Dying light

Teams were out searching for the missing prostitute's body, Steel was off questioning the torso murderer… That left Insch's arsonist, Karl Pearson's torturer and Jamie McKi

So if they wanted to put Chib away for something it'd have to be Jamie McKi

Re

I

groaned. Just like if he kept on solving Steel's cases for her, it was always going to be in her best interests to keep him around. She'd never give him enough of the credit to let him escape her Screw-Up Squad. All that time he'd spent telling Jackie this was his only way to get away from that manipulative, wrinkly old bag, and he'd just ended up making himself indispensable.

'Bastard.' Insch had pretty much told him the best chance he had of getting out of the Fuck-Up Factory was to work on the arson investigation. But would he listen? No.

He had to go busting his hump, day in, day out, so DI Steel could take all the glory.

'Everything OK, sir?'

Logan looked up to see the admin officer frowning at him.

'No it bloody isn't.' He dragged himself out of his seat. 'I'm going out. If anyone wants me, you don't know where I am.'

The admin officer's frown grew confused. 'But I don't know where you're… Sir?' But Logan was gone.

He signed for a patrol car, not recognizing the registration number until he got down to the rear podium and beheld the same rubbish-filled mobile tip they'd taken yesterday. If anything, it was even more of a mess now; the whole vehicle stank of stale fast food and cigarette smoke.

A patrol car pulled up as Logan was stuffing chip papers into the wire bin by the door with bad grace. Someone familiar unfolded himself from the back seat: DI Steel's mate from the Drugs Squad, the one with the big hands. He looked up, saw Logan, nodded a greeting then turned to help an old lady out of the car. Graham Ke

She wouldn't look at him, but Detective Big Hands gri

'Not today she isn't. Sweet little old ladies shouldn't run drug rings from their homes, using wee kiddies as mules. Should they, Mrs Ke

'Fuck.' He should have bloody known. Bloody thing had been staring him in the face the whole bloody time! He'd even found a huge bag of the stuff in her fridge, for God's sake! 'Fuck!' He hurled the pizza boxes in the bin and stomped back to the car. All those kiddies hanging around, watching her house, waiting for the police to sod off so they could go about their Telly Tubby drug-ru

'Fuck!' The bloody chemistry teacher thing. The locked attic.

The grandson drug dealer. It was all there and he didn't put it together. 'FUCK!' Swearing and cursing he mashed the last of the boxes into the bin then took two steps back and kicked it hard enough to buckle the wire frame. Then limped back to the car, pulling out his mobile phone and telling Re

By the time they pulled into the Craiginches car park the sun was blazing, not a cloud in the sky, a faint haze on the horizon as the morning haar burned off. But summer didn't seem to have penetrated the prison walls. There was a man in a filthy boiler suit hunkered down by a radiator in the reception area, banging away at it with a spa

'Right,' said Logan when the tired-looking woman behind I hi' desk went off to get a list of all the prisoners who were supposed to be out in the exercise yard when Jamie McKi

Re

Four interviews later and they were no nearer getting anyone for McKi

Surprise, surprise. As the fourth inmate trooped out of the door Logan let out a yawn. Much to his surprise, Re

But they still weren't getting anywhere.

Frustrated Logan checked the list they'd got from the guard again – twenty-seven people in the exercise yard while someone pi

'Good idea: pee and tea break.'

Re

'No, you know what? This time I'll make the tea.'

The staff rest area was a small room, jaundiced by decades of cigarette smoke, the Thank You For Not Smoking sign on the wall modified by someone with a black marker pen so the cigarette in the red circle now looked like a penis, dripping sperm from the end. The word Smoking had been crossed out and Wanking scrawled in its stead. Classy.

Logan filled the kettle and stuck it on to boil. There were no clean mugs in the cupboard, but someone had hidden a packet of Wagon Wheels behind a collection of yellowing coffee filters, so Logan helped himself to a couple. There was a loud sneeze from tlie corridor outside and he hurriedly stuffed the biscuits in his pocket as the rec-room door opened. It was the social worker from last time, still looking as if she was dying from a cold. Logan slapped a smile on his face. 'Hi, just looking for some clean mugs,' he said, trying to provide a non-chocolate-biscuit-stealing reason for rummaging about in the cupboards.