Logan allowed himself a little nod of satisfaction, then continued on to where DI Ben Forde—the elder statesman of the team—stood gathered with a group of Uniforms and a few guys in sturdy boots and bright jackets. Some of the local Mountain Rescue Team, Logan guessed. He could hear the helicopter hovering somewhere beyond the hills.
“Jack. There you are,” Ben said when Logan reached the group. “Thought you weren’t coming.”
“Aye, well, I’m here now,” Logan said flatly, and Ben, unlike Tyler, immediately picked up on the tone and adjusted accordingly.
“Young lad out hiking came across a body. Burned down to the bones, he reckons. Bits of a metal frame around, too, suggesting he might’ve been in a tent. Silly bugger didn’t take a note of the exact location, though, so we’ve got the helicopter searching.”
“What? So, we don’t actually have a body?” Logan asked. “You called me in on my day off, and we don’t even know for sure there’s a body?”
“Well, it was Mitchell who called you in,” Ben said, his internal dashboard lighting up with warning signs. “I said to leave you be, but she wanted you brought in. To be honest, I think it was more Shona, since they’ve still not got a replacement for—”
“Jesus Christ,” Logan seethed. He held up a finger and thumb an inch apart. “I was this close to…”
Ben gave the rest of the sentence a moment to arrive, then pressed for more information when it didn’t. “To what?”
Logan sighed and let his arm fall back to his side. “Forget it. Doesn’t matter.” He looked around at the Uniforms and Mountain Rescue Team, finally acknowledged their presence with a nod, then searched the sky for the helicopter he could hear buzzing around. “No sign of anything yet?”
“Not yet, no,” one of the rescue team said. He had a walkie-talkie style radio in his hand, and was presumably the one in contact with the chopper. “Going to start getting dark in a couple of hours, so we might have to pack up then and try again in the morning.”
“In the morning?” Logan asked, his eyebrows forming a single straight line across his forehead.
“I told her not to call you in,” Ben said, interjecting before the unsuspecting Mountain Rescue man got both barrels. He looked along the row of parked polis and unmarked vehicles to where Logan’s BMW stood way at the back. “Is Shona with you?”
“She’s keeping the dog company,” Logan replied. He looked around at the wilderness, his gaze briefly lingering on DC Neish trudging forlornly across the boggy bracken. “Is there any point in me being here right now? Anything you need me for right this minute?”
“Not really,” Ben said. “Not until we’ve found the body.”
“If there even is one,” Logan added.
“Aye. Even then, that’s more Shona and Palmer’s team.”
“Christ. Palmer’s not here, is he?”
“Not yet,” Ben said, and Logan’s shoulders sunk back from where they’d risen up around his ears, like a cat getting ready to hiss. “But they’ll be on their way.”
“All the more reason for me to clear off, then,” the DCI said. “This lad who found the body. Where is he?”
“He’s at the local station with Sinead and Hamza.”
“What, up in Fort William?”
Ben shook his head. “No,” he said, a little ominously. “Nothing as grand as that…”
Logan and Shona had driven right past the police station in the village of Strontian on the way to the scene, but had both mistaken it for a toilet block.
It was a small, grey building with a triangular roof that came to a point on all four sides, so it vaguely resembled a hat.
The building sat at a junction leading to what the signage declared as ‘Strontian Village Centre,’ which comprised a shop, a small cafe, and quite a lot of grass.
Despite his mood, Logan had to admit that the drive over had been something spectacular. From the moment the BMW had driven up the ramp and onto the Corran Ferry for the short hop across Loch Linnhe, through the winding narrow roads through tiny, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlets, Logan felt like he had finally found the Highlands he’d always imagined.
They’d had to stop twice to shoo sheep from the road, which had excited Taggart no end. Their phone signals had dipped in and out, before giving up the ghost completely some ten miles back.
Some whining from Taggart had forced them to stop for a pee break at somewhere Google Maps identified as Sallachan stone beach. There, standing at the edge of the loch, with a breeze wafting across the water, and the mountains rising from the opposite shore, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d travelled back in time.
Logan half-expected some blue-faced bastard with a sword to turn up and try to recruit them to go fight for ‘Freeeeedom!’ And, whether it was the way the landscape stirred some ancient pride or patriotism, or the fact that his current mood meant he was itching for a scrap, he was pretty confident he’d have said yes.
It was there on that rocky beach that Logan had finally given voice to the thoughts that had been rattling around in his head the whole way up the road.
“You were completely out of line arranging that—with Maddie, I mean—without telling me,” he’d said. Then, before Shona could reply, he’d added, “Thank you,” and squeezed her hand as they’d stood watching the dog go bounding along the water’s edge, his ears and tail and eyes and tongue all alive with the sheer bloody joy of it.
“Getting called in like this, it’s not great,” Shona said, as they’d stood there. “But you know what I always say? You’ve got to make the best of a bad situation.”
“You never say that,” Logan told her.
“No. But I’m going to start.”
And they had made the best of it, even if only then, for those few stolen moments on the shore, with the dog running wild and free.
It was good that they had time. It had taken the edge off Logan’s anger, and very probably saved Tyler’s life when he’d tried his, “Cheer up, boss,” nonsense some twenty minutes later.
Now, the BMW thunked into a pothole in the Strontian Police Station car park, and Taggart’s tail wagged excitedly when he realised they were stopping again. It was clear that he liked the stopping part. Then again, he liked the moving part, too. He appeared to like most things in general, in fact. The wee bastard was nothing if not consistent.
Hamza’s car was parked outside the building, alongside a battered 2002 Vauxhall Astra van with an extendable ladder strapped to the roof rack. There were no marked polis cars present. They’d be up at the scene with Ben and Tyler.
That was assuming, of course, that a station this size was big enough to merit a car. For all Logan knew, the officers stationed here might ride around on horseback.
“You coming in?” Logan asked, as the BMW rolled to a stop next to Hamza’s car.
“In a bit. I’ll take the dog for a wee walk first. Maybe scope out the shop. I’ve been craving a Twix since we passed that bus outside Glasgow.”
“What bus?” Logan asked.
“The one with the big Twix advert on it. The one where I said, ‘Imagine that bus is just full of Twixes,’ then we tried to figure out how many Twixes you could fit inside it.” Her eyes narrowed. “Well, I mean, it was mostly me who tried to… Were you even listening?”