'We have been over this already, Inspector.' His voice was old and tired. 'Bernard's not well. He needs help, not incarceration.'

Insch screwed his face up. 'Bernard,' said Insch with careful deliberation, 'you found her, didn't you?'

Lloyd Turner's eyebrows shot up his head. 'Found her?' he asked, looking at the stinking, tatty figure sitting next to him with barely concealed surprise. 'Did you find her, Bernard?'

Roadkill shifted in his seat and stared down at his hands. Small, burgundy clots covered his fingers like parasites. The skin was raw around the fingernails where he'd been picking and chewing his hands into submission. He didn't even look up, and his voice was small and broken. 'Road. Found her on the road. Three hedgehogs, two crows, one seagull, one tabby cat, two long-haired cats, black-and-white, one girl, nine rabbits, one roe deer…' His eyes misted up, his voice becoming rough, 'My beautiful dead things…' A sparkling tear escaped his eye, clearing the long eyelashes, to run down the weathered skin of his cheek and into his beard.

Insch folded his arms and settled back in his seat. 'So you took the little girl back to your "collection".'

'Always take them home. Always.' Sniff. 'Can't just throw them out like garbage. Not dead things. Not things that used to be alive inside.'

And with that Logan was forced to remember a single leg sticking out of a bin-bag in the middle of the council tip. 'Did you see anything else?' he asked. 'When you picked her up. Did you see anything: a car, or a lorry or anything like that?'

Roadkill shook his head. 'Nothing. Just the dead girl, lying at the side of the road. All broken and bleeding and still warm.'

The hairs went up on the back of Logan's neck. 'Was she alive? Bernard, was she still alive when you found her?'

The ratty figure sank down against the table, resting his head in his arms on the chipped Formica top. 'Sometimes the things get hit and they don't die right away. Sometimes they wait for me to come and watch over them.'

'Oh Christ.'

They put Roadkill back in his cell and reconvened in the interview room: Logan, Insch and Roadkill's appropriate adult.

'You do know you're going to have to release him, don't you?' said Mr Turner.

Logan raised an eyebrow, but Insch said: 'Your arse I will.'

The ex-schoolteacher sighed and settled back into one of the uncomfortable plastic seats. 'The most you have on him is failing to report an accident and the illegal disposal of a body.' He rubbed at his face. 'And we all know the Crown Prosecution Service isn't going to take this for criminal trial. One good psychiatric report and the whole thing goes nowhere. He hasn't done anything wrong. Not by his reckoning anyway. The girl was just another dead thing found at the side of the road. He was doing his job.'

Logan tried not to nod his head in agreement. Insch wouldn't have appreciated it.

The inspector ground his teeth and stared at Mr Turner, who shrugged. 'I'm sorry, but he's not guilty. If you don't release him I'm going to go to the press. There are still enough cameras out there to get this all over the morning news.'

'We can't let him go,' said Insch. 'Someone will rip his head off if we do.'

'So you admit that he's done nothing wrong then?' There was something distinctly patronizing about the way Turner said it, as if he was back in the classroom again and DI Insch had just been caught behind the bike sheds.

The inspector scowled. 'Listen, sunshine: I ask the leading questions in here, not you.' He rummaged in his pockets for something sweet and came up empty-handed. 'With Cleaver going free, the great, good and stupid of the community are on the lookout for anyone even slightly dodgy. Your boy had a dead girl in his shed. He's going to be top of their list.'

'Then you'll have to provide him with protective custody. We'll speak to the press: get them to understand that Bernard is innocent. That you've decided to drop all the charges.'

Logan cut in. 'No we haven't! He's still guilty of hiding the body!'

'Sergeant,' said Mr Turner with condescending patience, 'you have to understand how this works. If you try to take any of this to court, you're going to end up losing. The Procurator Fiscal won't stand for another cock-up. He's got enough egg on his face with the Cleaver fiasco. Mr Philips will go free. Question is: how much tax payers' money do you want to waste getting there?' Logan and DI Insch stood in the empty incident room, looking down at the growing bustle of activity in the car park. Mr Turner had been as good as his word. He was standing in front of the cameras, enjoying his moment in the spotlight. Telling the world that Bernard Duncan Philips had been absolved of all charges, that the system worked.

The ex-teacher had been right: the Procurator Fiscal didn't want to touch the case with a stick. And the Chief Constable wasn't that happy about it either. So Roadkill was off to stay at a safe house somewhere in Summerhill.

'What do you think?' asked Logan, watching as yet another camera crew joined the throng. It was almost eleven o'clock, but still they came.

Insch glowered down at the assembled press. 'I'm screwed, that's what I think. First the bloody panto thing, then Cleaver gets away with twelve years of systematic child abuse, and now Roadkill's back on the streets. How long did we have him banged up? Forty-eight hours? Maybe sixty at a push. They're going to eat me alive…'

'How about we go to the media too? I could have a word with Miller. See if he can put our side across?'

Insch gave a sad laugh. 'Small-town Journalist Saves Police Inspector's Career from the Toilet?' He shook his head. 'Don't see it coming off, do you?'

'Worth a shot though.'

In the end, Insch had to admit he had nothing to lose.

'After all,' said Logan, 'we've just prevented a serious miscarriage of justice. Surely that's got to count for something?'

'Aye. It should.' The inspector's shoulders sagged. 'But if it wasn't Roadkill and it wasn't Nicholson, then we've still got a killer out there, picking off children. And we haven't got a bloody clue who it is.'

27

By the time Logan climbed out of bed and into the shower, Sunday was tearing at the windows of his flat with wintry fingers. Snow, coming down in small icy flakes, whipped back and forth in the gusting wind. It was cold, it was dark, and it was no longer the day of rest he'd been promised.

Struggling into a grey suit, with matching expression, Logan doddered around his warm home, trying to put off the moment when he'd have to step out into the bloody awful weather. And then the phone went: the inimitable Colin Miller looking for his exclusive.

Logan grumbled his way down the communal stairs to the building's front door. Half a ton of flying ice tried to get in as he struggled his way out into the frigid morning. The snow attacked him like frozen razorblades, slashing at his exposed face and hands, making his cheeks and ears sting.

The day was dark as a lawyer's soul.

Miller's flash motor was waiting for him at the kerb, the interior lights on, something classical blaring out through the glass as the reporter hunched over a broadsheet newspaper. Logan slammed the apartment door shut, not caring if he woke his neighbours. Why the hell should he be the only one up and about on a crappy day like this? He slipped and slithered his way around the car to the passenger seat, bringing a flurry of icy, white flakes with him.

'Watch the leather!' Miller had to shout over the opera blaring from the car's stereo. He cranked down the volume a bit as the thin crust of snow slowly defrosted on Logan's heavy overcoat.

'What, no rowies today?' asked Logan, wiping ice out of his hair before it could turn into a frigid trickle down the back of his neck.