Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

There was a neatly typed note sitting on Logan's desk, summarizing the day's sightings. He scanned through them sceptically. Most looked like utter fantasy.

Next to it was the list of every female TB sufferer under the age of four in the whole country. It wasn't a big list; just five names, complete with addresses.

Logan pulled over the phone and started dialling. It was gone six when DI Insch stuck his head round the door and asked if Logan had a moment. The inspector had a strange look on his face and Logan got the feeling this wasn't going to be good news. He put one hand over the phone's mouthpiece and told the inspector he'd just be a minute. The other end of the phone was connected to a PC in Birmingham who was, at that moment, sitting with the last girl on Logan's list. Yes she was still alive and was Logan aware that she was Afro-Caribbean? So probably not the dead white girl lying on a slab in the morgue then.

'Thanks for your time, Constable.' Logan put the phone down with a weary sigh and scored off the final name. 'No luck,' he said as Insch settled on the edge of the desk and started rummaging nosily through Logan's files. 'All children in the right age group treated for TB are alive and well.'

'You know what that means,' said Insch. He had hold of the statements Logan had picked out as being nearest to Norman Chalmers and his wheelie-bin. 'If she's had TB and been treated, it wasn't in this country. She's-'

'-not a British national,' Logan finished for him before burying his head in his hands. There were hundreds of places in the world still regularly suffering from TB: most of the former Soviet Union, Lithuania, every African nation, the Far East, America…A lot of the worst places didn't even keep national records. The haystack had just got an awful lot bigger.

'You want some good news?' asked Insch, his voice flat and unhappy.

'Go on then.'

'We've got an ID on the girl we found at Roadkill's farm.'

'Already?'

Insch nodded and placed all of Logan's statements back in the wrong order. 'We looked through the missing persons list for the last two years and ran a match on the dental records. Lorna Henderson. Four and a half. Her mother reported her missing. They were driving home from Banchory, along the South Deeside road. They'd had a row. She wouldn't shut up about getting a pony. So the mother says: "If you don't shut up about that damn pony you can walk home".'

Logan nodded. Everybody's mum had done that at one time or another. Logan's mother had even done it to his dad once.

'Only Lorna really, really wants a pony.' Insch pulled out a crumpled bag of fruit sherbets. But instead of popping one in his mouth, he just sat there and stared morosely into the bag. 'So the mother makes good on the threat. Pulls the car over and makes the kid get out. Drives off. Doesn't go far, just around the next bend. Less than half a mile. Parks the car and waits for Lorna. Only she never shows up.'

'How the hell could she put a four-year-old girl out of the car?'

Insch laughed, but it was humourless. 'There speaks someone who's never had kids. Soon as the little buggers learn to talk they don't stop till their hormones kick in and they become teenagers. Then you can't get a bloody word out of them. But a four-year-old will moan all day and all night if it really wants something. So in the end the mother snaps and that's it. Never sees her daughter ever again.'

And there was no way she was ever going to now. When the body was finally released for burial it would be a closed casket affair. They wouldn't let anyone see what was inside that box.

'Does she know? That we've found her?'

Insch grunted and stuffed the untouched sherbets back in his pocket. 'Not yet. That's where I'm off to now. Tell her that she let her kid get caught by a sick bastard. That he battered her to death and stuffed her body in a pile of animal carcases.'

Welcome to hell.

I'm taking WPC Watson with me,' said Insch. 'You want to come?' The words were flippant, but the voice wasn't. The inspector sounded low. Not surprising given the week they'd just had. Insch thought he could bribe Logan into coming by dangling WPC Watson in front of him. Like a carrot in a police uniform.

Logan would have gone without the bribe. Telling a mother her child was dead wasn't something he was looking forward to, but Insch looked as if he needed the support. 'Only if we go for a drink afterwards.' They pulled up at the kerb in DI Insch's Range Rover, the massive car towering over all the little Renaults and Fiats that lined the street on either side with their white hats of pristine snow. No one had said much on the trip out. Except for the Family Liaison Officer, who'd spent the whole trip making 'Who's a pretty girl?' noises at the smelly black-and-white spaniel in the back of Insch's car.

The area was nice enough: some trees, a bit of grass. You could still see fields if you climbed on the roof. The house was at the end of a two-up, two-down terrace, all done out in white harling, the little white chips of stone and quartz sparkling in the streetlights, mimicking the snow.

The blizzard had turned into the occasional lazy flake, drifting slowly through the bitter night. They tramped through the ankle-deep snow to the front door together. Insch taking the lead. He pressed the doorbell and 'Greensleeves' binged and bonged from somewhere inside. Two minutes later the door was opened by a displeased, damp woman in her mid-forties, wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe. She wore no make-up, the faint remains of mascara smearing outwards from her eyes towards her ears. Her hair was wet, hanging over her face like damp string. The look of irritation on her face vanished as she saw WPC Watson's uniform standing at the back.

'Mrs Henderson?'

'Oh God.' She clutched at the front of the robe, twisting the neck tightly shut. All the colour went from her face. 'It's Kevin isn't it? Oh God…he's dead!'

'Kevin?' Insch looked flustered.

'Kevin, my husband.' She stepped back into the tiny hall, her hands all a flutter. 'Oh God.'

'Mrs Henderson: your husband's not dead. We-'

'Oh, thank the Lord for that.' Instantly relieved, she ushered them through the hall into a pink, candy-striped living room. 'Excuse the mess. Sunday's usually my day for the housework, but I had a double shift at the hospital.' She stopped and surveyed the room, moving a discarded nurse's uniform off the sofa and onto the ironing board. The half-empty bottle of gin was swiftly tidied away to the sideboard. Above the fireplace was a framed fake oil painting, one of the ones photographers churn out. A man, a woman and a fair-haired little girl. A husband, a wife and a murdered child.

'Of course Kevin doesn't live here right now…He's having a break…' There was a pause. 'It was after our daughter went missing.'

'Ah. That's why we're here, Mrs Henderson.'

She waved them towards a lumpy brown sofa, the leather covered up with pink-and-yellow throws. 'Because Kevin doesn't live here? It's only temporary!'

Insch pulled a clear plastic envelope from his pocket. There were two pink hairclips in it. 'Do you recognize these, Mrs Henderson?'

She took the envelope, peered in at the contents and then back at Insch and went pale for the second time. 'Oh God, these were Lorna's! Her favourite Barbie hair things. She wouldn't go out of the house without them! Where did you get them?'

'We found Lorna, Mrs Henderson.'

'Found? Oh God…'

'I'm sorry, Mrs Henderson. She's dead.'

She seemed to turn in on herself and then: 'Tea. That's what we need. Hot sweet tea.' She turned her back and scurried away into the kitchen, her towelling bathrobe flapping as she went.

They found her sobbing into the kitchen sink.

Ten minutes later they were back in the lounge, Insch and Logan on the lumpy settee, WPC Watson and Mrs Henderson on matching lumpy brown armchairs, the Family Liaison Officer standing behind her making consoling noises, one hand on Mrs Henderson's shoulder. Logan had made a big pot of tea and it sat steaming away on top of a coffee table festooned with Cosmopolitan magazines. Everyone had a cup, but no one was drinking.