Cold granite lm-1

by Stuart MacBride

  Things were already beginning to get ugly.

  They chanted and shouted abuse at the court building: men, women, parents and grandparents, all gathered together, baying for blood. The only things missing were the pitchforks and burning torches.

  And then the crowd went quiet.

  The large glass doors swung open and out into the rain came Sandy Moir-Farquharson. Gerald Cleaver wasn't with him: there was no way Grampian Police were going to turn Cleaver out into that mob, no matter how guilty they thought he was.

  Sandy the Snake smiled at the crowd as if they were old friends. This was his moment in the sun. Television cameras from around the world were here. Today he would shine on the global stage.

  A forest of microphones leapt up all around him.

  Logan stepped out into the rain, morbid curiosity dragging him on until he was close enough to hear the lawyer's words.

  'Ladies and gentlemen,' said Moir-Farquharson, pulling folded sheets of paper from his jacket pocket, 'my client will not be available for comment at this time but he has asked me to read the following statement.' He cleared his throat and stuck his chest out. '"I wish to thank everyone for their kind words of support during this ordeal. I have always maintained my innocence and today the good people of Aberdeen have vindicated me."'

  At this the silence became punctuated with angry noises.

  'Oh Christ,' muttered a uniform standing next to Logan, 'could they no have got him to keep his mouth shut?'

  '"Now that"…' Sandy the Snake had to raise his voice to be heard, '…"Now that my good name has been cleared I will"-' He didn't get any further.

  A huge scruffy young man lunged out of the crowd, shoved his way through the ring of reporters and clobbered the lawyer one. Right on the nose. Sandy the Snake staggered back, tripped, and went down. The crowd roared in approval.

  A ring of black uniforms appeared out of nowhere, grabbing the scruffy man before he could really put the boot into the fallen lawyer. They picked up a bleeding Sandy Moir-Farquharson and helped him back into the court building, frogmarching his attacker in behind him.

  Nothing else happened for half an hour. Nothing but the freezing rain. Most of the crowd gave up and dispersed to the bars and their homes until there were only a handful of protesters left to see an unmarked minibus with tinted windows pull out onto the road and head away towards the centre of town.

  Gerald Cleaver was free. Back at Force Headquarters Logan joined a long queue of dripping, sniffing, police men and women. Up at the head of the line the canteen staff ladled out steaming bowls of Scotch broth. Standing next to the cutlery, the Chief Constable shook everyone's hand and told them what a great job they'd done of preventing trouble.

  Logan accepted the soup and the handshake with equal magnanimity, then squelched down over to a table by the fogged-up window. The soup was hot and tasty and a damn sight more use than the handshake. But at least the soup was free.

  A delighted Detective Inspector Insch plonked himself down on the other side of the table, between a couple of drenched PCs. He sat beaming at everyone and everything. 'Right on the nose!' he said at last. 'Bang! Right on the nose.' He grinned and dug a spoon into his soup. 'Whap!' He put the spoon back down. 'Did you see it? Slippery little sod stands there and spouts his drivel and someone gets up and twats him one. Bang!' He slammed a huge fist into a huge hand, making the PC sitting next to him jump and miss his mouth with the spoon, sending a cascade of soup down the front of his tie. 'Sorry, son.' Insch offered the spluttering PC a napkin. 'Right on the bloody nose!' He stopped and the grin got even wider. 'It'll be on the news tonight! I'm going to record it and whenever I feel like a laugh-' he mimed pointing a remote control, stabbing his finger down on a pretend button. 'BANG! Right on the nose.' He sighed happily. 'Days like this I remember why I joined the force.'

  'How's DI Steel taking it?' asked Logan.

  'Hmm? Oh…' Insch's smile faded. 'Well she's happy about the nose-punching but well pissed off they let that slimy little pervert go free.' He shook his head. 'She spent ages getting the victims to testify. Poor buggers had to stand there and tell everyone what that pervert did to them. Hissing Sid humiliates them. Cleaver goes free, and all that pain was for nothing.'

  Silence settled over the table, everyone concentrating on their soup.

  'You want to go see him?' asked Insch when the last of Logan's soup was gone.

  'What, Cleaver?'

  'No, the hero of the hour!' He raised his hands in the classic fisticuffs pose. 'He who floats like a butterfly and stings like a fist to the nose.'

  Logan smiled. 'Why not?'

  There was a small crowd outside the holding cells. All happy and chattering. With a growl, DI Insch sent them packing. Didn't they know this was highly unprofessional? Did they want people to think it was OK to go committing assault? Shamefaced, the uniformed onlookers dispersed, leaving just Logan, Insch and the custody sergeant outside the blue-painted door. The sergeant was scribbling a name on the board next to the cell and Logan frowned. It looked familiar, but he couldn't work out why.

  'Mind if we pay your boy a visit?' asked Insch when the scribbling was done.

  'What? No, sir, you go ahead. Are you in charge of the investigation?'

  Insch beamed again. 'I bloody well hope so!'

  The room was small without being cosy: brown lino floor, cream walls and a hard wooden bench-seat running along the wall. The only natural light came from two small frosted panes of heavy-duty glass set into the top of the outside wall. The whole place smelled of armpits.

  The cell's occupant was curled up on the wooden bench, lying on his side in the foetal position. Moaning quietly.

  'Thank you, Sergeant,' said Insch. 'We can take it from here.'

  'OK.' The custody sergeant backed out of the cell and winked at Logan. 'Let me know if Mohammed Ali here gives you any trouble.'

  The cell door shut with a dull clang and Insch settled down on the bench next to the curled up figure. 'Mr Strichen? Or can I call you Martin?'

  The figure shifted slightly.

  'Martin? Do you know why you're here?' Insch's voice was soft and friendly, completely unlike any tone Logan had ever heard him use on a suspect.

  Slowly, Martin Strichen levered himself up until his legs were hanging over the edge of the bench, his socks making damp footprints on the lino. They'd confiscated his shoelaces and his belt and anything else dangerous. He was huge – not fat – but large everywhere, arms, legs, hands, jaw…Logan stopped when he got to the pockmarked face. Now he knew where he recognized the name from: Martin Strichen was WPC Watson's changing-room wanker, the one he'd given a lift back to Craiginches Prison. The one who'd been giving evidence in the Gerald Cleaver case.

  No wonder he'd smacked Slippery Sandy on the nose.

  'They let him go.' His voice was little more than a whisper.

  'I know they did, Martin. I know. They shouldn't have, but they did.'

  'They let him go because of him.'

  Insch nodded. 'And that's why you hit Mr Moir-Farquharson?'

  A muffled mumble.

  'Martin, I'm going to write up a little statement and then I'm going to ask you to sign it, OK?'

  'They let him go.'

  Gently, Insch took Martin Strichen through the events of the afternoon, taking special delight in the moment of impact, getting Logan to write it all down in tortured police-speak. It was an admission of guilt, but Insch had taken great pains to make it sound as if it was all Sandy the Snake's fault. Which it was anyway. Martin signed it and Insch released him from custody.

  'Do you have anywhere to go?' asked Logan as they walked him through reception to the door.

  'Staying with my mother. The court said I have to, while I do my community service.' His shoulders sagged even further.

  Insch patted him on the back. 'It's still raining; I can get a patrol car to give you a lift if you like?'

  Martin Strichen shuddered. 'Said she'd kill me if she saw ano
ther police car outside the house.'

  'OK. If you're sure.' Insch extended his hand and Strichen shook it, his huge paw engulfing the inspector's. 'And, Martin,' he looked into the lad's troubled hazel eyes, 'thank you.'

  Logan and Insch stood at the window, watching Martin Strichen disappear into the rainy afternoon. Only four o'clock and it was already dark outside.

  'When he was on the stand,' said Logan, 'he swore he'd kill Moir-Farquharson.'

  'Really?' Insch sounded thoughtful.

  'You think he'll try something?'

  A smile broke across the inspector's face. 'Let's hope so.' There were no smiles in interview room number three. It was packed to the gunwales with DI Insch, DS McRae, a damp WPC, and Duncan Nicholson. The tapes in the recording unit whirred away to themselves, the red light on the video camera winking away in the corner of the room.

  Insch leaned forward and smiled the kind of smile crocodiles reserve for sick wildebeest. 'Sure you don't just want to come clean, Mr Nicholson?' he asked. 'Save us all a lot of trouble. You just cough to it all and tell us what you've done with Peter Lumley's body.'

  But Nicholson just ran a hand across his shaved head, making scratching noises as he wiped the sweat away. He looked awful – shaking, sweating, arms wrapped around himself, eyes darting from Logan to Insch to the door.

  Insch popped open a clear plastic wallet and pulled out a photo of a little boy on a tricycle. The child was in what looked like a back garden, the strut of a whirly washing line visible between an out-of-focus towel and a pair of jeans. Insch held up the photo with the image facing away from him so he could read the name in biro on the back. 'So tell me, Mr Nicholson, who's Luke Geddes?'

  Nicholson licked his lips and darted a nervous glance at the door, the wet WPC, everywhere but the child on the bike.

  'Is he one of your little victims, Nicholson? Next on your list for picking up, killing and screwing? No? What about this one-' Insch dug another photo out of the wallet, a little blond boy in his school uniform, walking down a street alone. 'Stir any memories? Stir anything else? Get you hard, does it?' He pulled out another photo. 'What about this one?' Little boy sitting on the back seat of a car, looking scared. 'This your car? Looks like a Volvo to me.'

  'I didn't do anything!'

  'Bollocks you didn't. You're a lying wee scumbag and I am going to send your arse to jail till you die.'

  Nicholson swallowed hard.

  'We have some other photographs,' said Logan. 'Would you like to see them, Mr Nicholson?' He turned over a manila folder and took out the pictures of David Reid's post mortem.

  'Oh God…' Nicholson went grey.

  'You remember little David Reid, don't you, Mr Nicholson? The three-year-old you kidnapped, strangled and raped?'

  'No!'

  'Surely you remember him? You went back for bits of him didn't you? With a pair of secateurs?'

  'No! God, no! I didn't do it! I only found him! I didn't touch him!' He grabbed at the table as if he were about to fall off the floor and slam into the ceiling. 'I didn't do anything!'

  'I don't believe you, Duncan.' Insch gave his crocodile smile again. 'You are a filthy wee shite and I am going to put you away. And when you're up in Peterhead Prison you're going to find out what happens to people like you. People who fiddle with kids.'

  'I didn't do anything!' Tears streamed down Nicholson's face. 'I swear I didn't do anything!' A half hour later DI Insch suspended the interview, using the excuse of a 'comfort break'. They left Duncan Nicholson in the interview room with the soggy WPC and strolled back to the main incident room. Nicholson was a wreck, sobbing, wailing, trembling. Insch had put the fear of God into the man and now wanted him to stew in his own juices.

  Logan and Insch passed the time drinking coffee, eating fizzy jelly shapes and talking about the dead girl they'd dug out of Roadkill's steading. The teams had been back up there all day, working their way through the piles of dead things, finding nothing.

  Logan opened his folder again, taking out a school photograph of David Reid – a happy-looking lad with slightly squint teeth and a mop of hair that no amount of combing would tame. Nothing like the swollen, dark, rotting face in his post mortem photos. 'You still think he did it?' he asked.

  'Roadkill?' Insch shrugged and chewed. 'Doesn't look likely any more, does it? Not with laughing boy up there, with his collection of kiddie pics. Mind you, maybe they've got some sort of paedophile ring thing going.' He scowled. 'That'd be great, wouldn't it? A whole bunch of the sick bastards out there.'

  'None of the kids in Nicholson's photos are naked, though. Nothing smutty.'

  Insch raised an eyebrow. 'What, you think they're just artistic?'

  'No. You know what I mean. It's not kiddie porn, is it? It's bloody sinister and creepy, but it's not porn.'

  'Maybe Nicholson doesn't like to look at them that way. Maybe this is just his selection process. Follow some kids, take some pictures, pick a lucky winner for the paedophile sweepstakes.' He made a gun with his fingers and picked off an imaginary child. 'Gets his kiddie porn first hand, in the flesh. Real and immediate.'

  Logan wasn't convinced, but he kept his mouth shut.

  At last a PC stuck his head round the door and told them a Mr Moir-Farquharson wanted to see them. And was going to make himself a pain in everyone's backside until he had. Insch pursed his lips, thought about it, and finally asked the PC to show Sandy the Snake into a detention room.

  'What do you think Hissing Sid wants?' asked Logan as the PC left.

  Insch grinned. 'A whinge, a moan…Who cares? We get to poke fun at the wee shite while he's in pain.' He rubbed his hands together. 'Sometimes, Logan my lad, God smiles on us.' Sandy Moir-Farquharson was waiting for them in a ground-floor detention room. He didn't look very happy. There was a thin white plaster crossing the, now squint, bridge of his nose and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. If they were lucky those bags would settle into a pair of beautiful black eyes.

  His briefcase was sat in the middle of the table in front of him and he drummed his fingers impatiently on the leather surface, glowering at Insch and Logan as they entered.

  'Mr "Far-Quar-Son",' said the inspector. 'How nice to see you up and about again.'

  Sandy the Snake scowled at him. 'You let him go,' he said in a low, threatening voice.

  'That's right. He made a statement and has been bailed to return here on Monday at four.'

  'He broke my nose!' The words were punctuated with a fist, slammed down on the tabletop, making the briefcase jump.

  'Oh, it's not that bad Mr Far-Quar-Son. In fact it lends you a rugged, manly air. Doesn't it, Sergeant?'

  Logan kept his face straight and said that it did.

  Sandy frowned, but couldn't tell if they were taking the piss or not. 'Really?' he said at last.

  'Yes,' said Insch, poker-faced. 'Someone should have broken your nose a long time ago.'

  The lawyer's frown became a scowl. 'You do know that someone's been sending me death threats? That someone threw a bucket of blood over me?'

  'Yes.'

  'And that this Martin Strichen has form for violence?'

  'Now, now Mr Far-Quar-Son, Mr Strichen was in police custody when you were attacked with that blood. And we've analysed your death threats. There are at least four people sending the letters and none of them were postmarked Craiginches Prison. So it's probably not Mr Strichen.' He smiled. 'But if you like we could take you into protective custody? I have a number of lovely cells downstairs. A couple of throw cushions, some flowers, it'll be just like home!'

  A silent scowl was the only reply he got.

  Insch beamed. 'Well, if you'll excuse us, Mr Far-Quar-Son, we have real police business to attend to.' He stood and motioned for Logan to do the same. 'But if anyone makes good on any of those death threats, you make sure and give me a call. DS McRae will show you out.' His smile widened. 'Try and keep him from stealing the silverware, Logan: you know what these lawyers are like.'
/>   Logan walked the lawyer all the way to the front door.

  'You know,' said Sandy, scowling at the rain hammering down out of the ash-coloured sky. 'I have children too. The way that fat bastard goes on, you'd think I lived to put perverts back on the streets.'

  Logan raised an eyebrow. 'You got Gerald Cleaver off.'

  The lawyer buttoned his coat. 'No I didn't.'

  'Yes you did! You picked the bloody case to pieces!'

  Moir-Farquharson turned and looked Logan in the eye. 'If the case had been solid I couldn't have picked it apart. I didn't let Cleaver off: you did.'

  'But-'

  'Now if you'll excuse me, officer, I have other matters to attend to.' Back in the interview room Duncan Nicholson was fidgeting as if someone had stuck a mains cable up his bum. His shirt was drenched with sweat and his eyes roamed the room in perpetual motion, never settling on one thing for more than a moment.

  Logan went back to the seat nearest the tape machine and got the thing ready to start recording again.

  'I…I want protective custody!' said Nicholson, before Logan had managed to press the record buttons.

  'Craiginches secure enough for you?' asked Insch. 'Just till you go to Peterhead of course.'

  'No! Like on the films: protective custody. Somewhere safe…' He scrubbed at his sweat-drenched face. 'They'll kill me if they find out I've talked!' His bottom lip trembled and for a moment Logan thought he was going to dissolve into tears again.

  Insch dug his packet of fizzy shapes out and stuffed a couple into his mouth. 'No promises,' he said around a mouthful of orange-and-straw-berry dinosaurs. 'Start the tape, Sergeant.'

  Nicholson hung his head, staring fixedly at his hands, trembling away on the tabletop in front of him. 'I…I've been working for some bookies, moneylenders, you know…' His voice cracked and he had to take a deep breath before he could go on. 'Kinda like a debt control researcher, you know: I follow people who won't pay up. Take photographs of them and their families. I…I print them out at home and give the pictures to the people they owe money to.' He drooped even further in his seat. 'The bookies use the pictures to threaten them. Encourage them to pay up.'