“His teeth. Did he have any fillings?”
“Um… His teeth were pretty badly damaged in the fire, but three, I think,” Shona said, her eyes darting back and forth like she was consulting a report inside her head. “I’ll have to double-check. Definitely at least two, though. Why?”
Logan stood up. He didn’t intend to, but his legs hoisted him aloft all on their own.
“It’s not him. The body. That’s not Bernie,” he said.
Sinead’s voice crackled from the mobile. “Well then, that begs the obvious question, sir.”
Logan nodded and looked down at the passport. “Who the bloody hell is it?”
Three minutes later, Sinead stormed into the makeshift interview room and thrust her phone into Oberon Finley-Lennox’s face so suddenly he gave a shriek of fright and covered his head with his hands.
“I’m sorry! I said I’m sorry!” he cried.
“Oh grow up, I’m not going to hurt you,” Sinead said. Behind her, Taggart gave a low, menacing growl.
“But he might,” Hamza pointed out.
“Look at the screen,” Sinead instructed. “Look at it.”
Slowly, like a tortoise emerging from its shell, Oberon removed his arms from his head enough to let him look at Sinead’s mobile, and at the blank, expressionless face of the man in the photograph.
“Do you recognise this man?” Sinead asked.
Oberon eyed her cautiously, like he was trying to figure out what she was up to. “Yes. Of course,” he said. “I mean, he’s younger here, obviously, but that’s him. That’s Bernie.” He tore his eyes from the screen, then looked between the three detectives who were now assembled there in the room with him. “I mean… it is, isn’t it? Or isn’t it?”
“You tell us.” Sinead moved the phone closer, and the MSP retreated further into his seat. “It’s not a trick. It’s not a test. It’s just a question. Is this Bernie the Beacon?”
“Well, yes! Obviously!”
“Thank you,” Sinead said, lowering the phone and turning away.
“You’re welcome. But, I don’t understand what—”
Sinead turned back. The look on her face snapped the politician’s mouth shut. “Do not speak to me unless I tell you to. Understood?”
For a moment, it looked like Oberon might be about to burst into tears, but then he nodded and lowered his head, cowed by her words and the manner in which she’d said them.
“Good,” Sinead said. She turned to Ben and Hamza. “Now, would one of you two mind charging Mr Finley-Lennox for me?”
With a final look back over her shoulder, she fixed the MSP with a stare and a sneer.
“I’ve got better things to do with my time.”
And with that, she swept out of the room, with a starry-eyed Taggart trotting along behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dave Davidson’s night had not been what he was hoping for. He had spent it lying on a thin mat in a stuffy tent that he shared with one other human occupant, and eight-hundred-thousand hungry midges.
He wouldn’t have minded so much if the other human occupant had been of the female persuasion, but Frank was a big lad with a loud snore and restless legs, who had come to Westerly Wellness to help get his digestive problems and chronic flatulence under control.
It had not been effective thus far.
The night had crept by slowly, with Dave made sleepless by insect bites, flailing feet, and repeated exposure to gasses he felt were either banned under the Geneva Convention, or bloody well should be.
Morning, on the other hand, had pounced suddenly the moment he’d finally managed to nod off. The light of it shone through the tent, peeling his eyes open, and then forcing them closed again.
“Fucking fuck!” he muttered. “Fucking, fucking, fuckity-fuck!”
It was shortly after this burst of swearing that Dave sensed the empty space beside him where, for several agonising hours, a lumbering great oaf of a man had been. He forced his eyes open again, raised his head to check, and discovered Frank’s rucksack not just empty, but neatly rolled and stashed in the corner. Or whatever the equivalent to a corner was in a tent as round as this one.
The yurt was a decent size—big enough for Dave to bring his wheelchair inside—which had made the other occupant’s habit of moving endlessly closer in his sleep even more infuriating.
Dave thumbed the sleep from his eyes, stretched, and yawned. It was then that he heard the music—a soft and gentle lilting tune that may well have soothed him back to sleep were it not for the fact that he was desperate for a pee.
He unzipped his sleeping bag and several dozen midges flew out, full to the gunnels after the feast of their lives. They circled around inside the tent for a few seconds, then flew straight for his face and started devouring him again, prompting a fresh outburst of swearing and some frantic scratching that finally brought their reign of terror to an end.
With some effort, he clambered back into his chair, pulled aside the tent flap, rolled himself out into a crisp, bright morning, and came eye to arsehole with a man he instinctively knew was his bunkmate.
He wasn’t sure how he knew, exactly. He had never seen Frank from this angle. He hadn’t seen many people from this angle, in fact, and none of those he had were men.
Frank lay on his back, gripping his bare feet to better spread his legs. His robe was hitched up above his waist, so that his bare backside was fully exposed to the morning sun.
And, to his dismay, to Dave himself.
“Jesus!” the constable hissed, turning away from Frank’s winking anus.
This, it transpired, was a mistake, as his gaze instantly fell on the arse of another man he had not yet been formally introduced to. This one lay parallel to Frank, but several feet away on Dave’s right, so the view—mercifully—wasn’t quite as straight-on and clinical.
However, the other fella—a man in his late fifties, was making eye contact with Dave and smiling, which somehow made the whole thing seem even more sordid. Worse still, this man sported what looked like an impressively powerful erection, although nobody but Dave seemed remotely bothered about this.
Instinctively, Dave turned away again. His gaze swept across half a dozen gaping arses—mostly men’s, but a couple of women’s, too—all aiming past him and upwards to where the sun was climbing up the sky.
“The fuck…?” Dave mumbled. It was a thought that had been building since he’d first rolled out of the tent, but which was only now finally finding its voice.
“Ah! Good morning, mon ami. Would you like to join us?”
Dave turned sharply to his left, grateful to have something to focus on that wasn’t in danger of showing him what a group of total strangers had eaten for lunch the day before. André was pacing between the rows, his hands clasped lightly in front of his body, his robe swishing across the dew-dampened grass.