The newsroom was like a carpeted warehouse, all open plan and suspended ceiling tiles. There must have been a couple of hundred desks in here, all clumped together in little cliques: News Desk, Features, Editorial, Page Layout. . . The walls were the same pale lilac as reception and just as bare. There weren’t any partitions and the desktops spilled into one another. Piles of paper, yellow Post-its and scribbled notes oozing from one desk to the next like a slow-motion avalanche.
Computer monitors flickered beneath the overhead lighting, their owners hunched over keyboards, turning out tomorrow’s news. Apart from the ever-present hum of the computers and the whirr of the photocopier it was eerily quiet.
Logan grabbed the first person he could find: an older man in saggy brown corduroy trousers and a stained cream shirt. He was wearing a tie that sported at least three of the things he’d had for breakfast. The top of his head had said goodbye to his hair long ago, but a trapdoor of thin strands was stretched over the shiny expanse. He wasn’t kidding anyone but himself.
‘We’re looking for Colin Miller,’ said Logan, flipping out his warrant card.
The man raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh aye?’ he said. ‘You goin’ to arrest him?’
Logan slipped his identification back in his pocket. ‘Wasn’t intending to, but I’m starting to think about it. Why?’
The old reporter hitched up his trousers and beamed innocently at Logan. ‘No reason.’
Pause, two, three, four. . .
‘OK,’ said Logan, ‘so where is he?’
The old man winked at him, jerking his head towards the toilets. ‘I have no idea where he is, officer,’ he said slowly, one innuendo-laden word after another. He finished off with another couple of significant glances towards the gents and a grin.
Logan nodded. ‘Thanks, you’ve been a great help.’
‘No I haven’t,’ said the reporter. ‘I’ve been “vague and rambling” like the “senile old fart” I am.’
As he ambled off back to his desk, Logan and WPC Watson made a beeline for the toilets. To Logan’s surprise Watson stormed straight into the gents. Shaking his head, he followed her into the black-and-white-tiled interior.
Her shout of ‘Colin Miller?’ produced assorted journalistic shrieks as full-grown men scrabbled at their flies and scurried out of the toilets. Finally only one man was left: short, heavily-built, wearing an expensive-looking dark-grey suit. Broad-shouldered, with a pristine haircut, he whistled tunelessly at the urinals, rocking back and forth.
Watson looked him up and down. ‘Colin Miller?’ she asked.
He glanced over his shoulder, a nonchalant smile on his lips. ‘You want tae help me shake this?’ he asked with a wink, Glaswegian accent ringing out loud and proud. ‘Ma doctor says I’m no’ to lift anythin’ heavy. . .’
She scowled and told him exactly what he could do with his offer.
Logan stepped between them before Watson could demonstrate why she was called ‘Ball Breaker’.
The reporter winked, shoogled about a little, then turned from the urinal, zipping himself up, gold signet rings sparkling on almost every finger. A gold chain hung around his neck, lying over the silk shirt and tie.
‘Mr Miller?’ asked Logan.
‘Aye, you wantin’ an autograph?’ He strutted his way to the sink, hitching up his sleeves slightly as he did so, exposing something chunky and gold on his right wrist and a watch big enough to sleep four on the left. It wasn’t surprising the man was well-muscled: he had to be to cart about all that jewellery.
‘We want to talk to you about David Reid, the three-year-old who—’
‘I know who he is,’ said Miller, turning on the taps. ‘I did a front page spread on the poor wee sod.’ He grinned and pumped soap into his hands. ‘Three thousand words of pure journalistic gold. Tell ya, kiddie murders: pure gold, so they are. Sick bastard kills some poor kid and suddenly everyone’s dyin’ tae read about the wee dead body over their cornflakes. Fuckin’ unbelievable.’
Logan resisted the urge to grab Miller by the scruff of the neck and smash his face into a urinal. ‘You called the family last night,’ he said instead, fists jammed deep in his pockets. ‘Who told you we’d found him?’
Miller smiled at Logan’s reflection in the mirror above the sink. ‘Didn’t take a genius, Inspector. . . ?’
‘Sergeant,’ said Logan. ‘Detective Sergeant McRae.’
The journalist shrugged and wriggled his hands under the hand-drier. ‘Only a DS, eh?’ he had to shout over the roar of warm air. ‘Never mind. You help me catch this sick bastard and I’ll see you make DI.’
‘Help “you” catch. . .’ Logan screwed his eyes shut and was assailed by visions of Miller’s broken nose bleeding into urinal cakes. ‘Who told you we’d found David Reid?’ he asked through gritted teeth.
Click. The drier fell silent.
‘Told you: didn’t take a genius. You found a wee dead kiddie, who else could it have been?’
‘We didn’t tell anyone the body was a child!’
‘No? Ah well, must’ve been a coincidence then.’
Logan scowled. ‘Who told you?’
Miller smiled and shot his cuffs, making sure there was a fashionable inch of starched white visible at the end of both sleeves.
‘You never heard of journalistic immunity? I don’t have tae reveal my sources. And you can’t make me!’ He paused. ‘Mind you, if the tasty WPC wants tae do a Mata Hari I might be persuaded. . . Gotta love a woman in uniform!’
Watson snarled and pulled out her collapsible truncheon.
The door to the gents burst open, breaking the moment. A large woman with lots of curly dark-brown hair stormed into the toilets, hands on hips and fire in her eyes. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ she said, glowering at Logan and Watson. ‘I’ve got half the news desk out there with piss all down the front of their trousers.’ She rounded on Miller before anyone could respond. ‘And what the hell do you think you’re still doing here? They’re giving a press conference on the dead kid in half an hour! The tabloids are going to be all over the damn thing. This is our bloody story and I want it to stay that way!’
‘Mr Miller is assisting us with our enquiries,’ said Logan. ‘I want to know who told him we’d found—’
‘You arresting him?’
Logan only paused for a second, but it was long enough.
‘Didn’t think so.’ She stabbed a finger at Miller. ‘You! Get your arse in gear. I’m not paying you to chat up WPCs in the bogs!’
Miller smiled and saluted the glowering woman. ‘You got it, chief!’ he said and winked at Logan. ‘Gotta go. Duty calls and all that.’
He took a step towards the door, but WPC Watson barred his path. ‘Sir?’ She fingered her truncheon, desperate for an excuse to use it on Miller’s head.
Logan looked from the smug journalist to Watson and back again. ‘Let him go,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll talk later, Mr Miller.’
The journalist grinned. ‘Count on it.’ He made his right hand into a gun and fired it at WPC Watson. ‘Catch ya later, investigator.’
Thankfully she didn’t reply.
Back in the car park, WPC Watson stomped through the rain to their Vauxhall, wrenched the car’s door open, hurled her hat in the back seat, thudded in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut again, and swore.
Logan had to admit she had a point. There was