“Right, then!” she said, backing up to the door. “Let’s do this!”
She bumped the door open with her bum, stepped out onto the veranda, then turned with the tray. She hadn’t known what to expect, but had braced herself for a range of possibilities that went from ‘stony silence’ to ‘wanton destruction.’
Instead, she found them sitting there, side by side. Not smiling, exactly, but not not smiling, either. They both turned as she and Anderson stepped out of Nardini’s, and the similarity of their matching expressions proved their blood-relative status better than any DNA test ever would.
“Well, well, well,” Logan said. “Here’s the very bastards now.”
Shona side-eyed Anderson. “I don’t see any blood,” she said in a stage whisper.
“You owe me five quid,” Anderson told her.
“No blood,” Maddie said. She glowered at her husband. “Well, not until I get you home, anyway.”
“Oh. Promises, promises,” Anderson said, then he wilted like a dying flower as both Logan and Maddie glowered at him.
“The fuck’s that meant to mean?” Maddie asked, beating her dad to the punch. Possibly literally.
“Nothing. I just… I panicked,” her husband admitted.
Shona placed the tray on the table and divvied up the drinks—tea for Logan, coffee for the youngsters, and the milkshake for herself.
Taggart slid off Maddie’s lap when the bowl was placed on the ground, and then failed to hide his disappointment when it turned out to contain water and not food. He lapped at it forlornly, then lay down in the shade beneath the table.
Once the drinks were deployed and the tray stashed under the table beside the dog, Shona took her seat. She looked from Logan to Maddie and back again. “So, you’re not going to kill us, then?”
“Not out in the open like this, no,” Logan said. “Too many witnesses.” He took a sip of his tea, looked over the rim of the mug at his daughter, then went for it. “We… Shona and I… We were thinking of maybe hanging around for the rest of the day. Maybe going for dinner somewhere. If, you know… I mean, I’m not sure what your plans are, but if you wanted to join us, you’d be…” He sighed, shook his head, then set his mug down. “I’d like you to come to dinner. Both of you.”
Anderson’s hand slipped over Maddie’s. He gave her a nod of encouragement.
“Is it somewhere nice?” she asked. “Last time you took me out to dinner it was to Pizza Hut.”
“You liked Pizza Hut!” Logan protested.
“I liked Pizza Express.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “Same thing.”
“It’s not remotely the same,” Maddie countered.
“I mean, they both do pizza, so they definitely share some similarities.”
“Jack.” Shona tried to squeeze the word into a gap in the argument.
“So do McDonald’s and Burger King, but you wouldn’t get them mixed up.”
“I do!” Logan insisted. “I have! That birthday party you were invited to, mind? We just thought we were there early. Turned out we were at the wrong place.”
Maddie gasped. “You told me they phoned to say it had been called off!”
Logan bit his lip. “Did I?”
“Jack.”
“Yes! You said they phoned to cancel!”
“Maybe they did. My memory’s not—”
“Jack!”
This time, there was no ignoring it. Logan and Maddie both turned to Shona, then followed her gaze to the table, where the screen of Logan’s silenced phone was illuminated, indicating an incoming call.
The name ‘Det Supt Mitchell’ filled most of the display.
They all stared at the mobile, saying nothing. It was Maddie who eventually broke the silence.
“You’d better answer it.”
Logan shook his head. “It’s probably nothing.”
The theme to The A-Team suddenly blared from somewhere in Shona’s direction, making everyone at the table jump.
“Jesus!” Logan muttered.
“Sorry, that’s mine,” Shona said, getting to her feet. She took her phone from her pocket, and her face fell when she saw the name on the screen. “I have to take this.”
She stepped away, tapped the icon to answer the call, and placed the phone to her ear. “Shona Maguire,” she said.
On the table, Logan’s phone continued ringing in silence.
“Right. Yes,” Shona said, listening to the voice on the other end of the line. She looked back over her shoulder at the gathering. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Logan closed his eyes and groaned.
“It’s fine,” Maddie told him, pushing her chair back. “We should probably get going, anyway. Beat the traffic.”
Anderson looked from the phone, to Logan, and then up to where his wife stood over them. “What? Aren’t we going for dinner?”
“No,” Maddie said, and her smile was a thing made of plaster and stone. “We aren’t.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Cheer up, boss. It might never happen!”
Logan stopped. Turned. Looked straight into the beaming face of DC Tyler Neish, who had jumped out of his car at the first sight of the DCI and was now hurrying over to intercept.
Tyler’s year had been a mixed bag of fortunes, from the high of his wedding to DC Sinead Bell, to the low of having one of his goolies removed due to testicular cancer.
His recovery had gone well, though, and what he insisted on referring to as his ‘near-death experience’ had only served to make him even more annoyingly chirpy.
“I’m sorry?” Logan asked, almost daring the DC to repeat what he’d said.
Anyone with any sense would’ve picked up on the tone of the question. Anyone with any sense would’ve swapped their glaikit grin for a more suitably sombre expression.
Tyler did neither of those things.
“I said, ‘Cheer up, boss. It might never happen!’” he clarified. “You’ve got a face like a bulldog licking pish off a nettle.”
Logan made a sound like a bough of some ancient oak tree shifting on the wind. He turned from Tyler, and looked across the low hills of heather and bracken that lined either side of the narrow road.
“What’s that over there?” he asked, pointing to a random spot in the distance.
“What’s what, boss?” Tyler asked, following the finger.
“There. About a mile that way.”
Tyler squinted, his eyes narrowing, his nose wrinkling up. “I’m not seeing anything.”
“Aye, well, go and have a look.”
Tyler’s gaze shifted left and right between Logan and the utterly unremarkable stretch of scrub a mile off on the left.
“Go and have a look? But it’s all boggy, boss.”
“Aye,” Logan said, patting the younger officer on the shoulder. “I know. Chop-chop.”
Tyler opened his mouth to object, but some deeply buried sense of self-preservation alerted him to the fact that anything he might say would only make matters worse. Instead, he zipped up his jacket, groaned inwardly, and set off in the direction the DCI had indicated.