‘We’ve got patrol cars and officers out there right now looking for your son, Mrs Erskine. Now I need you to tell me what happened this morning. When he went missing?’
Mrs Erskine wiped her eyes and nose on the back of her sleeve. ‘He was supposed . . . supposed to come straight back from the shops. Some milk and a packet of chocolate biscuits. . . He was supposed to come straight back!’
She started to cross the lounge again, back and forth, back and forth.
‘Which shops did he go to?’
‘The ones on the other side of the school. It’s not far! I don’t normally let him go on his own, but I had to stay in!’ She sniffed. ‘The man was coming to fix the washing machine. They wouldn’t give me a time! Just some time in the morning. I never would have let him out on his own otherwise!’ She bit down on her lip and the sobbing intensified. ‘It’s all my fault!’
‘Have you got a friend or a neighbour who could stay with. . .’
Watson pointed at the kitchen. A used-looking older woman emerged carrying a tray of tea things: two mugs only. The police weren’t expected to stay for tea, they were expected to get out there and start looking for the missing five-year-old.
‘It’s a disgrace, so it is,’ said the older woman, putting the tea tray down on top of a pile of Cosmopolitans on the coffee table. ‘Letting perverts like that run around! They should a’ be in prison! It’s no’ as if there’s no one handy!’ She was talking about Craiginches, the walled prison just around the corner from the house.
Elisabeth Erskine accepted a mug of milky tea from her friend, shaking so much that the hot liquid slopped over the edge. She watched the drops seep into the pale blue carpet.
‘You, eh. . .’ She stopped and sniffed. ‘You don’t have a cigarette on you, do you? I . . . I gave up when I got pregnant with Richie. . .’
‘Sorry,’ said Logan. ‘I had to give up too.’ He turned and picked the most recent-looking photo off the mantelpiece. A serious little boy, staring at the camera. ‘Can we take this with us?’
She nodded and Logan handed it over to WPC Watson.
Five minutes later they were standing in the small back garden, sheltering beneath a ridiculously little porch bolted on above the back door. The tiny square of grass was disappearing under a spreading network of puddles. About a dozen child’s toys were scattered about the place, the bright plastic shapes washed clean by the downpour. On the other side of the fence more houses stared back at him, grey and damp.
Torry wasn’t the worst bit of the city, but was in the top ten. This was where Aberdeen’s fish processing factories were. Tons of white fish landed every week, all to be gutted and filleted by hand. Good money if you could handle the cold and the smell. Huge blue plastic bins of discarded fish guts and bones squatted on the roadside, the rain doing nothing to dissuade fat seagulls from swooping in to snatch a fish head or a beakful of innards.
‘What you think?’ asked Watson, sticking her hands deep in her pockets, trying to keep warm.
Logan shrugged, watching water overflowing the seat of a bright yellow digger. ‘The house been searched?’
Watson pulled out her notebook. ‘We got the call at eleven oh five. Mother was hysterical. Control sent round a couple of uniforms from the local Torry stationhouse. First thing they did was go through the place with a fine-toothed comb. He’s not hiding in the linen cupboard and his body’s not been stashed in the fridge freezer.’
‘I see.’ That digger was way too small for a five-year-old. In fact a lot of the toys looked as if they belonged in the age three-and-up bracket. Maybe Mrs Erskine didn’t want her little baby growing up?
‘You think she killed him?’ asked Watson, watching him stare out at the drenched garden.
‘No, not really. But if it turns out she has and we didn’t look . . . the press would crucify us. What about the father?’
‘’Cording to the neighbour he’s been dead since before the kid was born.’
Logan nodded. That would explain why the woman was so overprotective. Didn’t want her son going the same way as his father. ‘So what’s the state of the search?’ he asked.
‘We’ve phoned his friends: no one’s seen him since Sunday afternoon.’
‘What about his clothes, favourite teddy bear, that kind of thing?’
‘All present and accounted for. So he’s probably not run away.’
Logan gave the discarded toys one last look and went back into the house. The inspector would be here soon, looking for an update. ‘Er. . .’ He looked at Watson out of the corner of his eye as they walked through the kitchen and down the hallway towards the front door. ‘You’ve worked with DI Insch before, right?’
WPC Watson admitted that she had.
‘So what’s with the—’ Logan mimed stuffing his face with fizzy cola bottles. ‘He trying to give up smoking?’
Watson shrugged. ‘Dunno, sir. Maybe it’s some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder?’ She paused, brow furrowed in thought. ‘Or maybe he’s just a big fat bastard.’
Logan didn’t know whether to laugh or look shocked.
‘Tell you one thing though, sir, he’s a damn good policeman. And you don’t fuck with him twice.’
Somehow Logan had already come to that conclusion all on his own.
‘Right.’ He stopped at the front door. The hallway was festooned with photographs, just like the lounge. ‘Get that picture down to the nearest newsagents. We’ll need about a hundred photocopies and—’
‘The local boys have already done it, sir. They’ve got four officers going door to door all along the route Richard would have taken to the shops, handing them out.’
Logan was impressed. ‘They don’t hang about.’
‘No, sir.’
‘OK, let’s get half a dozen uniform down here to give them a hand.’ He pulled out his mobile phone and started dialling, his finger freezing over the last number. ‘Oh, ho . . .’
‘Sir?’
A flash-looking motor had pulled up at the kerb and out bustled a familiar, short figure, all wrapped up in a black overcoat, wrestling with a matching umbrella.
‘Looks like the vultures are circling already.’
Logan grabbed a brolly from the hallway and stepped out into the rain. The icy water thrummed off the umbrella as he stood and waited for Colin Miller to climb the stairs.
‘Sergeant!’ said Miller, smiling. ‘Long time no see! You still carting that tasty. . .’ The smile became even broader as he saw WPC Watson scowling from the doorway. ‘Constable! We was just talking about you!’
‘What do you want?’ Her voice was even colder than the grey afternoon.
‘Business before pleasure, eh?’ Miller dug a fancy dictaphone out of his pocket and pointed it at them. ‘You’ve got another missing kid. Are you—’
Logan frowned. ‘How did you know another child’s gone missing?’
Miller pointed out at the rain-soaked road. ‘You’ve got patrol cars out broadcastin’ the kid’s description! How do you think I found out?’
Logan tried not to look as embarrassed as he felt.
Miller winked. ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. I make an arse of myself all the time, but.’ He held the dictaphone up again. ‘Now, is this disappearance connected to the recent discovery of—’
‘We have no comment to make at this time.’