‘You fell down the bank, in the pouring rain, and yet when the police arrived there wasn’t a speck of mud on you! You were clean as a whistle, Duncan. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s just fallen down a muddy bank and into a ditch, now does it?’
Nicholson ran a hand over the top of his head, the stubble making a faint scritching noise in the oppressive interview room. Dark blue stains marked his armpits.
‘I. . . I went home to call you. I got changed.’
‘I see.’ Logan switched the smile back on again. ‘Where were you on the thirteenth of August this year, between half past two and three in the afternoon?’
‘I. . . I don’t know.’
‘Then where were you between the hours of ten and eleven this morning?’
Nicholson’s eyes snapped open wide. ‘This mornin’? What’s goin’ on? I didnae kill anyone!’
‘Who said you did?’ Logan turned in his seat. ‘Constable Watson, did you hear me accuse Mr Nicholson of murder?’
‘No, sir.’
Nicholson squirmed.
Logan produced a list of all the children registered missing in the last three years and placed it on the table between them.
‘Where were you this morning, Duncan?’
‘I was watching the telly.’
‘And where were you on,’ Logan leant forward and read off the list, ‘the fifteenth of March between six and seven? No? How about the twenty-seventh of May, half-four to eight?’
They went through every date on the list, Nicholson sweating and murmuring his answers. He wasn’t anywhere he said. He was at home. He was watching television. The only people who could vouch for his whereabouts were Jerry Springer and Oprah Winfrey. And they were mostly repeats.
‘Well, Duncan,’ said Logan when they’d got to the end of the list, ‘doesn’t look too good, does it?’
‘I didn’t touch those kids!’
Logan sat back and tried DI Insch’s silent treatment again.
‘I didn’t! I fuckin’ came to you lot when I found that kid, didn’t I? Why the hell would I do that if I killed him? I wouldn’t kill a kid: I love kids!’
WPC Watson raised an eyebrow and Nicholson scowled.
‘Not like that! I’ve got nephews and nieces, OK? I wouldn’t fuckin’ do something like that.’
‘Then let’s go back to the start.’ Logan shoogled his chair in closer to the table. ‘What were you doing wandering about on the banks of the Don in the middle of the night in the pouring rain?’
‘I told you I was pissed. . .’
‘Why don’t I believe you, Duncan? Why do I get the feeling that when the report comes back from Forensics there’s going to be evidence linking you to the dead boy?’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Nicholson slammed his hand down on the tabletop, making the little pile of shredded paper scatter and fall like snow.
‘We’ve got you, Mr Nicholson. You’re only kidding yourself if you think you’re going to talk your way out of it. I think a little time in the cells is going to do you the world of good. We’ll talk again when you’re ready to start telling the truth. Interview terminated at thirteen twenty-six.’
He got WPC Watson to escort Nicholson down to the cellblock, hanging on in the interview room until she returned.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think he did it. He’s not the right type. Not smart enough to lie convincingly.’
‘True.’ Logan nodded. ‘But he’s lying all the same. No way he was down there having a bit of a late night stagger. You get plastered, you don’t go stomping about down the riverbank in the pissing rain for a laugh. He was down there for a reason, we just don’t know what it is yet.’
Aberdeen harbour slid by the car window, grey and miserable. A handful of offshore supply vessels were tied up along the docks, their cheery yellow-and-orange paintwork dulled by the pouring rain. Lights glinted in the semi-darkness of the afternoon as containers were winched off lorries and onto the waiting boats.
Logan and WPC Watson were heading back to Richard Erskine’s house in Torry. Someone had actually remembered seeing the missing boy. A Mrs Brady had seen a small blond boy wearing a red anorak and blue jeans crossing the waste ground behind her house. It was the only break they’d had.
The half past two news was about to come on and Logan turned the car radio on, catching the end of an old Beatles track. Not surprisingly Richard Erskine’s disappearance was given top billing. DI Insch’s voice boomed out of the speakers asking members of the public to come forward with information about the child’s whereabouts. He had a natural flair for the dramatic, as everyone who’d seen him in the annual Christmas panto knew, but he managed to keep it in check as the newsreader asked the obvious question:
‘Do you think Richard has been taken by the same paedophile who killed David Reid?’
‘At this moment we’re just looking to find Richard safe and sound. If anyone has any information please call our hotline on oh eight hundred, five, five, five, nine, nine, nine.’
‘Thank you, Inspector. In other news: the trial of Gerald Cleaver, the fifty-six-year-old former male nurse from Manchester, continues today under tight security following death threats made to the accused’s solicitor, Sandy Moir-Farquharson. Mr Moir-Farquharson spoke to Northsound News. . .’
‘Here’s hoping it’s not just an idle threat.’ Logan reached out and snapped the radio off before the lawyer’s voice could come through the speakers. Sandy Moir-Farquharson deserved to get death threats. He was the weaselly little shite who’d argued leniency for Angus Robertson. Who’d tried to claim that the Mastrick Monster wasn’t entirely to blame. That he’d only killed those women because they’d reacted violently against his advances. That they’d dressed provocatively. That they’d been, basically, asking for it.
The media presence outside the door of little Richard Erskine’s house had almost doubled by the time they got there. The whole road was packed with cars. There were even a couple of outside broadcast vans. WPC Watson had to park miles away, so they trudged back through the rain, both sheltering under her umbrella.
BBC Scotland had been joined by Grampian, ITN and Sky News. The harsh white television lights bleached colour from the pale granite buildings. No one seemed to take much notice of the winter rain, even though it was battering down from the sky in sheets of frigid water.
The blonde woman with the big boobs from Channel Four News was doing a piece to camera, standing far enough down the street to get the house and the rest of the pack in the background.
‘. . . have to ask: does the media’s attention on a family’s pain, at a time like this, really serve the public interest? When—’
Watson marched right through the shot, her blue and white umbrella completely obscuring the woman from camera.
Someone yelled: ‘Cut!’
‘You did that on purpose,’ whispered Logan as the sounds of a swearing television journalist erupted. WPC Watson just smiled and barged her way through the crowd gathered at the foot of the stairs. Logan hurried after her, trying not to hear the howls of complaint mixed in with the shouted questions and demands for comment.
A Family Liaison Officer was through in the living room with Richard Erskine’s mother and the bitter old woman from next door. There was no sign of DI Insch.
Logan left Watson in the lounge and tried the kitchen, helping himself to an open packet