should get a DNA analysis done on the foetus: we may have to prove a link between the death and the child’s father.’ Now that there wasn’t a butchery exhibition going on under her nose she was a lot more confident. She’d stripped off her surgical gear to reveal a severe black suit with sensible boots. Her long hair was the colour of stale beer, frizzy at the ends, her face pretty in a long-nosed, girl-next-door kind of way, a smattering of freckles marking the recent sunshine. ‘What about the sexual assault angle?’
Fraser shook his head. ‘Plenty of recent sexual activity – all three entrances – but nothing forced. Signs of lubricant in all orifices, probably spermicidal condoms, but we won’t know for sure until we get the lab results back. No semen.’
‘Right, Sergeant,’ she said, turning to Logan, ‘I want you to search the alley for any discarded contraceptives. If we can…’ she caught sight of Logan’s expression and stopped. ‘What?’
‘Shore Lane is one big open-air knocking shop. There’ll be hundreds of used condoms down there, and we’ve no way of telling how long they’ve been there for, who was wearing them, or who they’ve been inside.’
‘But the DNA—’
‘For DNA to count, first you’d have to prove it’d been inside her, then that it was worn by the killer and not just one of her regulars. Not to mention the whole “was it used at the time of her death” thing. And we don’t even know if her attacker had sex with her first.’ Something horrible occurred to Logan. ‘Or after?’ He cast a worried glance at Dr Fraser, but the man shook his head.
‘No fear of that,’ he said. There had been a nasty case a year ago when little boys were being abducted, strangled and then abused and mutilated. At least this wasn’t going to be one of those.
‘I see.’ She furrowed her neatly trimmed eyebrows. ‘I suppose there would also be considerable expense involved in getting DNA extracted from all those contraceptives.’
‘Considerable!’ said Logan and Dr Fraser at the same time.
‘I want them collected anyway,’ she said. ‘We can store them in deep freeze in case a suspect emerges.’
Logan couldn’t see the point, but what did he know? He was just a lowly detective sergeant. Just as long as he didn’t have to be the one telling the search teams to rummage about looking for old condoms, preferably filled. ‘Will do,’ he said.
‘OK.’ She reached into her immaculate suit and pulled out a slim black wallet, handing each of them a freshly minted business card. ‘If anything comes up, day or night, let me know.’ And then she was gone.
‘Well?’ asked Dr Fraser when the morgue door had swung shut. ‘What do you think?’
Logan looked down at the card in his hand: ‘RACHAEL TULLOCH LL.B, PROCURATOR FISCAL SUBSTANTIVE DEPUTE’. He sighed and stuck it in his top pocket. ‘I think I’ve got enough to worry about.’
Twenty-five minutes past eleven and Logan was getting twitchy. He’d arrived at the offices of Professional Standards early, not wanting to make a bad impression, even though he knew it was way too late for that. Inspector Napier didn’t like Logan. Had never liked him. Was just itching for a chance to throw him out on his scarred backside. It was twenty to twelve before Logan was finally summoned through to the inspector’s lair.
Napier was an unhappy-looking man by nature and had managed to select a career in which his miserable face, thinning ginger hair and hooked nose were a distinct advantage.
The inspector didn’t stand as Logan entered, just pointed a fountain pen at an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair on the opposite side of the desk, and went back to scribbling down something in a diary. There was a second, uniformed inspector sitting on the other side of the room with his back to the wall, arms crossed, face closed. He didn’t introduce himself as Logan looked nervously about Napier’s office. The room echoed the man, everything in its place. Nothing here was without function, nothing frivolous like a photograph of his loved ones. Presuming he had any. Finishing his entry with a grim flourish, Napier looked up and flashed Logan the smallest and most insincere smile in the history of mankind.
‘Sergeant,’ he said, smoothing out a razor-sharp crease in his tailored black uniform, the buttons winking and shining away in the fluorescent lighting like tiny hypnotists’ pocket watches. ‘I want you to tell me all about PC Maitland and why he is now lying in Intensive Care.’ The inspector settled back in his chair. ‘In your own time, Sergeant.’
Logan went through the botched operation, while the silent man in the corner took notes. The anonymous tip-off: someone selling stolen electrical goods from an abandoned warehouse in Dyce. Getting the officers together, fewer than he’d wanted, but all that were available. Piling out to the warehouse in the dead of night when there was supposed to be some big delivery happening. Getting everyone into position. Watching as a grubby blue Transit Van appeared and backed up to the warehouse door. How he’d given the go to storm the building. And then how it had all started to go wrong. How PC Maitland had been shot in the shoulder and fallen from a walkway, twenty feet straight down to the concrete floor below. How someone had set off a smoke grenade and all the bad guys escaped. How, when the smoke cleared, there wasn’t a single piece of stolen property in the whole place. How they’d rushed Maitland to A&E, but the doctors didn’t expect him to live.
‘I see,’ said Napier when Logan had finished. ‘And the reason you decided to use an unarmed search team rather than trained firearms officers?’
Logan looked down at his hands. ‘Didn’t think it was necessary. Our information didn’t say anything about weapons. And it was stolen property, small stuff, nothing special. We did a full risk analysis at the briefing…’
‘And are you taking full responsibility for the entire…’ he hunted around for the right word, settling on: ‘fiasco?’
Logan nodded. There wasn’t anything else he could do.
‘Then there’s the negative publicity,’ said Napier. ‘An incident like this gathers media interest, much in the same way as a mouldering corpse gathers flies…’ He produced a copy of the previous day’s Evening Express. The headline was something innocuous about house prices in Oldmeldrum, but the inspector flicked past that to the centre-page spread and handed it across the desk. TO MY MIND … was a regular column, where the paper got local bigwigs, minor celebrities, ex-police chief inspectors and politicians to bang their gums about something topical. Today it was Councillor Marshall’s turn, the column topped with the usual photograph of the man, his rubbery features stretched wide by an oily smile – like a self-satisfied slug.
Police incompetence is on the rise: you only have to look at last week’s botched raid for yet more evidence! No arrests and one officer left at death’s door. While our brave boys in blue patrolling the streets are doing a sterling job under difficult circumstances, it has become clear that their superiors are unable to manage the proverbial drinks party in a brewery…
It went on for most of the page, using Logan’s screwed-up warehouse raid as a metaphor for everything that was wrong with the police today. He pushed the paper back across the desk, feeling slightly sick.
Napier pulled a thick file marked ‘DS L. MCRAE’ from his in-tray and added Councillor Marshall’s article to the pile of newspaper cuttings. ‘You have been remarkably lucky not to have been pilloried in the press for your involvement in this, Sergeant, but then I suppose that’s what happens when you have friends in low places.’ He placed the file neatly back in the tray. ‘I wonder if the local media will still love you when PC Maitland dies…’ Napier
