Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

'Mr McLennan? Malk the Knife?' Logan scooted forward in his chair. 'What was the message?'

'I let him in and he hit Geordie with something. And then he started kicking him when he was on the ground.' Red-rimmed eyes darted imploringly at Logan. Tears tumbled down the pasty cheeks. 'I tried to stop him, but he hit me…' That explained the bruise he'd been sporting the day he'd let them into the building.

'What was the message, Cameron?' The mysterious message that Simon McLeod said all of Aberdeen knew about. Everyone except the police.

'He spat on me…' A sob escaped, followed by a silvery trail that leaked out of Cameron's nose. 'He dragged Geordie out of the flat. He said he'd be back for me! I thought you were him!'

Logan examined the man sitting in front of him, rocking back and forward on the edge of the bed, eyes and nose running freely. He was lying. He'd looked out his front window and seen Logan and WPC Watson standing in the street. He knew it wasn't Desperate Doug back to finish him off. 'What was the message?'

Cameron waved a hand in random circles, the red smudge on his bandaged wrist growing ever larger. 'I don't know. He just said he was coming back!'

'What about the little girl?' Logan asked.

Anderson acted as if Logan had slapped him across the face. It took him a good ten seconds to recover enough to say, 'Girl?'

'The girl, Cameron. The one that ended up dead, wearing a bin-bag belonging to your upstairs neighbour. You remember her? A nice man from the police came round and took your statement.'

Anderson bit his lip and wouldn't meet Logan's eyes.

They couldn't get anything more out of him. Instead they all sat there in silence until a pair of uniformed constables arrived to take him away. The PC guarding Desperate Doug MacDuff's room was halfway through his novel when Logan and WPC Watson turned up at the door. He'd had a boring day, except for flirting with a couple of the nurses. Logan sent him off to fetch coffees again.

Doug's room was buried in semidarkness, the flickering television screen casting its green-and-grey glow, making shadows writhe and jump. It was like being back in the Turf 'n Track again. Only this time no one was trying to kick the living hell out of them. The only sound came from the air conditioner, the humming machinery, and the pallid, wheezing old man lying on the hospital bed, gazing up at the silent TV. Logan sat himself down at the foot of the bed again. 'Evening, Dougie,' he said with a smile in his voice. 'We brought grapes.' He plonked a paper bag on the blankets by the old man's feet.

Doug sniffed and went on staring at the television screen.

'We've just had a very interesting chat with someone, Dougie. About you.' Logan leaned forward and helped himself to a grape from the bag. In the light of the TV they looked like little gangrenous haemorrhoids. 'He's fingered you for assaulting and abducting the late Geordie Stephenson. He watched you do it! How about that, Dougie? First we get forensic evidence and now we've got a witness.'

No reaction.

Logan helped himself to another grape. 'Witness says you also killed that little girl.' It was a lie, but you never knew your luck. 'The one we found in a bin-bag.'

That took Doug's attention off the television set. He sat, propped up with half a dozen pillows, glaring at Logan with his one good eye. And then he went back to the television. 'Little fucker.'

The silence stretched out in the gloom. Lit by the TV's ghostly glow, Desperate Doug looked like a skeleton, all sunken cheeks and dark-ringed eye sockets. His teeth were still floating in a glass.

'Why'd you kill her, Dougie?'

'You know,' said the old man. His voice was low and gravelly, a whisper forced through broken glass. 'I was a fuckin' stallion when I was young. Aye, no that much younger mind. Women fallin' over themselves to get a bit of it Dougie-style. Women mind. Women. No like them sick fucks.'

Logan watched as Doug coughed: a wet, rattling sound that ended with a globule of dark phlegm being spat into a bedpan.

'I gets word Geordie's stayin' with his faggot half-brother in Rosemount. So I go round. Pay them a little visit. Geordie tries to come off all hard to start with, you know? He's the man. I'm just some old fuck. "Go home, granddad or I'll break your zimmer…" 'A toothless smile turned into a laugh that turned into another fit of coughing. Doug lay back on the mound of crunchy hospital pillows, breathing hard. 'So I kicked the shit out of him. Right there in the lounge. Then his poof-bastard-brother comes bargin' in from the bedroom, all wrapped up in this pink dressin' gown. And I'm thinking nothin' of it. You know, figure he's going for a bubble bath or some shite like that. Only I can hear somethin', like a kid cryin'.' He shook his head at the memory. 'Fucker's standing there shouting at me: "You can't come in here! You can't do this!" Like I give a shit. And I can still hear the cryin'. So I go see what it is, only poof-boy's no gettin' out of the way: "You've got no right…" 'He smacked a fist into his palm. 'Bang. There's this little girl in the bedroom. Wearin' nothin' but a fuckin' Mickey Mouse hat. You know, with the ears?' He looked at Logan for confirmation, but Logan was too shocked to answer. 'So I'm lookin' at this naked wee girl and that bastard's in there, barely dressed.' He grimaced. 'Went back in the lounge and kicked the shite out of him too. Sick bastard.'

Logan finally recovered enough to say, 'What happened to the girl?'

Desperate Doug MacDuff dropped his eyes to his hands. They lay curled in his lap like wizened talons. Arthritis, just beginning to turn the joints into swollen balls of pain. 'Aye. The girl…' He cleared his throat. 'She…came in as I'm givin' the sick bastard a goin' over. And she's foreign. You know, like German or fuckin' Norwegian. Somethin' like that. And she's lookin' up at me with these big brown eyes, an' she's cryin' and sayin' fuckin' filthy things: "I suck your dick." "Fuck me in the ass…" Over and over again.' The old man gave a shuddering breath and dissolved into a bed-shaking fit of coughing. He was white as milk when he finally stopped. 'She's…She's holding onto my leg, cryin' and snotterin' everywhere, bare naked, and tellin' me she wants me to fuck her in the arse. I…I pushed her away…' His voice dropped. 'Fell against the fireplace. Bang. Head into the brick.'

They sat in silence once more. Doug lost in thought, Logan and Watson trying to come to terms with what they'd just heard. It was Doug who spoke first.

'So I picked up Geordie, took him somewhere nice and quiet, and fucked him over. You should have heard him scream when I hacked off his fuckin' knees. Filthy bastard.'

Logan cleared his throat. 'How come you let his brother live?'

Doug looked at him with sadness written in the deep lines of his face. 'Had a job to do. Message to deliver. I was goin' to go back the next day. Show him what happened to sick bastards like him. You know, with a Stanley knife? Only when I went back there was all these pigs clamberin' all over the place. And the next day and the day after that…'

Logan nodded. The first lot of policemen must have been his team arresting Norman Chalmers. The rest doing door-to-doors, trying to find witnesses. While all the time Desperate Doug MacDuff was hovering in the shadows, watching them.

'Standin' like a fuckin' idiot in the snow and rain, gettin' myself some pneumonia to go with the cancer.' Doug lapsed back into silence, a faraway look in his good eye, the milky one shimmering in the television's glow.

Logan stood. 'Before we go there's one thing that's been bothering me: what was the message?'

'The message?' A smile spread across Desperate Doug's toothless face. 'You don't steal from your employer.'