“Aye. Thanks in a big part to Tyler,” Logan said.
“Oh, I find that very hard to believe, sir,” Sinead replied.
“Aye. I probably imagined it,” Logan agreed.
They stood watching Tyler and Dave either tending to or tormenting Alan Rigg. It was hard to tell from there. Either way, he didn’t seem to be particularly enjoying it.
“He’ll need the hospital,” Logan said.
“Will we take him in the helicopter?”
Logan started to nod, then shook his head. “Actually, no. Fuck him. We’ll let Dave drive him along that road, and put Tyler in the back with him. That’ll teach the bastard.”
Sinead chuckled. “You’re a cruel man, sir.”
“I have my moments,” Logan confessed. “I want you to go in the helicopter with Jameelah. Get her to hospital in Fort William. She’ll need checking over.” He side-eyed her. “Thoroughly. We don’t know what happened.”
Sinead’s laughter was now notable by its absence. “Got it, sir,” she said.
“Tell her the dog’s going to be waiting to play with her when she’s done.”
The DC nodded. “Will do.” She started for the 4x4, then turned so she was walking backwards. “What about you, sir? You heading back to Strontian?”
“I am,” Logan confirmed. He looked over to the sobbing Alan Rigg, then up at the lighthouse standing tall above them all. “There’s just something I have to do first.”
She was waiting for him by the door when he arrived, dressed in a stern black frock with sensible shoes and a coat in case it should rain. She looked smaller than before. Less intimidating. Although, that may just have been the lack of shotgun.
Alan had known they were coming. He’d left with just minutes to spare.
Out here, the sirens carried for miles. Long enough for her to drive the sheep out of the field. To funnel them between the fences, blocking the way.
She’d been standing in the road when they’d got to Dave’s car. She’d delayed them, just for one more moment. Just to buy him some extra time.
It had to be her who had warned him. It could only have been her. Logan had figured that out, but there was something he didn’t know.
“Why?” he asked.
“Why? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s a fucking travesty what they did to that little girl of his. It’s a bloody outrage, and no mistake. Poor little precious lamb that she was.”
“Your granddaughter,” Logan said.
It was a deductive leap into the abyss, but also the only way this made sense. Why would this woman help a relative stranger and local headcase in his attempt to murder a child? How would she get mixed up in such a plot? What would she possibly have to gain?
Besides, someone had helped tie both the then Bernie the Beacon’s arms to the Westerly Wellness gate. Someone had picked him up after his protest and driven him ‘out towards the lighthouse.’
Or, to put it another way, out towards Kathryn Chegwin’s house.
It was a stretch, yes. But there was very little he’d been more certain of in his life.
There wasn’t much reaction to the statement from the woman on the front step, aside from a slight thinning of the lips and a rolling back of the shoulders. Nothing to confirm Logan’s suspicions, but no denials, either.
“Alan’s your son, isn’t he?” Logan pressed. “That’s why he came here. His ex-wife mentioned that you were going to move when they first started living together. You moved here. That’s what brought him up this way. You. And you’ve been plotting together this whole time. Pretending not to know each other. Pretending that you weren’t mother and son. And for what? So you could steal a wee girl? So you could kill her?”
“It weren’t nothing personal. Not on the little ‘un. Weren’t her fault. It was her father who needed punishing. It was him who couldn’t be let to get away with what he’d done. That weren’t right. Not one bit of it. And we weren’t going to kill her, neither. Of course not. We were just going to give him a scare, is all. Maybe get him to confess to what he’d done.”
“She almost died,” Logan said. “He tried to throw her into the bloody water.”
Kathryn gave a shake of her head. Firm. Adamant. “No. You’re wrong.”
“I assure you I am not,” Logan said. “And what about the body? The homeless guy?”
“I don’t know anything about that,” the woman insisted.
“Who did that? You or Alan?”
“Neither. I don’t know what you’re on about. That weren’t us.”
“You burned a man alive!” Logan roared.
Kathryn roared right back. “He wasn’t alive! He was already…”
Her voice dried up as she realised what she’d said. She started to say something else, to take it back, to change her tune.
But then, with a sniff, she smoothed down her coat, and picked up a small suitcase that sat on the step beside her.
She locked the door. Checked it. Placed a hand on the old wood and kept it pressed there for a moment, like she was calming some skittish animal.
“Right, then,” she said. She fixed her gaze ahead at the BMW standing at the end of her path. “No use in us standing around here all day. Let’s get off before the rain comes in.”
Logan looked up at the mostly blue sky. The earlier cloud had all but burned away.
“You think it’s going to rain?” he asked, escorting the woman up the path towards the waiting car.
“It’s never far away,” Kathryn said.
Logan motioned to Taggart to stay where he was in the back. “No,” he said, opening the front passenger door for Kathryn. “No, I don’t suppose it is.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Things fell into place quite quickly over the next few hours. The team had two confessions to work with, plus a statement from Jameelah. Add in Logan and Tyler’s own eyewitness accounts, and a successful prosecution was looking like a certainty.
There hadn’t been a lot of forensic evidence to salvage from the girl. There had been no sexual assault. Logan had felt a tingling at the back of his eyeballs when he’d been given that news, but had gritted his teeth and given just a single nod of relieved acknowledgement.
Her parents had arrived at Fort William in a remarkably short space of time, the team down south having sorted a helicopter to bring them straight up.
DCI Grimm, the SIO on Jameelah’s case, had accompanied them. His facial scars had been noticeable during his telly appearances, but they were considerably more prominent in the flesh, and Tyler had let out an involuntary, “Fuck!” at the sight of him, before scurrying off and trying to make himself look busy.
“Detective Chief Inspector,” Logan said, dipping his head in acknowledgement of the other man.
DCI Grimm mirrored the gesture. “Detective Chief Inspector.”
And that was the end of that conversation.