Logan McRae Series Bundle (1,2,3,) by Stuart MacBride Read Free Book Online Page B

us.’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Don’t know. The mother treats the kid like he’s made of glass. Doesn’t get out on his own. All his toys are for a kid two years younger than he is. I get the feeling she’s smothering the life out of him.’
    Insch raised an eyebrow, causing the pink, hairless skin of his head to wrinkle. He didn’t speak.
    ‘I’m not saying he hasn’t been snatched.’ Logan shrugged. ‘But still. . .’
    ‘Point taken,’ said Insch, smoothing himself down. Unlike the filthy, smelly Range Rover he was immaculately turned out in his best suit and tie. ‘But if we play this down, and he turns up all strangled with his willy cut off, we’ll be up to our ears in shite.’
    Logan’s phone went off in an explosion of beeps and whistles. It was the Queen Street station. They’d picked up Duncan Nicholson.
    ‘What. . . ? No.’ Logan smiled, the phone clamped to his ear. ‘No, stick him in a detention room. Leave him there to sweat till I get there.’
    By the time Logan and WPC Watson got back to Force Headquarters a full-blown search was underway. DI Insch had more than trebled the six uniforms Logan had drafted in to help and now more than forty police men and women, four dog-handlers and their alsatians, were out in the freezing rain, searching every garden, public building, shed, bush and ditch between Richard Erskine’s home and the shops on Victoria Road.
    The desk sergeant told them that Duncan Nicholson had been stuck in the mankiest detention room in the place. He’d been there for nearly an hour.
    Just to be on the safe side, Logan and WPC Watson stopped off at the canteen for a cup of tea and a bowl of soup. Lingering over the pea and ham while Nicholson sat in a room, all 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’ll 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 yellow 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 hallway and drank it slowly, filling in the time. Then took another painkiller. When twenty minutes had elapsed he headed down to interview room two.
    It was small 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 will, didn’t you? No toilet? I’ll have a word with the duty sergeant. Make sure it doesn’t happen again.’ He smiled a disarming, friendly smile. ‘But we’re all here now,