“You remember DS Khaled, then,” Logan said. “Good.”
“Why’s that good?” Dinky asked. He produced a small metal pipe from down the side of the armchair, lit it with a disposable lighter, then took a long draw from it.
“Means your brain’s not totally addled,” Logan said. He sniffed the air, then eyeballed the pipe. “Is that cannabis?”
“It’s medicinal.”
“You’ll have a prescription, then?”
Dinky removed the pipe from his mouth and used it to gesture at the DCI. “You’re not a very good detective, are you? If I have this prescribed, why would I still have the prescription? They don’t give you it back to use the next time.”
Logan chose not to get into it. From somewhere outside, he heard the barking of Dinky’s dog getting fainter and further away, and felt a flicker of concern for the welfare of DC Neish.
It faded quickly—not because he didn’t care about the younger officer, but because he knew something that Tyler didn’t.
He knew that, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, the lad could handle himself.
“You still not caught your killer yet?”
“Sorry?” Logan asked.
“Your pal who was here last time. He was investigating a murder.” Dinky sucked on his pipe. “You still not got someone for that?”
“We did,” Logan said. “I’m not here about that. We’re here for Ally Bally.”
“Why?” Dinky asked, his eyes narrowing. “What’s he done?”
“That’s still to be determined,” Logan said. “We’re investigating the death of a man we only know at the moment as Bernie.”
Dinky choked on his next lungful of smoke. He whipped the pipe from his mouth, then spent several seconds hacking and coughing and wheezing, his eyes bulging like they were about to pop.
“Fuck off!” he gasped, when he could finally get a breath. “Bernie’s dead?”
“You knew him?”
“Prick owed me eight hundred quid!” Dinky cried. “Jesus Christ, why does this keep happening to me? The last guy owed me money, too. Never fucking saw that again, did I?”
“You’d loaned him money?”
“You deaf, or something? You not hear me way up there? Yes, he owed me money. He owed me eight hundred quid.”
“Since when?”
“Since he fucking borrowed it,” Dinky snapped back.
Logan bit his tongue and swallowed down his rising temper. “Which was…?”
“I don’t know. Three weeks. A month. Something like that. Bastard!” He flopped like a fish as he dismounted the armchair, then scurried past Logan, heading for the couch. “Wait till I check my paperwork.”
“You’ve got paperwork?”
“Course I’ve got paperwork. I’m a businessman. Businessmen have paperwork.”
Logan watched him clamber up onto the arm of the couch. The teetering piles of paper wobbled dangerously, but Dinky remained unconcerned. Stretching for the top of the closest pile, he pulled down three or four sheets, rifled through them, then gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Here we are,” he said, then his face scrunched up in rage. “It’s fucking nine hundred! Nine ton, up in smoke. Just like that.”
Logan took his hands from his coat pockets and crossed them in front of himself. “Interesting choice of words there, Dinky.”
Standing on the couch, the little man was close to the height of the average adult. This still made him substantially shorter than Logan, though, and he looked up at the detective with a look that might have been genuine confusion, but could equally have been an act.
“What words are they, then?”
“That your money’s ‘up in smoke.’ Bernie’s body was set on fire.”
Dinky’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t know that. That’s just…” He pulled himself together. “Aye, bad choice of words, but he’s fuck all to do with me. Guy owes me eight hundred quid.”
“Nine hundred,” Logan corrected.
“Fuck!” Dinky spat. “Guy owes me nine hundred quid. Why am I going to kill him? What benefit would that possibly bring me?”
“Maybe he wasn’t paying you back.”
Dinky laughed at that. It would’ve been a big, booming laugh for a full-sized man, so from someone of his size, it was something quite exceptional. He threw back his head, and the laughter filled the room and shook the towers of papers where they stood.
“Aye. No. I don’t think so,” he said, once the hilarity had come to an end. “He might’ve been a headcase, but he wasn’t daft. Not after last time.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “Last time? What do you mean?”
Dinky shrugged, a sly smile curving one corner of his mouth. “Let’s just say, he’s borrowed money off me a few times before, and that on one of those occasions he ‘forgot’ to pay it back on the agreed timetable.”
“What did you do?” Logan asked. He expected Dinky to act coy about it, and at most to give some vague hint of what had transpired without getting into the details.
Coy, however, did not seem to be in the man’s vocabulary.
“Let’s just say that during discussions, one of his wrists got broken,” he said, practically rubbing his hands together with glee.
“Are you confessing to a crime here, Dinky?”
Realisation darted across the other man’s face, and he gave a sad little shake of his head. “Of course not. It was an accident, obviously. Nothing for you lot to get involved in. Real shame. But, on the upside, we’ve had a long and successful business relationship since, with clarity and understanding on both sides. He was one of my best customers.”
He got down from the couch and presented Logan with a handwritten sheet of paper.
“What’s this?” The DCI asked, squinting at the indecipherable series of swirls and squiggles.
“Loan agreement. As you can see, he wasn’t due to start paying me back until next week. I had no beef with Bernie, pal. In fact, I’m pretty much the last person who wanted him dead. So, if it’s a murderer you’re looking for, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
The dog was closing in. Tyler could no longer just hear it, he would swear he could feel it, too. The vibrations of its paws hitting the ground. The warm swirl of its breath on the back of his legs, even through the mascot outfit.
He could sense its hunger, too. Its hatred, and its rage. Its desire to sink its teeth into Tyler’s juicy flesh, and rip it from his bones.
It was going to eat him alive. He was sure of it. No doubt in his head. This four-legged torpedo—this furry land shark—was closing in on him. Any second now, it would make the leap. There would be pain. He’d fall. And then, squirrel suit or no squirrel suit, his world would be nothing but sharp teeth, dog breath, and a growing number of open wounds.
Why hadn’t be brought the dog treats? He could’ve thrown them. They might have bought him a second or two to climb a tree. He could’ve waited there for Logan to come find him. Or, if it really came to it, lived there indefinitely.