Logan sniffed as he gave the MSP an appraising once-over. “Aye. Doesn’t look the type to get his hands dirty, right enough. Besides, what would the papers say?” He shrugged. “Probably nothing. Or just, ‘Who?’”
“This is… No. I’m not having this. This is unacceptable,” Oberon said. “I’m not having this in my own house. I’m not being accused of… whatever it is I’m being accused of. I’m not some… some common criminal that you can just push around. I am a duly elected Member of the Scottish Parliament!”
“On the list vote,” Logan reminded him.
“That’s irrelevant!” Oberon insisted. “Who’s your superior? I’m going to have my office contact him to put in a complaint.”
“Her,” Logan corrected. “It’s Detective Superintendent Mitchell, up in Inverness. And I’m sure she’d love another complaint to add to the pile.”
“Yes. Well, please do rest assured that she shall be getting one!”
“Oh, I have no doubt that she will,” Logan said. He looked around at the office, with its expensive old furniture and grandiose style, then gave the MSP a nod. “Keep your phone on for us,” he instructed. “I’ve got a feeling we’ll be talking to each other again very soon.”
Taggart bounced around excitedly when the detectives returned to the car, but managed to restrain himself enough to not come bounding into the front and onto their laps. Instead, he stuck his head between the gap in the front seats, and panted happily as Sinead patted his head.
Through the front windscreen, they watched Oberon’s Range Rover pull away from the house and go roaring up the road with a turn of speed that skirted defiantly close to the speed limit.
“What do you think?” Sinead asked.
“From a purely personal perspective, I think he’s an arsehole,” Logan replied.
“And from a professional perspective?”
“I think you’re right that he wouldn’t have killed Bernie himself.” Logan looked up at the house, with its dozen windows, and ivy creeping across the old red bricks. “But he’s certainly got the resources to have some other bugger do it for him.”
Taggart nudged his arm with his head, then licked his elbow through his coat. Logan begrudgingly reached back and tousled the dog’s fur beneath its chin.
“There, you needy bastard. Happy?”
Judging by the way the little dog’s tail wagged, he was over the moon.
“Right, you ready to face this road?” asked the DCI, starting the engine.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sinead said with a groan.
Logan put the car into gear and stole a glance at his mirrors. For a moment, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Mrs Finley-Lennox peeking out through the blinds at one of the downstairs windows.
When he looked closer, though, she was gone.
“Right, then,” he announced, his gaze lingering there for just a moment. “Let’s get a shifty on.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ben was having problems of the technical variety. This was not unusual, but given that the technology he was currently attempting to use was so unfamiliar, and the internet speeds so poor, the problems were even worse than usual.
“Hello? Hello?” He tapped the screen of the laptop in an apparently random series of places then, when this achieved precisely nothing, he pecked at the space bar. “Can you hear me? I think there’s something wrong with this thing.”
“Why would she be able to hear you, boss?” asked Tyler, bending so he leaned over the DI’s left shoulder. “You’ve not started the call.”
“What? How do you know?”
Hamza leaned over Ben’s right shoulder. “Well, it says ‘Start Call’ there, doesn’t it, sir?”
“What? Where?” Ben peered over his glasses at the button on the screen. “That one?”
“That’s the one, boss,” Tyler confirmed.
Ben prodded the button and waited.
“It’s not touchscreen, sir,” Hamza told him. “You need to use the trackpad.”
“The trackpad?” Ben squinted at the screen, then down at the keyboard. Then, he repeated his movement several times before asking the obvious question. “What’s that?”
“The square bit, boss. There, below the space bar.”
“Oh, the swipey bit? Well why didn’t you bloody say so?”
Ben shot them both reproachful looks like this was somehow all their fault, then moved a finger across the trackpad. The arrow cursor shot straight to the top of the screen, slid to the far right corner, and stayed there.
“Where’s the thingy? I’ve lost the thingy,” he said, eyes hunting the screen for any sign of it.
“It’s up there, sir,” Hamza said, indicating the top corner. “Would it be easier if I just dialled you in?”
“That definitely sounds easier, boss,” Tyler said.
“I’m not going to learn if you keep doing these things for me,” Ben said. “You just need to show me how to do it myself.”
Hamza had shown him how to do ‘these things’ for himself. He had shown him this exact thing three times now, and it wasn’t getting any easier.
“Maybe we could sit down next week sometime and go through it,” Hamza said, before quietly adding an, “again.”
“Shona’s going to be thinking we’re not coming, boss,” Tyler pointed out. “We were meant to be dialled in five minutes ago.”
Ben sighed and took his hands off the keyboard like he was turning himself in. “Fine. You give it a try. I’m telling you, though, there’s something wrong with it. You won’t get it to—”
Hamza clicked the button he’d drawn Ben’s attention to earlier, and after a further click to confirm, Shona’s face appeared on the screen.
“Aha! There you are!” she said. “I thought you’d stood me up.”
“Hello, Shona!” Ben bellowed, loud enough to make the pathologist pull an earbud from her ear in fright.
“You can just talk normally, sir,” Hamza told him.
“Aye, there’s a microphone, boss. She doesn’t have to hear you shouting all the way from Inverness.”
“Oh. Right, aye. Sorry about that,” Ben said. He was still projecting his voice more than usual, but it was an improvement.
Shona stuffed her earbud back in while her eyes searched the screen. “Jack not there?”
“No, he’s still out and about,” Ben said. “Not quite sure when he’ll be back.”
“Ah right. No rest for the wicked!” Shona said. “It’s the same here, actually. Pulled an all-nighter with your camper.”
“You’ve been at it all night?” Ben frowned. “You shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t especially urgent. You’ll be knackered.”
“No, I’m wide awake, actually,” Shona said, and the way she bounced around in her chair backed this up. “Petrol station at Tesco has got this new energy drink in. I stocked up on it. I am, not to put too fine a point on it, buzzing off my tits.” Her eyes widened even as she heard the words coming out of her mouth. “By which I mean I’m heavily caffeinated. Anyway, how are you all doing? It’s funny seeing you all on the screen like this. The way you’re positioned, you look like the video for Bohemian Rhapsody.”
She fell silent for a moment, sniffed, then clutched her head like it was about to explode.
“Sorry, I’m talking absolute shite. Clearly, I need to get some sleep. You’ll be after the post-mortem results?”