“Of course. I’m retired, Jack, I’m not dead. Not yet. You’ve been keeping busy up there,” Cowan said. “Dealt with Petrie properly, I hear. Long overdue, if you ask me. I did offer to have that little problem taken care of for you way back when. Seems like it could’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”

“Aye, well. I’m no’ here to talk about Owen Petrie,” Logan said.

“Then to what do I owe the displeasure?”

“Your name came up,” the detective told him.

“I’m assuming you don’t mean in casual conversation?”

“In connection to a case.”

Cowan gave a whistle, drawing the attention of the barman. “What are you drinking, Jack? You still on the hard stuff?”

“No.”

“Pint, then?”

“I’m fine.”

Cowan looked him up and down. For the first time since Logan had sat down, there was a hint of a smile on the older man’s face. “Butterflies. Eh, Jack? How things change.” He raised his voice to the man behind the bar. “Couple of coffees, Tam.”

“Right you are, Mr Cowan,” the barman replied, then he found a couple of reasonably clean-looking mugs, and set to work.

“You do drink coffee, yes?” Cowan asked, turning back to the DCI. “Not eliminated all vices, have we?”

“Coffee’s grand,” Logan said, then a thump from upstairs drew his eyes to the yellowing ceiling.

“Relax, Jack,” the older man said. “No harm’s going to come to anyone, if everyone just keeps the heid.”

There was a sound like two hard things hitting sharply together, then a derisory cheer from a voice that wasn’t Tyler’s. Right then, the barman set two mugs and a cracked cafetière of coffee down on the table between them.

“Besides,” Cowan said, reaching for a mug. “Sounds to me as if they’re all getting along like a house on fire.”

* * *

A few minutes prior to the thump and the clack and the spontaneous cheering, Tyler shuffled past a foul-smelling bathroom with his breath held, then was guided with a shove into what he guessed was a large room.

He couldn’t say why he guessed that, exactly. The windows were heavily shuttered and there was no light except the dim glow seeping in from the stairwell, so he couldn’t see more than a foot or two in front of him.

But something about the air in the place, maybe, or the sound of their footsteps told him it was one big upstairs space that stretched all the way from the front of the pub to the back.

He was ‘encouraged’ forwards. Something large loomed in the shadows ahead of him, but he only got a suggestion of a shape before the door closed behind his three chaperones, and the room was dragged deep down into the dark.