stuck out his hand. ‘I take it DI Insch sent you?’ The accent wasn’t marked, just a hint of Brummie under the received pronunciation.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So let me guess: you’re not to tell me anything, and basically keep me out of the way. Yeah?’
‘No, sir. I’m just to give you a lift into town.’
‘Uh-huh. And that needed a detective sergeant?’ Faulds watched Logan wriggle for a moment then laughed. ‘Don’t worry: I used to do the same thing when top brass descended on me from other divisions. Last thing you want is some desk-jockey coming in and telling you how to run your investigation.’
‘Ah … OK … The car’s—’
‘Do you have a first name, Sergeant, or would that spoil your air of mystery?’
‘Logan, sir.’ He moved to pick up the Chief Constable’s bag, but Faulds waved him away.
‘I’m not a senior citizen yet, Logan.’
They crawled back into Aberdeen through the rush-hour, with Faulds on the phone, drawing Logan into a strange three-way conversation about the body parts they’d found the previous night.
‘What? Of course it’s raining: it’s Aberdeen … No, no I don’t think so, hold on …’ The Chief Constable stuck his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Do you have an ID for any of the victims?’
‘Not yet, we—’
‘Not gone through the missing persons database, or the DNA records?’
‘We only just found the remains, sir. They’re still frozen solid. The pathologist—’
And Faulds was back on the phone again. ‘No, they’ve not done the DNA yet … I know … You heard?… Yes. That’s what I thought.’ Back to Logan again. ‘You don’t need to defrost the whole thing – the sample you need for a DNA test should be small enough to come up to temperature in seconds. I’d better have a word with this pathologist of yours when we get in.’
‘Actually, sir, that might not be—’
But Faulds was back on the phone again. ‘Uh-huh … I think you’re right … Did he?’ Laughter. ‘Silly sod …’
He’d hung up by the time Logan was fighting through the long queue that trailed back from the Haudagain roundabout. Two lanes packed solid with cars and a bus lane full of orange cones. Faulds looked around at the collection of shiny new vehicles full of bored-looking people investigating the insides of their noses, while the drizzle drifted down. ‘Is this going to take long, Logan?’
‘Probably, sir. Apparently this is the worst roundabout in the country. Been questions raised about it in the Scottish Parliament.’
Faulds smiled. ‘About a roundabout? You whacky Jocks: and they said devolution wouldn’t work.’
‘They estimate it costs the local economy about thirty million a year. Sir.’
‘Thirty million, eh? That’s a lot of deep-fried haggis pies.’
Logan bit his tongue. Calling the chief constable a condescending wanker probably wasn’t the best career move.
They sat in uncomfortable silence, just the squeak of the windscreen wipers interrupting the stop-go of the motor as Logan inched the car forward. At least the bloody roundabout was in sight now.
And then Faulds burst out laughing. ‘You are so easy to wind up!’ He settled back in his seat. ‘Come on then, I know you’re dying to ask.’
‘Sir?’
Faulds just smiled at him.
‘Well … I was …’ Logan snuck a glance at his passenger: the clothes, the earring. ‘You’re not exactly what I expected, sir.’
‘You heard the words “Chief Constable” and you thought: doddery old fart with no sense of humour, who dresses up like a tailor’s dummy because he’s got an embarrassingly small penis and truncheon envy.’
‘Actually, I was wondering why someone as senior as you would come all the way up here to sit in on a local murder enquiry.’
‘Were you now?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Logan accelerated into the maelstrom of traffic, swung round the roundabout – trying not to get squashed by the articulated lorry heading straight for them – and finally they were on North Anderson Drive. Halleluiah! He put his foot down, overtaking a doddering old biddie in a clapped-out Mercedes. ‘I mean, why not send a DI, or a superintendent?’
There was a pause. ‘Well, Logan, there are some things you just can’t delegate.’ He checked his watch. ‘This raid DI Insch is on?’
‘That’s where we’re going now.’
‘Excellent.’ Faulds pulled out his phone again and started dialling. ‘Don’t mind me, just got a couple of calls to make, we – Fiona? … Fiona, it’s Mark: Mark Faulds … course I do, darling …’
They abandoned the pool car down a little side road and hurried out into the drizzle.
‘You know,’ said Faulds as they crossed at the traffic lights outside Country Ways, collars up and heads down, ‘I’ve been to Aberdeen about a dozen times, and it’s always sodding raining.’
‘We do our best.’
‘You buggers must be born with webbed feet.’
‘Only the ones from Ellon, sir.’
Holburn Street had been brought to a virtual standstill – two uniformed officers pretending to be traffic lights as they funnelled the backed-up traffic down one side of the road. The butcher’s shop had been hidden behind a cordon of eight-foot-high white plastic screens that reached out into the middle of the street.
A BBC outside broadcast van was parked on the double yellow lines just down from the scene, a woman with a ponytail, an umbrella, and a strange orange tan trying to convince a traffic warden not to give the van a ticket. There was a strobe-light flicker of flash photography and shouted questions as Logan and Faulds ducked under the blue-and-white Police tape, then they were through and behind the wall of plastic sheeting.
The IB’s filthy Transit van was parked inside the cordon, its back doors open while someone rummaged about inside for SOC suits for Logan and the Chief Constable.
Inside, the shop walls were peppered with recipe cards hung at jaunty angles: goulash, rib roast, minty lamb kebabs … A deli section and a mini greengrocer’s sat opposite an empty glass-fronted counter festooned with colourful stickers. The place was full of people in white paper oversuits and the smell of meat.
They found DI Insch in the cold store through the back, with a pair of IB technicians and Isobel, examining yet more chunks of meat.
Faulds took one look at the inspector in his bulging SOC outfit and said, ‘Good God, David, you’re huge!’ He stuck out his hand to shake, but Insch just looked
