Tyler’s smile was so thin it bordered on being transparent. “Me, boss? What did he say?”

Logan unfastened the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. He’d been given quite the talking to by Detective Superintendent Mitchell when he’d returned to Inverness following their last case, and it had been agreed that he would ‘make more of an effort.’

So far, this had extended to him arriving at work with his shirt fully buttoned and his tie straight. His record for keeping them that way was a shade under three hours, and two of those had been spent in an operational meeting with the Assistant Chief Constable.

“Not a lot. Just asked if I’d talked to you,” Logan replied. He interlocked his fingers and leaned forward, eager with anticipation. “So, I thought to myself, ‘Talked about what?’ And now, here you are. So, what is it you want to talk to me about, Tyler?”

Tyler squirmed like a worm on a hook. He rubbed a finger across the edge of Logan’s desk like he was checking for chips in the wood. “Aye. Well. No. Aye. I mean… there was something, boss. That I wanted to talk about. To you, I mean.”

Logan dipped his head forward, urging him to continue.

“Like, I mean, it’s not that I want to. Nobody wants to talk about stuff like… But, well, I suppose it’s sort of… There’s no getting away from it, is there?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, son,” Logan pointed out. “There’s no getting away from what?”

“The thing I wanted to talk about. You know? Like the… what is it they say? The elephant in the room,” Tyler said.

He was sweating now. Beads of perspiration were giving his forehead the same sheen as Logan’s greasy, post-bacon-and-egg-roll fingers.

“I think an elephant in the room refers to something that everyone is aware of, but nobody’s mentioning,” Logan said. “That’s the opposite of what we’ve got here. Because, again, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. What’s wrong, Tyler? Spit it out, son.”

Tyler drummed on the desk with both hands, clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth so it made a loud tock sound, then nodded.

“Aye. Best way. I’ll just say it.”

Logan waited.

And waited.

“Did you mean out loud, or…?”

“What? No. Aye.” Tyler took a breath so deep he almost swelled up like a toad. “See, the thing is, boss—”

The phone sitting between them on the desk rang. Tyler’s eyes went to it. Logan’s did not.

“The thing is…?” the DCI urged.

“The, eh, the thing is…” Tyler shifted his weight around like he’d forgotten how to sit. “The thing is that…”

His eyes were drawn back to the insistently purring phone. Logan lifted the handset without looking, then set it down again.