of the privileges of rank: you supervise those further down the tree.’ He was a detective sergeant, Steve a constable. They’d all gone out and got pissed and Logan hadn’t done a bloody thing to stop the PC getting blootered and bollock-naked.
Logan groaned.
This assignment was as much a punishment for him as it was for Steve.
Twenty-five minutes later they were climbing out of the Nervous Wee Shite’s car in front of a dilapidated farm steading, the first outlying arm of a rambling croft on the outskirts of Cults. What little road there was disappeared into the undergrowth. A rundown farmhouse sulked at the end of the track, its grey stone weeping in the neverending rain. Derelict farm buildings sprawled around it, set in a wasteland of hip-deep grass and weeds. Ragwort and docken stuck up through the vegetation, their stems and leaves rust-brown beneath the winter sky. Two windows poked out of the building’s slate roof like an empty, hostile stare. Below, a faded red door bore a big painted number six. Each of the rambling steadings had a number scrawled on them in white paint. Every surface was slick with the misty rain, reflecting back the flat, grey daylight.
‘Homely,’ said Logan, in an attempt to break the ice. And then he smelled it. ‘Oh Jesus!’ He slapped a hand over his mouth and nose.
It was the cloying, reeking stink of corruption. Of meat left for too long in the sun.
The smell of death.
PC Steve lurched once, twice, and charged into the bushes to be noisily and copiously sick.
‘You see?’ said the nervous man from the council. ‘Didn’t I tell you it was terrible? Didn’t I?’
Logan nodded and agreed, even though he hadn’t paid attention to a single word on the way out.
‘The neighbours have been complaining about the smell since last Christmas. We’ve written letter after letter, but we never get anything back,’ said the man, clutching his leather folder to his chest. ‘The postman refuses to deliver here any more you know.’
‘Really,’ said Logan. That explained why they never got a bloody reply. Turning his back on the retching constable, he started wading his way through the jungle. ‘Let’s go see if there’s anyone in.’
Not surprisingly, the man from the council let him go first.
The main farm building had once been well cared for. There were little flecks of white paint on the crumbling stone, twisted rusting brackets where hanging baskets would have been. But those days were long gone. Grass was growing in the gutters, blocking the downpipe, and water dripped over the edge. The door hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint for years. Weather and wasps had stripped the last coat away, leaving bare, bleached wood and a small iron number was screwed in the middle, rendered illegible by rust and dirt. The handle didn’t look much better. And over the lot was that big, white, hand-painted number six.
Logan knocked. They stood back and waited. And waited. And waited. And …
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