That was when Logan's mobile phone went off, the sound loud and intrusive in the small room.

'You know,' said the guard sternly, 'mobile phones have to be switched off!'

Logan apologized, but this would only take a minute.

It was Miller again. 'Laz! Beginning to think you'd fallen off the arse of the earth, man.'

'I'm kind of busy right now,' said Logan, turning his back on the spotty youth with the turd-brown uniform. 'Is it urgent?'

'Kinda depends on what your point of view is. You anywhere near a telly?'

'What?'

'Television. Moving pictures-'

'I know what television is.'

'Aye, well, if you're near one: turn it on. Grampian.'

'Can you get regular television on any of these things?' Logan asked the security jobbie.

The spotted youth said no, but Logan could try one of the rooms down the corridor.

Three minutes later they stood in front of a flickering television screen with an American soap opera dribbling away on it. Behind them, on the bed, an old woman with purple-rinsed hair was snoring it up, her teeth floating in a glass.

'Gee, Adelaide,' said a suntanned blond with perfect teeth and a washboard stomach. 'Are you saying that baby's mine?'

Dramatic music, close-up of over-made-up brunette with pneumatic breasts; cut to commercial. Stair-lifts. Crisps. Washing powder. And then the face of Gerald Cleaver filled the screen. He was sitting in a wingback leather chair, wearing a cardigan, looking all avuncular and wholesome. 'They tried to make me look like a monster!' he said and the camera cut to a shot of him walking a jolly labrador. 'They accused me of terrible crimes I didn't commit!' Another camera jump, this time to Cleaver sitting on a low drystone dyke, looking earnest and pained. 'Read about my year of hell, only in this week's News of the World!'

'Oh God,' said Logan as the paper's logo spun on the screen. 'That's all we need.'

34

Logan and Watson grumbled their way back to the security office. Berating the paper and its decision to give Gerald Cleaver money for his story. The spotty youth in the shitty-brown uniform was in the process of charging into action, straightening his peaked cap as he went.

'Trouble?' asked WPC Watson.

'Someone's stealing Mars Bars from the gift shop!' And off he ran.

They watched him disappear round the corner, feet and elbows flying in his haste to reach the scene of the crime. Watson gave a wry smile. 'How the other half live…'

A second security guard – a heavy-set man in his early fifties, with a comb-over and eyebrows like a terrier – was now manning the console. He was swigging from a bottle of Lucozade, his head buried in a copy of the morning's paper. 'Kiddie-Killer Suspect Stabbed To Death!' was splashed across the front page. When Logan told him why they were there, he grunted and waved at a pile of labelled video tapes.

Settling down at a console with a tape player, Logan and Watson started to wade their way through the videos. The search team that had been here before had made things a lot easier, winding the tapes forward to when Roadkill was murdered. Slowly, Logan and Watson worked their way through them all, the security guard slugging away at his Lucozade and sucking his teeth in the background.

Figures jumped and jerked across the screen, the camera only taking one frame every three or four seconds, making everything look like experimental Canadian animation. The faces were pretty blurred, but it was still possible to make people out when they got closer to the camera. Half an hour later Logan had recognized a handful of the hundreds of faces that had drifted through various parts of the hospital: the doctor who'd treated Desperate Doug; the nurse who thought he was a monster for beating up an old man; the PC who was supposed to be guarding the geriatric hitman; the doctor who'd declared death on Roadkill last night; the surgeon who'd spent seven hours stitching Logan's insides back together; and Nurse Henderson, her black eye clearly visible on the tape as she stomped along, dressed in her street clothes – rugby shirt, trainers and jeans, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder.

'How many more tapes have we got to go?' asked Logan as Watson gave a huge yawn and stretch.

'Sorry, sir,' she said, composing herself. 'Two more exit tapes and that's the lot.'

Logan slipped the next one into the machine. A side entrance to the hospital. Faces flashed by, talking and laughing, or people with their heads down as they stepped into the biting wind. Nothing suspicious. The last one was the main A amp;-E reception area. The tape here ran at normal speed, ready to capture the all too common flare-ups of antisocial behaviour that came with a hard night's drinking. Logan recognized more faces here: he'd arrested a lot of them. Peeing in doorways, petty larceny, vandalism. One bloke had been done for 'giving himself a treat' in Union Terrace gardens with a wine bottle. But again, there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Not if you didn't count the sudden explosion as two staggering drunks launched themselves at a huge bouncer who had his arm in a makeshift sling. Screams, overturned chairs, more blood. Nurses trying to pry them apart. And then, at last, a blurry police constable charged into the crowded room and put an end to the whole thing with three liberal doses of CS spray. After that it was mostly rolling about on the ground, screaming. But no sign of Roadkill's murderer.

Logan sat back in his seat and rubbed at his eyes. The time stamp on the video said ten-twenty. The PC with the CS spray stayed to make sure everyone was still alive. Ten twenty-five: PC hero accepts a cup of tea before returning to his vigil outside Roadkill's door. Ten-thirty…Logan was getting bored with this. They weren't going to find anything on the tapes.

And that was when Nurse Henderson came back into view, the black eye a lot more noticeable. Logan frowned and paused the tape.

'What?' Watson squinted at the tableau.

'Notice something?'

WPC Watson confessed that she didn't, so Logan tapped the screen, right on top of Nurse Henderson, still carrying the overnight bag. 'She's wearing her uniform.'

'So?'

'She was wearing her civilian clothes in the other tape.'

Watson shrugged. 'So she got changed.'

'She's still carrying the bag. If she got changed, why didn't she leave her bag in the lockers?'

'Maybe they don't have lockers?'

Logan asked the older security guard if the nurses' changing room had lockers in it.

'Aye,' he said. 'But if you think I'm showin' you a video tape of nurses gettin' changed: you've got another bloody think comin'!'

'This is a murder investigation!'

'I don't care. You're no seein' any tape of naked nurses.'

Logan bristled. 'Listen, sunshine-'

'We've no got cameras in there.' He grinned, showing a perfect set of dentures. 'We tried, but the governors were havin' none of it. Didn't trust us to keep our minds on the job. Shame. I coulda made a fortune floggin' those tapes…'

The administration centre of the hospital was nicer than the bit sick people occupied. Here the smell of antiseptic on squeaky linoleum was exchanged for carpet and fresh air. Logan found himself a helpful young woman with bleached-blonde hair and an Irish accent and sweet-talked her into going through last night's shift records.

'Here you go,' she said, pointing to a screenful of numbers and dates on her computer. 'Nurse Michelle Henderson…Did a double shift last night. Got off at about half-nine.'

'Half-nine? Thanks: thanks a lot. You've been very helpful.'

She smiled back at him, pleased to have been of assistance. If there was anything else she could do for him, just give her a call. Anytime. She even gave him a business card. Luckily Logan didn't see the look on WPC Watson's face as he accepted it.