Upstairs there was a cupboard, opposite the bathroom. Three foot long, four foot wide, just big enough to hold a computer, fancy-looking colour printer, and a barstool. And a bolt that only fastened from the inside.

There were shelves of CDs on the wall, the kind you burn at home, all labelled and dated, and boxes of high-quality, glossy printouts under the bench the computer sat on. Women and children; mostly children. They found a top-of-the-range digital camera in the bedroom.

There was a rattling sound from downstairs and everyone suddenly went quiet.

Creak. And the front door opened.

'Dunky? Can you give me a…Who the hell are you?'

Logan poked his head down the stairs to see a heavily pregnant woman dressed in a black leather coat and carrying a stack of shopping bags staring in disbelief at the crowd of policemen filling her house.

'Where's Duncan? What have you bastards done with my husband?'

25

The news came over the police radio at three o'clock, just as Logan was getting back to Force Headquarters. The Gerald Cleaver trial had finally come to its verdict after four weeks in the media spotlight.

'Not guilty? How the hell could they find him not guilty?' asked Logan, as the grumpy DC stuffed their rusty pool car into the parking lot.

'Hissing Bloody Sid,' came the reply. Sandy Moir-Farquharson had struck again.

They hurried out of the car and up through to the briefing area. The room was full of uniform, most of whom looked soaked to the skin.

'Listen up!' It was the Chief Constable himself, looking sharp as a pin in his neatly pressed dress uniform. 'We are going to have a lot of angry people out there.' That was an understatement: the crowd of protesters had been an almost permanent fixture outside the courthouse. They wanted to see Gerald Cleaver sentenced to life in Peterhead Prison. Letting him go free was like lighting the blue touch paper and stuffing the firework down your trousers.

The police presence outside the court buildings had been minimal, just enough to keep everything under control; but that was about to change. The Chief Constable wasn't taking any chances.

'The eyes of the world are on Aberdeen,' he said, striking an inspiring pose. 'With every day that passes, the anti-paedophile movement grows. And quite rightly. But we cannot let a few, misguided, individuals turn the protection of our children into an excuse for violence. I want this to go peacefully. There will be no riot shields. This is a community policing initiative. Understood?'

There were a few nods.

'You will be out there representing the best of this proud city. Make sure everyone knows that Aberdeen takes law and order very seriously!'

He paused for a second, as if expecting a round of applause, before yielding the floor to DI Steel who gave everyone their assignments. She looked stressed. She'd been responsible for the Gerald Cleaver case.

Logan wasn't uniform, so his name was left off the list, along with the rest of CID, but he shuffled along after the last team anyway, pausing at the front door to look out at the freezing rain and the angry mob outside the Sheriff Court building.

The crowd was bigger than Logan had anticipated: about five hundred people, filling the space in front of the court, spilling down the stairs and into the 'official business only' car park. Television crews were visible as tiny islands of calm in the unhappy sea of faces and placards:

'DOWN WITH EVIL CLEAVER!'

'GIVE CLEAVER THE CHOP!'

'PERVERT BASTARD!'

'LIFE MEANS LIFE!'

'DEATH TO PEDIPHILE SCUM!!!'

Logan winced as he read that last one. Nothing like stupid people with righteous fury and a mob on their side. Last time there had been this kind of fervour three paediatricians had their surgery windows smashed. Now it looked like they were after the foot fetishists.

Things were already beginning to get ugly.

They chanted and shouted abuse at the court building: men, women, parents and grandparents, all gathered together, baying for blood. The only things missing were the pitchforks and burning torches.

And then the crowd went quiet.

The large glass doors swung open and out into the rain came Sandy Moir-Farquharson. Gerald Cleaver wasn't with him: there was no way Grampian Police were going to turn Cleaver out into that mob, no matter how guilty they thought he was.

Sandy the Snake smiled at the crowd as if they were old friends. This was his moment in the sun. Television cameras from around the world were here. Today he would shine on the global stage.

A forest of microphones leapt up all around him.

Logan stepped out into the rain, morbid curiosity dragging him on until he was close enough to hear the lawyer's words.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' said Moir-Farquharson, pulling folded sheets of paper from his jacket pocket, 'my client will not be available for comment at this time but he has asked me to read the following statement.' He cleared his throat and stuck his chest out. '"I wish to thank everyone for their kind words of support during this ordeal. I have always maintained my innocence and today the good people of Aberdeen have vindicated me."'

At this the silence became punctuated with angry noises.

'Oh Christ,' muttered a uniform standing next to Logan, 'could they no have got him to keep his mouth shut?'

'"Now that"…' Sandy the Snake had to raise his voice to be heard, '…"Now that my good name has been cleared I will"-' He didn't get any further.

A huge scruffy young man lunged out of the crowd, shoved his way through the ring of reporters and clobbered the lawyer one. Right on the nose. Sandy the Snake staggered back, tripped, and went down. The crowd roared in approval.

A ring of black uniforms appeared out of nowhere, grabbing the scruffy man before he could really put the boot into the fallen lawyer. They picked up a bleeding Sandy Moir-Farquharson and helped him back into the court building, frogmarching his attacker in behind him.

Nothing else happened for half an hour. Nothing but the freezing rain. Most of the crowd gave up and dispersed to the bars and their homes until there were only a handful of protesters left to see an unmarked minibus with tinted windows pull out onto the road and head away towards the centre of town.

Gerald Cleaver was free. Back at Force Headquarters Logan joined a long queue of dripping, sniffing, police men and women. Up at the head of the line the canteen staff ladled out steaming bowls of Scotch broth. Standing next to the cutlery, the Chief Constable shook everyone's hand and told them what a great job they'd done of preventing trouble.

Logan accepted the soup and the handshake with equal magnanimity, then squelched down over to a table by the fogged-up window. The soup was hot and tasty and a damn sight more use than the handshake. But at least the soup was free.

A delighted Detective Inspector Insch plonked himself down on the other side of the table, between a couple of drenched PCs. He sat beaming at everyone and everything. 'Right on the nose!' he said at last. 'Bang! Right on the nose.' He grinned and dug a spoon into his soup. 'Whap!' He put the spoon back down. 'Did you see it? Slippery little sod stands there and spouts his drivel and someone gets up and twats him one. Bang!' He slammed a huge fist into a huge hand, making the PC sitting next to him jump and miss his mouth with the spoon, sending a cascade of soup down the front of his tie. 'Sorry, son.' Insch offered the spluttering PC a napkin. 'Right on the bloody nose!' He stopped and the grin got even wider. 'It'll be on the news tonight! I'm going to record it and whenever I feel like a laugh-' he mimed pointing a remote control, stabbing his finger down on a pretend button. 'BANG! Right on the nose.' He sighed happily. 'Days like this I remember why I joined the force.'