in medieval history from St Andrews University. Or so I’m told.’
Logan nodded. He’d suspected as much. ‘What happened?’
‘Schizophrenic.’ The man shrugged. ‘He’s on medication.’
‘Care in the community?’ asked Logan.
‘Oh he’s perfectly safe,’ said the man from the council, but Logan could hear the tremor in his voice. That was why he’d been so insistent on a police escort. Care in the community or not, he was scared of Roadkill. ‘And he does a good job, he really does.’
‘Scraping up dead animals.’
‘Well, we can’t just leave them to rot at the side of the road, can we? I mean it’s not too bad with rabbits and hedgehogs, the cars sort of smush them into paste and the crows and things take care of what’s left. But cats and dogs and things. . . You know. . . People complain if they have to drive past a rotting labrador every morning on the way to work.’ He paused as a bus pulled out in front of them. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without Bernard. Before he was released into the community we couldn’t get anyone to do it for love nor money.’
Now he actually stopped to think about it, it had been a long time since Logan had seen a dead animal on an Aberdeen street.
The man from the council dropped them off outside Force HQ, thanking them for their help and apologizing for the smell before driving off into the rain.
Logan and PC Steve sprinted for the main door, their feet sending up fountains of water with every step. They were both soaked by the time they pushed through into reception.
The pointy-faced desk sergeant looked up as they squelched their way across the Grampian Police Crest set into the lino: a thistle topped with a crown, above the words ‘SEMPER VIGILO’.
‘DS McRae?’ he said, stretching himself out of his chair like a curious parrot.
‘Yes?’ Logan was waiting for some sort of ‘Lazarus’ comment. Those bastards Big Gary and Eric must have told the whole bloody station about it.
‘DI Insch says you’re to go straight to the incident room.’
Logan took a look down at his soaking trousers and wringing suit. He was desperate to climb into a shower and a dry set of clothes. ‘Can it not wait fifteen, twenty minutes?’ he asked.
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Nope. The DI was very specific. Soon as you got back: straight to the incident room.’
While PC Steve went off to get dry, Logan grumbled his way through the building to the lifts, mashing the button with an angry finger. Up on the third floor he stomped his way down the corridor. The walls were already punctuated with Christmas cards. They were pinned to the corkboards, in between ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?’ and ‘DOMESTIC ABUSE. . . THERE’S NO EXCUSE!’ and all the other wanted and information posters the media office put out. Tiny bursts of cheer among all the misery and suffering.
The incident room was crowded and bustling. PCs, WPCs and DCs charged about clutching sheets of paper, or answered the constantly bleating phones. And in the middle of it all Detective Inspector Insch sat on the edge of a desk, peering over someone’s shoulder as they scribbled down notes with a phone clamped between their shoulder and their ear.
Something had happened.
‘What’s up?’ asked Logan after he’d squelched his way through the crowd.
The inspector held up a hand for silence, leaning closer so he could read what was being written. Finally he sighed with disappointment and turned his attention to Logan. An eyebrow shot up as he saw the state of his detective sergeant. ‘Go for a swim did you?’
‘No, sir,’ said Logan, feeling water trickling down the back of his neck into his already sodden collar. ‘It’s raining.’
Insch shrugged. ‘That’s Aberdeen for you. Could you not have dried yourself off before coming in here, dripping all over my lovely clean incident room?’
Logan closed his eyes and tried not to rise to the bait. ‘The desk sergeant said it was urgent, sir.’
‘We’ve lost another kid.’
The car was steaming up too quickly for the blowers to deal with. Logan had cranked them, and the heating, up to full pelt, but the outside world remained obscured behind misty windows. DI Insch sat in the passenger seat, chewing away thoughtfully as Logan squinted through the windscreen at the dark, rain-soaked streets, trying to get them through town to Hazlehead and the place where the latest child had gone missing.
‘You know,’ said Insch, ‘since you came back to work we’ve had two abductions, found a dead girl, a dead boy and dragged a corpse with no knees out the harbour. All in the space of three days. That’s a record for Aberdeen.’ He poked about in his packet of fizzy, jelly shapes, coming out with what looked like an amoeba. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re some sort of jinx.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It’s playing merry hell with my crime statistics,’ said Insch. ‘Nearly every bloody officer I’ve got is either out there searching for missing children or trying to find out who the little girl in the bin-bag was. How am I supposed to get the burglaries and the frauds and the indecent exposures sorted out if I don’t have any bloody uniforms left?’ He sighed and offered the bag to Logan.
‘No thank you, sir.’
‘I tell you, rank has fewer privileges than you think.’
Logan looked across at the inspector. Insch was not the sort of officer who normally indulged in self-pity. At least not as far as Logan knew. ‘Like supervising uniforms, you mean?’ he asked.
At this a smile broke over DI Insch’s large features. ‘Did you like Roadkill’s little collection?’
So he had known all about the steadings full of rotting animal corpses. He had done it on purpose.
‘I don’t think I’ve been sick so many times in my life before.’
‘How was Constable Jacobs?’
Logan was about to ask who Constable Jacobs was, when he realized the inspector was talking about PC Steve: the naked drunkard. ‘I don’t think he’ll forget this morning in a hurry.’
Insch nodded. ‘Good.’
Logan thought the large man was going to say something more, but Insch just stuffed another sweetie in his mouth and smiled evilly to himself.
Hazlehead was right on the edge of city, just a stone’s throw from the countryside proper. On the other side of Hazlehead Academy only the crematorium stood between civilization and the rolling fields. The Academy had a reputation for drugs and violent pupils, but it wasn’t a patch on places like Powis and Sandilands, so things could have been worse.
Logan pulled the car up in front of one of the tower blocks near the main road. It wasn’t as big as the ones in town, being a mere seven storeys, and was surrounded by mature, cadaverous trees. The leaves had come off late this year, coating the ground in slimy black clots that clogged the drains and made them overflow.
‘You
