Dying light

Logan took one last look at The Birth of Man and followed.

The rest of the day was spent getting authorization for a low key surveillance on Jamie McKi

That done, DI Steel went off in search of a bottle of wine and a half-dozen red roses. It looked like she was in for a much better night than Logan was.

Half eight Sunday evening: Jackie would be up and getting ready for the night shift. The sound of someone murdering the theme tune to The Flintstones echoed out of the shower as he let himself in. The singing trailed off into 'da-da, dum de da-da…', the shower juddered to a halt and The Flintstones started up again, this time the X-rated version Jackie liked to perform at parties after one too many vodkas.

Logan set the table, complete with tablecloth and candles.

Then it was out with the fu

'This,' he said making a sweeping gesture to take in the table, 'is a peace offering.' He dug into a plastic bag from the local curry house. 'Chicken jalfrezi, chicken korma, nan bread, poppadums, lime pickle, raita and that red, raw oniony stuff you like.'

She actually smiled at him. 'Thought you weren't speaking to me… You know, after Friday…' Pause. 'You were out all day yesterday.'

'Thought you'd want to be alone. You spent the night on the couch 'I… I was out on the piss till one in the morning. Didn't want to wake you.'

'Oh…'

Silence.

Jackie bit her lip and took a deep breath. 'Look, I'm sorry for storming off, OK? It wasn't you, it was me… Well, it wasn't all me, I mean you should've never let that manipulative old bitch talk you into working on your day off, but I suppose it wasn't all your fault.' She unpeeled the sticky tape wrapped around the bin-bag, pulling it off to expose the cast on her left forearm. The once pristine-white plaster was now a dirty yellow-grey. 'Ever since I did it, I've been bored out of my head. Filing! Can you believe it? I'm a bloody good police officer, but I'm stuck doing the crappy, shitty, boring, fucking filing.' She picked a fork off the perfectly set table and used it to scratch inside the cast.

'Going out of my bloody mind…' Grimace, scratchscratchscratch.

Logan picked a fresh fork out of the drawer. 'I was begi

She stopped scratching for a moment and looked at him.

'Trust me: right now I'm fed up with pretty much everything.

But this sodding thing comes off in a couple of weeks, I get to go back to normal duties, everything's fine.'

Logan hoped so. Christ knew he didn't want a repeat of this weekend. Not wanting to spoil the mood he kept his thoughts to himself and dished out the curry.

There wasn't time for a quickie afterwards.

The Monday morning edition of the Press and Journal was waiting on Logan's doormat when he finally surfaced sometime after nine. He carried the paper through to the kitchen so he could cover it in toast-crumbs and coffee-circles, getting as far as bite one before glancing at the front page. 'Dirty bastard…' The headline explained Colin Miller's private little meeting in the pub on Friday. Edinburgh Developer Delivers Jobs Windfall! Much of the front page was devoted to Miller's gushing praise of the new development: three hundred homes on green belt between Aberdeen and Kingswells. 'McLe

Logan settled back in his seat and read the article again. No wonder Colin Miller had been so jumpy when he'd seen him in the pub. The reporter had been thrown off the Scottish Sun for refusing to complete a series of exposes on Malk the Knife's drug smuggling activities, because two of Malkie's boys had made it quite clear that if he didn't drop the story like the proverbial radioactive tattie, they'd hack off his fingers. And just last Christmas, Malk the Knife had tried, and failed, to bribe his way through the pla

But the main story of the day wasn't in the Press and Journal. It'd be all over the evening news.

12

Sounds were muffled. The mist, thicker here in the forest than out on the road, clung to the trees and bracken, making everything alien and strange. The rain had given up the ghost sometime after midnight, fading to a misty drizzle. Then came the haar, rolling in off the North Sea, smothering the world. The ground beneath her feet was cold and wet as she squelched along the path, the vague outlines of Scots pine, oak, beech and spruce lurking to either side. Dripping.

The Tyrebagger Woods were a damn sight creepier today than they'd been yesterday. Anyone could be lurking in the bushes, just around the next bend. Waiting for her… Just as well she had Benji to protect her – or would have if the rotten little sod hadn't charged off into the fog at the first opportunity.

'Benji!… Be

She shook her head and carried on up the track, going the wrong way round the Tyrebagger sculpture trail. A huge disembodied stag's head loomed out of the mist, hanging between the trees like a cross between the more sinister bits of Watership Down, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, and the dismembered corpse of a bright-yellow Ford Escort.

Whenever she saw the thing she couldn't help smiling.

But not this time. This time there was something primitive about it. Something pagan. Something predatory. Shivering, she hurried past, calling out for Benji again. Why the hell did he have to pick today to go AWOL? It wasn't as if she could spend all morning looking for him! Her interview was at half eleven. This was just supposed to be a little walk in the woods to calm her nerves. Not tramp about like a bastard in the fog looking for a stupid bloody spaniel. 'BENJI!'