Chalmers jumped out of his seat.

'I didn't! Will you bastards bloody listen? I didn't do anything!'

Sandy Moir-Farquharson laid a hand on Chalmers's arm. 'It's all right. You don't have to say anything. Just sit back down and let me do the talking, OK?'

Chalmers looked down at his lawyer, nodded, and slowly sank back into his seat.

Insch hadn't moved.

'So, Inspector,' said Moir-Farquharson, 'as I said: I'd like to speak to my client in private. After that we will help you with your enquiries.'

'That's no how this works.' Insch scowled at the lawyer. 'You have no legal right of access to this wee shite whatsoever. You are here as a courtesy only.' He leaned in so close there was barely a breath between them. 'I'm running this show, not you.'

Moir-Farquharson smiled calmly up at him. 'Inspector,' he said in his most reasonable voice, 'I am well aware of the vagaries of Scottish law. However, as a sign of good faith, I'm asking you to let me speak to my client in private.'

'And if I don't?'

'Then we sit here till the cows come home. Or your six hours' holding time run out. It's up to you.'

Insch glowered, stuffed the liquorice allsorts back in his pocket and left the room, trailing Logan and WPC Watson behind him. Out in the corridor it was a lot cooler, but the air contained a lot of swearing.

When he had finished cursing the lawyer to the four winds, Insch told Watson to keep an eye on the door. He didn't want either of them doing a runner.

She didn't look too impressed. It wasn't a glamorous task, but that's what you got when you were a lowly WPC. One day she'd make CID, then she'd be the one telling uniforms to guard doorways.

'And, Constable,' Insch leaned in closer, his voice becoming a conspiratorial whisper. 'that was a damn fine bit of police work today: the supermarket receipt. I'll be putting in a good word for you on that one.'

She grinned. 'Thank you, sir.'

Logan and the inspector left her to it, working their way back to the incident room.

'Why did it have to be him?' asked Insch, parking himself on the edge of a desk. I'm supposed to be at the dress rehearsal in twenty minutes!' He sighed: there was no chance he'd make it now. 'We're going to get bugger all out of Chalmers now. God save us from crusading lawyers!'

Sandy Moir-Farquharson was notorious. There wasn't a single criminal defence lawyer in the whole city who could hold a candle to him. Aberdeen's best solicitor advocate, qualified to stand up and defend the guilty in open court. For years the Crown Prosecution Service had been trying to get him to come over to their side, act as a public prosecutor, help put people away, instead of getting them off. But the slippery wee sod wasn't having any of it. He was on a mission to prevent miscarriages of justice! To protect the innocent! And get his face on the telly at every available opportunity. The man was a menace.

But secretly Logan knew if he ever got into trouble himself, he'd want Slippery Sandy representing him.

'So how come you let Hissing Sid suspend the interview?'

Insch shrugged. 'Because we were never going to get anything out of Chalmers anyway. At least whatever the Snake comes up with will be entertaining.'

'I thought he was busy representing our favourite child molester, Gerald Cleaver.'

Insch shrugged and dug the bag of sweets out of his pocket. 'You know Hissing Sid. That case's got about a week, week and a half left to run. After that he's going to need something else to get his face in front of the cameras.' The inspector offered the open bag to Logan who helped himself to a coconut wheel with a liquorice centre.

'Forensics are going to find something,' Logan said, chewing. 'The girl had to be in his flat. There were food scraps and empty wine bottles in that bag. There's no way he could have got her into that bin-bag anywhere else…Unless he's got another property he eats and drinks at.'

Insch grunted, rummaging in the bag. 'Get onto the council in the morning. See if he's got a second property registered anywhere. Just in case.' He found what he was looking for: one of the aniseed disks with blue bobbles on it. 'Listen,' he said, popping the sweet into his mouth, 'the post mortem's been scheduled for quarter to eight this evening.' He paused, his eyes fixed on the floor at his feet. 'I was wondering if you would mind…'

'You want me to go?'

'As senior investigating officer I should be there, but…well…'

The inspector had a little girl about the same age as the victim. Watching a four-year-old being filleted like a side of meat would be rough for him. All the same it wasn't a job Logan was looking forward to. Especially if Dr Isobel MacAlister was going to be the one doing the filleting. I'll go,' he said at last, trying not to sigh. 'You should probably be interviewing Chalmers anyway…as senior investigating officer.'

'Thank you.' As a token of his esteem he gave Logan the last liquorice allsort. Logan took the lift down to the morgue, hoping it would be Isobel's night off. Maybe he'd be lucky and get one of her deputies instead? But the way his luck was running he doubted it.

The morgue was unnaturally bright and airy for this time of night, the overhead lights sparkling off the dissecting tables and chiller cabinets. It was nearly as cold in there as it was outside. A heavy layer of disinfectant almost managed to hide the stench of corruption from this morning's post mortem. The smell of David Reid.

He arrived just in time to see the little girl being unloaded from her oversized body-bag. She was still wrapped in the packing tape, only now the shiny brown strips were dusted with white fingerprint powder.

Logan's heart sagged. It was Isobel, not one of her deputies, who stood on the far side of the stainless steel table, directing the little body into place. She was dressed in her cutting gear, the red rubber apron still clean and free from gore. The Procurator Fiscal and the corroborating pathologist were already there, dressed in coveralls, discussing the body with Isobel as she described the rubbish tip where it had been discovered.

She looked up as Logan approached, annoyance shining out from behind her safety goggles, and pulled down her surgical mask. 'I thought DI Insch was SIO on this case,' she said. 'Where is he this time?'

'He's interviewing the suspect.'

She snapped the mask back into place and muttered her displeasure. 'First he skips the David Reid post mortem and now he can't even be bothered to attend this one. I don't know why I bloody bother…' Her complaints trailed off into silence as she prepared her microphone and then went through the opening preliminaries. The Procurator Fiscal cast a disapproving glance at Logan. Clearly he agreed with Isobel's reading of the situation.

The shrill bleeping of Logan's mobile phone cut across her listing of those present and she hurled a furious scowl at him. 'I do not allow mobile phones to be used during my post mortems!'

Apologizing profusely, Logan dug the offending article out of his pocket and switched it off. If it was anything important they'd call back.

Still seething, Isobel finished off the introductory procedure, selected a pair of gleaming stainless steel scissors from the tray of instruments and began to snip away at the packing tape, documenting the state of the body as it was uncovered.

Underneath the tape, the little girl was naked.

A big chunk of hair threatened to come away as Isobel tried to unwrap the child's head. She loosened it with acetone, the sharp chemical smell cutting through the room's antiseptic tang and underlying perfume of decay. But at least this body hadn't been lying in a ditch for three months.

Isobel replaced the scissors on the tray and her assistant started packing the tape into labelled evidence bags. The body was still curled up in a foetal position. Gently Isobel worked the rigor out of the joints, flexing them back and forward until she could lay the little girl out flat on her back. As if she was just sleeping.