“Yeah, but I don’t want it,” Shona said. She tossed the chip in her mouth. It was hotter than she’d been ready for, and she had to keep it moving with her tongue as she spoke so it didn’t get a chance to burn her. “I’m just eating it out of spite.”
Logan looked down at the contents of her Styrofoam tray. Ignoring the big bite she’d taken out of the end, the tray contained one large, curved smoked sausage, and two pickled eggs that couldn’t possibly have rolled into their current position by accident.
“You mean you didn’t leave off the chips for the aesthetics?” he asked.
Shona looked down at her tray and frowned. “How d’you mean?”
“Well…” Logan gestured at her food. “Look at it.”
“What about it?”
“You’ve done that deliberately.”
She looked up at him, shook her head, then studied the tray again. “Done what? What do you mean? Is this supposed to look like something? Because if so, whatever it is, I don’t see it.”
Picking up the sausage, Shona took another big bite off the end.
“You must just have a dirty mind,” she told him as she chewed. “Which, you know, I might be interested in hearing some more about.”
Logan picked up his fish, dunked it in the salad cream, then took a bite. He chewed and swallowed before replying. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Shit. Are you pregnant?” Shona asked.
“No.”
“Am I pregnant? Or… wait. You’re not dumping me, are you?”
“What?” Logan shook his head. “No. No, nothing like…” He sighed. “It was just something that Maddie said. And then I was talking to Sinead, and she told me I should… That we should talk. About it.”
Shona stole another chip from his box. “About what?”
“About… I don’t know. About what happened.”
“When?”
“With…” Logan shuffled around on the couch, which was suddenly lumpier and far less comfortable than it had previously seemed. “During the last big case. When you were…”
“Oh. That.” She waved her big sausage and made a sound like a deflating balloon. “Yeah, I’m fine. Nothing to worry about on that front. Like, at all. At all.”
“You sure?”
She made the same pfffft sound again and rolled her eyes. “I’m sure as shoite,” she said, really playing up her Irish accent. “I don’t even give it a second thought. Or a first thought, even. There’s not a thought about it in my head. What are we even talking about again?”
She laughed, but it was so paper-thin he needed none of his detective skills to see through it.
“Is that why you didn’t go home?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t around?”
“What? Haha, no! Get you all full of yourself, ye big eejit!”
“It was your first night alone, wasn’t it? Since I got out of hospital,” Logan realised. “Either you’ve been here, or I’ve been at yours every night since then. Mostly here.”
He reached out for her hand, but she pulled it away. “It’s not that,” she insisted, her paper smile still fastened in place. “I just… I wanted to get ahead with the PM. That’s all.”
“You can talk to me.”
“I am talking to you now. Look.” She pointed to her mouth. “See my lips moving and hear the sound coming out? I am grand on the talking front.”
“Aye, but—”
“Jack.” She barked out his name, the smile falling away like a switch had been flicked off. “Can we just… Can we just not talk about it? Not right now?”
She fell sideways against him, and he put an arm around her shoulder, holding her in close. “OK. If that’s what you want,” Logan said. “But—”
“Pssht!” She put a finger to her lips. “Not tonight, alright? Just… just not tonight. Let’s just be normal.”
Logan plucked one of his chips from his box and dunked it in the sauce. “Do you do normal? If so, you’ve hidden that well.”
Shona smiled. “OK, maybe not normal, exactly. But normal for us.”
“Normal for us is me getting a phone call at the worst possible time, and—”
His phone rang, and he felt Shona tense up against him. Logan looked at the mobile that lay on the coffee table between the briefcase and Shona’s laptop bag. The screen was lit up, but he couldn’t make out the name on it.
“You should get it,” Shona said, after they’d sat staring at it for a while. With some effort, she detached herself from him. “It might be important.”
Logan sighed, set aside his fish supper, then leaned over and picked up the phone. “It’s just Tyler,” he said.
“It might be important,” Shona reiterated.
Logan grunted. “Did you no’ hear what I said? It’s just Tyler.”
Shona let out the first few notes of a laugh, then took a bite out of a pickled egg and nodded to the phone. “Quick, before he hangs up.”
With a sigh, Logan answered the ringing phone. “Tyler. What is it?”
“Alright, boss?” came the reply, chirpy as ever. “How’s it going?”
“It was going fine,” Logan said. “What’s happening?”
“Just got Harris to bed. Thought I’d check in to see what’s happening in the morning.”
Logan tutted. “And you couldn’t have texted?”
There was a moment of silence from the other end. Logan heard Tyler take a breath, and could almost picture him puffing himself up.
Good on the lad.
“I could’ve, boss, but I decided not to,” he replied. “Because I think you’ve missed something.”
Logan frowned. “What do you mean? Missed what?”
“Well, I’ve just been in the shared inbox looking at the photos and stuff you sent,” Tyler continued. “And in one of them, you can see a computer screen.”
“And?”
“And the X-ray of the briefcase is on there.”
Logan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Get to the point, son.”
“I think there’s something else in the case, boss. Something you didn’t take a picture of.”
Logan frowned, then indicated Shona’s laptop. “Can you get the X-ray we took tonight on there?”
“Mm-hm,” Shona said through a mouthful of vinegar-infused boiled egg. She took her bag from the table, slipped out the laptop, and Logan watched her fingers dance across the keys like revellers at a rave.
“We’re looking now,” Logan said into the phone.
Shona said something, but her full mouth turned it into an incomprehensible mush of vowels and consonants. Logan got the gist from the way she presented the screen to him, though.
It showed the X-ray they’d taken a couple of hours ago, the boxy outline of the briefcase clear to see, along with the photocopied letters, the bundle of photographs, and the outlines of the envelopes containing both.
“I’m not seeing…” the DCI began, but then he stopped when Shona tapped a spot on the screen.
It wasn’t obvious. Not right away. Whatever it was had been well-hidden in the image by the photographs on top of it, but there was definitely something else there. Something thicker than the other items in the case. A notebook, maybe, or…
No. Best not to get his hopes up.
“You spotted it yet, boss? Middle right. Looks a bit like—”
“Aye, I see it,” Logan confirmed. “Good spot, son. We were looking for bombs, and clearly not paying enough attention to the details.”