Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

The knife.

Logan ran a hand over his face. He'd not thought about that night for a long time. Lying on the tower block roof, half-unconscious, while Angus Robertson stabbed and stabbed and stabbed…Desperate Doug MacDuff had brought it all screaming back.

Logan had filled in all the forms, explaining why he'd put an old age pensioner in the hospital. Had spent a happy hour and a half while Inspector Napier scowled at him, asked leading questions and left him in no doubt about what was going to happen next. Now there was nothing left to do but sit back and wait to be told he was suspended. One week back on the job and already his career was down the tubes. And it wasn't even his fault!

Sighing, he looked up at Geordie Stephenson's dead face. Worst of all Desperate Doug was going to be that much harder to convict now. The jury would see a poor old man, beaten by the police, fitted up for the murder of an Edinburgh hoodlum. How could that old man murder anyone? He was so frail! The Procurator Fiscal wouldn't touch it with a bargepole.

Logan let his head sink forward until it clunked off the pile of papers. 'Shit.' He banged his forehead on the table, in time with the words: 'Shit, shit, shit, shit…'

He was interrupted by the blaring tune from his mobile phone. Sighing, he pulled the thing out, and stuck it to his ear. 'Logan,' he said, without enthusiasm.

'DS McRae? This is Alice Kelly, we met yesterday? At the safe house? We were looking after Mr Philips?'

Logan had the sudden image of a frumpy, plain-clothes policewoman with too many rings. 'Hello…' He stopped and sat up. 'What do you mean: you "were" looking after him? Where is he?'

'Ah, yes. You see that's the thing.' Embarrassed pause. 'DC Harris went out to the shops for a pint of milk and some crisps while I was in the shower-'

'Don't tell me you've lost him!'

'We didn't really lose him. I'm sure he's just gone out for a walk. He'll be back as soon as it gets dark…'

Logan looked at his watch. It was three-thirty. It was already dark. 'Have you looked for him?'

'DC Harris's out there now. I'm staying here, in case he comes back.'

Logan banged his head off the table again.

'Hello? Hello? Is something wrong?'

'He's not coming back.' The words came out through gritted teeth. 'Have you told Control he's missing?'

Another embarrassed pause.

'Oh for God's sake,' said Logan. 'I'll let them know.'

'What do you want me to do?'

Logan was a gentleman and didn't tell her.

Ten minutes later every patrol car in Aberdeen knew to keep an eye out for Roadkill wandering the streets. Not that Logan needed psychic powers to know where he would be going. He'd be making for the farm and its buildings full of dead things.

It was a fair walk to Cults from Summerhill, especially in the driving snow, but Roadkill was used to long walks. Pushing his own portable morgue along the highways and byways of the city. Collecting dead animals along the way.

But Bernard Duncan Philips didn't get that far. He was found three and a half hours later, lying in a pool of slowly freezing blood, in Hazlehead Woods. The woods were fairytale black and white, old twisted trees frosted with ice, blanketed in snow. A single-track road twisted its way through the centre of the park and Logan crept his pool car along it, keeping the speed down trying to keep the thing from sliding off the road and into a tree.

A mile and a half into the woods there was a rough car park, no tarmac, just dirt compacted over years and years of use, hidden beneath the snow. A single, large beech tree sat in the middle, bedecked in winter and surrounded by policemen milling about with no real obvious purpose, breath pluming out into the bitter air. Freezing their nuts off.

Logan pulled up next to the grubby IB van, killed the engine and clambered out into the slippery, hard-packed snow. The cold air was like a slap in the face. He shivered his way to the crime scene tent, hoping to God it would be warmer inside. It wasn't. Blood was spattered out from the middle of the tent, where a big pool of dark red was thickening with ice crystals, making the surface glitter. There were footprints everywhere and a man-shaped depression, straddling the pool of blood. Roadkill had been lying on his side. Bleeding his life out into the snow.

Logan grabbed the photographer. It was Billy: the balding AFC fan who'd taken photos at the tip. He was still wearing the same red-and-white bobble hat.

'Where's the body?'

'A amp;-E.'

'What?'

'He's no dead.' The photographer looked down at the crimson stain and then at Logan. 'No yet anyway.'

Which was how Logan ended up back at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary for the second time that day. Bernard Duncan Philips had been admitted with a fractured skull, broken ribs, broken arms, one broken leg, fractured fingers and internal injuries consistent with someone repeatedly stamping on his stomach. He'd been taken straight into surgery, but the mob had done a thorough job this time. Roadkill wasn't expected to survive.

Logan waited at the hospital, because there wasn't really anywhere else for him to go. He wasn't going to go back to FHQ and wait for his suspension to become official. At least if he was out here, with his phone switched off, he could pretend it wasn't going to happen.

Four hours later a serious-looking nurse appeared and escorted Logan through the maze of corridors to intensive care. The doctor who'd dealt with Desperate Doug was standing at Roadkill's bed, reading a chart.

'How is he?'

The doctor looked up from his clipboard. 'You back again?'

Logan looked at the battered, bandaged figure. 'Is it as bad as it looks?'

'Well…' There was a sigh. 'He's suffered some brain damage. We won't know how much for a while yet. He's stable for now.'

They stood watching Roadkill's shallow breaths.

'Is there any chance?'

The doctor shrugged. 'I think we caught the internal bleeding in time. I can tell you one thing for sure though: he's not going to have any more children. Both testicles ruptured. But he'll live.'

Logan winced. 'What about the man I came in with earlier? Mr MacDuff?'

'Not good.' He shook his head. 'Not good at all.'

'Is he going to be OK?'

'I'm afraid I can't discuss that. Patient confidentiality. You'd have to ask Mr MacDuff.'

'OK I'll do that.'

The doctor shook his head again. 'Not tonight. He's an old man; he's been through a lot today. It's nearly midnight. Let him sleep.' He raised sad eyes to Logan's face. 'Trust me: he's not going anywhere.' Outside, the snow had stopped and the sky was clearing: a bowl of inky-black, the stars blurred by the city's lights. Logan walked out of A amp;-E and into the icy night.

An ambulance carefully pulled up to the entrance, its lights flashing away.

Turning his back on the scene, Logan climbed into his pool car, his breath instantly fogging up the windscreen, dug out his mobile phone and switched it back on. Might as well face the music, now that it was too late for anyone to be calling him.

He had five messages. Four of them were from Colin Miller, desperate to know what had happened to Roadkill. But one was from WPC Jackie Watson asking if he didn't have anything better to do that is, if he would, but it was OK if he didn't, like to maybe go see a film, or maybe not a film, maybe just have a drink, because it had been a rough day…And if he did want to, you know, do something, then he could maybe give her a call back? The message was left at eight. Right about when Logan was sitting down to wait for Roadkill to come out of surgery.

He stabbed her number into the phone. It was late: after midnight, but maybe not too late…

It rang and rang and rang. At last a tinny, metallic voice told him that the number he had called was not available, please try again later.