Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

'DI Steel wants me to follow up on Geordie Stephenson: that body they dragged out the harbour,' he said as they made their way down the long corridor that linked courtroom number one to the holding cells. 'I said I'd need some help, and Insch volunteered you. Said you'd keep me right.'

Watson smiled, pleased at the compliment, not knowing Logan had made it up himself.

Martin Strichen had been escorted from the court straight to the holding cells. By the time Logan and Watson got down there he was sitting on a thin grey bunk with his head in his hands, moaning softly beneath the flickering overhead lights. The back of his borrowed suit jacket was groaning under the strain, the seam getting more and more visible with every shivering sob.

Looking down at him, Logan didn't know what to think. It was terrible that any child should have to undergo the kind of abuse Cleaver subjected his victims to. Even so, Slippery Sandy's words stayed with him. That list of crimes. Martin Strichen was a dirty wee toerag. But that didn't mean he hadn't suffered at the hands of Gerald Cleaver.

Watson signed for Martin Strichen and they led him, handcuffed and whimpering, up through the building and out the back entrance. It was only a short walk to the pool car Logan had appropriated. As Watson pushed her prisoner's head down so it wouldn't bang on the roof of the car, Strichen said, 'She was fourteen.'

'What?' Watson peered into the car, into Martin Strichen's puffy red eyes.

'The girl. We was both fourteen. She wanted to, but I couldn't. I didn't force her…I couldn't do it.' A large, tear-shaped drop suspended from the tip of his nose and as she watched it slowly fell, sparkling in the early afternoon light.

'Arms up.' She buckled the seatbelt around him, making sure that Grampian Police didn't end up in court defending a negligence claim if they crashed the car. As her hair brushed his face she heard him whisper, 'She wouldn't stop laughing…' They dropped their passenger off at Craiginches Prison. Once the rigmarole of signing him back into custody was over and done with, they were ready to start on DI Steel's investigation.

Logan and WPC Watson slogged their way around Aberdeen's less salubrious bookmaking establishments, showing the staff Geordie Stephenson's porn star picture but getting nothing but blank stares for their troubles. There was little point in visiting the majors – William Hill and Ladbrokes – they weren't likely to hack Geordie's kneecaps off with a machete if he failed to settle his debts.

But the Turf 'n Track in Sandilands was exactly that kind of place.

The shop had been a baker's back in the sixties when the neighbourhood was a bit more upmarket. Not that much more upmarket, but back in the days when you could walk the streets after dark. The shop was part of a block of four equally tatty and run-down establishments. All were covered in graffiti, all had heavy metal grilles on the window, and all had been broken into and robbed at gunpoint many times. Except the Turf 'n Track, which had been robbed only once in living memory. And that's because the McLeod brothers hunted down the bloke who burst into their father's shop waving a sawn-off shotgun and tortured him to death with a gas lighter and a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Allegedly.

Council-owned housing surrounded the shops – three-and four-storey concrete tenement buildings thrown up in a hurry and left to rot. If you needed a home fast, had no money and weren't fussy, this was where you ended up.

A poster outside the grocer's next door declared: 'MISSING: PETER LUMLEY' beneath a colour picture of the five-year-old's smiling, freckled face. Some wit had drawn on a pair of glasses, a moustache and 'RAZ TAKES IT UP THE ARSE'.

There were no community notices pinned up outside the Turf 'n Track: it offered only blacked-out windows and a green-and-yellow plastic sign. Logan pushed through the door into the gloomy interior where the air was thick with the smell of hand-rolled tobacco and wet dog. The inside was even shabbier than the outside: dirty plastic seats in grimy orange, sticky linoleum with cigarette burns and holes worn all the way through to the concrete floor. Woodwork so thickly impregnated by generations of cigarette smoke that it oozed sticky black. There was a chest-high counter running across the room, keeping the punters away from the paperwork, the tills, and the door to the back room. An old man sat in the corner, a grey-muzzled Alsatian at his feet, a tin of Export in his hand. His attention was fixed on a TV screen with dogs screeching round a track. Logan was surprised to see a pensioner in here. He thought they were all too scared to come out on their own. And then the man took his eyes off the television to examine the newcomers.

There were tattoos all the way up his neck: flames and skulls; his right eye cloudy-white and slack.

Logan felt a tug at his sleeve and WPC Watson hissed in his ear, 'Isn't that-'

But the old man got there first, shouting, 'Mr McLeod! There's some fuckin' police bastards here tae see you!'

'Now, now Dougie, that's not nice,' said Logan, taking a step towards the old man. The Alsatian was on its feet in an instant, teeth bared, its low growl making the hair on Logan's neck stand on end. A string of saliva spiralled down between the animal's broken teeth. It was an old dog, but it was vicious enough to frighten the crap out of him.

Nobody moved. The dog kept on snarling, the old man kept on glowering, and Logan kept on hoping he wasn't going to have to run for his life. Eventually a round face stuck itself out of the back room.

'Dougie, what have I told you about that fuckin' dog?'

The old man cracked a smile, exposing green-and-brown dentures. 'You said if the pigs come in, let 'im tear their fuckin' throats out.'

The newcomer frowned, then a smile broke his face in two. 'Aye, you're right. So I did.' He was a good thirty years younger than Dougie, but the old man still called him 'Mr' McLeod.

Simon McLeod had inherited his father's coarse features. His left ear was missing a chunk, courtesy of a Rottweiler called Killer whose head now adorned the back office.

'What do you bastards want then?' he asked, settling his massive arms on the counter.

Logan pulled out a colour picture of Geordie and held it out in front of him. 'You recognize this man?'

'Fuck you.' He hadn't even looked at the picture.

'Nice offer, but I'll pass this time.' Logan slapped the photo down on the grimy counter. 'Now: do you recognize him?'

'Never seen him before.'

'He was a loudmouthed git from Edinburgh. Came up here to do a job for Malk the Knife. Made some big bets and didn't settle them.'

Simon McLeod's face closed up. 'We don't have a lot of people who don't settle. It's against management policy.'

'Take another look, Mr McLeod. Sure you don't recognize him? Ended up floating face down in the harbour with his kneecaps missing.'

Simon's eyes opened wide and he slapped a hand over his mouth. 'Oh, him! God, now you mention it, I do remember something about hacking his kneecaps off and throwing him in the harbour! Christ, why'd you no say so sooner? Aye: I kilt him and I'm no fuckin' bright enough to lie about it if the police come in here askin' stupid fuckin' questions.'

Logan bit his tongue and counted to five. 'Do you recognize him?'

'Get to fuck and take your bitch with you. The smell's upsettin' Winchester.' He pointed at the snarling Alsatian. 'And even if I did recognize him, I'd sooner eat shite out a whore's arse than tell you.'

'Where's your brother Colin?'

'None of your fuckin' business: that's where he is. Now you goin' to fuck off, or what?'

Logan had to admit that there wasn't a lot more they could do here. He was all the way to the door before a thought struck him and he turned. 'Hacked off,' he said, frowning. 'How did you know the man's kneecaps had been hacked off? I never said anything about that. I just said they were missing!'