Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The car park at Burnett Road station was emptier than it had been when they’d left. Even the most die-hard dayshifters had headed home, and though there were plenty of officers still on duty, a large chunk of the civilian staff would now be off for the weekend.
‘Thanks for letting me tag along,’ Reeve said, taking his keys from his pocket.
Logan’s car locked with a chi-chirp, the indicator lights flashing as the mirrors folded in.
‘Aye, well, good for you to see how it’s done.’
‘Every day’s a school day,’ Reeve replied.
They stood there in the rain, facing one another over the bonnet of Logan’s SUV. Reeve clicked his fingers, then tapped the side of one hand into the open palm of the other.
‘Guess I’ll be seeing you around, Detective Chief Inspector.’
‘Not too soon, I hope.’
‘Ha! For both our sakes,’ Reeve said.
He hesitated for a few moments, then started off in search of where he’d parked his car. Logan turned, but barely made it a step before the other detective spoke again.
‘I like people,’ Reeve announced. ‘I mean, you know, some more than others, but in general. I like people. I like animals more because, you know, I’m not a psychopath, but I do like people.’
Logan had no idea what sort of response he was supposed to give to that, if any, so he barely bothered to acknowledge it at all.
‘And I think I understand people. Not all of them, and not everything, but enough. And, uh’—Reeve glanced down, choosing his words carefully—‘I’m sorry about how things went with your… foster daughter?’
Logan’s brow furrowed, like the shifting of a tectonic plate.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t catch all of it, obviously. But I saw you taking her into the room, Bosco told me a few things, I heard DC Neish mention the pathologist. Shona, right?’
He winced, like this was not going to plan. No doubt the look on Logan’s face played some part in him thinking that.
‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ Logan agreed.
Reeve nailed his smile back on. ‘I hope things work out,’ he said.
‘It’s none of your concern,’ Jack told him.
‘Sure. You’re right.’ Reeve held up his hands. ‘Should’ve kept my mouth shut.’
He moved to go, then stopped again.
‘Oh. Shoot. One thing.’
Logan sighed. ‘What now?’
‘Bosco. Mr Maximuke.’ Reeve’s gaze flitted to one of the upper floors of the station. ‘You did remember to let him out, right?’
‘Where fuck you been? You leave me in here for hours. For four hours. Five!’
‘My arse. It’s not been five hours, Bosco,’ Logan told him. ‘It’s been ninety minutes. Two hours, tops.’
Bosco was on his feet and red-faced with anger. Or maybe he’d been burning off a lot of energy pacing around and trying to force the door open.
‘I could have died. Thirst. Hunger. What if I needed piss?’
Logan ran a hand down his face. ‘Again, it was an hour and a half, Bosco. I’m sure you could’ve tied a knot in it.’
‘I should complain! I have right to complain!’ the Russian cried. ‘See what bosses say then, yes?’
‘I could charge you,’ Logan spat back at him. ‘You gave a false confession. You wasted polis time. If I arrest you, then you end up back in the nick. No trial, no more plea bargaining. Just bang. In you go. See you in a few more years.’
Bosco’s chest rose and fell, like a racehorse after a sprint.
‘So, will we overlook this little oversight?’ Logan asked him. ‘Or do you want to escalate it further?’
Bosco wriggled his shoulders, like he was trying to shrug something off. He sighed, breathing out all the fight that had been in him.
‘I did not need piss, anyway.’
‘Good. Glad to hear it. I’ll get Uniform to take you downstairs.’
‘Push me downstairs, you mean?’
‘Nice as that would be, no. You can take the lift if you want,’ Logan told him. ‘But I want the address where you’re staying, I want a contact number, and if you so much as think about leaving town in the next few days, Bosco, I’ll personally cut both your legs off.’
Bosco didn’t bite back at that. Instead, he nodded to say he understood, then fiddled with the little crucifix that hung around his neck.
‘What about Olivia?’ Bosco asked.
Logan tensed. Braced himself. ‘What about her?’
‘She in trouble?’
‘No.’ Logan shook his head. ‘No, she isn’t.’
Bosco’s expression contorted into confusion. ‘Then why you bring her in? Why you interrogate her?’
It was a bloody good question. Jack had been asking himself the same thing for the past couple of hours.
Why had he done it?
What had he been thinking?
‘Stay out of bother, Bosco,’ Logan said. He knocked on the interview room door, and a constable opened it from the other side. ‘Or Olivia will be way down your list of concerns.’
Ben Forde was attempting to wrestle himself into his Paddington Bear duffel coat when Logan returned to the Incident Room.
‘Christ, you not gone yet?’ Jack asked. ‘Moira’s going to have my bollocks for this.’
‘Ach, she’ll be fine,’ Ben said. He fiddled with the buttons of the coat, trying to fasten it up. ‘How’d you get on down the road?’
Logan gave a shake of his head.
‘That good?’
‘Pretty much,’ Logan confirmed. ‘I left Hamza down there. He’ll make sure everything’s ticking along. But, the short of it is, Joe Robertson is dead. Looks like suicide, though we’ll have to wait for confirmation.’
‘Jesus,’ Ben muttered.
‘From the angle, what I saw, I’d say he lay down in the grass. Tucked the shotgun under his chin and… Well.’
‘Christ,’ Ben said, finishing the thought.
‘Aye,’ Logan said.
He shrugged off his coat, even as Ben was still fastening his up.
‘You sticking around?’ Ben asked.
Logan thought about what might be waiting for him at home. The conversations. The arguments. The cold shoulders, or screaming matches.
All the hurt that he’d caused.
‘Aye. Going to hang on a bit,’ he said.
He looked over to where Dave still sat, fingertips rippling across the keys, frowning expression fixed on the screen.
‘Dave, you can get off, if you like. Already sent Tyler and Sinead home.’
Dave shrugged, not taking his eyes from the computer. ‘I’m still digging on the Bitcoin stuff. I’ll only end up doing it at home. Might as well run up your electric bill instead of my own.’
‘Fair enough,’ Logan conceded.
Dave finally tore his gaze away from the monitor. He pointed to the computer on Tyler’s desk, which was still on.
‘Oh, got a wee deep dive running on HOLMES for Eleanor Belov at the minute. Nothing coming up so far beyond the dead first husband stuff, and a couple of parking tickets. It’ll ping if there’s anything else.’
‘Good work,’ Logan told him.
Ben finished buttoning up his oversized coat. It gave him the shoulders of an American Football player, and came down to somewhere below his knees.
He held his arms out, presenting himself for appraisal.
‘How do I look?’
‘Like a five-year-old wearing his old man’s clothes,’ Logan replied.
‘Or two dwarves standing one on top of the other,’ Dave suggested.
‘Or—’
‘Alright, alright,’ Ben said, silencing them both with a good-natured scowl. ‘So, tomorrow… I’ll, eh… Do you need me to…?’
‘We’ll see you in the morning,’ Logan said.
Ben gave him a wink and a nod. ‘I’ll bring the breakfast rolls.’
There was a ping from Tyler’s computer. Loud. Sharp. Very much drawing attention to itself.
Dave was already wheeling his way over to it by the time Logan figured out what it was.
Ben squinted at the monitor, but it was too far away for him to read what it said. Besides, it was late. If he got himself caught up in something else, he’d be there all bloody night.
‘And that,’ he said, as Dave and Logan closed in on Tyler’s desk from opposite sides. ‘Is my cue to leave.’
‘Goodnight, now!’ Ben called to the man on the front desk, who smiled and waved back at him.
You wouldn’t have got that sort of response back in Moira’s day, when she was the guardian of the Fort William station. She wouldn’t have stood for a cheerful farewell from a departing visitor. She’d have spat at you for less.
She’d be cleaning up in the café by now. Olivia was meant to be pulling a shift, which was the only reason Moira had agreed to let Ben stay on for another day at the station.
Obviously, given recent events, Olivia wouldn’t have been at work, which meant Moira would’ve been on her own all day, running the place single-handedly.
It was a good thing no bugger ever came in.
The rain had stopped again, but the air still had that icy dampness to it that got in about your joints and ached all the way down to the bone.
Fortunately, his oversized coat meant he was sweating buckets, and the evening air, when it hit him, came as a blessed relief.
His car was still parked at the café. That was fine. It was a short stroll across the industrial estate around the back of the station. Two or three minutes, tops, even at his ambling pace.
It was a pity there wasn’t a flower shop, or even a petrol station on the way, so he could try to appease Moira with a bunch of tulips.
Not that she liked tulips. Or flowers. Or being appeased. She enjoyed being angry. Annoyance wasn’t just her default state, it was her preferred one.
So, really, if you thought about it, he’d done her a favour by abandoning her all day. She should probably thank him for it.
Aye. That was a nice thought, if nothing else.
Ben had just reached the back gate of the station when he heard the screeching of tyres, and a shout of surprise. He recognised the voice right away. That Russian accent was undeniable.
Years of conditioning kicked in, and he ran in the direction of the sound, reaching a turn in the road just as the back doors of a white transit van were thrown open.
Two men, both heavily built, both masked up, rained punches on a third man as they bundled him towards the back of the vehicle. Bosco. Ben couldn’t see him clearly, not without his glasses, but the shouting gave him away.
‘What fuck you doing? What fuck you doing?’
There was a crack. Something hard hit Bosco across the back of the head, and his legs gave way.
‘Oi! You! Police!’ Ben boomed, throwing himself forward, running as fast as he could despite his age, and his legs, and his ridiculous coat fighting him every step of the way.
He wasn’t police, of course. Not now. But these bastards didn’t need to know that.
‘Stop where you are!’
That time, the shout barely reached them. Pain ratcheted across Ben’s chest, like a band tightening around him, squeezing the air from his lungs.
He stumbled. Staggered. They were too far away. There was no way he was going to reach them. Even if he did, what could he do? What good was he?
His hands frantically patted at his pockets, searching for his glasses so he could at least get the details. So he could at least do that much.
By the time he found them, by the time he pulled them on, the van was halfway down the street, the number plate obscured by the red glow of its taillights.
He’d lost them. The two masked men were gone.
And they’d taken Bosco Maximuke with them.