“Aye, well, you know me, Shuggie. Always turning up where I’m no’ welcome,” Logan replied. He turned back to Tyler. “Off you go, son. Get your stuff and get on that train.”

Tyler blinked. “What? No, I can’t… I’m not just going to leave you here, boss.”

“Aye, you are,” Logan insisted.

At the table in the corner, the old man gave a dry chuckle that became a cough. “No, he’s no’,” he said, once the wheezing had subsided. “Seth, how about you and the boys take Mr Logan’s friend there upstairs and keep him entertained for a while?” He leaned out from behind the pillar, revealing a grin, a gold tooth, and a scar in the shape of a swastika. “Jack and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Ben returned to the Incident Room to find a fully updated Big Board, and a raft of new developments.

The car was on there—black or dark blue, small, Wednesday evening between half-eight and nine. It was a nice juicy addition, but it had been overshadowed almost immediately by Dave’s discovery.

His hunch had proven correct. After getting off the train, Archie Sutherland and his family had walked the few dozen yards to the entrance of the Royal Highland Hotel, and collected the keys for the room they’d booked earlier that morning.

Four of them had checked in on Wednesday afternoon.

When they’d left the following Monday, five of them had checked out.

Hamza pointed to the chain of index cards that made up the timeline on the board. “Somewhere between them arriving on Wednesday and the early hours of Saturday evening, they acquired a baby,” he said.

“Why Saturday morning?” asked Ben, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

“Cleaners came in just after eight on Saturday. Family had ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs up all week, but they must’ve forgot to put it out on Saturday. Archie chased the cleaner out, sharpish, but not before she saw Donna Sutherland holding the baby,” Hamza explained. “She reported it to her supervisor, but the hotel doesn’t charge extra for kids that age, so they never followed up on it.”

“And they didn’t think that was weird? Them producing a wean out of thin air?”

“You’ve clearly never worked in the hospitality sector,” Dave said. “Shite like that happens all the time. I used to work in a hotel, years back, and you got some right oddballs staying. I mind I had to bring a pillow up to some guy in his room one time, and when he came to the door I saw he had a goat in there with him.”

“A goat?” said Sinead. “What, in his room?”