Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Logan stood in his hallway, one arm inside the sleeve of his coat, his phone pressed to his ear with the other hand.
The sound of Shona belting out Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell from the shower, which had been going on for a good four or five minutes by this point, seemed to fade into silence.
‘What do you mean she knew?’ Logan asked.
He listened as Tyler explained again. As he told him word for word what Harris had said.
‘Weeks?’ he repeated, when the detective constable had finished. ‘What do you…? No. She’d have said something.’ He looked at the front door, through which Olivia had recently exited in her school uniform. ‘She’d have told us.’
Wouldn’t she?
Bosco himself had said Olivia had been shocked to see him.
She couldn’t have known he was getting out.
Could she?
‘We’ll talk about it when we get to the station,’ he said, buying himself some time to think.
He ended the call, then almost jumped out of his skin when a hand slipped onto his shoulder from behind.
‘Jesus!’
Shona grinned at him from the first step. She was largely cocooned in towels—her big Back to the Future one wrapped around her like a strapless dress, and a plain white one bundled on top of her head.
‘No, he’s got other appointments, so he sent me instead.’
She held her arms out to her sides and sang a Heavenly chord, then hurriedly grabbed for her big towel as it started to slip.
Her smile, which had been splitting her face in two, faded a little when she saw Jack’s expression.
‘What’s up?’
Logan glanced down at the phone in his hand, then shook his head as he pocketed it. ‘Nothing.’
‘Then why are you standing there with your coat half on, and a face like a well-skelped arse?’
Logan regarded his trailing sleeve like he was seeing it for the first time. He slipped an arm through it, then shrugged the coat on.
‘Just a call from Tyler. It’s nothing,’ he reiterated.
Shona searched his face, like she knew there was something to find.
‘Is he OK?’
‘He’s fine. Just… It’s just about this case. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Oh. OK,’ she said, giving up. She knew better than to waste her time continuing to ask. Jack Logan’s stubbornness could give brick walls a run for their money. ‘You heading in? Can you take Taggart today?’
At the sound of his name, the dog came trotting from the kitchen, tail going back and forth like a windscreen wiper. He circled Logan’s feet, then stood facing the door, ready to leave.
‘Aye, no bother,’ Logan confirmed. He fastened the middle button on his coat, and unhooked Taggart’s lead from the rack behind the door. ‘You, eh, going to get those PM reports finished up and sent across today?’
‘Assuming you don’t bring me any more dead people, then yes,’ Shona told him.
Jack nodded solemnly. ‘Right, good.’
He clipped the lead onto Taggart’s collar to prevent the dog shooting off the moment the door was opened. His hand found the door handle, but stopped there without turning it.
‘The other night. Parents’ evening,’ he began.
‘What about it?’
Logan didn’t look back at Shona. ‘Where was Olivia beforehand?’
‘Not sure,’ Shona said, after a moment’s silence. ‘Think she was out with friends, wasn’t she?’
She might have been. It was entirely possible. He didn’t think she’d ever said as much, though.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ Logan said.
Then, with a turn of the handle and a hurried, ‘Have a good day,’ he let the dog drag him outside into the early morning rain.
Sinead and Tyler stood together on one side of the desk in Logan’s office, while Jack sat hunched in his chair across from them. The window blinds had been pulled shut, cutting them off from the rest of the Incident Room.
Beneath the desk, Taggart snored softly.
‘Tell me again,’ Logan urged.
Tyler and Sinead exchanged sideways glances. They’d gone over the conversation half a dozen times now, between the phone call and here in the office. There was nothing new to add.
‘Just like we said, boss. Harris said he thought she might have a boyfriend. A new one, like, not him. He says they weren’t… But, you know what teenagers are like.’
Logan twirled a finger, urging the DC to get to the point. Again.
‘Then, he said maybe she didn’t, but she’d been acting weird for a few weeks, since she found out her dad was getting out of prison.’
‘A few weeks? That’s what he said?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ Sinead confirmed.
‘And she told him not to say anything?’
‘So he says, boss,’ Tyler replied. ‘And I reckon he was telling the truth.’
Logan groaned, rubbed at his forehead, then stood up suddenly. ‘He was lying,’ he announced.
Sinead shook her head. ‘I don’t think he was, sir. He seemed genuine. I don’t see why—’
‘Not Harris. Bosco. The bastard looked me in the eye and lied to me. Said him popping up had been a shock to Olivia, like she hadn’t known a thing.’
He stood up and walked around to join them on the other side of the desk, then half-sat on the edge, arms folded.
‘If he lied about that, what else is he hiding?’
‘I, eh, I don’t know, boss,’ Tyler said. He shifted uncomfortably on the spot. ‘You, eh, you think that’s the big takeaway from this, though?’
Logan pressed his fingertips to his forehead again, and rubbed more forcefully, like he could wipe away the rapidly building stress headache.
‘For now, aye.’ He sighed. It was heavy and weary. ‘Do me a favour. Keep this to yourself for the minute.’
Another look was exchanged between the detective constables.
‘I know. I know,’ Logan said, picking up on it. ‘I just need a bit of time to sit with it. Just… just trust me on it, alright?’
‘Course, boss.’
‘Always, sir.’
Before anyone could say anything more, there was a sharp rap of knuckles on the glass door. Detective Superintendent Mitchell entered without waiting for an invitation. She nodded once to acknowledge Logan, then turned her attention to Sinead.
‘DC Bell? The panel is ready for you now.’
It was Tyler who reacted first. He sprang a few inches off the floor, his arms flapping around like he’d lost all muscle tone, his eyes widening in shock and horror.
‘Oh, God. Oh, God! This is it!’ he cried.
He lunged in to give his wife a good luck kiss on the cheek, before the disapproving look on Mitchell’s face jarred him off course.
It had taken a lot of wrangling for Tyler and Sinead to be allowed to work on the same team, and part of the agreement had been that there would be no public displays of affection between them while on the job.
He was already moving though. Already committed to the kiss. Panic flooded through him, and he let out a little shriek of surprise as he spun ninety degrees and planted his lips on Logan’s cheek, instead.
Silence fell, broken only by Tyler’s horrified gasp, which he partly muffled by clamping a hand over his mouth.
For what felt like quite a long time, nobody said a word.
Finally, Logan cleared his throat and spoke.
‘I think it’d be best if we all just pretended none of that happened,’ he suggested.
‘I’m sorry, boss. I just… I panicked, and I couldn’t stop in time, so it had to go somewhere, and—’
‘None of it happened, Tyler,’ Logan stressed, and the detective constable mimed zipping his lips shut before they could do any more damage.
Detective Superintendent Mitchell looked from Jack to Tyler, then raised her eyebrows and gave the tiniest little shake of her head.
‘DC Bell?’ she said, tacitly going along with Logan’s suggestion. ‘Shall we?’
Sinead took a breath, then followed Mitchell out of the office. Both men whispered, ‘Good luck,’ when she looked back over her shoulder, and she acknowledged them with a nod and a tight, anxious smile.
Once she’d left, Tyler shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
‘So, um, will… Did…’ He brushed a hand against the top of the desk, like he was checking it was real. ‘Is that a new’—his eyes darted desperately around the room—‘bin?’
‘No,’ Logan told him.
Tyler tilted his head to one side and nodded. He rapped his knuckles on the desktop. ‘What sort of wood’s that, do you think?’ he asked, then a knock on the door provided a much-needed escape route.
‘Oh, thank God,’ Tyler whispered, as he turned to see Hamza entering the room.
‘We just got a call,’ the DI announced. ‘It’s your man, Joe Robertson.’
‘The bag snatcher. What’s he up to this time?’ Logan asked. ‘A smash and grab?’
‘Eh, no, sir.’ Hamza glanced down at the notepad in his hand, like he was double-checking the facts. ‘He’s gone missing.’