DS Logan McRae is just coming off medical leave in Aberdeen (where it's usually cold and raining sideways) when he's assigned to DI Insch to investigate the murder of three-year-old David Reid. Soon, other children have gone missing and bodies are being discovered.
‘You know,’ said [DI] Insch, ‘since you came back to work we’ve had two abductions, found a dead girl, a dead boy and dragged a corpse with no knees out the harbour. All in the space of three days. That’s a record for Aberdeen.’ He poked about in his packet of fizzy, jelly shapes, coming out with what looked like an amoeba. ‘I’m beginning to think you’re some sort of jinx.’ ‘Thank you, sir.’
The prime suspect is "Roadkill," a schizophrenic with a degree in medieval history who, after leaving a mental hospital got a job picking up dead animals off the roads. Turns out he was keeping them on his small acreage and in one of the large piles was found the body of a 4-year-old girl.
The community is enraged, of course, with self-righteous anger directed at the police and this occasioned one of the funnier scenes in the book as protesters have gathered outside the police station with the usual misspelled signs. (You know the ones: "Get a Brain. Morans" or "Obama. Commander and Theif." or "No Pubic Option.") Or, as here, who can't spell paedophile. Logan winced as he read that last one. Nothing like stupid people with righteous fury and a mob on their side. Last time there had been this kind of fervour three paediatricians had their surgery windows smashed. Now it looked like they were after the foot fetishists.
The situation becomes more confused when forensics reveals one of the dead children had most likely been hit by a car.
Excellent.
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