Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
‘I get your interest, Detective Inspector, and I appreciate you making such a comprehensive argument, but the facts of the matter as I see them are these.’
DCI Nathan Reeve turned, halfway down the front path of Kendrick Crichton’s house, and began counting on his fingers.
‘This here travesty happened on our patch; Mr Crichton has been a person of interest across multiple departments within the North East branch of our mutual organisation for some time now…’
He waggled his middle finger as he tried to think of another point, then locked it into place with a grin of triumph.
‘Oh, and we got here first.’
He turned and set off towards the road again, with Hamza and Ben trailing in his wake.
‘But we believe it’s connected to a case of ours,’ Hamza reasoned. ‘Another murder from last night.’
‘I recall you made that point back there in the house, and I’ll say now what I said then, DI Khaled. My team will do its utmost to work with you guys and share everything we find. And, I hope that courtesy can extend in both directions.’
He stopped so suddenly that Hamza almost walked straight into the back of him.
‘In fact, this could be the beginning of a beautiful thing,’ he said, his smile widening as he gazed ahead at some unseen horizon. ‘Our team and yours, working together, one big family. Wouldn’t that be something?’
‘It’d be something alright,’ Ben chipped in, though he stopped short of speculating exactly what that thing might be.
It didn’t matter, anyway, because Reeve was already charging on again. He practically skipped down the step at the bottom of the path and landed with a thack in hostile territory.
‘Here, mate. You meant to be here?’ demanded Tyler, eyeing up the man in the checked shirt and jeans. ‘How’d you get through the cordon?’
Reeve beamed at them. ‘Huh? Oh, I didn’t. They built it around me,’ he said. ‘And yes. I’m supposed to be here.’ He looked from Tyler to Sinead, then down to Dave. ‘You three, I’m less sure about.’
‘They’re with me,’ Hamza said, stepping out of the garden. ‘DC Neish, DC Bell, DC Davidson. This is DCI Reeve.’
‘Nathan. Nate, actually,’ Reeve said. He grasped Sinead’s hand and shook it. ‘We’re all friends here, right?’
‘Um,’ Sinead said, blinking in the brilliance of his smile.
‘DCI Reeve is from Aberdeen. MIT North East,’ Hamza said.
‘Right.’ Tyler side-eyed his wife, then held a hand out to Reeve, if only so he’d stop shaking Sinead’s. ‘Sorry for all that a minute ago, then. Thought you were somewhere you shouldn’t be.’
He practically yelped when Reeve gripped his hand and shook it.
The DCI wasn’t squeezing or deliberately trying to crush Tyler’s fingers, but there was a very clear sense that he could do so with very little effort.
In fact, had he wanted to, Tyler reckoned the DCI could have swung him up and over his head, then smashed him back and forth on the ground until there was nothing left of him but a lumpy paste on the tarmac.
Fortunately, and to Tyler’s immense relief, he didn’t.
‘Pleasure to meet you guys,’ Reeve said, relinquishing his grip on Tyler and shaking Dave’s hand next. ‘I hear a lot of good things about your team over there in Inverness. You are quite the outfit.’
‘Eh, cheers,’ Tyler said.
‘In fact, one second,’ Reeve said, holding up a finger. ‘Let me introduce you to my guys. I think you’re all going to get along great!’
He turned and hurried off, gesturing to the woman at the cordon tape.
‘He’s… interesting,’ Sinead said.
‘Did you just brush your hair behind your ear there?’ Tyler asked her.
Sinead looked to her right to find her hand still hovering there. She dropped it quickly to her side.
‘No.’
‘Aye, you did!’
‘That’s nothing, mate,’ Dave said. ‘When he said we were a good outfit, you blushed.’
‘I didn’t blush!’
‘You did blush a bit,’ Hamza confirmed.
‘What? Well, if I did blush, which I didn’t, it was because I was annoyed.’
‘Oh right, aye. An annoyed blush. One of them,’ Ben said, joining in.
‘Because that’s definitely a real thing,’ Hamza said.
Tyler pointed to his wife. ‘She brushed her hair behind her ear!’
‘Aye, but she didn’t have skelping red cheeks at the time,’ Dave pointed out. He made a weighing motion with his hands. ‘So, who fancies him more?’
‘I don’t fancy him!’ Tyler insisted. He waited a moment, then turned to his wife. ‘You’re supposed to say that, too!’
Sinead shrugged. ‘I mean, he is quite impressive…’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tyler almost choked on the question. ‘He’s like a ginger Deputy Dawg!’
‘Hey, guys! Guys!’
Reeve was jogging back towards them, smiling like he hadn’t seen them in years.
‘Try and control yourself here, mate,’ Dave mumbled.
Tyler tutted, and barely had time to whisper a hissed, ‘Shut it,’ before Reeve arrived back with them.
‘I got my DI over there. I asked her to come say hello.’
Ben looked past the Reeve to where the sharply dressed woman still stood near the cordon, dishing out orders to the Uniforms.
‘Did she say no?’ he guessed.
‘She said no. She absolutely said no,’ Reeve confirmed. ‘Maybe she’ll have time a little later. But, you guys know how it is, right? Controlling a scene.’
‘Aye, well, not to worry.’
The voice boomed from a few feet away.
A car door closed with a sound like thunder.
Logan stepped between Tyler and Sinead, his hands buried in the pockets of his coat, his gaze fixed on the red-haired man smiling back at him.
‘We’ll be taking that off your hands.’
Shona turned the lock on the front door, leaned her head against the glass, and took a few seconds to compose herself.
Once Logan had finished with him, Olivia had wanted to hear her father out. Jack had insisted he stay, but Shona had picked up the signals from the girl, and assured him that his presence wasn’t required.
He had a job to do, and Shona and Olivia were perfectly capable of looking after themselves. Olivia had even fetched the knife again, in order to hammer that point home.
The conversation after Logan had left had been stilted. Awkward. Bosco’s fumbled attempts at apologies and explanations had been largely rebuffed by Olivia, who sat facing him from the armchair in the living room, Taggart curled up at her feet, the kitchen knife resting on the chair’s padded arm.
She had listened, mostly in silence, as Bosco had pleaded, made promises, quoted scripture, and said everything he could to convince her that he was telling the truth. That he was here to stay. That he was here for her.
In the end, when he’d run out of things to say, she’d just nodded slowly, like she was taking it all in, and then asked, ‘Is that it?’
It was soon after that she told him to leave. Shona had been braced for him to argue, but he hadn’t. He’d just smiled, patted the arm of the couch a couple of times, then stood up and thanked Shona for her hospitality.
He’d hovered near where Olivia sat for a few moments, like he was expecting a hug, but had left without pushing for one.
Shona had almost felt sorry for him when he was leaving. And yet, her hands had been shaking as she hurriedly bolted the door at his back.
She was barely back in the living room when she heard the thud-thud-thud of footsteps running towards her, closing fast.
There was no time to react. Olivia thudded into her. They both stumbled back until Shona hit the doorframe.
Olivia’s arms pulled tight around the pathologist’s shoulders, face burying in against her neck, her whole body shuddering.
Shona put her hands on the girl’s back and on her head, holding her close, as Olivia Maximuke silently sobbed her heart out.
‘It is an honour to be here in your presence. I want to throw that out there, right off the bat.’
DCI Reeve stood face to face with Logan, shaking hands. At least, that’s what it looked like they were doing, but there was a sense of something else going on there, too. Some secret battle or contest, the rules of which neither one really understood, but were determined to win, all the same.
‘If there was a league table of legendary lawmen, then your name would sit right there on top, I do not doubt it for a moment.’
They continued shaking hands, neither one willing to be the first to let go.
‘Aye, very good,’ Logan said. ‘Now, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work to be doing back in Aberdeen. Sheep-rustling, or whatever.’ He glanced around at the scene, drawing attention to it. ‘You can leave this lot to us.’
‘Ha! Sheep-rustling. Classic!’ Reeve said. ‘But, no. As I was explaining to Detective Inspector Khaled here a few minutes ago, we’re going to hang onto this one, but we will be more than happy to—’
‘No.’
The hands kept shaking. Up. Down. Tyler stood watching them, transfixed.
‘No?’
‘The victim in there has been named as a suspect in our murder investigation,’ Logan told him.
The rest of his team looked at him in surprise, but kept their mouths shut.
‘So, to protect the integrity of the investigation, chain of evidence, all that stuff, we’ll be taking this one.’
‘I hear you, Jack,’ Reeve said, and Logan bristled at the familiarity. ‘But we have our own ongoing investigations concerning Mr Crichton.’
‘We’ll be happy to share what we find,’ Logan assured him.
Up. Down. The arms kept pumping.
‘It’s on our turf,’ Reeve argued.
‘It’s borderline. It’s… what?’
He didn’t take his eyes off Reeve long enough to direct the question, but he didn’t have to.
‘About two miles,’ Hamza said.
‘Two miles. Out of thousands. That’s nothing,’
‘It’s actually two-point-six miles, by my reckoning, but I’m going to go ahead and take your point,’ Reeve said.
Up, down. Up, down.
‘There’s still the matter of us getting here first,’ Reeve said. ‘Though I apologise for how childish that might sound.’
‘Listen… Nathan, was it?’
‘Nate.’
‘Listen, Nathan,’ Logan intoned. ‘I am going out of my way to do you a favour here, by taking all this work off your hands. Are you short of things to do over there? Is that the problem?’
‘Oh, no, sir. We have a whole lot to be getting on with.’
‘Well, there we go, then. Out of the goodness of my heart, I am offering to ease some of that workload.’
Up. Down. Tyler’s head continued to follow the hands. He was starting to look like a nodding dog.
‘Our pathologist is already on the way.’
‘Fine. They can declare it and take the rest of the day off. We’ll get the body shipped to Inverness. Win-win.’
Reeve’s smile cranked up a few notches. Sinead caught herself before she could tuck her hair back again.
‘You have got this all figured out, huh?’
‘Just helping out a fellow officer.’
Reeve chuckled at that. He continued to shake Logan’s hand for a few more seconds, then relented and released his grip.
‘Who am I to argue with one of the old legends?’ he asked.
Logan didn’t miss the dig. He smiled, showing his teeth.
‘You’re nobody at all,’ he replied.
Reeve caught that one, too. He laughed, looked across the faces of the team, then gave Hamza a friendly pat on the shoulder.
‘Congratulations again, Detective Inspector. All of us over on the east coast are rooting for you.’
‘Eh, cheers,’ Hamza said.
Reeve nodded, one quick tipping of his head to be shared among the six of them, then turned and headed back down his own end.
Logan let him get a decent distance away, before calling after him.
‘Oh, and here. Buck Howdy, or whatever your name is.’ He raised a finger and pointed at the other DCI. ‘For this, you owe me one.’
Reeve’s grin lit up his face.
‘Buck Howdy. That’s a good one.’
He wagged a finger, like he was making a mental note to remember the moment, then put an arm around the shoulder of a passing constable, and guided him back up towards the cordon.
‘Nicely done, Jack,’ Ben remarked.
‘You fair put him in his place, boss,’ Tyler agreed.
‘But, eh’—Hamza glanced back in the direction of the house—‘that right enough, what you said? About Crichton being a suspect for Victor Belov.’
‘Aye. Maybe.’ A tilt of Logan’s head said he wasn’t ready to commit, either way. ‘But it didn’t exactly come from the world’s most reliable source.’
‘Where did it come from, sir?’ Sinead asked.
Logan bit down on his lip. They were all watching him. All waiting.
He had to tell them. He did. He would.
But not yet. Not now.
‘Let’s get everything underway here,’ he said. With a nod, he handed all authority back to Hamza, then turned towards his car. ‘We can regroup at the station. We’ll talk then.’
He hesitated, not yet walking away. Not yet ready to leave them.
‘There’s something you all need to know.’