“He’s really good at swimming,” Constable Tanaka said. “He’s being modest.”
“No, you’re good at swimming,” Chris told her.
“Not as good as you, though,” Suzi replied. “You’re way better than I am.”
“I’m not way better. You’re really good. Anyway, I’ve got bigger feet. And you know what they say about guys with big feet?” Chris said.
Constable Tanaka smirked. “I do.”
“Dead good at swimming,” Chris concluded. He pointed to Logan’s feet. “Are you any good at swimming, sir?”
Logan looked from one constable to the other, then glanced around to see if any hidden cameras were watching on. There was a real danger, he thought, that this whole conversation was another of Herbert Gibson’s internet pranks. Otherwise, the Police Scotland recruitment crisis was much worse than he thought.
“I’m going back in,” he said.
“To the caravan?” asked Suzi.
“Aye, to the… Where else would I be talking about?”
“Aye. No. Just…” Chris shrugged. “You were talking about going swimming, an’ that. We weren’t clear on what… But, aye. The caravan. Good call. Want us to come with you?”
“Be a bit of a squeeze,” Constable Tanaka said. She smirked at the younger officer. “But I’m game if you are.”
“No. Just wait here,” Logan said, then he pointed to Chris. “In fact, better still, you wait somewhere else. Go back to the scene. Ask for DC Tyler Neish. Tell him you’ve been given direct orders to assist him.”
If the constable answered, Logan didn’t hear it, preferring to take his chances with whatever waited in the caravan than listen to that pair of cretins for a moment longer. PC Tanaka had struck him as promising when he’d first met her, but something about the other constable’s presence appeared to have pruned her IQ.
The smell in the caravan wasn’t as bad, now that he was prepared for it, and it had a bit of time to waft out through the open door. It was still a long way from pleasant—it was still a considerable distance from neutral, in fact—but it would be tolerable enough in short bursts to let him have a poke around.
It was not a big living space, but then if what he’d been told was correct, Bernie only used it for what could, if you were feeling generous, be described as ‘work purposes.’ And, if you were feeling less generous, ‘his demented ramblings.’
The walls were covered in old newspaper cuttings, Polaroids, and handwritten notes in fastidiously neat block capitals. There were hundreds of separate pieces of paper, pinned up with no clearly discernible pattern, then joined up with sagging lengths of string.
An article about sewerage in a local river had a string connecting it to a printout of an internet page about the possibility of water on the planet Mars, which in turn was linked to a list of the months of the year, with all the months ending in the letter ‘Y’ heavily circled and underlined with a red pen.
One whole wall and a boarded-up window were decorated with adverts for something called ‘The Westerly Wellness Retreat’. The name rang a bell somewhere at the back of Logan’s brain, but he couldn’t quite place where he’d seen or heard the name before.
Bernie seemed to hold some deep fascination for the place, though, and had torn out or printed off thirty or more advertisements for the place, before haphazardly pinning them up. Judging by the colour of some of the paper, and the way its edges curled, some of the cuttings were a year or more old.
Another wall held mostly Polaroids. The subject of many of them was a grey-haired man who never seemed to be aware that someone was taking his picture. Strings ran from several of the images, linking them to everything from a medical negligence case in Yorkshire to mass bird deaths in Arizona.
The man, too, was familiar, but the smell of the rotting pheasant carcass was starting to take its toll, and Logan couldn’t face standing around while he rifled through his memory banks. Instead, he plucked one of the photographs free, lumbered down the caravan’s fold-out metal steps, and blew the stench of decay out through his nostrils with what little air was left in his lungs.
“That’s ripe in there,” he remarked, then he held up the photograph. “Who’s this?”
“That? He’s a local politician. Well, a politician who lives locally, anyway. MSP. Forget his name, but I can look it up. Bernie had a bit of an axe to grind with him.”
“Oh? How come?”
The PC blew out her cheeks. “I think he was doing the bidding of a race of lizard men or something. That was the gist of it.”
“Aye, well, I suppose that’s as good a reason to hold a grudge as any,” Logan conceded.
He looked down at the photograph, realising now why the man had looked so familiar. He was the Scottish Parliament member for the local constituency, and no doubt popped up on the news from time to time. He wasn’t one of the big hitters, though, and things generally had to be pretty desperate before the media turned to him for a quote.
The photograph was taken from behind a bush, judging by the foliage in the foreground, and showed the politician putting a black bag into his green wheelie bin. To the casual observer, it was a late-middle-aged man taking the rubbish out, but there was no saying what Bernie saw in the photo, or why he felt the need to pin it to his wall.
“Was he aware of this grudge?” Logan asked. “The MSP, I mean. Did he know Bernie was spying on him?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s put in umpteen complaints. Got really angry a couple of times, when Bernie accosted him while he was out with his daughters. He’s got a non-harassment order out on him at the moment.”
“And did that put a stop to it?”
Tanaka shrugged. “I mean, he hasn’t put in any more complaints lately, so presumably, yes.”
Logan studied the man in the photo, and wondered how recently it had been taken. “Is he around at the moment? Is he here or in Edinburgh?”
“Why would I know that? I don’t have his diary,” the constable sniped, before she remembered the seniority of the man she was talking to, and worked quickly to salvage the situation. “I could find out, though, sir.”
“Aye. You do that,” Logan told her, shooting her a look that made it clear he’d picked up on the insubordination, but was choosing to overlook it just this once. “Is there anyone else Bernie was rubbing up the wrong way round here?”
“Pretty much everyone at one point or another,” Constable Tanaka said. “He could be an annoying bastard when he wanted to be.”
Great. That narrowed it down.
“You think it’s murder, sir?” the PC asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Logan replied. “Could’ve been an accident.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Logan considered the photo in his hand, then the caravan behind him. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t think so. But fingers crossed that I’m wrong.”