“Aye, hopefully,” Logan agreed. “Run it and we’ll see. I’m heading back now. Should be there in about an hour. Log this with the team running the investigation in England, will you? They should know.”
“Will do, sir,” Hamza confirmed.
Logan whistled, drawing Taggart’s attention. The dog came bounding back to him, tail spinning in circles so it looked like it was propelling him across the grass.
“And get me a number for the DCI leading the case down there,” Logan said, as Taggart skidded to a stop beside him. “I think it’s time that he and I had a little chat.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Tyler opened the front door to Strontian Police Station, wiped his feet on the mat, then announced his presence by proclaiming, “Well, that was a complete waste of time.”
He entered their improvised Incident Room, hung his jacket on the back of the door, then had a sniff of his armpits.
“Warm out there,” he said. “Especially when you’re walking miles going door to door. Why can’t people just live closer together?”
He realised then that nobody was listening to him. Sinead was adding reams of information to the Big Board, Hamza sat typing away on his laptop, while Ben was talking on the phone.
“Did I miss something?” Tyler asked. “Has something happened?”
The door behind him was thrown open, and he had to dart out of its path to avoid being splattered against the wall.
Taggart ran into the room first, his whole body thrumming with excitement, his tail swinging so wildly he was walloping himself with it over and over again.
Logan came through a moment later, his coat off, and his sleeves rolled up like he meant business. Either that, or he, too, was feeling the heat.
“Alright, boss?” Tyler looked from the DCI to the other detectives. “I think something’s happening.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Logan demanded.
Tyler blinked. “I was… You told me to do door-to-door.”
“Oh. Aye. Anything?”
“Total waste of time, boss. Half of them thought I was a Jehovah’s Witness.” His brow furrowed, like he was being haunted by a troubling memory. “And one older woman said I was late, then started taking her kit off. I think… I think she might’ve thought I was a prostitute.”
“That’s a fine bit of deduction there, son,” Logan told him.
Hamza looked up from the laptop. “Well, while you’ve been hooring and touring it around out there, some of us have been making real progress.”
“Aye?” Tyler gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Maybe you should send me away to do pointless stuff more often. Clearly, I’m a jinx.”
Logan fixed him with a solemn look of reproach. Tyler shrunk for a moment, nodded, then turned back to Hamza.
“I mean… go fuck yourself.” He winked up at Logan, but it was clear from the DCI’s face that his retort hadn’t quite hit the mark. “Go fuck yourself, Sergeant?” He shook his head and shrugged. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I’m going to get the hang of this, boss.”
“You can work on it,” Logan instructed. He started to close the door, then stopped when the two uniformed constables arrived in the reception area, and beckoned them both inside.
“Morning, all,” said Constable Tanaka. “We were out by Sanna beach.”
PC Miller interjected. “Aye, not for… We weren’t surfing or anything. We were on a call-out, she means.”
“What? Aye. We were at a call out. Came as quickly as we could.”
“Fine. I don’t care. You’re here now, so find a spot,” Logan urged, then he shut the door behind them.
Tyler took a seat next to Hamza, who was still staring at him in shock. “What the hell was that about?” asked the DS.
“What was what about?”
“You telling me to go fuck myself.”
“Oh, that!” Tyler replied in a whisper. “Just… the boss told me to have a bit more confidence in my own abilities. To be my own cheerleader, sort of thing. I mean, he didn’t use those words, exactly, but that was the general gist of it.”
Hamza considered this. “And how does, ‘Go fuck yourself, Sergeant,’ help on that front?”
“Well, I mean…” Tyler began, but the rest of the sentence eluded him. Instead, he indicated Sinead and the Big Board with a nod. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Looks major.”
“It is,” Hamza confirmed, but before he could go any further, Sinead turned from the board and, for the benefit of the constables, detective, and otherwise, she provided a quick recap that brought everyone in the room up to date on the death of Alan Rigg’s daughter, the missing Jameelah Oboko, and the very real possibility that those two things were connected.
And the information didn’t stop there.
“Got an ANPR ping on the vehicle already,” she said, and Logan’s ears practically pricked up.
“We have? Where?”
“M6, just south of Penrith. Headed north,” Sinead said. She anticipated the next question, too. “Four days ago. The day Jameelah was taken.”
“Well, that all-but confirms it, then,” Logan said. “Bernie—Alan, I mean—he must’ve taken the girl.”
“We’ve got the search still running for the plate,” Hamza said. “If it’s been picked up anywhere else, we should know in a couple of hours. And we’ve got eyes peeled for it all over the country. The team down south are going to put out Alan’s name and photograph, as well as the reg and description of the van in a new appeal. If he’s still driving it, we’ll get him.”
“I just hope we’re not too late,” Ben said. He shook his head. “That poor girl.”
At the back of the room, Constable Miller and Constable Tanaka swapped looks. They both tilted their heads, each encouraging the other to be the one to interrupt, until Suzi got fed up with this and just blurted it out.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Sorry to interrupt, and everything, but… van?”
The detectives all turned her way. Even Taggart looked up at her, although he was mostly just following the crowd.
“Uh, yes,” Sinead confirmed. “We believe Bernie—Alan—was driving a van.”
The constables swapped glances again. “White van? Shitheap of a thing? Rust on the wheel arches?”
“Aye,” Logan said. “Like that. Why?”
Now that the hard work of interrupting the briefing had been done, Constable Miller swooped in to steal all the glory. “Our call-out to Sanna Bay, it was for an abandoned vehicle. Down an embankment at the side of the track, hidden by bushes.”
Logan pointed to Hamza and clicked his fingers. The DS took his cue and read out the number plate of Alan Rigg’s recently acquired vehicle.
“Aye. That’s it,” Constable Tanaka confirmed.
“Should you not check your notepad?” asked PC Miller.
“I don’t need to check my notepad, Chris, I can remember things that happened in the very recent past,” Suzi replied. “And that’s the right reg.”
It was only when she turned away from her colleague that she realised everyone else in the room was now on their feet and staring at her.
“The van? You saw the van?” Logan asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ve seen this van? The van we’re after? The van we’ve got half the bloody polis in the country out hunting for?”