'Any ideas?'

Logan shrugged. 'Someone in the IB team? They've got access to all the bodies.'

Napier raised a cold eyebrow. 'Just because your team put money in the pot it doesn't mean they're not guilty. It could be anyone here.' He said that last bit looking directly at Logan. 'Anyone.'

Insch thought about it, his face dark and distant. 'We could have got him,' he said at last, sealing the envelope. 'We could have staked the place out and he'd've come back.'

Logan nodded. They could have caught him.

Napier continued to stare at Logan.

'Anyway,' Insch sighed and stuffed the brown envelope full of money into an inside pocket. 'If you'll excuse us, Inspector: post mortem's at nine. We wouldn't want to be late. Logan's old girlfriend would have our guts for garters.'

Down in the basement, Logan and Insch found Dr Isobel MacAlister with an audience. Her floppy-haired bit of rough was flouncing around in his usual effeminate, moronic manner. Three medical students stood with notebooks at the ready, all earnest and keen to learn just how one should go about butchering a murdered four-year-old. She didn't even look at Logan as she said a curt hello to the inspector.

Peter Lumley's naked body was laid out in the middle of the slab, pale and waxy and very, very dead. The students took notes, the bit of rough simpered, and Isobel cut and examined and extracted and weighed. It was exactly the same story as little David Reid, only without the advanced state of decay and genital mutilation. Strangled with a cord of some kind, probably plastic-coated. Something inflexible inserted into the body after death.

Another dead child on the slab. Logan's little incident room was empty when he returned from the post mortem, feeling sick. Geordie Stephenson's dead face stared blankly down from the wall. Two cases. Both going nowhere.

There was a large padded envelope from Forensics sitting in his in-tray addressed to 'DETECTIVE SERGEANT LAZARUS MCRAE'.

'Bunch of bastards.'

He sank into a chair and ripped the envelope open. It contained a forensics report, with all the easy-to-understand words taken out and replaced with half a ton of indecipherable jargon. The other thing was a set of teeth, cast in cream resin.

Logan pulled the teeth out of their baggie and frowned. Someone must have screwed up. This was supposed to be a cast of the bite-marks on Geordie's body. They were supposed to match Colin McLeod. The only way these were going to match Colin McLeod was if he was a bloody werewolf. One with a few missing teeth…

With a growing feeling of dread, Logan picked up Geordie's as-yet-unread post mortem report. The bit about the bite-marks was quite precise.

He closed his eyes and swore.

Five minutes later he was flying out of the door, dragging a bemused-looking WPC Watson with him. The Turf 'n Track looked every bit as ratty and unwelcoming as it had the last time. Falling snow had not lent it a jolly, festive air; instead the squat concrete rectangle of shops looked more dismal than ever. WPC Watson slithered their pool car into the front car park, where they sat looking out at the howling wind and flying snow, waiting for confirmation that the patrol car – Quebec Three One – was in place around the back. It wasn't their normal beat, but they were free.

There was a knock at the passenger-side window and Logan jumped.

Standing in the snow was a nervous looking man wearing a heavily-padded leather arm protector. Logan wound down the window and the nervous man said, 'So…this Alsatian…big is it?' His face said he hoped the answer was no.

Logan held up the cast of teeth for the handler from the Dog Section to see. It didn't make the man any happier.

'I see…Big. With lots of teeth,' the handler sighed. 'Great.'

Logan thought about the grey muzzle. 'If it's any consolation: he's quite old.'

'Ahh…' said the handler, looking even more depressed. 'Big, lots of teeth and experienced.'

He carried a long metal pole with a strong plastic loop hanging out of the end, and he banged his head on it gently, sending a flurry of water sprinkling in through the open passenger window.

The radio crackled into life: Quebec Three One was in position. Time to go.

Logan clambered out into the slippery car park. WPC Watson was first to complete the journey from the car to the Turf 'n Track, flattening herself beside the door, truncheon at the ready, just like they did in the movies. Hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched, ears going bright red in the freezing wind, Logan followed her, the two dog-handlers grumbling and slipping along behind him.

When they reached the bookies both the handlers copied Watson, standing flat against the wall, clutching their long metal poles.

Logan looked at the three of them and shook his head.

'It's not Starsky and Hutch, people,' he said, calmly opening the door, letting a deafening barrage of noise out.

The smell of wet dog and hand-rolled fags washed over him as Logan stepped over the threshold. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. A pair of televisions flickered away, one in each corner of the room above the long wooden counter. Both showed the same dog race, the pictures jumping, the sound cranked up far too loud.

Four men sat on the edge of their cracked plastic seats, all staring and shouting at the television screen.

'Come on you lazy fucker! Run!!!'

Desperate Doug was nowhere to be seen. But his Alsatian was lying splayed out on the floor, next to the three-bar electric fire, tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, fur gently steaming in the heat.

A gust of wind barged past Logan into the dark, smoky room, bringing a flurry of snow with it, setting the posters on the wall fluttering. Without looking around, a large man dressed like a tramp on his day off shouted, 'Shut the bloody door!'

The wind ruffled the fur on the sleeping dog and its paws twitched as if it was chasing something. Something tasty. A rabbit; or a policeman.

Watson and the two dog-handlers slipped in after Logan, closing the door behind them. They eyed up the sleeping Alsatian as if it was an unexploded bomb. Licking his lips in nervous anticipation, one of the handlers lowered the loop on the end of his pole at the mass of steaming grey and tan fur, and crept forward. If they could get it while it was asleep then maybe no one would have to get bitten. With all the punters' attention firmly fixed on the race, he tiptoed closer and closer, until the noose was hanging inches from the dog's grey muzzle. On the television a greyhound in a yellow bib charged over the finishing line, just a hair's breadth in front of one in blue. Two of the punters leapt to their feet and cheered. The other two swore.

The sleeping dog's ears twitched at the sudden noise and up snapped his old, wolf-like head. For a heartbeat the dog just looked at the handler, with his pole and dangling noose.

The handler went 'Eeek!' and lunged. But he wasn't fast enough. The old dog leapt to his feet and let out a volley of gunfire barks as the pole clattered against the three-bar fire, shattering one of the heating elements.

Every face in the room turned to stare at the dog. And then at the four policemen.

'Wharafuck?'

Now all the punters were on their feet. Clenched fists and tattoos. Bared teeth, snarling, just like Desperate Doug's Alsatian.

There was a crash at the far end of the shop and the door through to the back room burst open. Simon McLeod stood in the doorway, the annoyance on his face swiftly turning to anger.

'We don't want any trouble.' Logan had to shout to be heard over the barking dog. 'We just want to speak to Dougie MacDuff.'

Simon reached out a hand and switched off the lights. The room was plunged into darkness, the ghostly green-grey glow from the flickering television sets doing nothing more than highlighting shapes.