Stuart MacBride - In the Cold Dark Ground

Down the corridor, third on the left. It wasn’t much more than a cupboard with a kettle, a microwave, a toaster, and a wee fridge.

Napier filled the kettle from a bottle of mineral water, and stuck it on to boil. ‘Would you like to have a look at the laptop? It’s being held here as evidence.’

‘Lots of pictures of kids being abused? Not really.’

‘I meant the files. You don’t have to browse the actual images.’

Oh. ‘Would it help?’

‘It might help you.’

He made two mugs of tea, and glopped milk into Logan’s without asking. Then handed it over. ‘No sugar: that’s right, isn’t it?’

‘Er... Thank you.’

Napier opened a cupboard and took out a bag-for-life that was covered with bees and flowers. He reached inside and produced a round metal biscuit tin. Gave it a shoogle. ‘Ah, good. The Counter Corruption team haven’t got their sticky fingers on them yet.’ He levered the lid off. ‘I’ll pass you on to Karl, our IT whiz, he’ll show you anything you need.’ Then Napier held the open tin out to Logan. It was full of raggedy brown things. ‘Chocolate crispies. I make them with Special K, melted Mars Bars, and crunched-up Maltesers. Not frightfully good for you, but little treats, now and then.’

‘Yes. Right.’ Logan blinked at him, then helped himself to one. ‘Lovely.’

OK, this was getting creepy.

Napier popped the lid back on and tucked the tin under his arm with the folder, then led the way back out into the corridor. ‘Tell me, Logan, do you enjoy being in uniform again? Feet on the streets, dealing with the public?’

He followed Napier down towards the far end. ‘It’s...’ A frown. ‘Yes.’

‘Good man. I miss it myself. Oh, it’s lovely being in a position to influence policy and really achieve things on a broader scale, but there’s a lot to be said for being on the front line.’ He stopped, knocked on one of the office doors, then poked his head inside. ‘Karl? That’s Sergeant McRae here. Show him anything he needs to see, all right?’

A middle-aged man with a grey cardigan thrown on over his black Police Scotland T-shirt peered out at them from behind a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles. His gaze drifted downwards, then a smile split his round face. ‘Do these ancient eyes deceive me, Nigel, or have you made another batch of your famous fudge-and-raisin brownies? Hmmmm?’

Napier held the tin out. ‘Chocolate crispies.’

‘Ooh, I love those.’ He creaked the tin open and helped himself. ‘Now, Sergeant McRae, let’s get you sorted. Thank you, Nigel, I’ll take good care of him.’

‘Well, this is where we part company, Logan.’ Napier shook his hand. ‘I’m afraid I have to deal with a constable who seems to have forgotten that rule number one of using an extendable baton is you do not hit people in the head with them. But if you need anything, give me a call.’ And then the doppelganger pretending to be the Ginger Ninja turned on his heel and marched off to distribute his chocolatey treats.

‘Shall we, Sergeant?’ Karl ushered Logan inside and closed the door behind him. Plonked himself on the other side of a workbench covered in bits of electronic equipment. Laptops, desktops, tablets, mobile phones — all tagged and bearing sticky labels. Another, smaller, bench sat against the wall with a laptop on it, a rainbow swirly screensaver dancing away across the display. ‘That’s you over there. All set up and ready.’

Logan perched on the edge of a bar stool and poked at the keyboard. The screensaver disappeared, replaced by the machine’s desktop. The picture was a line-up of Aberdeen football club players, all done up in their red kit. ‘Karl?’

‘By name, Karl by nature.’

‘Does Chief Superintendent Napier do a lot of baking things?’

‘Every Friday. You really should try Nigel’s brownies. Oh my, yes.’

Napier baking? Being nice to people? Having a first name? It was official — that last blow to Logan’s head had scrambled his brains. That, or he’d woken up in some alternative mirror-universe this morning.

Nigel.

Bizarre.

Logan moved the mouse arrow over the folder icon and clicked it open. Navigated his way through the computer’s hard drive to the iTunes section of the program files. ‘Any idea where I should be looking?’

‘Try “iTunes dot resources”.’

He did and got a screen full of other folders for his trouble. ‘Then what?’

‘“E S underscore M X dot lproj”. Then “printing templates”. You’ll see a printer icon, only it’s not really a printer it’s a password-protected RAR file.’

It sat at the top of a list of XML files. Logan double-clicked it and when the password prompt came up, turned back to Karl. ‘Do you have...’

He was holding up a Post-it note with ‘H UTCHESON ’ written on it in big black letters. ‘Only backwards. Capital N.’

Logan picked ‘N OSEHCTUH ’ out on the keyboard and hit return. Immediately the screen filled with rows and rows of pretty explicit filenames. Some were clearly ordered into groups, as if they formed part of a different photo set. They all had different modified dates, but when Logan ordered them by created date, they fell into two distinct chunks just like Napier had said. And the created dates were all after the modified dates as well.

He leaned back on his seat.

OK, so that didn’t prove anything, did it? Jack Wallace might have got them from one of the dodgy scumbags in his paedophile ring. Or maybe he copied them off an older machine? Or had them saved onto a DVD or something?

Didn’t mean Steel broke into his house or car, nicked his laptop, then stuck a bunch of kiddy porn on it. Returned it to the house and accidentally stumbled onto the folder.

Though let’s face it: the files would be nearly impossible to find, given how buried they were in the file structure. You’d really need to know what you were looking for and where, not to mention what the password was. Steel could barely work her own phone, never mind hack her way through a jungle of folders.

And what had she said, when he’d asked her about it? Wallace didn’t even try to hide the pictures, as if he was proud of his collection.

Yeah. This was beginning to look dodgier by the minute.

‘Karl?’

‘Your wish is my command, oh inquisitive one.’

Logan pointed at the laptop. ‘These files, all squirrelled away down here in the iTunes folders, that takes some doing, right? Wallace had to be a bit of a computer whizz kid to bury them away there.’

‘Oh dearie me, no.’ Karl laughed, big and wobbly, like something off a fairground attraction. ‘Finding the files is difficult. Hiding them, on the other hand, is child’s play. You navigate your way down to the bottom of any folder tree that takes your fancy, and Robert is the sibling of your immediate progenitor. My Yorkshire terrier could do it with one paw tied behind his back.’

So maybe even a detective chief inspector could manage.

Steel wouldn’t fit him up for fun, though, there had to be a reason.

Logan turned around in his seat. ‘Napier said you could show me anything I need to see, right? Well, I need to see everything you’ve got on Jack Wallace.’

‘Of course, you know what this is, don’t you?’

Logan stared at the crumpled lump in the toilet mirror. ‘Shut up.’ He finished washing his hands, then ran them under the howling roar of the air dryer.

Mirror Logan shook his head. ‘You’re only doing this so you don’t have to go home and sit there. In the dark. Getting drunk. Worrying about Reuben.’

‘Yes, but this is important, isn’t it?’