“Thought we’d do a quick catch-up call,” Ben explained. “A few things have come up, and I’ve set something in motion that I probably should’ve discussed with you first.”
“What have you done?” Logan asked, his fingers tightening on the wheel as he tensed.
“I’m putting Constable Dave Davidson into Westerly Wellness. André Douville’s place.”
“Is he sick?” Tyler asked, which earned him a disparaging look and a shake of the head from Logan.
“Is he sick?” the DCI muttered. “Undercover, son.”
“Oh. Aye. Aye, that makes more sense,” Tyler said, then he frowned and turned his attention back to the screen. “Wait, he’s getting to go to the sex cult? How does he get to go to the sex cult?”
Sinead loudly cleared her throat, and Tyler hurriedly moved to cover his tracks.
“I meant why isn’t it someone from CID, obviously. Not me. I wouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing.”
“Dave just felt like the right man for the job,” Ben said. “Besides, you can see most of these buggers in CID coming a mile off. They’ve practically got the word ‘polis’ stamped on their heads. Whereas, with Dave, sometimes even I forget he’s on the force, even if he’s sat there in uniform.”
Both occupants of the BMW nodded their agreement at that. There was something about Dave Davidson that made him an unlikely police officer, and it was nothing to do with his wheelchair.
It wasn’t so much that he didn’t respect authority, more that he didn’t really notice it. He didn’t bow and scrape to superior officers, but he didn’t act the big man around anyone, either. It was like he considered everyone to be on an equal footing, and no more worthy of respect or scorn than the next man.
Some officers saw the uniform as a licence to throw their weight around. An excuse for a power trip. Dave, on the other hand, saw it as a thing he had to wear for work, and he was probably a far better officer because of that.
Even if that same attitude sometimes made the others forget he was an officer at all.
“Eh… OK,” Logan said. “Did you just fancy giving him a wee holiday, or…?”
Ben gave way to Hamza then, who went over everything they’d found on the man currently calling himself André Douville. Logan sat in silence, eyes fixed on the road ahead, his jaw tightening as the man’s criminal history was read out, and all his deceptions uncovered.
“So, he’s not even French?” Tyler asked once Hamza had finished.
“No,” Ben confirmed. “And he doesn’t look like Jesus, either. Even those big blue sparkly eyes of his are contacts. He’s a bloody charlatan.”
“We should haul the bastard in by the beard and hammer the bloody truth out of him,” Logan said.
“I think we’ll all pretend we didn’t hear that, Jack, and stick with my plan for the moment,” Ben said. “Besides, I think Dave’s excited to get stuck in.”
Tyler snorted. “I bet he bloody is.”
Once Hamza had given a potted history of the MSP, Oberon Finley-Lennox, Sinead took her turn at going over what she’d found. Right now, that wasn’t much. Even with the help of the two constables, wading through the densely packed, often nonsensical newsletters was a slow process.
There were no smoking guns in any of the issues they’d gone through yet—nothing that pointed to any one individual who might be Bernie’s killer. A few trends were starting to emerge, though, which Sinead felt were worthy of note.
“He didn’t like doctors,” she said. “Well, medical professionals in general, but doctors especially. He repeatedly claimed that they’re all running tests on us.”
“Well, they are, aren’t they?” asked Tyler. “That’s sort of their job.”
“Aye, but not for our own benefit. For the government. Who are lizards.”
“Obviously,” Hamza said.
“He reckoned they were using us like lab rats to test new drugs, implants, mind control techniques… That sort of thing.”
“So he’s proper mental, then?” Tyler said. He looked from the stereo to Logan and back again. “Is that a pretty accurate summary?”
“Well, I’m not sure it’d stand up as a medical diagnosis,” Sinead told him. “But aye, that’s definitely the impression his newsletter gives off. There’s top tips on preventing radio signals getting inside your head, one of which involves removing all your teeth with pliers.”
Tyler instinctively rubbed his hand across his mouth at the thought of this, but said nothing. Logan shot a glance at the screen where the number was still being displayed.
“He didn’t do that to himself. The body still had teeth.”
“No, he said it’s only necessary if you have metal fillings. He says he didn’t, so there was no need,” Sinead explained. “If you don’t have fillings, you just have to rub bacon fat on your temples and the back of your neck.”
“I thought they all used tinfoil?” said Ben. “The conspiracy theory nutters, I mean.”
“That’s for the amateurs, sir. So the newsletter says,” Sinead explained. “Apparently, bacon fat is where it’s at.”
“Here, that’d be quite a good advertising slogan,” Tyler said. “Bacon fat is where it’s at!”
Logan side-eyed him. “Who’s advertising bacon fat?” he asked.
Tyler shifted in his seat. “Well… No. But, I’m just saying… If they were.”
There was a moment of silence in which everyone came to the same decision to ignore everything that Tyler had just said.
“Anyway, that’s about all we’ve got for now,” Sinead continued.
“Nothing about the MSP or the wellness centre?” Logan asked.
“Nothing specific, sir, no. But we’ll keep looking.”
Logan steered the BMW around a couple of twists in the road. They were going quite fast, so Tyler was forced to grip the handle above the door and stare straight ahead at some imagined spot on the horizon to stop his nausea from rising too far to contain.
As luck would have it, there was a queue of traffic waiting to make the turn into Urquhart Castle around the next bend, and Logan cursed below his breath as he brought the car to a stop.
“Bloody tourists, eh, boss?” Tyler said, trying hard to hide his relief.
“Aye, you can say that again,” Logan replied in a series of irritated grunts.
Sinead announced that her update was over, so Logan took his turn as they inched forward in the queue.
“We’ve got the briefcase that was in Bernie’s caravan,” he announced, drawing sounds of surprise and celebration from the speaker system. “While Ally Bally had Tyler and Hamza running around like a pair of Muppets, Dinky snuck in and took it. Someone find out their real names, by the way, I’m no’ going to keep calling them that.”
“Will do, sir,” Hamza said.
“So, this Dinky character…” Ben began. “Presumably, he also set the caravan on fire, then?”
“He says he didn’t.”
“Well, he’s hardly going to just own up to it, is he?” Ben replied.
“I actually think he might’ve,” Logan said. “Don’t ask me why, but my hunch is that he didn’t do it.”
“We actually got a report through about the fire,” Hamza said.