Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

Ground floor right: four students, two of whom were still asleep. No one had seen or heard anything. Too busy studying. 'My arse,' said Watson. 'Fascist,' said the student.

First floor left: timid single woman with big glasses and bigger teeth. No she hadn't seen anyone or heard anything and wasn't it all simply dreadful?

First floor right: no answer.

Top floor left: unmarried mother and three-year-old child. Another case of see, hear and speak no evil. Logan got the feeling you could commit regicide in her bathroom while she was taking a bath, and she'd still swear she'd seen nothing.

Top floor right: Norman Chalmers. His story hadn't changed. They had no right to harass him like this. He was going to call his lawyer.

And back out onto the street again.

'Well,' said Logan, stuffing his hands into his pockets to keep out the chill. 'Six down, seventy-eight to go.'

Watson groaned.

'Never mind.' Logan gave her a smile. 'If you're very, very good I'll buy you a pint when we've finished.'

That seemed to cheer her up a bit and Logan was on the verge of adding an invitation to dinner when he caught sight of his reflection in the car windscreen. It was too dark to make out much detail on the building behind him, but the windows shone like cats' eyes in the dark mirror of glass. All of them.

He turned and stared up at the building. Every single window on the front of the building was ablaze. Even the supposedly empty first floor right flat. As he watched a face appeared at the window, staring down at the street. For a heartbeat their eyes met and then the face was gone, wearing a terrified expression. A very familiar face.

'Well, well, well…' Logan patted WPC Watson on the shoulder. 'Looks like we have ourselves a contender.'

Back inside, Watson pounded on the door of the offending flat. 'Come on: we know you're in there. We saw you!'

Logan leaned back against the banister and watched her bash at the black-painted door. He'd brought the pile of statements in with him and was flicking through them, looking for the one that fitted the address. First floor right, number seventeen…A Mr Cameron Anderson. Who came from Edinburgh and made ROVs.

WPC Watson mashed her thumb on the doorbell again, still hammering away with her other hand. 'If you don't open this door I'm going to break the damn thing down!'

All this racket out in the hall and not a single face peeked out from the other flats to see what was going on. So much for a sense of community.

Two minutes and still the door remained resolutely shut. Logan was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. 'Kick it in.'

'What?' Watson turned and whispered loudly at him, the words hissing out. 'We don't have a warrant! We can't just break down the door! I was only bluffing-'

'Kick it in. Now.'

WPC Watson took a step back and slammed her foot into the door, just below the lock. With an explosive bang the door flew open, slamming into the flat's hall and bouncing back, rattling photographs in their frames. They rushed in, Watson into the lounge, Logan taking the bedroom. No one.

Like Chalmers's flat, upstairs, there wasn't a door on the kitchen but it was empty anyway. That only left the bathroom and it was locked.

Logan rattled the door, banging the flat of his hand on the wooden door. 'Mr Anderson?'

From inside came the sound of sobbing and running water.

'Damn.' He gave the door one last try before asking Watson for a repeat performance.

She nearly kicked it off its hinges.

Clouds of steam billowed out into the tiny hallway. Inside, the small bathroom was clad in wood, like a sauna, partially concealing a nasty avocado suite. The room was just big enough for the bath to fit along the far wall, on the other side of the toilet, a shower rigged up over it, the curtain drawn.

Logan yanked the curtain open to reveal a fully-dressed man on his knees in the rising water, hacking away at his wrists with a broken disposable razor. They took Mr Anderson directly to A amp;-E, without waiting for an ambulance. The hospital was less than five minutes away. They wrapped his wrists in layers of fluffy towels before stuffing them into discarded plastic carrier bags from the kitchen so he wouldn't bleed all over the car.

Cameron Anderson hadn't done a very good job of killing himself. The cuts weren't deep enough to fully open the veins, and he'd gone across, rather than down their length. A few stitches and a night's observation was all he needed. Logan smiled as he was told the news and promised the nurse that Mr Anderson would get all the observation he needed in a cell back at Force Headquarters. She looked at him as if he should be scraped off her shoe.

'What the hell is wrong with you?' she demanded. 'That poor man has just tried to kill himself!'

'He's a suspect in a murder enquiry-' was as far as Logan got before she scowled in recognition at him.

'I know you! You're that one was here yesterday! The one beat up that old man!'

'I don't have time for this. Where is he?'

She crossed her arms and refocused her scowl.

'If you don't leave I'm calling security.'

'Good for you. Then we'll see how you get on with a charge of obstruction. OK?'

Logan brushed past her heading into the row of curtained-off cubicles. He identified the one Anderson was in by the sound of snivelling in an Edinburgh accent.

The man sat on the edge of the examination bed, rocking back and forth, crying to himself, snatches of words escaping through the tears. Logan pushed his way through the curtains and sat on a black plastic chair opposite the bed. Watson followed him in, taking up position in the corner, notebook at the ready.

'Hello again, Mr Anderson,' said Logan in his best friendly voice. 'Or can I call you Cameron?'

The man didn't look up. A small patch of red had seeped through the bandage on his left wrist. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

'Cameron, I've been wondering about something,' said Logan. 'You see, there was this bloke who came up from Edinburgh and ended up in the harbour. We put his picture in all the papers and stuck posters up all over the shop, but no one came forward. Seems they didn't like the way his kneecaps were hacked off with a machete.'

At the words 'hacked off Mr Anderson flinched. 'Machete' elicited an anguished moan.

'Now the thing that confuses me, Cameron, is that you never gave us a call. I mean you must have seen the picture. It was on the news and everything.' Logan pulled a rectangle of paper from his pocket, unfolding it into a photograph of Geordie Stephenson from when he was alive. He'd been carrying it about since they'd done their tour of Aberdeen's seedier bookies. He held it up in front of the weeping man. 'You do recognize him, don't you?'

Anderson's eyes flashed up to the photograph then back to the stain on his bandage. In that swiftest of glimpses Logan knew he'd been right. Cameron Anderson and Geordie Stephenson. They didn't share the same surname, but they shared the same heavy features, the same bouffant hair. The only thing missing was the porn-star moustache.

Anderson said something, but it was too low and muffled to make out.

Logan laid the photograph on the floor, positioning it so Geordie's dead eyes stared up at the man on the bed. 'Why'd you try to kill yourself, Cameron?'

'Thought you were him.' The words were mumbled rather than spoken, but at least this time they were audible.

'Him who?'

Anderson shivered. 'Him. The old man.'

'Describe him.'

'Old. Grey.' He made scratchy, claw-like gestures at his throat. 'Tattoos. One eye all white. Like a poached egg.'

Logan settled back. 'Why him, Cameron? What does he want with you?'

'Geordie was my brother. The old man…he…' One hand went up to his mouth. He started methodically biting the nails on each finger down to the quick. 'He came to the flat. Told Geordie he had a message for him. From Mr McLennan.'