if you nod.’
Nicholson’s eyes darted back to the staring glass eye of the video camera. ‘Er. . . Oh, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, I did. I found him last night.’
‘What were you doing down there in the middle of the night, Duncan?’
He shrugged. ‘I wis. . . takin’ a walk. You know, had a row with the wife and went for a walk.’
‘Down the riverbank? In the dead of night?’
The smile started to fade. ‘Er, yeah. I go down there sometimes to, you know, think an’ stuff.’
Logan crossed his arms, mirroring the PC sitting next to him. ‘So you went down there to think. And just happened to fall over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy?’
‘Er, yeah. . . I just. . . Look, I. . .’
‘Just happened to fall over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy. In a waterlogged ditch. Hidden beneath a sheet of chipboard. In the dark. In the pouring rain.’
Nicholson opened his mouth once or twice, but nothing came out.
Logan left him sitting in silence for almost two minutes. The man was getting more and more fidgety by the second, his shaved head now as sweaty as his upper lip, the smell of second-hand garlic oozing out of him in nervous waves.
‘I’d been. . . drinking, OK? I fell down, nearly killed myself goin’ down that bloody bank.’
‘You fell down the bank, in the pouring rain, and yet when the police arrived there wasn’t a speck of mud on you! You were clean as a whistle, Duncan. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s just fallen down a muddy bank and into a ditch, now does it?’
Nicholson ran a hand over the top of his head, the stubble making a faint scritching noise in the oppressive interview room. Dark blue stains marked his armpits.
‘I. . . I went home to call you. I got changed.’
‘I see.’ Logan switched the smile back on again. ‘Where were you on the thirteenth of August this year, between half past two and three in the afternoon?’
‘I. . . I don’t know.’
‘Then where were you between the hours of ten and eleven this morning?’
Nicholson’s eyes snapped open wide. ‘This mornin’? What’s goin’ on? I didnae kill anyone!’
‘Who said you did?’ Logan turned in his seat. ‘Constable Watson, did you hear me accuse Mr Nicholson of murder?’
‘No, sir.’
Nicholson squirmed.
Logan produced a list of all the children registered missing in the last three years and placed it on the table between them.
‘Where were you this morning, Duncan?’
‘I was watching the telly.’
‘And where were you on,’ Logan leant forward and read off the list, ‘the fifteenth of March between six and seven? No? How about the twenty-seventh of May, half-four to eight?’
They went through every date on the list, Nicholson sweating and murmuring his answers. He wasn’t anywhere he said. He was at home. He was watching television. The only people who could vouch for his whereabouts were Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey. And they were mostly repeats.
‘Well, Duncan,’ said Logan when they’d got to the end of the list, ‘doesn’t look too good, does it?’
‘I didn’t touch those kids!’
Logan sat back and tried DI Insch’s silent treatment again.
‘I didn’t! I fuckin’ came to you lot when I found that kid, didn’t I? Why the hell would I do that if I killed him? I wouldn’t kill a kid: I love kids!’
WPC Watson raised an eyebrow and Nicholson scowled.
‘Not like that! I’ve got nephews and nieces, OK? I wouldn’t fuckin’ do something like that.’
‘Then let’s go back to the start.’ Logan shoogled his chair in closer to the table. ‘What were you doing wandering about on the banks of the Don in the middle of the night in the pouring rain?’
‘I told you I was pissed. . .’
‘Why don’t I believe you, Duncan? Why do I get the feeling that when the report comes back from Forensics there’s going to be evidence linking you to the dead boy?’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Nicholson slammed his hand down on the tabletop, making the little pile of shredded paper scatter and fall like snow.
‘We’ve got you, Mr Nicholson. You’re only kidding yourself if you think you’re going to talk your way out of it. I think a little time in the cells is going to do you the world of good. We’ll talk again when you’re ready to start telling the truth. Interview terminated at thirteen twenty-six.’
He got WPC Watson to escort Nicholson down to the cellblock, hanging on in the interview room until she returned.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think he did it. He’s not the right type. Not smart enough to lie convincingly.’
‘True.’ Logan nodded. ‘But he’s lying all the same. No way he was down there having a bit of a late night stagger. You get plastered, you don’t go stomping about down the riverbank in the pissing rain for a laugh. He was down there for a reason, we just don’t know what it is yet.’
Aberdeen harbour slid by the car window, grey and miserable. A handful of offshore supply vessels were tied up along the docks, their cheery yellow-and-orange paintwork dulled by the pouring rain. Lights glinted in the semi-darkness of the afternoon as containers were winched off lorries and onto the waiting boats.
Logan and WPC Watson were heading back to Richard Erskine’s house in Torry. Someone had actually remembered seeing the missing boy. A Mrs Brady had seen a small blond boy wearing a red anorak and blue jeans crossing the waste ground behind her house. It was the only break they’d had.
The half past two news was about to come on and Logan turned the car radio on, catching the end of an old Beatles track. Not surprisingly Richard Erskine’s disappearance was given top billing. DI Insch’s voice boomed out of the speakers asking members of the public to come forward with information about the child’s whereabouts. He had a natural flair for the dramatic, as everyone who’d seen him in the annual Christmas panto knew, but he managed to keep it in check as the newsreader asked the obvious question:
‘Do you think Richard has been taken by the same paedophile who killed David Reid?’
‘At this moment we’re just looking to find Richard safe and sound. If anyone has any information please call our hotline on oh eight hundred, five, five, five, nine, nine, nine.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. In other news: the trial of Gerald
