It was wishful thinking and they both knew it. Peter Lumley was dead. They just hadn't found his body yet.

'What about the crime scene?' asked Logan.

'What about it?'

'The dead girl we found might not be the only one in the pile.' The next bit was what had been causing him trouble since the farmhouse. 'And then there's David Reid. He was abandoned. The MO just doesn't fit. Roadkill's a collector. He wouldn't just leave the body lying out like that.'

'Maybe he likes them rotted before he hoards them.'

'If it is him, he cut the genitals off David Reid. They'll be at the farm somewhere.'

Insch screwed up his face. 'Shite. We're going to have to go through every last carcase he's got out there looking for it. Talk about your proverbial needle in a haystack.' He mashed his features with a pair of tired hands. 'Right.' He took a deep breath and straightened his back. The authority had returned to his voice. 'We're going to have to do this the hard way. If we can't get a confession out of Philips we'll tie him to the bodies. The little girl we found at his home; no problem there. And there must be something linking him to David Reid and Peter Lumley. I want you to get a dozen uniform question everyone where the children were last seen. Get me a witness. We're not letting the bastard get away again.'

*

That night Logan's dreams were full of rotting children. They ran through the flat, wanting to play. One sat on the living room floor, little chunks of skin falling onto the polished floorboards, bashing away at a xylophone Logan had been given for his fourth birthday. Clank and clink and boing, a cacophony that was more like a phone ringing than music.

And that's when he woke up.

Logan staggered through to the lounge and grabbed the ringing phone from its cradle. 'What?' he demanded.

'An' a merry Christmas to you too.' Colin Miller.

'Oh God…' Logan tried to rub some life into his face. 'It's half-six! What is it with you and mornings?'

'You found another body.'

Logan shuffled to the window and looked for Miller's expensive automobile in the darkened street. There was no sign of it. At least that meant he was to be spared a visit from the cheerful fairy this morning.

'And?'

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. 'And you arrested Bernard Philips. Roadkill.'

Stunned, Logan let the curtain fall back. 'How the hell did you know that?' There was nothing in the press pack to identify who'd been arrested, just the normal: 'a suspect has been taken into custody and a report sent to the Procurator Fiscal'.

'You know how: it's ma job. Poor wee thing, rottin' away in that pile of crap…I want the inside track, Laz. I've still got stuff on Geordie Stephenson you don't know. Everybody wins.'

Logan couldn't believe his ears. 'You've got a bloody cheek after what you did to DI Insch yesterday!'

'Laz, that's just business. He screwed you over and I took him down a couple of pegs. Did I write one bad word about you? Did I?'

'That's not the point.'

'Ah, loyalty. Like it. Good quality in an officer of the law.'

'You made him look like an idiot.'

'Tell you what: I lay off the pantomime dame and you and me has a chat over breakfast?'

'I can't do that. I need to get Insch to clear anything I say, OK?'

There was another pause.

'You gotta be careful what you do with your loyalty, Laz. Sometimes it can do you more harm than good.'

'What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?'

'Take a look at the morning's paper, Laz. See whether or not you need a friend in the press.'

Logan settled the phone back in its cradle and stood in the darkness of the lounge, shivering. There was no way he could just go back to bed now. Not until he knew what Miller had done. What the morning paper contained.

Half past six. His own copy wouldn't be delivered for another hour and a bit. So he dressed quickly and slid his way through the ankle-deep snow up to the Castlegate and the nearest newsagent.

It was a small shop, the kind that tried anything once. The walls were festooned with shelves: books, pots, pans, light bulbs, tins of kidney beans…Logan found what he was looking for on the floor by the counter – a thick bundle of fresh papers, still wrapped in protective plastic to keep the snow from soaking into the newsprint.

The proprietor, a stocky man with three fingers missing on his left hand, a greying beard and a gold tooth grunted a good morning as he slit the plastic open. 'Jeezuz,' he said, picking a paper off the top of the pile, holding it up so Logan could see the front page. 'They had the bastard an' they let him go! Can you fuckin' believe that?'

There were four photographs, slap bang in the middle of the page: David Reid, Peter Lumley, DI Insch and Bernard Duncan Philips. Roadkill was out of focus, bent over a shovel full of squashed rabbit, his wheelie-bin sitting next to him on the road. The two boys smiled out from school photographs. Insch was in full panto get-up.

Above the lot the headline screamed 'HOUSE OF HORROR: DEAD GIRL FOUND IN PILE OF ROTTING ANIMALS!' and underneath that 'Killer Released From Police Custody Only Hours Earlier'. Colin Miller strikes again.

'Buncha fuckin' clowns: that's what they are. Tell you: five minutes alone with this sick bastard. That'll do me. Got fuckin' grandchildren that age.'

Logan paid for his paper and left without saying a word.

It had started to snow again. Thick white flakes drifted down from the dark sky, the clouds lit dark-orange, reflecting back the streetlights. All the way up Union Street the twelve days of Christmas glittered and sparkled, but Logan didn't see any of it. He stood outside the newsagent, reading by the light of the shop window.

There was an in-depth exposeof Roadkill's life – the schizophrenia, the two-year stay in Cornhill, the dead mother, the collection of dead bodies. Miller had even managed to get hold of some of the crowd that attacked Roadkill outside the primary school gates. The quotes were full of bravado and righteous indignation. The police had treated them like criminals for attacking that sicko, when all the time there was a dead girl lying in that pile of filth!

Logan winced as he read how the police had Roadkill in custody, but DI Insch, recently seen strutting about on stage while children were being abducted, murdered and violated, had ordered his release. Against the advice of local police hero DS Logan 'Lazarus' McRae.

Logan groaned. Bloody Colin Miller! Probably thought he was doing him a favour, making him look like the voice of reason, but Insch would blow a gasket. It would look as if Logan had gone to the Press and Journal with the story. As if he was stabbing the inspector in the back. Peter Lumley's stepfather was waiting for him when he pushed through the front doors to Force Headquarters. The man looked as if he hadn't slept for a month and his breath would have made wallpaper curdle: stale beer and whisky. He'd seen the papers. He knew they'd arrested someone.

Logan took him into an interview room and listened as he'd ranted and raved. Roadkill knew where his son was. The police had to make him talk! If they couldn't, he would! They had to find Peter!

Slowly Logan calmed him down, explained that the man they had in custody might not have anything to do with Peter going missing. That the police were doing everything they could to find his son. That he should go home and get some sleep. In the end it was fatigue that made him consent to a lift home in a patrol car.

By the time the working day had begun Logan was feeling terrible. There was a knot in his stomach, and not just the scar tissue. Half past eight and there was still no sign of Insch. There was a shit-storm brewing and Logan was going to be right in the middle of it.