Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

It wasn't easy running in Wellington boots and heavy snow, but Logan managed to get there just as the last seagull was tipped in. 'Hold it,' he said, grabbing the man with the shovel. No not a man, a woman. It was difficult to tell in the shapeless protective gear.

'Where did you put the original contents?'

She looked at him as if he were mad, snow swirling down all around them. 'What?'

'The original contents: the council were filling these things. Where did you put the bodies they'd already put in there? Have you gone through them already?'

A look of unhappy comprehension appeared on the WPC's face. 'Shit!' She threw her shovel down into the snow. 'Shit, shit, shit!' Three deep breaths and then, 'Sorry, sir. We've been at this all day. We've just been throwing the bodies in. No one thought about checking the stuff already in there.' Her shoulders slumped and Logan knew how she felt.

'Come on. We'll empty this thing into steading number one and check the contents as we go. One group keeps going where they are, the other goes through this lot.' Fun, fun, fun. 'I'll break the good news to the team.' Why not? he thought to himself, they already hate me. Might as well give them good reason for it.

The news went down every bit as badly as Logan had anticipated. The only thing that made them feel any better was that he was prepared to pitch in and help. At least for a while.

And that was how Logan spent his afternoon. Miller, bless his cotton socks, swallowed his pride and picked up a shovel. The spaniel/labrador was near the top of the pile this time. Last in, first out. But slowly they worked their way through the contents of the waste container.

Logan was sure he'd examined the same burst-open rabbit about thirty times when the screaming started.

Someone came running out of steading number three clutching his hand to his chest. He slipped on the snow and went flat on his back. The screaming stopped for a moment as all the wind was knocked out of him.

The team abandoned their carcases and charged towards the fallen figure. Logan got there just as the screaming started up again.

Blood was oozing out of the constable's thick rubber glove through a neat puncture mark in the palm. The victim tore off his mask and goggles. It was PC Steve. Ignoring the calls to calm down, he carried on screaming as he dragged the bloody glove off his injured hand. There was a ragged hole in it: right in the meaty bit between his thumb and forefinger. It pulsed dark-red blood, running down the blue plastic boiler suit and into the snow.

'What did you do?'

PC Steve went on screaming so someone slapped him one. Logan couldn't be sure, but it looked like the Bastard Simon Rennie.

'Steve!' Rennie said, preparing to haul off and smack him again, 'What happened?'

PC Steve's eyes were wild, darting between the steading and his bleeding hand. 'Rat!'

Someone dragged their belt out from underneath their boiler suit and wrapped it around Steve's wrist, pulling hard.

'Jesus, Steve,' said the Bastard Simon Rennie, peering at the hole in his friend's hand. 'That must've been one big rat!'

'Fucking thing was like a Rottweiler! Ah, bastard that hurts!'

They stuffed a plastic bag with snow and stuck Steve's bleeding hand into it, trying not to notice as the snow inside slowly turned from white to pink and then to red. Logan wrapped the whole lot in a spare boiler suit and told PC Rennie to take him to the hospital, lights and music all the way.

Miller and Logan stood side by side as the lights flickered into life on top of the patrol car. It did a messy three point turn on the slippery road before creeping off into the blizzard, siren blazing.

'So,' said Logan as the flashing lights were swallowed by the snow. 'How are you enjoying your first day on the Force?'

Logan stayed at the farm as long as he could, examining animal carcases with the rest of the team. Even with all that protective gear on he felt dirty. And everyone was on pins and needles after the rat attack. No one wanted to join PC Steve in A amp;-E waiting for a tetanus and rabies shot.

In the end, he had to call it a day: he still had work to do back at Force HQ. They dropped an ashen-faced Colin Miller off at the gate to the farm track. He was knackered, going straight home to drink a bottle of wine. Then he was going to climb into the shower and exfoliate until he bled.

The gaggle of reporters and television cameras outside the farm had thinned out. Now only the hardcore remained, sitting in their cars with the engines running and heaters going full blast. They leapt from the warm safety of their vehicles as soon as Logan's car appeared.

No comment was all they got.

DI Insch wasn't in the incident room when Logan got back to FHQ. Getting an update from the team manning the phones was an uncomfortable experience. Even after the inspector's speech they obviously still thought Logan was shite in a suit. No one actually said anything, but their reports were curt and to the point.

Team one: door-to-door – 'Have you seen this man?' – had generated the usual raft of contradictory statements. Yes, Roadkill had been seen talking to the boys, no he hadn't, yes he had. The Hazlehead station had even set up a roadblock to ask drivers if they'd seen something on their way into and out of town. A long shot, but worth a try.

Team two: Bernard Duncan Philips's life story. They'd been the most successful. There was a large manilafolder sitting on the inspector's desk containing everything anyone knew about Roadkill. Logan perched himself on the edge of the desk and flicked through the collection of photocopies, faxes and printouts. He stopped when he got to the report on the death of Bernard's mother.

She'd been diagnosed with bowel cancer five years ago. She'd been ill for a long time, unable to cope. Bernard had come home from St Andrews, leaving a PHD behind, in order to look after his sick mother. Her GP had insisted she get help, but she refused. Bernard was on mummy's side and chased the man off the family farm with a pickaxe. Which was when they spotted the mental problems.

Then her brother, who'd found her face down on the kitchen floor, made her go to the hospital. Exploratory surgery and bingo: cancer. They tried treating it, but the cancer had spread to her bones by February. And in May she was dead. Not in the hospital, but in her own bed.

Bernard shared the house with her for two months after she died. A social worker had gone to check on Bernard. The smell had met her at the farmhouse door.

So Bernard Duncan Philips got a two-year spell in Cornhill, Aberdeen's only 'special needs' hospital. He responded well to the drugs so out he had gone into the care of the community. Which roughly translated meant they wanted the bed freed up for some other poor sod. Bernard buried himself in his work: scraping dead animals off the road for Aberdeen City Council.

Which explained a lot.

Logan didn't need an update on team three: he'd seen enough at first hand to know they weren't getting anywhere fast. Making them go through all that stuff in the waste containers hadn't helped, but at least now they knew they hadn't missed anything. At the rate they were going it'd be Monday at the earliest before they'd worked their way through all three steadings-worth of animal corpses. Providing the superintendent authorized the overtime.

Logan's mini incident room was empty by the time he got there. The lab results had come back on the vomit Isobel had found in the deep cut in the little girl's body. The DNA didn't match the sample from Norman Chalmers. And Forensics still hadn't come up with anything else. The only thing tying him to the girl was the supermarket till receipt. Circumstantial. So they'd had to let Norman Chalmers go. At least he'd had the good sense to go quietly, rather than in a barrage of media attention. His lawyer must have been gutted.