The pub was crowded with noisy groups of youngsters wrapping themselves around pitchers of cocktails, keeping out the cold by getting as pissed as possible as quickly as possible. Come chucking out time there would be vomiting, a bit of fighting and, for some, a trip to the cells. Or maybe A&E.
‘Oh to be young and stupid again,’ he muttered, squeezing his way through the throng to the long, wooden bar.
The snatches of conversation he heard on the way were predictable enough. A bit of boasting about how wrecked someone was last night and how much more wrecked they were going to get tonight. But underneath it all there was another theme. The topics of alcohol and sexual prowess were being challenged by Gerald Cleaver getting off scot-free.
Logan stood at the bar, waiting for one of the frayed-looking Australians to serve him, listening to a fat man in a bright yellow shirt holding forth to a lanky, bearded bloke in a T-shirt and waistcoat. Cleaver was scum. How could the police have screwed up so badly the sicko got away with it? It was obvious Cleaver was guilty, what with all these children turning up dead. And there they were letting a known paedophile back on the streets!
Little and Large weren’t the only ones on the ‘stupid police’ rant. Logan could hear at least half a dozen others banging on about the same topic. Didn’t they know this was where most of Aberdeen’s off-duty policemen drank? A lot of the dayshift would be in here, having a pint after work. Bemoaning Cleaver’s release. Spending some of that overtime they were all getting.
When he finally managed to get served Logan took his pint of Stella and went for a wander through the other sections of the huge pub, looking for someone he knew well enough to talk to. He smiled and waved at clumps of PCs, only vaguely recognizing them out of uniform. In the far corner he spotted a familiar figure wreathed in cigarette smoke, surrounded by depressed looking detective sergeants and constables. She threw her head back and poured another lungful of smoke into the cloud above her head. As she came back down her eyes locked on Logan and she gave him a lopsided smile.
Logan groaned: she’d seen him. Now he had to go over.
A DC shoogled over, making room for Logan and his pint at the small table. Above their heads a television burbled away quietly to itself, local adverts for garages, chip shops and double-glazing, filling the space between programmes.
‘Lazarus,’ said DI Steel, the word coming out slightly slurred through a haze of cigarette smoke. ‘How you doing, Lazarus? You made Chief Inspector yet?’
He should have never sat down here. He should have grabbed a pizza across the road and gone home. He forced some lightness into his voice and said, ‘Not yet. Maybe Monday.’
‘Monday?’ The inspector laughed like a drain, rocking back and forth with fag ash spilling from her cigarette down the front of the DC who’d shoogled. ‘“Maybe Monday”. Priceless. . .’ She cast an eye over the glass-crowded tabletop and frowned. ‘Drink!’ she said, digging an old leather wallet from an inside pocket and handing it to the ash-covered DC. ‘Constable, I want you to get another round. People are dying of thirst here!’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Whiskies all round!’ DI Steel slapped the tabletop. ‘And make them doubles!’
The detective constable headed off to the bar, taking the inspector’s wallet with him.
Steel leaned closer to Logan, dropping her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Between you and me, I think he’s a bit drunk.’ She sat back and beamed at him. ‘You know, with Inschy getting kicked for the Roadkill pantomime thing and Cleaver going free, there’s bound to be at least one inspector’s job coming up!’
Logan didn’t have anything to say to that, but DI Steel’s face fell.
‘Sorry, Lazarus.’ She dropped the cigarette and ground it into the wooden floor. ‘It’s been a shitty day.’
‘It’s not your fault they let Cleaver go. If anyone’s to blame, it’s Hissing Bloody Sid.’
‘I’ll drink to that!’ she said, and did, downing a large whisky in a single gulp.
A familiar-looking DC on the opposite side of the table was staring up at the television above their heads. He grabbed the inspector by the arm. ‘It’s coming on!’
Logan and DI Steel twisted round in their seats as the opening titles of the local news flickered across the screen and the noise level in the pub took a sudden dip, as every off-duty police man and woman in the place turned to face the nearest television.
Someone a lot less attractive than she could have been was speaking seriously into the camera from behind her news desk. The volume wasn’t loud enough to pick out any real words, but a photo of Gerald Cleaver’s face appeared over her left shoulder. Then the scene changed to an exterior shot of Aberdeen Sheriff Court. The crowd were thrusting their placards in the air and suddenly a woman in her mid-forties filled the screen, clutching her ‘DEATH TO PEDIPHILE SCUM!!!’ placard with pride. She banged her gums with righteous fury for all of fifteen seconds, not one word of it audible in the crowded pub, before being replaced by another shot of the courthouse through the crowd. The big glass doors were opening.
‘Here we go!’ said DI Steel with glee.
Sandy Moir-Farquharson appeared through the doors and proceeded to read his client’s statement. The camera zoomed in, just in time to see a figure lunge from the crowd and smack his fist into Sandy the Snake’s face.
A huge cheer went up from the pub.
The newsreader’s concerned and serious face reappeared, said something, and then the punch was shown again.
Another huge cheer.
And then it was something about traffic on the Dyce to Newmacher road and everyone went happily back to their drinks.
DI Steel had a misty-eyed smile on her face as she gulped another large whisky. ‘Wasn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?’
Logan agreed that it was pretty damn good.
‘You know,’ said Steel, lighting up another cigarette, ‘I would love to shake that kid’s hand. Hell, I’d even be tempted to go straight for a night. What a star!’
Logan tried not to form a mental picture of DI Steel and Martin Strichen going at it like knives, but failed. To take his mind off it he glanced back up at the television. Now it was showing a full-screen photo of Peter Lumley, missing since last Tuesday. Ginger hair, freckles and smile. Cut to an exterior of Roadkill’s farm. Then to a press conference with the Chief Constable looking stern and committed.
The good mood slowly ebbed out of Logan as the pictures flickered in front of him. Peter was lying dead somewhere and Logan had the nasty feeling they still hadn’t got the man responsible. No matter what DI Insch thought.
And then it was adverts. A garage in Bieldside, a dress shop in Rosemount and a government road safety thing. Logan watched in silence as the car screeched to a halt, but not before striking the boy crossing the road. The kid was small, the grille and bumper catching him in the side, making his legs flail out as he pin-wheeled into the bonnet, cracking his head against the metal before sailing off to smack into the tarmac. It was in slow motion, every impact horribly clear and choreographed. The legend ‘KILL YOUR SPEED, NOT A CHILD’ blazed across the screen.
Logan stared up at the screen with a growing look of pain on his face. ‘Son of a bitch.’
They’d got it wrong.
It took till eight o’clock to get everyone gathered in the morgue. DI Insch, Logan and Dr Isobel MacAlister, who looked even less happy at being dragged back into work than the inspector, being dressed up to the nines in a long black dress, cut low at the front. Not that Logan was afforded much in the way of gratuitous skin to ogle. Isobel had pulled