That horrible woman next door had ruined everything…

With a sigh, Ailsa stacked the last mug on the draining board. The noise next door was getting worse again, the yelling, the foul language, the sound of something breaking.

Then the pointy-faced boyfriend limped out into the back garden, covering his head with his hands as a beer bottle sailed out through the French windows. The horrible woman lurched out after it, drunk at half past ten in the morning, swigging from another bottle. The boyfriend tried to get out of the way, but she grabbed him by the collar and punched him in the face! She was going to beat him up again: right there in the back garden, where everyone could see!

He staggered back, blood streaming from his crooked nose and she tried to swing for him again, missing, collapsing on the grass. Crying. The boyfriend turned and ran into the house, screaming that he was leaving her, that he'd had enough, slamming the door behind him.

Ailsa never saw him again.

The horrible woman rolled over onto her back, like a beached whale in jogging pants, and started to snore. Ailsa shuddered – maybe she should call the police?

But she didn't. Instead she picked up the dishtowel and started to dry.

The nurse who'd seen to Jamie McKinnon's fingers wasn't exactly the most attractive woman ever to don a blue uniform: bobbed brown hair, squinty nose, pointy ears and thinnish lips, but DI Steel was smitten from the outset. She perched on the edge of the nurse's desk, giving the young woman her undivided attention while she told them all about Jamie McKinnon's visitors last night. Two men, both neatly dressed in suits. One with really nice teeth and short blond hair, the other with shoulder-length black hair and a moustache.

A little warning bell went off in the back of Logan's head.

They didn't have Edinburgh accents by any chance, did they?'

They did.

Steel protested, but eventually Logan managed to drag her away from the nurses' station and up to the hospital's security office, where a lone guard kept an eye on a bank of CCTV monitors. He was dressed in the standard turdbrown uniform with brass buttons and yellow trimmings that looked disturbingly like chunks of sweet corn. It took a little persuasion, but eventually he showed them last night's tapes. There wasn't a camera in Jamie McKinnon's ward, but there was one in the corridor not far from it.

Logan ran through the tape, watching the fast-forward flicker of motion as the machine played back yesterday evening. The system was only set up to record an image every couple of seconds and the doctors, nurses and civilians jerked past in a strange stop-motion ballet. Two large figures twitched into view, drifting along the corridor to disappear suddenly outside Jamie's ward. The timestamp at the bottom of the screen said ten seventeen. Regular visiting hours ended at eight. When they re-emerged the timestamp said ten thirty-one. Fourteen minutes of dislocating Jamie McKinnon's fingers and threatening his family. Logan hit the pause button. Now the figures were walking towards the camera he had a good view of their faces. The picture quality wasn't great, but it was good enough: the bloke in the suit with the short blond hair was the same 'corporate investment facilitator' Miller had met for breakfast in the pub. And the man at his side was a dead ringer for the driver who'd been waiting in the car outside while Miller agreed to write a puff piece on McLennan Homes' latest business venture. 'And we have a winner.'

'What?' Steel was slouched in her chair, not really paying attention to the screen, or to the clockwork animation people on it.

'This one,' said Logan, poking the screen with his finger.

'Works for Malcolm McLennan.'

It was DI Steel's turn to swear. 'You sure?'

'Yup. So anything your mate digs out of Jamie McKinnon's arse belongs to Malk the Knife.'

Eleven o'clock and they were back in the car again, heading for the HQ of Aberdeen's main local newspaper. DI Steel sat in the passenger seat, worrying away at her thumbnail, her expression conflicted.

Jamie McKinnon was being kept under close supervision, not even toilet breaks allowed, until Steel's mate from the Drugs Squad turned up with his long rubber glove. She was determined to pin something on the two thugs from down south. The trouble would be getting any sort of case together.

Somehow Logan didn't see Jamie McKinnon having the balls to stand up in court and say, 'Yes, Your Honour, those are the men that forced six kilos of heroin up my backside.' Not if he didn't want to end up filling a shallow grave out in the Grampian hills somewhere. But you never knew your luck.

Logan took the car up across Anderson Drive and onto the Lang Stracht. The Press and Journal – local news since 1748 – shared a squat, concrete, sprawling box of a building with its sister paper, the Evening Express, on a small industrial estate packed with car dealerships and warehouses.

Inside it was all one huge, open-plan office. It always amazed Logan that the place was so quiet, just the ever-present hummmmm of the air-conditioning and the odd muffled conversation overlaying the soft, plastic clickity-clack of people typing on word processors. Colin Miller, however, was hunched over his computer, hammering away at the keyboard as if it had recently called his mother a schemie whore. The desks around him were packed with piles of paper, mugs of congealing coffee and bespectacled journalists.

Every head within an eight-desk radius snapped up as Logan tapped Miller on the shoulder and asked for a quiet word.

'Oh, for fuck's sake! Can you no' see I'm busy?'

'Colin,' said Logan in a low, friendly voice. 'Trust me on this; you want to have a wee chat with us. And it'll be much nicer if we have it over an early lunch in the nearest pub than down at the station. OK?'

Miller looked from Logan to the article flickering away on his screen – something about a bake sale in Stonehaven, if Logan wasn't mistaken – before hammering Ctrl-Alt-Delete, locking his computer. 'Come on then.' Miller stood and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair. 'You bastards is buyin'.'

They didn't go into the nearest pub – according to Miller the place would be hoachin' with nosey-bastard journalists and if there was any chance of a story coming out of this, he wasn't going to share it with anyone – so instead he made Logan drive them into the centre of town, dumping the car back at Force HQ so they could make the two-minute walk to the Moonfish Cafe on Correction Wynd. On the other side of the narrow, sunken alley a huge granite wall, at least twenty-foot tall, held back the dirt and graves of the 'Dead Centre' – St Nicholas Kirk – the sky an icy blue, trapped between the looming church spire and the twisted willows.

They were halfway through ordering when Steel jiggled about in her seat, then dragged out her mobile phone. 'Got it on vibrate,' she said with a wink. 'Hello? What? No, I'm in a restaurant… Yes… Susan! No, that's not… Look I know you're upset… but…' Swearing she stood, grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair and marched outside.

'Susan, it's not like that…'

'So,' said Logan as the inspector stomped back and forth on the other side of the restaurant's front window – a freshly lit cigarette leaving wild smoke trails in the wake of her gesticulating hand, 'Isobel feeling any better?'

The reporter looked alarmed. 'Better?'

'Doc Fraser said she'd been sick.'

'Oh, right. Aye…' Shrug. 'Summer cold or somethin', no' sleepin' much, you know?' An awkward silence settled onto the table, followed by complimentary slices of freshly baked bread. They helped themselves, making small talk about Aberdeen's chances in the coming match with Celtic, waiting for the inspector to finish what looked like a very loud argument.