“Do us both a favour, Mr Finley-Lennox,” Logan said. He wasn’t smiling, exactly, but he wasn’t not smiling, either. “Get the Freedom UK out of this station.”
The not-quite-smile became a fully-fledged grin then. It showed too many teeth, and drew a little cheep of fear from the politician.
“You’ll be hearing from my solicitor,” Oberon squeaked, scuttling through the open door.
“Aye, well, maybe let him know you’re facing six months and an unlimited fine. He might want to prioritise that,” Logan said.
Then, before the other man could reply, he closed the door, turned back to the audience of detectives who’d been pretending not to be watching and listening to the entire exchange, and graciously accepted their applause.
Even Taggart, who had been lying under what passed for the reception desk, thumped his tail against the floor in approval.
“Do you know?” Logan began, shrugging off his coat. “I thoroughly enjoyed that.”
“I think we all did, sir,” Hamza said.
“It was his face I enjoyed the most,” Sinead said. “The way it sort of collapsed when you mentioned his wife taking the photos to the papers.”
There was some general agreement that this had indeed been a particularly good bit.
“Right. Anyway. We got an update or what?” the DCI asked, getting them back on track.
“Big Board’s all ready,” Sinead informed him.
“Good. Let’s go over that, then.” He pointed to DC Neish. “Tyler, go make tea,” he said, then he turned and headed for what currently served as the Incident Room.
“How about you make your own tea, you big arsehole?”
Logan stopped.
Three gasps of shock rang out in the silence. Three pairs of eyes deftly darted in the DC’s direction.
Under the table, Taggart lay very still, sensing the change of pressure in the room that suggested an oncoming storm.
Despite all this, Tyler stood his ground.
To start with, anyway. That soon changed once Logan turned on the spot to face him.
“Was that… Was that too far?” he asked, his voice a dry croak.
“What do you think, son?” Logan intoned.
Tyler swallowed. “I think… I think maybe I’ll go make the tea, boss.”
“I think that’s a very wise decision,” the DCI agreed.
Tyler rallied slightly. “But, just so we’re clear, I’m only doing it because I want to. Not because you said.”
“You tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself, Detective Constable,” Logan replied. “Everyone else, Incident Room. Now. Let’s get this thing wrapped up.”
“Right you are, Jack,” Ben said, following along behind. “By the way, has anyone heard from Dave this morning?”
It was a common complaint, Dave Davidson was assured. That much sun, on an area that had previously seen so little? A touch of sunburn was always going to be a danger. But the discomfort would pass. The main thing was that he had opened himself up to a life-changing experience—literally—and his Hui Yin would never be the same again.
In hindsight, he quite liked his old Hui Yin, he thought. The Hui Yin whose itchiness wasn’t driving him up the wall, and which didn’t elicit a little yelp of pain every time he broke wind.
The accident that had left him wheelchair bound had robbed him of his strength below the waist, but not of all sensation. Previously, this was something he’d been happy about. Today, not so much.
It wasn’t something he’d generally given much thought to over the years, his arse, but he was regretting that now. He felt he hadn’t appreciated it properly. It had just sort of been there, steadfastly doing its duties, day in, day out, never complaining too much.
It had certainly never flaked before. Of all the medical complaints he had ever suffered from—and there had been plenty—a flaky arsehole had never been one that had so much as crossed his mind.
Fifteen minutes flat on his back in a field had put paid to that. Now, the flakiness of the region in question was pretty much the only thing he could think about.
He was not the first Westerly Wellness ‘acolyte’ this had happened to, and he almost certainly wouldn’t be the last. It was so common, in fact, that André had created a special ointment designed to help alleviate the discomfort.
“A couple of dabs, and you shall be right as rain, oui?” he’d promised, as he’d handed Dave the tub.
Not one to do things by halves, Dave had elected to scoop out half the tub’s contents, and smear the greenish-white gunk liberally over the affected area.
The relief was instantaneous.
And then, a moment later, it wasn’t.
“Shit. Shit, shit, fuck, ow!” he hissed, scratching furiously at his sun-ravaged anus.
“Everything alright?” André called from just outside the tent.
“It stings. It’s fucking… Ow! Jesus! What is this stuff?” Dave asked.
“It is made from nettle leaves,” André replied.
“Fucking nettles?!” Dave yelped. “Why?!”
“It should not sting if you just dab.” There was a moment of silence from beyond the tent flaps. “You did just dab, like I instructed, oui?”
Dave stared at the half-empty tub in horror. “Erm…” he began. “Define ‘dab.’”
Logan and the others sat back, tea in hand, while Sinead went over everything they’d pulled together in the past twenty-four hours.
There were now two main threads to the investigation—the identity of the body, and the whereabouts of Alan Rigg, aka Bernie the Beacon. One of those threads was far more developed than the other, although neither seemed to be nearing any sort of resolution.
“We’ve gone through Alan Rigg’s history. No criminal record. No social media presence. Lots coming up on Google, but nothing so far that looks like it’s referring to him. It’s quite a common name, it seems,” Sinead explained.
“If he’s been hiding out here for a decade or more, it’s hardly surprising he’s no’ all over the internet,” Logan said. “Have we been able to track down any family?”
“We have, sir,” Sinead confirmed. “His wife. She lives in Leeds. They both did, apparently, until he had what she describes as, ‘a total fucking breakdown,’ and upped and left. They’re technically still married, though she says she hasn’t seen or heard from him since.”
“And she never reported him missing?” asked Ben, helping himself to a Rich Tea from a plate of biscuits that Tyler had brought in with the tea—entirely of his own free will, the DC had stressed.
“She did about ten years ago, but nothing was done,” Sinead continued. “He’d basically told her he was leaving and wasn’t coming back, so it wasn’t seen as a priority and was never really followed up on.”
“What prompted the breakdown, do we know?” Logan asked.