Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Olivia was sitting in the dark when Logan and Shona returned to the house. Taggart, who had been lying sprawled on the couch beside her, immediately started running laps of the living room at the sound of their key in the lock.
‘What’s with the lights? Power off, or something?’ Logan asked, stepping into the room.
He flicked the switch, and Olivia gave a vampire hiss as the LED bulbs burned into life.
‘Jesus!’
Logan clicked the lights off again, giving the room back to the dark.
Upstairs, the floorboards creaked as Shona raced about, getting changed into work clothes.
‘You sick, or something?’ Jack asked. ‘You’ve normally got every bloody light in the house on, and then some.’
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Olivia said.
‘Oh. Right. You taken anything for it?’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘There’s paracetamol in—’
‘I said I’ll be fine!’
Logan shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Dog been out?’
As if sensing he was now part of the conversation, Taggart stopped running and came to a sudden stop right at Jack’s feet. He sat down, staring up, big brown eyes gazing hopefully.
‘Just the walk home,’ Olivia told him.
Logan was well-used to abrupt answers from the girl. Or, often, no answers at all. Normally, it was because she was too engrossed in her phone screen, or whatever shite was blaring through her earphones.
Now, she was just sitting there in the dark, doing nothing. Maybe the headache story was legit, right enough.
‘Right, well, Shona’s grabbing some stuff then shooting into the hospital. She’s just going to get the body booked in, and then she’ll crack on in the morning. I need to go and do a house call.’
Olivia looked up. Her eyes flashed in the gloom. ‘You’re going out? Both of you?’
‘Aye. For a bit. We shouldn’t be long,’ Logan said. He considered her huddled there on the couch. Noted the closed curtains.
In the single flash of the overhead lights, he’d clocked that she was still wearing her trainers—the battered white Converse that she’d drawn patterns on in black Sharpie.
Normally, any shoes got kicked off the moment she came home, and lay where they fell until Logan inevitably tripped over them on his way out the door.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked.
There was silence. For a moment. For an eternity.
‘No,’ she finally said. ‘Just wondering.’
There was something. He was sure of it. But, despite his decades of training and experience, he’d never been able to get the truth from the girl via direct interrogation. He’d found it was best just to wait.
Or, even better, to let Shona handle it.
‘Right, well, no parties. I should be back in about an hour. I’ll give the dug his last walk then.’
Taggart sprang to his feet, tail whirling like the rotor of a helicopter.
‘Shite. I said walk. Bollocks, I said it again.’ Logan sighed. ‘Bugger it. Fine. Five minutes, once around the block. That’s your lot for now.’
He looked over at Olivia. Her eyes were lowered again. Otherwise, she hadn’t moved a muscle.
‘You want to come?’
This time, there was no hesitation.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’
Olivia wasn’t the only one behaving oddly.
Taggart, who would usually be attempting to pull Jack off his feet by now, albeit with very little chance of success, was trotting along at his heels.
His excitement at being outside had almost immediately given way to a sort of low-key wariness that kept him from pulling ahead.
It might have been the wind. It had started picking up on the drive back to Inverness, and though the rain was off for the moment, the odd north-westerly gust still came whistling down the gaps between the houses.
Jack looked back at his house. The lights were on upstairs, but downstairs was still in darkness. If it wasn’t for Shona up in the bedroom, the place would be almost invisible in the evening gloom.
Was that deliberate? Did she really have a headache, or was she hiding?
If so, hiding from what?
Sulking was more likely, he reckoned. The first half of parents’ night hadn’t exactly been brimming with positive reports, but in her own sullen way, she’d seemed pleased that he and Shona had taken the time to attend.
It had been a first for her, having someone turn up to talk to the teachers on her behalf, and she’d raced back to the school from God knows where so she could attend the meetings with them.
She was probably just annoyed they had to ditch early. There had been some talk of getting dinner afterwards, too. Maybe she was disappointed about that.
Aye. Aye, that’d be it. They’d make it up to her, though. She’d understand.
Before he had a chance to dwell any more on it, his phone buzzed. Taggart instinctively looked up when Logan’s hand went into his pocket, in case it heralded the arrival of biscuits. When it came out holding the phone, he lost interest and went back to sniffing the ground.
The text was from Tyler. It gave a name—Eleanor Belov—and an address in Nairn. Logan winced. He’d be away longer than an hour, then.
At the bottom, a line space below the address, was a single “x”. The little bubble had already popped up below the message, letting him know that Tyler was typing something else.
It arrived with another buzz.
Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to add the kiss.
Logan rattled off a reply—Aye, ye did—then returned the phone to his pocket.
‘Right then, dug,’ he announced, picking up the pace. ‘Let’s get a shifty on.’
Business was clearly good for Victor Belov. Well, not so much now, Logan supposed, given his current condition, but he’d evidently been earning well while he was alive.
His house was a glass and metal monster of a thing, situated just outside Nairn, looking out over the town’s East Beach towards the North Sea.
It was the sort of place that got featured on Grand Designs on the telly, as one of those overly ambitious projects that spiralled out of control, resulting in bankruptcy and divorce.
Though the front was all shiny chrome and black-tinted glass, the roof was covered in grass that curved down to meet the ground at the back of the house.
The whole thing looked like it had been built into a hillside.
Or, like some underground creature had just popped its head above the surface to say hello.
Not cheap, then.
A long driveway curved up from the beach road, meandering through a landscaped garden that was all statues and fountains.
A security gate at the bottom of the garden stood open as if the owner of the place was expecting visitors.
The wheels of Jack’s SUV crunched along the gravel driveway and into the car park at the side of the building.
There were three cars already parked here. Two black BMWs that both bore a striking resemblance to the one Geoff Palmer’s team was currently poring over, and a red Tesla with a “Baby on Board” warning triangle affixed to the back windscreen.
Logan had never really understood the point of those signs. Very rarely, in his experience, did anyone deliberately plough their car into the back of another due to the lack of infants inside. Generally speaking, these things tended to be accidental.
Parking up, he checked the name again on Tyler’s text, then approached the house.
A dark reflection of himself followed all the way to the front door, and he got the sense that there were people standing right on the other side of those tinted windows, watching his every move, faces pressed up against the glass.
The doorbell chimed somewhere deep within the house when Logan jabbed the button. It was a slow, mournful ding-dong—the sort of thing Castle Dracula might get fitted during a refurb.
The glass in the door was just as opaque as the windows. Logan ran a hand down his face, like he might wipe away the dark bags under his eyes. No such luck, of course.
The door opened, revealing a sleek, minimalist hallway, and not a lot else. It was only when a movement drew his attention downwards that Logan spotted the boy. He was around four or five, dressed in pyjamas that were a bit too long on the legs, and holding a partially peeled banana.
He had wide eyes, curly hair, and two lines of snot that formed a glistening number eleven on his top lip. As he stared up at Logan, he brought the banana to his mouth and bit a chunk off the end.
‘Is, eh, is your mum in?’ Logan asked.
The boy chewed thoughtfully, like he felt the question deserved serious consideration. Then, without a word, he stepped back, fully opening the door, and beckoned him inside with the remaining banana.
‘Cheers, wee man. But, it’d be better if you went and got—’
‘Oh, God. Just come in.’
Logan looked along the hallway to where a young blonde woman in a pink velour tracksuit stood bouncing a baby on her hip. She shot him a look of irritation, then disappeared through a doorway on her left.
She returned a moment later. ‘Oh, and Jack? Make sure you shut the door.’
Hearing her call him by his name like that knocked him off his stride for a moment. She was gone again before he recovered.
‘How the hell did she know that?’ he muttered.
He looked down at the boy like he might be able to shed some light on the matter, but he was too busy trying to get the last half-inch of banana by mushing the whole thing, skin and all, into his face.
With a glance back over his shoulder, Logan crossed the threshold of the house, and closed the door behind him.