Cold Granite. Stuart MacBride
were in here. They’d been out in the pouring rain all day, some hunting for forensic evidence on the muddy banks of the River Don, the rest looking for Richard Erskine. Today they’d been searching for a missing child. Tomorrow they’d be looking for a dead body. Everyone knew the statistics: if you didn’t find an abducted child within six hours, they were probably dead. Just like three-year-old David Reid, or the unknown girl lying on a slab in the morgue, a big Y-shaped scar running the length of her torso where all her insides had been taken out, examined, weighed, slithered into jars, bagged, tagged and handed into evidence.
They’d spent the first third of the evening talking in serious tones about the dead and missing children. The second third had been spent bitching about the Professional Standards investigation into the leaking of information to the press. Changing their name from Complaints and Discipline hadn’t made them any more popular.
And the last third getting seriously drunk.
One of the PCs – Logan couldn’t remember his name – lurched back to the table with another round of beers. The constable was entering that stage of drunkenness where everything seemed very funny, giggling as half a pint of lager went all over the table and down the leg of a bearded CID man.
Logan had no intention of being the responsible adult tonight, so he grabbed his pint and walked, a little unsteadily, across to the bandits.
There was a small knot of off-duty officers gathered round a quiz machine, shouting and cheering, but Logan walked right past them.
WPC Watson was standing on her own, jabbing away at a bandit. Flashing lights spiralled round and round the machine’s face, glittering and bleeping and dinging away. A half-drunk bottle of Budweiser was clutched in her other hand as she stabbed the flickering buttons, sending the tumblers whizzing round again.
‘You look happy,’ said Logan as two lemons and a castle appeared on the display.
She didn’t even look round. ‘Not enough bloody evidence!’ Watson hammered the nudge button, getting an anchor for her troubles.
‘Have to keep looking,’ said Logan, taking a swig, enjoying the warm fuzzy feeling spreading out from the middle of his head. ‘Forensics didn’t find anything at the flat—’
‘Forensics couldn’t find shite in a septic tank. What about the bloody receipt?’ She stuffed another couple of pounds in the slot and smacked her fist down on the Go button.
Logan shrugged and Watson snarled at the pictures: anchor, lemon, bar of gold.
‘We all know he’s guilty!’ she said, sending the tumblers spinning again.
‘And now we’ve got to prove it. But we wouldn’t even have him in custody if it wasn’t for you.’ Logan had a bit of difficulty with the word ‘custody’, but WPC Watson didn’t seem to notice. He leaned forward and poked her gently in the shoulder. ‘That receipt was a damn clever catch.’
He could have sworn she almost smiled as she fed another pound into the machine.
‘I didn’t spot the Clubcard points. You did that.’ She didn’t take her eyes off the flashing lights.
‘And I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t found the receipt in the first place.’ He beamed at her and took another drink.
She took her eyes off the machine’s flashing lights to watch him sway slightly, almost in time with the music. ‘What happened to “one four times a day, not to be taken with alcohol”?’
Logan winked. ‘I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.’
She smiled at him. ‘Babysitting you is going to be a full time job, isn’t it?’
Logan clinked his pint glass against her bottle of beer. ‘I’ll drink to that!’
Six o’clock and the alarm’s insistent bleeping dragged Logan out of his bed and into a blistering hangover. He slumped at the side of the bed, holding his head in his hands, feeling the contents swell and throb. His stomach was gurgling and churning with lurching certainty. He was going to be sick. With a grunt he staggered to the bedroom door and out into the hall, making for the toilet.
Why did he have so much to drink? The pills said quite clearly they were not to be taken with alcohol …
Afterwards, he leant on the edge of the sink and let his head droop forward to touch the cool surface of the tiles, the acid tang of bile still burning his nostrils.
He slid one eye open, just far enough to make out the pint glass sitting on top of the cistern. There was still half a bottle of the painkillers he’d been given the first time he’d come out of the hospital, when the scars were still fresh. Logan pulled them out with a trembling hand, struggling with the childproof lid. He filled the glass with water, knocked back a couple of the pebble-sized capsules, and slouched into the shower.
He wasn’t feeling that much better by the time he was finished, but at least he didn’t smell like a cross between a brewery and an ashtray any more. He was halfway across the hall, rubbing a towel through his hair, when he heard a polite cough.
Logan spun around, heart suddenly racing, his hands balling into fists.
WPC Watson was standing in the kitchen doorway, wearing one of his old T-shirts and waggling a plastic fish slice at him. Her hair, released from its tight regulation bun, fell over her shoulders in dark brown curls. A pair of bare legs stuck out of the bottom of the T-shirt and they were very nice legs indeed.
‘Cold, is it?’ asked Watson with a smile and Logan suddenly realized he was standing there in the nip, with everything on show.
He clutched the towel swiftly over his exposed nether regions and a furnacelike blush worked its way from the soles of his feet all the way up to the top of his head.
Her smile slipped a bit and WPC Watson frowned, a small crease forming between her neat, brown eyebrows. She was staring at his stomach, where the scars covered the skin with little puckered trails.
‘Was it bad?’
Logan cleared his throat and nodded. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it,’ he said. ‘Er … I …’
‘Do you want a bacon buttie? There weren’t any eggs. Or much of anything else come to that.’
He stood, clutching his towel over his embarrassment, feeling the uncomfortable tingle of an approaching erection.
‘Well?’ she asked again: ‘Bacon buttie?’
‘Er, yeah … Thanks, that’d be great.’
She turned back into the kitchen and Logan ran for the bedroom, slamming the door behind him. God, how drunk did they get last night? Not to be taken with alcohol! He couldn’t remember a thing. He didn’t even know her first name. How could he sleep with someone when he didn’t even know her first name?
He scrubbed himself with the towel, threw it in the corner and fought his still-damp feet into a pair of black socks.
How the hell could he let this happen? He was a DS and she was a WPC. They worked together. He was her superior officer! DI Insch would have a fit if he started seeing a WPC on his team!
Hopping on one leg, he got his trousers on before realizing he’d forgotten to put on any pants. So off came the trousers again.
‘What the hell have you done, you idiot?’ he asked the panicking reflection in the mirror. ‘She works for you!’ The reflection looked back at him, the consternation slowly slipping into a knowing smile. ‘Aye, but she’s not bad is she?’
Logan had to admit that the reflection had a point. WPC Watson was smart, attractive … And she could beat the shit out of anyone who used her as a one night stand. She wasn’t called ‘Ball Breaker’ for nothing: that’s what DI Insch had said!
‘Oh