and nearly fell on his backside in the slush. He had the collar of his jacket turned up and a newspaper held over his shaved head, trying to keep the worst of the weather off. He slipped and slid his way up the disabled ramp to the bookies.
Logan frowned and turned the binoculars on the newcomer as he pushed his way through the door into the shop. The man’s ears were festooned with piercings and he had a haunted look that was instantly recognizable: Duncan Nicholson. The same Duncan Nicholson who’d 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.
‘What are you doing here, you little toerag?’ Logan asked himself quietly.
Mastrick wasn’t local for Nicholson. He lived in the Bridge of Don, well across the city. Big journey to make on a shitty day like this.
And then there was that carrier bag. Or what was in it.
‘I wonder. . .’
But Logan’s trail of thought was shattered as the police radio spluttered into life. They’d found another body.
It was dark by the time Logan reached the farm on the outskirts of Cults. The gate was open, a patrol car parked next to it containing a pair of unhappy-looking constables, just visible through the fogged-up windscreen. They were blocking access to the farm road. Logan pulled up next to them and rolled down his window. The PC in the driver’s seat did the same.
‘Afternoon, sir,’
‘What’s the story?’
‘DI Insch is here, so’s the Fiscal. Duty doctor’s just arrived. IB are stuck in traffic. And there’s about six blokes from the council in one of the steadings. We had to restrain them from killing the property’s owner.’
‘Roadkill?’
‘Yup. He’s holed up in the farmhouse with Insch. The inspector doesn’t want him going anywhere till death’s been declared.’
Logan nodded and started to wind up his window. The sleet was beginning to blow into the car.
‘Sir?’ asked the PC behind the wheel of the patrol car. ‘Is it true we had him in custody last night and let him go?’
Logan felt a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach. He’d been thinking the same thing ever since he’d heard. Worrying all the way over from Mastrick. They’d released Roadkill without charge and now another child was dead. He’d even given the guy a lift!
The sleet was thickening, turning into flurries of real snow as Logan slithered the pool car up the rutted driveway towards Roadkill’s farm. The steadings loomed out of the dark, the car’s headlights picking out the open doors.
Blue police tape was stretched across the doorway of steading number two. The one they’d been emptying today.
Logan pulled up behind the duty doctor’s car. There was another patrol car here, empty this time. Its occupants would be taking statements from the guys who’d found the body. Stopping them from tearing Roadkill to pieces. The only car not parked next to the snow-shrouded waste containers was DI Insch’s Range Rover. The big four-by-four was the only one that could handle the rutted drive in the snow. It was abandoned in front of the farmhouse. A faint yellow light flickered in one of the downstairs windows.
Logan looked from the steading with its warning tape to the farmhouse, fading in and out of view through the growing blizzard. Might as well get the nasty bit over and done with.
It was freezing cold outside and as soon as Logan killed his car lights it was dark as well. He jumped back in the car and dug a flashlight out from under a pile of posters with Peter Lumley’s face on them. Please God: let it be him. Don’t let it be some other poor little bastard. Not another one.
The torch dispelled just enough darkness for Logan to see where he was putting his feet. The snow was building up in the hollows and potholes, hiding them, making it far too easy to slip and fall. Logan stumbled his way through the grass to steading number two, the fat snowflakes sticking to his jacket.
Inside, it smelled terrible. But not as bad as it had on that first day when he’d made PC Steve drag open the heavy wooden door. The wind took away some of the smell, but it was still bad enough to make Logan gag as he crossed the threshold. Coughing, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it over his nose and mouth.
Half the carcases were gone and the concrete floor slippery with ooze and decayed body fluids. Doc Wilson, dressed in the regulation white paper boiler suit, was hunched down in front of the pile of corpses, his open medical bag sitting on top of a flattened bin-bag to keep it out of the slime.
Logan pulled on a set of coveralls. ‘Evening, Doc,’ he said, carefully picking his way across the concrete.
The duty doctor turned. A white mask hid the lower part of his face. ‘How come when it’s a messy job it’s always me gets called, eh?’
‘Just lucky I guess,’ said Logan. The humour was forced, but the doctor managed a small smile behind his mask.
He pointed at the open bag and Logan helped himself to a pair of latex gloves and a mask. The smell suddenly vanished, replaced by an overwhelming reek of menthol that made his eyes water. ‘Vicks VapoRub,’ Doc Wilson said. ‘Old pathology trick. Covers a multitude of sins.’
‘What are we looking at?’
Please God let it be Peter Lumley.
‘Difficult to tell. The poor wee sod’s nearly rotted all away.’
The Doc lumbered to the side and Logan got his first real look at what had sent Matthew Oswald screaming out into the snow to throw up his Weetabix. A child’s head protruded from the mass of animal corpses. There were no real features left, the bone poking out through slimy grey.
‘Oh Christ.’ Logan’s stomach lurched.
‘I dinna even know if it’s a boy or a girl. We’ll no know till we dig the body out and examine it properly.’
Logan looked at the grim head, the empty eye-sockets, the mouth hanging open, the teeth protruding from the shrunken gums. A matted mess of hair was almost indistinguishable from the fur of the animals piled up all around the body. A pair of small pink clasps were embedded in the putrid scalp. Barbie hairgrips.
‘It’s a girl.’ Logan stood. He couldn’t take any more of this. ‘Come on, Doc. Declare death and leave this for the pathologist.’
The doctor nodded sadly. ‘Aye. Perhaps you’re right. Poor wee sod. . .’
Logan stood outside in the snow, his face turned into the wind, letting the cold and damp wash away the stench of decay. It didn’t dispel his nausea though. Shivering, he watched as Doc Wilson clambered his way through the snow and into his car. No sooner was the door closed than out came the cigarettes and the doctor was wreathed in smoke.
‘Lucky bastard.’
He turned his back on the scene and trudged out into the blizzard, making for the farmhouse, the torch’s beam a bar of white, swirling and whirling, marking his progress through the long grass. Ten steps and his trousers were soaked to the knee, his shoes full of icy
