said the PC with no name. ‘You get that down you, Steve. Nice hunks of sliced dead pig. Fried in its own grease. Dripping with fat. Just the thing you need to settle a queasy, heaving stomach.’
Steve was starting to go grey.
‘Nothing like a bit of lard to settle the old. . .’
The newcomer didn’t have to go any further. Steve lurched up from the table, slapped a hand over his mouth and sprinted for the toilet. As the sounds of retching and splattering echoed out of the bathroom the newcomer grinned, snatched up Steve’s forgotten buttie and rammed it into his gob. ‘God that’s good!’ he declared, grease running down his chin.
‘You’re an utter and complete bastard, Simon Rennie!’
The bastard Simon Rennie winked at WPC Jackie Watson. ‘Survival of the fittest.’
Logan sat back from the table, chewing on his bacon buttie, trying to remember what the hell happened last night. He couldn’t remember any party. Everything was pretty much a blank after the pub. And some of the stuff before that was none too clear either. But apparently he’d had a party and some of the search team had crashed at his place. That made sense. His flat was on Marischal Street: two minutes’ walk from Queen Street and Grampian Police Headquarters. But he still couldn’t remember anything after they were chucked out of the pub. The PC currently throwing up in his toilet – Steve – had stuck Queen’s ‘A Kinda Magic’ on the jukebox and promptly taken off all his clothes. It couldn’t be called a striptease. There was no teasing and too much staggering round like a drunken lunatic.
The bar staff had kindly asked them to leave.
Which explained why half of Aberdeen’s constabulary were either in his kitchen wolfing bacon, or in his bathroom chucking their guts up. But it didn’t shed any light on WPC Jackie Watson and her lovely legs.
‘So,’ he said, watching as Watson tore another huge mouthful out of her buttie. ‘How come you ended up with cooking duty?’ It was a neutral subject. No one would be able to discern the subtext: did we sleep together last night?
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and shrugged. ‘My turn. If it’s your first time on a sleepover you have to make the butties. But it’s your flat, so it goes to the next one in line.’
Logan nodded as if that made perfect sense. It was too early in the morning and he wasn’t up to thinking speed yet. He just smiled in a way that he hoped didn’t say anything negative about whatever had happened last night.
‘Well,’ he stood, dropping his crusts in the bin. ‘I’ve got to go. The briefing’s at half-seven, sharp, and I’ve got some pre-work to do.’ Nice and businesslike. No one said anything, or even looked up. ‘OK, well, if you can make sure and lock up I’ll see you all there. . .’ He stopped, expecting some sort of signal from WPC Watson. Jackie! Not WPC Watson: Jackie. He didn’t get one. She was too busy eating. ‘Yeah. Right,’ he said, backing towards the door. ‘See you later.’
Outside it was still dark. This time of the morning wasn’t going to see the sun for another five months at least. The city was starting up as he climbed Marischal Street to the Castlegate. The streetlights were still on, and so were the Christmas lights. The twelve days of Christmas: Aberdeen’s favourite, strung all the way from here to the far end of Union Street.
Logan stopped for a moment, breathing in the cold morning air. The torrential downpour was gone, replaced by a misting drizzle that made the Christmas lights hazy and blurred. Ivory-white light sculpted into lords a-leaping and swans a-swimming against the gunmetal-grey sky. The streets were slowly filling up with cars. The Union Street shop windows offered a riot of Christmas cheer and cheap tat. Above these, grey granite reached up for three or more storeys, the windows dark where offices were yet to open, people yet to wake. The whole scene was washed with amber and sparkling-white from the festive lights. It was almost beautiful. Sometimes the city reminded him why he still lived here.
He grabbed a pint of orange juice and a couple of butteries at the nearest newsagents before pushing his way through the back door of police headquarters and into the dry. The desk sergeant looked up at him as Logan shook himself on the way to the lifts.
‘Morning, Lazarus.’
Logan pretended not to hear him.
The briefing room smelled of strong coffee, stale beer and hangovers. The turn-out was one hundred percent, which surprised Logan. Even the vomiting, stripping Constable Steve was sitting up at the back, looking decidedly unwell.
Logan, clutching a stack of photocopied posters of the dead girl, found a seat as close to the front as he could and sat waiting for DI Insch to start things off. The Inspector had asked him to stand up this morning and tell everyone exactly how little they knew about the four-year-old child discovered at the Nigg tip yesterday.
He looked up from his photocopies to see WPC Watson – Jackie – smiling at him. He smiled back. Now that he’d had a bit of time to work the panic out of his system he was beginning to like the idea. It had been four months since he and Isobel had gone their separate ways. It would be nice to start seeing someone again. Soon as the briefing was over he was going to ask DI Insch to assign him a different bodyguard. Surely no one could complain about him seeing her if they weren’t working together.
He smiled over at WPC Jackie Watson, her lovely legs hidden beneath a pair of regulation black trousers. She smiled back. All was well with the world.
Logan suddenly became aware that everyone was smiling at him, not just WPC Jackie Watson.
‘In your own time, Sergeant.’
He snapped his head around to see DI Insch staring at him. ‘Er, yes. Thank you, sir.’ He pulled himself out of his seat and over to the desk Insch was sitting on, hoping he didn’t look as embarrassed as he felt.
‘Yesterday at four p.m. one Andrea Murray, head of Social Studies at Kincorth Academy, called 999 to report the discovery of a human foot sticking out of a bin-bag at the Nigg tip. The foot belongs to an unidentified four-year-old girl: Caucasian, long blonde hair, blue eyes.’ He handed a wad of photocopied sheets to the nearest person and told them to take one and pass it on. Each sheet was the same: a photograph from the morgue, full face, eyes closed, her cheeks lined where the packing tape had been. ‘Our killer tried to hack up the body for disposal, but didn’t have the stomach to go through with it.’
There were rumblings of disgust from the men and women filling the briefing room.
‘That means. . .’ Logan had to raise his voice. ‘That means this was probably his first time. If he’d killed before it wouldn’t have been a problem.’
Silence settled back in and Insch nodded approvingly.
Logan handed out a second set of copies. ‘This is the statement of Norman Chalmers. We arrested him last night on suspicion of murder after WPC Watson found evidence linking him to the bin-bag the body was dumped in.’
Someone slapped her on the shoulder and WPC Jackie Watson smiled.
‘However,’ continued Logan, ‘we have a problem. Forensics found no sign of the girl ever having been in Chalmers’s house. If he didn’t take her there, where did he take her?
‘I want one team to go through Mr Chalmers’s dealings with a fine-tooth comb. Does he rent a garage? Is he housesitting for anyone?
