Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride Read Free Book Online Page B

Lingering over the pea and ham while Nicholson sat in a room, al alone, and worried.
    'Right,' said Logan, when they'd finished. 'How'd you like to drag Mr Nicholson into an interview room? Give him the silent glower routine? I'l check up on the search and pop along in about, fifteen, twenty minutes. He should be bricking it by then.'
    Watson stood, cast one last longing look at the thick slices of sponge pudding and steaming yel ow custard, and headed off to make Duncan Nicholson's life even more miserable.
    Logan got an update from the admin officer in the incident room: the search teams hadn't turned up anything and neither had the door-to-door interviews. So Logan grabbed a cup of tea from the machine in the hal way and drank it slowly, fil ing in the time. Then took another painkil er. When twenty minutes had elapsed he headed down to interview room two.
    It was smal and utilitarian, done up in a nasty shade of beige. Duncan Nicholson sat at the table, opposite a silent, scowling, WPC Watson. He was looking very uncomfortable.
    The room was no smoking and Nicholson obviously had a problem with that. There was a pile of shredded paper on the table in front of him and as Logan entered Nicholson jumped, sending little scraps of white fluttering to the scuffed blue carpet.
    'Mr Nicholson,' said Logan, sinking down into the brown plastic chair next to Watson.
    'Sorry to keep you waiting.'
    Nicholson shifted in his chair, little beads of sweat sparkling on his upper lip. He wasn't a day over thirty-two, but looked closer to forty-five. The hair on top of his head was shaved down to the bone, blue-grey stubble showing between shiny patches of pink scalp. Each of his ears had been pierced in at least three places. The rest of him looked as if it had been thrown together on a Monday morning before the factory was properly awake.
    'I've been here for hours!' he said, mustering up as much indignity as he could. 'Hours!
    There was nae bog! I wis burstin'!'
    Logan frowned. 'Dear, dear, dear. There's obviously been some mistake, Mr Nicholson.
    You came forward of your own free wil , didn't you? No toilet? I'l have a word with the duty sergeant. Make sure it doesn't happen again.' He smiled a disarming, friendly smile. 'But we're al here now, so shal we get started?'
    Nicholson nodded, smiling a little, feeling reassured. Feeling better.
    'Constable, would you do the honours?' Logan passed Watson two brand new audiotapes and she unwrapped them, sticking one in each side of the recorder bolted to the wall before doing the same with a pair of videotapes. The machine clicked and bleeped as she pressed 'Record'.
    'Interview with Mr Duncan Nicholson,' she said, going through the standard names, date and time.
    Logan smiled again. 'Now then, Mr Nicholson, or can I cal you Duncan?'
    The man on the other side of the table cast a nervous glance at the camera in the corner of the room, over Logan's shoulder. At last he nodded his shaved head.
    'So, Duncan, you found the body of David Reid last night?'
    Nicholson nodded again.
    'You have to say something, Duncan,' said Logan, his smile getting wider by the minute.
    'The tape can't hear you if you nod.'
    Nicholson's eyes darted back to the staring glass eye of the video camera. 'Er...Oh, sorry.
    Yeah. Yeah, I did. I found him last night.'
    'What were you doing down there in the middle of the night, Duncan?'
    He shrugged. 'I wis...takin' a walk. You know, had a row with the wife and went for a walk.'
    'Down the riverbank? In the dead of night?'
    The smile started to fade. 'Er, yeah. I go down there sometimes to, you know, think an'
    stuff.'

    Logan crossed his arms, mirroring the PC sitting next to him. 'So you went down there to think. And just happened to fal over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy?'
    'Er, yeah...I just...Look, I...'
    'Just happened to fal over the murdered body of a three-year-old boy. In a waterlogged ditch. Hidden beneath a sheet of chipboard. In the dark. In the pouring