Hank inhaled the last half-inch of his cigarette in one big suck, then stubbed it out in a red glass ashtray.

“It’s a good job for him Fellatio wasn’t around. She’d have put the slimy little toad in his place. Better luck fucking next time. She’d have given him ‘darling.’ She’d have shoved his ‘darling’ right up his shitter. Sideways, and wrapped in barbed wire.”

“I thought you were… Are you not Fellatio?” Tyler asked. He shot a worried look at his notes. “Because that’s what I’ve written down.”

“Sometimes. But I wasn’t then, not right at that moment,” Hank offered by way of explanation. “If she’d been there, though, she’d have sorted the little weasel out. Talk to her like that? She’d have ended him. I swear to God, she’d have fucking ended him. It’s a miracle she hasn’t done it long before now, in fact. Lord knows he’s been asking for it for years. What she wouldn’t give to get her hands around that little bastard’s throat. She’d wring his bloody neck.”

Logan noted how Hank’s hands trembled as he took another cigarette from a pack. There was no sound but the rasping of the lighter while he lit up, then he steadied himself with a nicotine fix, blew a smoke ring, and turned back to the detectives.

“So, anyway, old Tatties,” he said. “What about the vile little shit? What’s he done?”

“He hasn’t done anything,” Logan said. “I’m afraid Mr Sutherland’s been murdered.”

Hank froze with the butt of the cigarette resting against his bottom lip. His eyes searched the faces of the two men on his couch, like he was waiting for a punchline that was never going to come.

“Oh, I see,” he said, and his natural accent came through loud and clear. “Well, eh, in that case…” He flashed a worried smile. “Any chance we can strike all that stuff I just said off the record?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You’re back,” Moira said with a roll of her eyes and a grimace of distaste. “Why are you back?”

“Thought I’d bring you a wee magazine to read,” Ben said, holding up a copy of the one he’d chosen from the dozens of near-identical offerings on a rack at the supermarket.

“Why?” Moira demanded. She was propped up in bed, but slouching a little to the right. The railing at her side would stop her from falling out, but she didn’t exactly look comfortable, Ben thought.

“We’ll call it professional courtesy,” the DI replied. He put the magazine on the bed, then put his hands on his hips as he considered her. “That’s a hell of a position you’ve got yourself into there. Do you want me to get one of the nurses to give you a shift?”