He tuned back in just as DI Steel was setting up the various teams and doling out their assignments. She wrapped the briefing up and sent them on their way with a rousing chorus of 'We are not at home to Mr Fuck-Up!'

When there was no one left except Logan, she cracked open a window and sparked up a cigarette with trembling hands, inhaling like a suffocating man. She closed her eyes, sighed happily then lurched into a rattling cough. 'Jesus, I've been bursting for a fag!' She took another deep drag, shuddering in pleasure as the nicotine and smoke filled her lungs.

When she breathed out it hung around her head like her own private fog bank. 'You see the papers?' she asked. Logan said no, so she dug a copy of that morning's P amp;J from the bin and tossed it over. Shore Lane Stalker Strikes Again! right across the front page, By Colin Miller. It wasn't his best work. 'I suppose,' she said as Logan read, I'd better go tell Michelle's dad she's dead…' Sigh. 'You know, you wouldn't think it to see her on the slab, but she was a pretty girl when she was little. Before spots and boys and underaged drinking. I brought her in about a dozen times when she was younger: shoplifting. Baby clothes, food, shoes, booze, stuff like that…' her voice trailed off. 'Arrested her all those times and I didn't even recognize her, not with her face all smashed up like that. Only IDed her this morning when the prints on the handbag came back… She was only twenty-four. Poor wee bitch.'

'She been on the game long?'

The inspector shook her head. 'Not that I can tell. No arrests for soliciting on her record. Not even a warning.'

Logan didn't say anything, but he couldn't help thinking of the woman he'd spoken to down the docks: the one with the PVC raincoat, black lace bustier and all the bruises. The minute she realized he was a policeman she'd offered him a bribe, or a free ride on the venereal express. Maybe there was a reason Michelle Wood hadn't received so much as a caution. Maybe one of Aberdeen's fine, upstanding boys in blue had been getting freebies.

'Right.' Steel dropped her cigarette butt and ground it into the carpet with a scuffed shoe. 'While I'm gone I want you to make sure everything's up and running properly. I don't trust any of these bastards to get it right.'

Logan was surprised. 'You don't want me to come with you?'

She shook her head. 'Her dad's going to have enough to deal with without a house full of bloody policemen.'

Logan was on his way down to the incident room when a familiar, hawk-nosed, ginger-haired bastard stuck his head out into the corridor and asked for a moment of his time. Inspector Napier smiled like a scar as Logan settled uncomfortably into the; rickety plastic chair in front of the desk. 'So, Sergeant McRae.' The inspector leaned back in his seat and smiled his post-surgery smile again. 'I take it you are familiar with the nature of the case now being headed up by DI Steel?' Logan carefully admitted that he was, wondering where this was going. 'Well,' said Napier, 'I'm sure I don't have to tell you the importance of a quick and decisive result. One that will stand up in court. You see,' he picked up a silver pen, slowly twisting it back and forth in his fingers, 'I know that you have … "friends" in the media. These people will try to protect you should things go wrong.' The smile became colder. 'It might be wise for you to ensure that they do not use Inspector Steel as a scapegoat.' Significant pause. 'In the interests of teamwork.'

An uncomfortable silence filled the space between them.

'What if it's her fault?'

Napier waved a hand, as if shooing a troublesome fly. 'Are you aware of the fable about the fox and the chicken? The chicken burns down the farmer's barn and blames the fox.

The farmer shoots the fox and then eats the chicken…' He pointed the silver pen at Logan's chest making it clear who the poultry was in this scenario. The inspector's chilly, unsettling smile disappeared. 'I will supply the sage and onion.'

Their new incident room – courtesy of the Chief Constable the minute this became a serial case – was huge, the walls covered with maps of Aberdeen and scribbled-on whiteboards. The middle of the room was taken up with phones and computers, the monitors flickering in the overhead light as uniformed officers took calls and entered the details into HOLMES. There was already a huge stack of automatically generated actions waiting for him, so Logan pulled up a chair and started working his way through the lot; sorting them into two piles he called 'To Do' and 'Bollocks'. The system's greatest strength was that it would churn its way through endless reams of data, automatically picking out connections and patterns. Its greatest weakness was that it frequently didn't have a sodding clue what it was doing. He was just finishing when DI Steel finally got back from speaking to Michelle Wood's father.

'How did it go?'

The inspector shrugged and started flicking half-heartedly through Logan's pile of 'Bollocks', turfing them one after the other into the bin. 'How do you think it went? Telling some poor bastard his daughter's been battered to death by a psycho, and her naked body was abandoned in the fucking woods for three days before someone fell over it in the fog … oh and by the way, your little girl was fucking strangers for money.' She sighed and ran a hand over her face. 'Sorry, been a shitty week.' Logan handed her the 'To Do' pile and she whittled that one down too; there weren't many actions left by the time she was finished. She palmed them off on the admin officer, telling him to get them cleared by the end of the day.

'Right,' she said, as the man grumbled away to get the personnel organized. 'Plan of action?'

'Well, what do you want to do about Jamie McKinnon?'

'Leave him where he is, we've still got plenty tying him to Rosie's murder.' Steel pulled out a packet of king-size cigarettes and started fiddling with the silver paper insert. 'If we get someone else in the frame for both tarts we'll do McKinnon for the fast-food jobs instead. But if anyone asks, we're dealing with the killings like they're part of the same pattern.'

'OK.' Logan grabbed a magic marker and started drawing up a rough map of the docks on one of the whiteboards.

'Rosie Williams was found here…' He drew a blue circle on Shore Lane. 'Do we know if Michelle Wood worked the docks?'

'Who knows?'

'If she did, then we've got a hunting ground. We put in some surveillance: unmarked cars…' He picked up a green pen and started putting 'X'es where a rusty Vauxhall could be parked without attracting too much attention.

'What bloody good are unmarked cars going to do us?' asked Steel, corkscrewing a finger into her ear. 'Dirty bastards pick up women down there the whole time. How're we going to spot our man: pull them all over and ask?' She dropped her voice an octave and put on a broad east London accent.

'"Excuse me, sir, 'ave you picked up this tart wiv the intention of beatin' 'er to death, or just givin' 'er a serious