshift tent of fresh bin-bags and wheelie-bins over the body. It looked as if it was going to fly apart at any moment, torn to pieces by the howling wind, but it kept the worst of the rain off.
‘Where the hell are they?’ Logan cleared a porthole in the fogged-up windscreen. His mood had swiftly deteriorated as they’d struggled with whipping black plastic bags and unco-operative bins. The painkiller he’d taken at lunchtime was wearing off, leaving him sore every time he moved. Grumbling, he pulled out the bottle and shook one into his hand, swallowing it down dry.
At long last an almost-white, unmarked van slithered its way slowly along the rubbish road, its headlights blazing. The Identification Bureau had arrived.
‘About bloody time!’ said WPC Watson.
They clambered out of the car and stood in the driving rain.
Behind the approaching van the North Sea raged, grey and huge, the frigid wind making its first landfall since the Norwegian fjords.
The van slid to a halt and a nervous-looking man peered out through the windshield at the driving rain and festering rubbish.
‘You’re not going to bloody melt!’ shouted Logan. He was sore, cold, damp and in no mood for dicking about.
A troop of four IB men and women grudged their way out of the van into the downpour and swore the SOC tent up over Logan’s makeshift fort. The wheelie-bins and black plastic bags were turfed out into the rain and the portable generators set up. With a roar they burst into life, flooding the area with sizzling white light.
No sooner was the crime scene waterproof than ‘Doc’ Wilson, the duty doctor, turned up.
‘Evenin’ all,’ he said, turning up the collar of his coat with one hand and grabbing his medical bag with the other. He took one look at the minefield of crap that lay between the dirt road and the blue plastic marquee and sighed. ‘I just bought these bloody shoes. Ah well …’
He stomped off towards the tent with Logan and WPC Watson in tow.
An acne-ridden IB officer with a clipboard stopped them at the threshold, keeping them all out in the driving rain until they’d signed in, and then watched them suspiciously until they’d all clambered into white paper boiler suits.
Inside the tent a single human leg rose out of the sea of refuse sacks, from the knee down, like the Lady of the Lake’s arm. The only thing missing was Excalibur. The IB video operator was sweeping his way slowly
