turnip. He sank into one of the recently vacated office chairs and sagged back, staring up at the baggy ceiling tiles. ‘Great.’
Then his phone launched into ‘Fairytale of New York’ again. He groaned and curled into himself, arms wrapped around his head.
Steel grinned at Logan. ‘What you doing here?’ Then pointed at the groaning King. ‘Going to fire the wee man?’
‘Just popped in on my way to the canteen.’
‘Hmph. Nice for some, swanning about like something off Darth Vader’s glee club.’
‘So you didn’t find out anything useful at all?’
‘From the Teuchter Patrol? Nah.’ She plonked herself down in a chair. ‘“Professor Wilson is a loner”, “Professor Wilson is a pain in the hoop”, “Professor Wilson never puts his bins out on the right day”. Only thing we know for sure is he went missing sometime between eighteen past eleven on Sunday night and twenty to ten, Monday morning.’
Heather raised an eyebrow. ‘How can you possibly—’
‘Last tweet he sent was eleven eighteen; first Alt-Nat tweet crowing about his death was twenty to ten. It’s no’ exactly Celebrity Eggheads, is it, H?’
A blush spread itself up Heather’s neck and across her cheeks.
Steel pulled out her phone. ‘Honestly, you buggers forget I used to be a Chief Inspector, don’t you?’ She poked at the screen, eyes all narrow and squinty. ‘Here you go: “Corrupt Brit-Nat mouthpiece, Professor Wilson, has stained our proud country with his lies and filth for the last time. Death was too good for him. Enemy of the people!” Exclamation mark. Hashtag: “Rise up and be the nation again”, hashtag: “Scotland first”.’
Logan peered over her shoulder at the screen. ‘They leave a name?’
‘Aye: “Wally Knieve 1314”.’
‘OK.’ He straightened up. ‘So we do a PNC check for—’
‘It’s from Burns.’ Heather pulled her chin up, stressing the words as if trying to redeem herself after Steel made her look like a numpty. “‘Address to a Haggis”. And I quote:
“But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his treads,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He’ll mak it whissle …”’
She held up a hand and curled it into a fist. ‘This is my “walie nieve”.’
King let his arms fall by his sides and stared at the ceiling again. Voice little more than a funeral dirge:
‘“An’ legs, an’ arms, an’ heads will sned,
Like taps o’ thrissle.”’
Heather nodded. ‘And 1314 was the battle of Bannockburn.’
‘Oh …’ Steel put her phone away. ‘In that case, no. He didn’t leave a name.’
‘Course he didn’t.’ King sagged a bit further. ‘H?’
‘I can get in touch with Twitter, but don’t hold your breath.’
King didn’t move. ‘Thanks. And now, unless anyone else has a—’
The door burst open, banging against the wall, and in marched a short man. A bit tubby about the middle, small round glasses and a hairline that looked as if it was planning on parting company with its host any day now. A scowl etched into his pasty face. DCI Hardie stopped in the middle of the room as King scrambled to his feet.
‘Boss.’
‘You’ve heard about the university?’
‘Press release.’
‘Which means we’re going to have to do a media briefing. And by “we” I mean “you”. Two o’clock sharp. Try to make it sound like we know what we’re doing.’
King nodded. ‘Boss.’
Then Hardie stared at Logan. ‘Inspector McRae, good to have you back after …’ Suspicion replaced the scowl as he looked from Logan to King. ‘Is there something here I should know about?’
Logan put a hand on Steel’s shoulder. ‘Just popped by to see how Detective Sergeant Steel’s getting on. Make sure she’s keeping her nose clean.’
She gave him a full dose of the evil eye. ‘Hoy!’
‘Good luck with that.’ Hardie turned on his heel, snapping his fingers above his head as he marched from the room. ‘Two o’clock sharp!’
As soon as the door banged shut, King collapsed into his seat, hands over his face again. ‘Aaaargh …’
Yeah, that pretty much summed it up.
Logan plipped the locks on his Audi and hurried across the furnace masquerading as Bucksburn station’s rear car park. Trying to avoid the stickier patches of tarmac.
Inside, it was a bit cooler, but not a lot. He limped his way up the stairs to Professional Standards, sweat prickling between his shoulder blades. Who decided it was OK for the weather to be so bloody hot? The temperature was never meant to hit twenty-six in Aberdeen – what was the point of living nearly a degree and a half north of Moscow if it was going to be twenty-six in the shade? Might as well live in a microwave oven.
At least the air conditioning was on in the main office.
Someone he didn’t recognise was lowering the blinds, cutting out the glaring sun and the lunchtime ‘rush’. The traffic was barely moving – crawling along Inverurie Road and bringing most of Bucksburn to a grinding halt. Then the blinds clunked down and it was gone.
Whoever-it-was waved at Logan and he waved back.
Yup, no idea at all who you are, mate.
Logan lumbered his way along the line of offices to the one marked, ‘FORENSIC I.T.’ A laminated sheet of A4 sat underneath it, covered in clipart cartoon characters depicting some sort of bloody Aztec ritual with the legend, ‘THE MIGHTY KARL CARES NOT FOR YOUR VIRGIN SACRIFICES: BRING CAKE!’
OK, so a packet of Rice Krispie squares wasn’t quite the same thing, but it was near enough. Right?
He shifted the pack to his other hand and knocked.
A slightly high-pitched voice sounded on the other side of the door. ‘Abandon all hope and enter.’
Logan let himself in.
The Mighty Karl’s domain was an eclectic collection of IT equipment, all of it labelled and most
