Cold Granite Part 2

WPC Watson was waiting for him at the front desk. She was m.u.f.fled up to the ears in a heavy black police-issue jacket, the waterproof fabric slick and glistening with raindrops. Her hair was tucked into a tight bun under her peaked cap; her nose was Belisha-beacon red.

She smiled at him as he approached, hands in pockets, mind on the post mortem.

'Morning, sir. How's the stomach?'

Logan forced a smile, his nostrils still full of dead child. 'Not bad. You?'

She shrugged. 'Glad to be back on days again.' She looked around the empty reception area. 'So what's the plan?'

Logan checked his watch. It was going on for ten. An hour and a half to kill before Insch got out of his meeting.

'Fancy a trip?'

They signed for a CID pool car. WPC Watson drove the rusty blue Vauxhall while Logan sat in the pa.s.senger seat, looking out at the downpour. They had just enough time to nip across town to the Bridge of Don, where the search teams would be trudging through the rain and mud, looking for evidence that probably wasn't even there.

A bendy bus rumbled across the road in front of them, sending up a flurry of spray, adverts for Christmas shopping in the west end of town splattered all over it.

Watson had the wipers going full tilt, the wheek-whonk of rubber on the windscreen sounding over the roar of the blowers. Neither of them had said a word since they'd left Force HQ.

'I told the desk sergeant to let Charles Reid off with a warning,' Logan said at last.

WPC Watson nodded. 'Thought you would.' She slid the car out into the junction behind an expensive-looking four-by-four.

'It wasn't really his fault.'

Watson shrugged. 'Not my call, sir. You're the one he nearly killed.'

The four-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicle which probably never had to deal with anything more off road than the potholes in Holburn Street suddenly decided to indicate right, stopping dead in the middle of the junction. Watson swore and tried to find a s.p.a.ce in the stream of traffic flowing past on the inside.

'b.l.o.o.d.y male drivers,' she muttered before remembering Logan was in the car. 'Sorry sir.'

'Don't worry about it...' He drifted back into silence, thinking about Charles Reid and the trip to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary last night. It hadn't really been Charles Reid's fault. Someone phones your daughter up and asks how she feels about her three-year-old son's murdered body turning up in a ditch. Not surprising he took a swing at the first target that presented itself. Whoever sold the story to the P&J: they were to blame.

'Change of plan,' he said. 'Let's see if we can't find ourselves a slimy journalist.'

'THE PRESS AND JOURNAL. LOCAL NEWS SINCE 1748'. That's what it said at the top of every edition. But the building the paper shared with its sister publication, the Evening Express, looked a lot less venerable. It was a low, two-storey concrete-and-gla.s.s monstrosity just off the Lang Stracht, squatting behind a high, chainlink fence like a sulking Rottweiler. There being no access from the main road, WPC Watson drove them in through a tatty-looking industrial estate consisting of crowded car showrooms and double parking. The security guard took one look at Watson's uniform and raised the barrier, smiling a gap-toothed smile as he waved them through.

'ABERDEEN JOURNALS LTD' was written in gold lettering on polished granite next to the reception's revolving door, right above a bra.s.s plaque proclaiming the paper's history. 'FOUNDED BY JAMES CHALMERS IN 1748...' blah blah blah. Logan didn't bother to read the rest.

The pale lilac walls of the reception area were bare. Only a carved wooden plaque, commemorating the paper's employees lost in World War Two, broke the monotony. Logan had been expecting something a bit more newspaper-ish: framed front pages, awards, photographs of the journalists. Instead it looked as if the paper had only just moved in and hadn't got around to decorating yet.

Weedy pot plants sat on the violently-coloured floor: big linoleum squares of bright blue fake marble, set in a gold-and-pink grid.

The receptionist didn't look much better: pink eyes, lank blonde hair. She reeked of mentholated cough sweets. Peering blearily up at them, she honked her nose on a scabby hanky.

'Welcome to Aberdeen Journals,' she said with zero enthusiasm. 'How can I be of a.s.sistance?'

Logan dragged out his warrant card and held it under her runny nose. 'Detective Sergeant McRae. I'd like to speak to whoever phoned the home of Alice Reid last night.'

The receptionist looked at his identification, looked at him, looked at WPC Watson and sighed. 'No idea.' She paused for a sniff. 'I'm only here Mondays and Wednesdays.'

'Well, who would know?'

The receptionist just shrugged and sniffed again.

WPC Watson dug a copy of the morning's paper out of a display rack and slapped it down on the reception desk. 'MURDERED TODDLER FOUND!' She stabbed her finger at the words: 'BY COLIN MILLER'.

'How about him?' she asked.

The receptionist took the paper and squinted her puffy eyes at the by-line. Her face suddenly turned down at the edges. 'Oh... him.'

Scowling, she jabbed at the switchboard. A woman's voice boomed out of her speakerphone: 'Aye?' and she grabbed the phone from its cradle. Her accent suddenly switched from bunged-up polite to bunged-up broad Aberdonian.

'Lesley? Aye, it's Sharon ... Lesley, is G.o.d's Gift in?' Pause. 'Aye, it's the police ... I dinna ken, hang oan.'

She stuck a hand over the mouthpiece and looked up, hopefully, at Logan. 'Are you going to arrest him?' she asked, all polite again.

Logan opened his mouth and shut it again. 'We just want to ask him a couple of questions,' he said at last.

'Oh.' Sharon looked crestfallen. 'No,' she said into the phone again. 'The wee s.h.i.te's no' gettin' banged up.' She nodded a couple of times then grinned broadly. 'I'll ask.' She fluttered her eyelashes and pouted at Logan, doing her best to look seductive. It was an uphill struggle with a flaky red nose, but she did her best. 'If you're not going to arrest him, any chance of a little police brutality?'

WPC Watson winked conspiratorially. 'See what we can do. Where is he?'

The receptionist pointed at a security door off to the left. 'Don't be afraid to cripple him.' She grinned and buzzed them through.

The newsroom was like a carpeted warehouse, all open plan and suspended ceiling tiles. There must have been a couple of hundred desks in here, all clumped together in little cliques: News Desk, Features, Editorial, Page Layout... The walls were the same pale lilac as reception and just as bare. There weren't any part.i.tions and the desktops spilled into one another. Piles of paper, yellow Post-its and scribbled notes oozing from one desk to the next like a slow-motion avalanche.

Computer monitors flickered beneath the overhead lighting, their owners hunched over keyboards, turning out tomorrow's news. Apart from the ever-present hum of the computers and the whirr of the photocopier it was eerily quiet.

Logan grabbed the first person he could find: an older man in saggy brown corduroy trousers and a stained cream shirt. He was wearing a tie that sported at least three of the things he'd had for breakfast. The top of his head had said goodbye to his hair long ago, but a trapdoor of thin strands was stretched over the shiny expanse. He wasn't kidding anyone but himself.

'We're looking for Colin Miller,' said Logan, flipping out his warrant card.

The man raised an eyebrow. 'Oh aye?' he said. 'You goin' to arrest him?'

Logan slipped his identification back in his pocket. 'Wasn't intending to, but I'm starting to think about it. Why?'

The old reporter hitched up his trousers and beamed innocently at Logan. 'No reason.'

Pause, two, three, four...

'OK,' said Logan, 'so where is he?'

The old man winked at him, jerking his head towards the toilets. 'I have no idea where he is, officer,' he said slowly, one innuendo-laden word after another. He finished off with another couple of significant glances towards the gents and a grin.

Logan nodded. 'Thanks, you've been a great help.'

'No I haven't,' said the reporter. 'I've been "vague and rambling" like the "senile old fart" I am.'

As he ambled off back to his desk, Logan and WPC Watson made a beeline for the toilets. To Logan's surprise Watson stormed straight into the gents. Shaking his head, he followed her into the black-and-white-tiled interior.

Her shout of 'Colin Miller?' produced a.s.sorted journalistic shrieks as full-grown men scrabbled at their flies and scurried out of the toilets. Finally only one man was left: short, heavily-built, wearing an expensive-looking dark-grey suit. Broad-shouldered, with a pristine haircut, he whistled tunelessly at the urinals, rocking back and forth.

Watson looked him up and down. 'Colin Miller?' she asked.

He glanced over his shoulder, a nonchalant smile on his lips. 'You want tae help me shake this?' he asked with a wink, Glaswegian accent ringing out loud and proud. 'Ma doctor says I'm no' to lift anythin' heavy...'

She scowled and told him exactly what he could do with his offer.

Logan stepped between them before Watson could demonstrate why she was called 'Ball Breaker'.

The reporter winked, shoogled about a little, then turned from the urinal, zipping himself up, gold signet rings sparkling on almost every finger. A gold chain hung around his neck, lying over the silk shirt and tie.

'Mr Miller?' asked Logan.

'Aye, you wantin' an autograph?' He strutted his way to the sink, hitching up his sleeves slightly as he did so, exposing something chunky and gold on his right wrist and a watch big enough to sleep four on the left. It wasn't surprising the man was well-muscled: he had to be to cart about all that jewellery.

'We want to talk to you about David Reid, the three-year-old who-'

'I know who he is,' said Miller, turning on the taps. 'I did a front page spread on the poor wee sod.' He grinned and pumped soap into his hands. 'Three thousand words of pure journalistic gold. Tell ya, kiddie murders: pure gold, so they are. Sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d kills some poor kid and suddenly everyone's dyin' tae read about the wee dead body over their cornflakes. f.u.c.kin' unbelievable.'

Logan resisted the urge to grab Miller by the scruff of the neck and smash his face into a urinal. 'You called the family last night,' he said instead, fists jammed deep in his pockets. 'Who told you we'd found him?'

Miller smiled at Logan's reflection in the mirror above the sink. 'Didn't take a genius, Inspector... ?'

'Sergeant,' said Logan. 'Detective Sergeant McRae.'

The journalist shrugged and wriggled his hands under the hand-drier. 'Only a DS, eh?' he had to shout over the roar of warm air. 'Never mind. You help me catch this sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d and I'll see you make DI.'

'Help "you" catch...' Logan screwed his eyes shut and was a.s.sailed by visions of Miller's broken nose bleeding into urinal cakes. 'Who told you we'd found David Reid?' he asked through gritted teeth.

Click. The drier fell silent.

'Told you: didn't take a genius. You found a wee dead kiddie, who else could it have been?'

'We didn't tell anyone the body was a child!'

'No? Ah well, must've been a coincidence then.'

Logan scowled. 'Who told you?'

Miller smiled and shot his cuffs, making sure there was a fashionable inch of starched white visible at the end of both sleeves.

'You never heard of journalistic immunity? I don't have tae reveal my sources. And you can't make me!' He paused. 'Mind you, if the tasty WPC wants tae do a Mata Hari I might be persuaded... Gotta love a woman in uniform!'

Watson snarled and pulled out her collapsible truncheon.

The door to the gents burst open, breaking the moment. A large woman with lots of curly dark-brown hair stormed into the toilets, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. 'What the h.e.l.l is going on here?' she said, glowering at Logan and Watson. 'I've got half the news desk out there with p.i.s.s all down the front of their trousers.' She rounded on Miller before anyone could respond. 'And what the h.e.l.l do you think you're still doing here? They're giving a press conference on the dead kid in half an hour! The tabloids are going to be all over the d.a.m.n thing. This is our b.l.o.o.d.y story and I want it to stay that way!'

'Mr Miller is a.s.sisting us with our enquiries,' said Logan. 'I want to know who told him we'd found-'

'You arresting him?'

Logan only paused for a second, but it was long enough.

'Didn't think so.' She stabbed a finger at Miller. 'You! Get your a.r.s.e in gear. I'm not paying you to chat up WPCs in the bogs!'

Miller smiled and saluted the glowering woman. 'You got it, chief!' he said and winked at Logan. 'Gotta go. Duty calls and all that.'

He took a step towards the door, but WPC Watson barred his path. 'Sir?' She fingered her truncheon, desperate for an excuse to use it on Miller's head.

Logan looked from the smug journalist to Watson and back again. 'Let him go,' he said at last. 'We'll talk later, Mr Miller.'

The journalist grinned. 'Count on it.' He made his right hand into a gun and fired it at WPC Watson. 'Catch ya later, investigator.'

Thankfully she didn't reply.

Back in the car park, WPC Watson stomped through the rain to their Vauxhall, wrenched the car's door open, hurled her hat in the back seat, thudded in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut again, and swore.

Logan had to admit she had a point. There was no way Miller was going to volunteer his source. And his editor, the curly-haired harridan, had made it perfectly clear, in a ten-minute tirade, that there was no way in h.e.l.l she was going to order him to do so. There was about as much chance of that happening as Aberdeen Football Club winning the Premier League.

A knock on the pa.s.senger window made Logan jump and a large, smiling face beamed in at him from the rain, a copy of the Evening Express held over his head to keep his thin comb-over dry. It was the reporter who 'hadn't' told them the repulsive Mr Miller was hiding in the men's toilets.

'You're Logan McRae!' said the man. 'See? I knew I recognized you!'

'Oh aye?' Logan shrank back in his seat.

The man in the saggy, faded-brown corduroys nodded happily. 'I did a story, what wis it: a year ago? "Police Hero Stabbed in Showdown with Mastrick Monster!"' He grinned. 's.h.i.te, that wis a d.a.m.n good story. Nice headline too. Shame "Police Hero" didn't alliterate...' A shrug. Then he stuck his hand in through the open car window. 'Martin Leslie, Features Desk.'

Logan shook it, feeling more and more uncomfortable with every second.

'Jesus, Logan McRae...' said the reporter. 'You a DI yet?'

Logan said no, he was still a DS, and the older man looked outraged. 'You're kidding! b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! You deserved it! That Angus Robertson was one sick b.a.s.t.a.r.d... You hear he got himself a DIY appendectomy in Peterhead?' He lowered his voice. 'Sharpened screwdriver, right in the stomach. Has to c.r.a.p in a wee bag now...'

Logan didn't say anything, and the reporter leaned on the open window, poking his head in out of the rain.

'So what you workin' on now?' he asked.

Logan stared straight ahead, through the windscreen at the dismal grey length of the Lang Stracht. 'Er...' he said. 'I, ehmmm...'

'If you're interested in Colin the c.u.n.t,' the older man started in a near-whisper. He stopped, slapped a hand over his mouth and mumbled to WPC Watson, 'Sorry love, no offence.'

Watson shrugged: after all, she'd been calling Miller much worse just minutes ago.

Leslie gave her an embarra.s.sed smile. 'Aye, well, the wee s.h.i.te swans up here from the Scottish Sun thinkin' he's G.o.d's f.u.c.kin' gift... Got kicked off the paper from what I hear.' His face darkened. 'Some of us still believe in the rules! You don't screw your colleagues. You don't phone up a dead kid's mum until you know the police have broken the news. But the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d thinks he can get away with murder, just as long as there's a story at the end of it.' There was a bitter pause. 'And his spellin's b.o.l.l.o.c.ks.'

Logan gave him a thoughtful look. 'You have any idea who told him we'd found David Reid?'