Stuart Macbride - Cold granite

'You've got a face like a pig's arse,' Insch told him, indicating to turn up Westburn Road. 'What's up?'

Logan shrugged, still seeing that wretched figure, tromping through the snow with his head down, the legs of his overalls damp with snow and slush. 'Not sure…maybe nothing.'

Inside the hospital it was too hot, the heating cranked up to combat the winter's chill, leaving the whole place in a sub-tropical, antiseptic fug. The room Bernard Duncan Philips, AKA Roadkill, had shared was no different, only more crowded – Identification Bureau personnel, a photographer, DI Insch and Logan all dressed in identical white paper coveralls as if they were some sort of conceptual dance troupe.

The room's other bed was empty; a tearful nurse in her late forties told Logan the man sharing with Roadkill had died of liver failure that afternoon.

In between the high-pitched whine and clack of the photographer's flash, Logan was treated to the sight of Roadkill's battered body. He was sprawled across the bed, one plastered arm hanging out over the linoleum, blood drips slowly clotting on the tips of pale fingers. The bandages on his head were bright red around the eyes and mouth, the ones on his chest so saturated with blood they were almost black.

'What the hell happened to the PC watching him?' Insch was in a foul mood.

A sheepish-looking constable held up his hand and explained that there had been some trouble in A amp;-E. Two drunks and a bouncer, trading blows. He'd been summoned by the nurses to help break it up.

Insch creased his face and counted to ten. 'I suppose death's been declared?' he asked when he got to the end.

A WPC said that it hadn't, eliciting a barrage of swearing from the inspector.

'It's a hospital! The place is filthy with bloody doctors! Go get one of the lazy bastards to officially declare death!'

While they waited, Insch and Logan examined the body as best they could without actually touching it.

'Stabbed,' said Insch, peering closely at the small, rectangular puncture marks in the bandages. 'That look like a knife to you?'

'Something with a chisel point. Could be a screwdriver? Stiletto? Pair of scissors?'

Insch squatted down, searching under the bed for a discarded knife. All he found was more blood.

While the inspector was looking for a murder weapon, Logan worked his way carefully along the body. The stab-marks were all exactly the same, no more than fifteen millimetres long, two millimetres wide, all radiating out from the left side of the body. The killer had been frenzied, the stab wounds multiple and furious. He closed his eyes and pictured the scene: Roadkill unconscious, killer standing on the left side of the bed, the side furthest away from the door. Stabbing rapidly, again and again.

Logan opened his eyes and stepped back, feeling slightly nauseous. There was blood everywhere. Not only on the body and the bed, but up the wall too. He craned his neck back to see little red flecks splattered on the off-white ceiling tiles. Whoever did this would have looked like something from a horror film by the time they'd finished. Not someone you'd forget seeing in a hurry.

This wasn't random violence. Nor was it the violence of a self-righteous mob. This was revenge.

'What is the meaning of this? Why have I been dragged down here?'

The voice was stressed and irritable, just like its owner: a well-built female doctor in a white coat, complete with stethoscope around her neck.

Logan raised his hands in submission and backed away from the body. 'We need you to declare death before we can move the body.'

She scowled at him. 'Of course he's bloody dead. You see this?' She pointed at her name badge. 'It says "doctor". That means I know a dead body when I see one!'

Inspector Insch stood up on the other side of the bed and pulled out his warrant card. 'You see this?' he said, holding it under her nose. 'It says "Detective Inspector". That means I expect you to behave like a grown up and not take whatever your problem is out on my officers. OK?'

She glowered at him, but didn't say anything. Slowly her face softened. 'Sorry,' she said at last. 'It's been a long, shitty day.'

Insch nodded. 'If it's any consolation I know how you feel.' He stepped back and pointed at Roadkill's pincushion corpse. 'Care to hazard a guess at the time of death?'

'Easy: some time between quarter to nine and quarter past ten.'

Insch was impressed. 'Not often we get an estimated time of death within half an hour.'

The doctor actually smiled at him. 'That's when the last shift was through. The beds get checked regularly. He wasn't dead at quarter to nine. Quarter past ten, he was.'

DI Insch thanked her and she was about to say something else when the pager at her hip let out a series of bleeps. She grabbed it, read the message, cursed, apologized, and ran from the room.

Logan stared down at the bloody remains of Bernard Duncan Philips and tried to figure out what was nagging him about all this. And then it hit him. 'Lumley,' he said.

'What?' Insch looked at him as if he'd grown an extra head.

'Peter Lumley's stepdad. Remember him? He walks round this area of town the whole time. Last time I saw him he was walking away from the hospital. He blamed Roadkill for his son's death.'

'So?'

Logan gazed down at the blood-soaked body lying on the bed. 'Looks like he's got his own back.'

Hazlehead was dark and cold as midnight rolled in. The snow was lying thicker here than it had been in the middle of town, the trees standing out like Rorschach inkblot tests. Streetlights cast yellow pools of light, the flickering blue flash of patrol car lights making dark shadows dance. Most of the tower block was shrouded in darkness, but here and there a twitching curtain showed a neighbour peering out, trying to see what the police wanted.

The police wanted Jim Lumley.

The Lumley's flat looked nothing like it had the last time Logan had been here. It was a pigsty. Discarded carryout containers lay in piles on the carpet, joined by empty tins of Special and cheap lager. All the photos had been taken down from the rest of the flat and put back up again in the lounge: one big montage of Peter Lumley's life.

Jim Lumley hadn't put up any sort of struggle when Insch rang the doorbell and barged his way in, dragging Logan and a couple of uniformed PCs with him. He'd just stood there in his filthy overalls, unshaven and rumpled, his hair sticking out like an electrocuted hedgehog. 'If you're looking for Sheila, she's not here,' he said and collapsed onto the couch. 'Went two days ago. Staying with her mother…' He pulled a tin of Special free of its plastic handcuff and cracked it open.

'We're not here to see Sheila, Mr Lumley,' said Insch. 'We're here for you.'

The ragged man nodded and took another swig. 'Roadkill.' He didn't bother to wipe away the beer dripping down his stubbly chin.

'Yes, Roadkill.' Logan settled down on the other end of the settee. 'He's dead.'

Jim Lumley nodded slowly and then stared hard at his tin of beer.

'Want to tell us all about it, Mr Lumley?'

Lumley threw his head back and drained the tin, froth spilling down the sides of his mouth and onto the front of his grubby overalls. 'Not much to tell…' he said, shrugging. 'I was walking around, looking for Peter and there he was. Just like his picture in the paper. Right there.' He pulled another tin of Special free, but Insch liberated it before he could pop the top.

The inspector told the two uniforms to search the place for the murder weapon.

Lumley picked a cushion off the couch and clutched it to his chest like a hot water bottle. 'So I follows him. Into the woods.'

'Into the woods?' This wasn't quite what Logan had been expecting, but Insch cast him a warning glance before he could say anything more.