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Screw-Up Squad, that was all he needed. Napier smiled at him coldly. ‘I hope you will look upon this as an opportunity to redeem yourself, Sergeant.’ Logan mumbled something about givingit his best shot and Napier oozed out of the room, reeking with triumph.
    Insch dug a fat finger into the packet of Allsorts and stuffed a black-and-white cube into his mouth, chewing as he put on a reasonable impersonation of Napier’s nasal tones: ‘“I have been able to convince him not to suspend, demote or dismiss you” my arse.’ The cube was followed by a coconut wheel. ‘Wee bugger will have been in there with the knife. The CC doesn’t want to fire you ’cos you’re a bona fide police hero. Says so in the papers, so it must be true. And anyway, Napier can do sod all till they’ve finished the internal investigation. If he thought there was any chance of doing you for culpable negligence or gross misconduct you would’ve been suspended already. You’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.’
    ‘But DI Steel?’
    Insch shrugged philosophically and munched on a pink aniseed disk. ‘Aye, there is that. So you’re on the Screw-Up Squad: so what? Get your finger out, don’t do anything stupid and you’ll be OK.’ He paused and thought about it. ‘Long as PC Maitland doesn’t die, that is.’
    DI Insch ran a tight ship. A stickler for punctuality, preparation and professionalism, his briefings were clear and concise. DI Steel’s, on the other hand, seemed to be pretty much a shambles. There was no clear agenda and everyone talked at once, while Steel sat by an open windowpuffing away on an endless chain of cigarettes, scratching her armpit. She wasn’t much over forty, but looked a damn sight older. Wrinkles ran rampant over her pointy face, her neck hanging from her sharp chin like a wet sock. Something terrible had happened to her hair, but everyone was too afraid to mention it.
    Her team was relatively small – no more than half a dozen CID and a couple of uniforms – so they didn’t sit in ordered rows like DI Insch insisted on, just clustered around a handful of chipped tables. They weren’t even talking about work; half the room was on ‘did you see EastEnders last night?’ and the other half on what a bloody shambles the last Aberdeen–St Mirren football match was. Logan sat on his own in silence, staring out the window at a crystal-blue sky, wondering where it had all gone wrong.
    The door to the briefing room opened and someone in a brand-new suit backed in, carrying a tray of coffee and chocolate biscuits. It went onto the middle table, starting a feeding frenzy, and as the figure straightened up Logan finally recognized him. PC Simon Rennie, now a detective constable. He spotted Logan, smiled, grabbed two coffees and a handful of chocolate biscuits before joining Logan at the window. Grinning as he handed over one of the chipped mugs. He looked awfully pleased with himself.
    DI Steel took a sip of coffee, shuddered and lit up another cigarette. ‘Right,’ she said, her headwreathed in smoke, ‘now that DC Rennie has delivered the creosote, we can get started.’ Conversation drifted to a halt. ‘As you boys and girls can see, we have a couple of new recruits.’ She pointed at Logan and DC Rennie, then made them stand so a half-hearted round of applause could be wrung from the rest of her team. ‘These two have been selected from the hundreds of keen applicants, desperate to join our ranks.’ That got a small scattering of laughter. ‘Before we go any further I’d like to give our newest members the standard intro speech.’
    That got a groan.
    ‘You are all here for one reason and one reason only,’ she said, scratching. ‘Like me, you are a fuck-up, and no one else will have you.’
    DC Rennie looked affronted: this wasn’t what he’d been told! He’d only been a DC for three days, how could he have screwed up?
    Steel listened to him with sympathy, before apologizing. ‘Sorry,