LITMIR.BIZ

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my gut says your guy’s a ghost.’

      Charlie wiped a hand across his shiny forehead, smearing what little foundation he had left up there. ‘Aye, and as long as he wants to stay a ghost, we’re not going to find sod all.’

      King’s nose came up. ‘That’s a double negative.’

      ‘So’s your mum.’ Then Charlie barged out the kitchen door, taking his crate with him.

      Always nice to have a happy workplace.

      Logan tried not to sigh, he really did. ‘What about photos?’

      ‘Technically I’m not allowed to give you anything unless you go through official channels, in triplicate, but here …’ she pulled a cheap iPad-knockoff from her crate, poked at the screen and handed it over. ‘You’ve got till we’re tidied up. After that you’ll have to wait till the report’s done and the Gods of Pointless Paperwork and Half-Arsed Procedures have been appeased.’ She stood there, giving King a look that could’ve curdled holy water, then turned and marched off with her crate. Leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen.

      Logan watched him seethe for a bit. ‘You made a lovely impression there. They really like you, I can tell.’

      ‘They’ve still not forgiven me for that Martin Shanks disaster.’ He stuck a hand out, for the fauxPad. ‘My crime scene, remember?’

      Yes, it was his crime scene, but he was being a dick, so no.

      Logan put the fauxPad on the work surface between them and flicked through the photos to the ones of the kitchen, stopping at a shot of the bloody tabletop with its half-full bottle of wine and accompanying glass …

      Now that was interesting.

      He turned and stared at the table. A thick oak job, with scarred legs – probably where generations of Russian Revolutionary Jack Russells had scratched the wood raw. Logan hunkered down and had a damn good frown at the blood-spattered surface. Three dried circles marred the red-brown stains, two were perfectly smooth, but the third was dotted around its circumference. That would be the bottle’s dimpled bottom.

      Logan took out his phone and snapped half a dozen shots of the tabletop and the blood spatters. ‘Did you see this?’

      King snorted. ‘If you’re planning on amazing everyone with your Sherlock Holmes impression, don’t. Obviously Professor Wilson knew his attacker. You don’t open a bottle of Jacob’s Creek and swig it with a complete stranger.’

      ‘Hmmm …’ Three circles, pressed into the blood.

      ‘We need to work our way through his colleagues at the university – you heard Dr Longmire: they all hated him. But this must’ve been someone he felt comfortable with. Someone who hid it. Pretended to be his friend. Someone he’d invite into his house and crack a bottle of wine for.’

      Logan stayed where he was. ‘Check out the table: tell me what you see.’

      ‘It’s a table.’ He took one look at Logan’s face and sighed. ‘OK, OK. It’s oak. It’s old. It’s a bit manky. Lots of blood spatters.’

      ‘What about the wine glass?’

      Sounding bored now. ‘They took it away for testing.’

      ‘I know that. I’m asking what happens if you put a glass down on the table, then someone does whatever it was they did to get blood everywhere.’

      Another sigh. ‘Do we really have to play—’

      ‘Humour me.’

      King tramped over and examined the tabletop. ‘Well, there’d be …’ And finally the penny dropped. ‘Oh sod and buggeration.’

      ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

      ‘The glass would act as a mask, or a windbreak: there’d be a clear patch on the table where the blood wouldn’t spatter. The bottle too.’ King swivelled around, facing the door. ‘So our attacker gets in, attacks Professor Wilson, gets blood all over the table, then pours him a glass of wine? Well that’s just perfect: we’re dealing with a nutjob.’

      ‘Looks like there was enough wine out the bottle for two, maybe three glasses.’

      King narrowed his eyes, then marched over to a scuffed off-white dishwasher, snapped on a single blue nitrile glove, and pulled the door open.

      It was empty, except for a single wine glass.

      He took the glass out and held it up to the light, where it sparkled and gleamed, sending chips of rainbow swirling around the kitchen. Not a single smudge or smear on it. ‘Our attacker does … whatever it was, then pours them both a glass of wine and has a drink. Puts his glass in the dishwasher, cleans up, and walks right out of here taking Professor Wilson with him, leaving not a single forensic clue behind.’ King returned the glass to the dishwasher. ‘This is going to be an utter bastard of a case, isn’t it?’

      It certainly looked like it. But, on the bright side, it was King’s utter bastard of a case and not Logan’s.

      Which made a nice change.

      They hadn’t given King one of Divisional Headquarters’ swankier incident rooms. No fancy-pants digital whiteboards and projector systems here, this was old-school. Which in police parlance meant ‘scruffy, bland, and a bit tattered around the edges’. The ceiling tiles sagged in one corner, and the handful of cubicles lining the walls looked as if they’d been installed sometime around the end of the last ice age. The whiteboards – analogue, not digital – had been used and cleaned so often they’d taken on a manky shade of grey that looked like a dead person’s dentures.

      Two plainclothes officers and a uniformed PC were gathered in the middle of the room, sitting on creaky office chairs, watching King finish his briefing.

      Logan perched his bum on one of the desks at the back of the room. Doing his best to stay out of the way. To be inconspicuous. Didn’t work, though. That was the trouble with being Professional Standards – the uniform might be the same as everyone else’s, but it exerted a strange gravitational pull that grabbed people’s attention. Like a black hole, lurking at the edge of the room. Sinister, dark, and all devouring.

      King risked a glance in Logan’s direction, before dragging himself back to his tiny team. ‘So, right now, that’s all we know.’ He folded his arms. ‘Any questions?’

      A wee nyaff with a pale-ginger crewcut stuck his hand in the air. ‘Are we sure he’s been abducted? Maybe he cut himself and—’

      ‘Wheesht, Tufty.’ One of the plainclothes officers chucked a crumpled-up Post-it at his furry head. She was an older woman with a soft Weegie accent, greying brown bob, lilac jacket, jeans and a shirt. Stylish and relaxed. As if she was off to audition for a TENA Lady advert. ‘Don’t be such a neep. Why would he pour himself a glass of wine afterwards?’

      ‘Heather’s right.’ The other PC punched Tufty on the arm. ‘Shut yer cakehole, you twonk.’ Milky: mid-twenties, in black jeans and a Klangers T-shirt, her shoulder-length hair dyed an unnatural shade of mahogany. ‘He’d have got bloody fingerprints on the bottle too.’ She hit him again, for luck.

      Heather nodded. ‘Exactly. And …’ She swivelled her ancient office chair around till she was frowning at Logan. Then back to King. ‘No offence, Boss, but are we really doing this in front of Professional Standards?’

      Logan smiled at them all. ‘Don’t mind me.’

      ‘I mean it’s a bit … you know. If we have to take a care every time we open our mouths, it’s going to stifle the free flow of information and ideas. Plus he’ll write it all down and use it against us later.’

      ‘Try to pretend I’m not here.’

      King grimaced. ‘If only.’ He pointed at Tufty’s tormentor. ‘What about you?’

      Milky

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