to be heard over the whine of the vacuum table as someone dusted a length of metal pipe for prints.
Logan hauled at the crotch of his oversuit. Some funny bugger must’ve changed the label, because there was no way in hell this was a Large. ‘So, how long?’
‘Give us a break, we’ve only had the stuff fifteen minutes.’
‘Finnie wants everything tested ASAP.’
‘There’s a shock.’ The technician bent over the crumpled note again, taking a swab of sticky dark-red blood and slipping it into a little plastic vial. ‘If I put a rush on the DNA you’ll get it back in an hour—’
‘There’s a media briefing at six!’
‘—hour and a half tops. Best I can do.’
‘Can’t you—’
‘This isn’t the telly, I can’t just magic up a DNA profile in time for the adverts. Can probably do you a blood-type, though.’ He took another swab, then wandered over to the work surface beside the fridge. ‘As for the rest of it…’ He sighed, adjusted his safety goggles, then looked across the room. ‘Sam? How long for fingerprints?’
Nothing.
Logan peered at the shape huddled over the vacuum table. The baggy white SOC suit made her completely anonymous, even to him. ‘Samantha?’
The tech tried again. ‘Sam?’
Still nothing.
‘SAM: HOW LONG FOR FINGERPRINTS?’
She looked up from her length of iron pipe. One end was wrapped in a clear plastic evidence bag, the metal inside dark and stained. She hauled at the elastic on her suit’s hood – exposing a shock of bright scarlet hair – and pulled a tiny black headphone out of her ear. ‘What?’
‘Fingerprints.’
‘Oh.’ She looked at Logan and smiled … Probably. It was difficult to tell under the full SOC get-up. ‘That you in there?’
Logan smiled back behind his own mask. ‘Last time I checked.’
‘Got your envelope in the superglue box. Not holding my breath though, been in there ten minutes already and nothing’s come up.’
‘O rhesus negative.’ The tech held up a card. ‘Does that help?’
Same as Jenny McGregor.
‘Post mortem?’
‘No idea.’ The man picked up the evidence bag with the toe in it – using two fingers as if it was a dirty nappy – handed it to Logan, then wiped his gloves down the front of his oversuit. ‘The Ice Queen’s off at a conference in Baltimore, and the silly sod they got in to cover for her’s off with the squits. So…’
Logan tried not to groan. ‘When’s her highness back?’
‘Tuesday week.’
Brilliant.
He signed for the toe, then headed down to the mortuary: quiet and cold in a subterranean annex off the Rear Podium car park. The duty Anatomical Pathology Technician was sitting in a small beige office by the cutting room, feet up on the desk, reading a celebrity gossip magazine.
Logan knocked on the door frame. ‘Got some remains for you.’
‘Ah, indeed.’
‘WAG LOVE CHEAT EXCLUSIVE!’ went into a desk drawer, and the APT unfolded herself from the chair. Tall, thin, and insect-like, with trendy glasses and wide flat face, fingers constantly moving. ‘Is the hearse in the loading bay?’
Logan held up the bag containing the tiny chunk of flesh and bone.
‘Oh…’ She raised a broad, dark eyebrow. ‘I see. Well, we’ve had a busy day; I dare say this will represent a change of pace when Mr Hudson returns from his illness.’ She prowled through to the cold storage room, selected a metal door, opened it, and slid a large metal drawer out of the wall.
A waxy yellow face stared up at them. Swollen golf-ball nose; scraggy grey beard; the skin around the forehead and cheeks slightly baggy, as if it hadn’t been put back properly.
The APT frowned. ‘Now that’s not right. You should be in number four.’ Sigh. ‘Never mind.’ She opened up the next one along. ‘Here we go.’
‘I need the PM done soon as possible. We have—’
‘Sadly, with Dr McAllister away, and Mr Hudson…indisposed, it may be a few days before we can do anything.’ She reached towards him, fingers searching like the antennae on a centipede. ‘May I have the remains?’
Logan got her to sign for the toe, then watched her solemnly place the little pale digit in the drawer. It looked vaguely ridiculous: a tiny nub of flesh in an evidence bag, lying in the middle of that expanse of stainless steel. Then she slid the drawer back into the wall and clunked the heavy door shut.
Out of sight, but definitely not out of mind.
3
‘Rose Ferris, Daily Mail. You still haven’t answered the question: did you find Jenny McGregor’s body or not?’ The gangly reporter shifted forward in her seat, nostrils flaring.
Up on the podium DCI Finnie opened his mouth, but the man sitting next to him got in first.
‘No, Ms Ferris, we did not.’ Chief Superintendent Bain straightened the front of his dress uniform, the TV lights glinting off the silver buttons and his shiny bald head. ‘And I’d thank the more excitable members of the press to stop spreading these unsubstantiated rumours. People are distressed enough as it is. Is that clear, Ms Ferris?’
Standing at the side of the room, Logan scanned the sea of faces gathered in the Beach Ballroom’s biggest function suite – the only place near Force Headquarters large enough to fit everyone in. TV cameras, press photographers, and journalists from every major news outlet in the country. All here to watch Grampian Police screwing everything up.
They were arranged in neat rows of plastic chairs, facing the little dais where DCI Finnie, his boss – Baldy Brian – and a chewed-looking Media Liaison Officer perched behind a table draped in black cloth. A display stand with the Scottish Constabulary crest on it made up the backdrop: ‘SEMPER VIGILO’, ‘Always Vigilant’. Somehow Logan doubted anyone was buying it.
A rumpled man stuck his hand up: a sagging vulture in a supermarket suit. ‘Michael Larson, Edinburgh Evening Post. “Unsubstantiated”, right? So you’re saying this is all just a big hoax? That the production company—’
Everything else was drowned out: ‘Here we bloody go…’, ‘Hoy, Larson, your dick’s unsubstantiated!’, ‘Tosser…’
Larson’s back stiffened. ‘Oh come on, it’s obviously fake. They’re just doing it to boost record sales, aren’t they? There never was a body, it’s all—’
‘If there are no other
