A teenager with more acne than skin, nose like a sharpened pencil.
Back to the reporter.
Another cut: night, snowing. The crowd had thinned down to the hard-core, frozen few. Then someone emerged from off camera, a lit petrol bomb in their hand. It sizzled across the screen, leaving a trail of glowing white, and the camera swung around to watch it explode against the granite wall of Knox’s house. The flash was bright enough to overload the camera for a moment, and then it was back in focus, just in time to catch the second bomb being thrown. It burst on the sill of the broken lounge window – sending burning petrol all over the curtains.
The screen went blank.
Logan pulled up one side of his headphones. ‘How do I rewind?’
‘Big black knob to your right.’
The Transit’s side door slid open and there was the reporter. She froze, one foot up on the van’s floor, thick flakes of white specking her shoulders and hair; nose and ears a deep shade of pink. Her forehead creased. ‘Where am I supposed to sit?’
Logan turned his back on her, twisting the big black knob till she appeared on screen again.
‘Come
‘Shut the door, eh, Janet? Freezing me nuts off here.’
‘You’re freezing yours off? What about
‘There’s a thermos in the cab…’
Logan stuck the headphones back on and set the report running again. Shutting out the argument.
The first petrol bomb was too quick – the cameraman didn’t have time to catch much more than the rough shape of someone wrapped up in a padded jacket hurling the bottle. But the second time he’d got the camera around in time to catch the thrower centre frame.
Logan hit pause.
It was either a very effeminate man, or a slightly butch woman. Difficult to tell with all the padding. They had a black-and-white bobble hat pulled down over their ears, wisps of dark hair sticking out of the bottom. Eyes screwed up, nose crinkled. A checkered scarf covered the lower half of their face, and they were wearing what looked like a blue North Face jacket – the logo just visible on the left chest – with matching gloves.
So that probably meant no prints on the bottle.
Logan frowned, then took off the headphones and hung them back on the improvised hook. ‘Do you have any other shots of who threw the petrol bomb?’
‘You’re bloody impossible, Gavin! How am I supposed to work under these conditions?’ The reporter stormed out and slammed the side door shut.
Gavin rubbed his hands across his face. ‘No idea. Maybe in the crowd shots?’
‘Any chance you could—’
‘Mate, I’ve got a live bulletin on in ten, a…’ He lowered his voice, ‘A reporter with PMT who won’t deliver her bloody lines properly, a dodgy sound desk, and about three thousand other things I’ve got to do before we hand over to the London studio. What do you think?’
Logan sighed. ‘OK, OK. I’ll get a warrant.’
The man nodded. ‘Good idea. Now, if you don’t mind…?’
Logan stood off to the side, watching the woman from BBC Scotland doing her live broadcast for the
Behind her, Knox’s house was a blackened shell, steam and thin ribbons of greasy smoke rising from the blackened windows while the Fire Brigade rolled their hoses up.
A fake English accent sounded at Logan’s shoulder. ‘’Allo, ‘allo, what’s all this then?’
He didn’t even have to check. ‘Evening Colin.’
The wee reporter rubbed his leather-gloved hands together, the rigid finger joints sticking out at odd angles. ‘Brass monkeys, but.’
‘Isobel give you a late pass, did she?’
‘Why, fancy a pint later?’
‘Can’t: on the wagon.’
‘Fuck me, must be serious.’ Colin blew into his cupped, gloved hands, wreathing them in a white cloud. ‘Any off-the-record statements you’d like to make for your old mate?’
Logan frowned for a minute. ‘Yeah. Can you say: “sources close to the investigation think the media are a bunch of sketchy bastards for standing about filming Knox’s house burning down when they should have been calling the Fire Brigade”?’
