A look of surprise faltered its way across Tyler’s face. He blinked, gave a curious sort of half smile, then jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “I was just going to say that me and Sinead have decided to cancel our days off this week, boss,” he announced. “And just as well, too. By the sounds of things, you’re going to need all the help you can get!”

Chapter Five

Mitchell had called it ‘a bad one.’

Christ. Talk about an understatement.

There were four of them, just like she’d said. Two adults, two kids.

Hands and feet bound with coils of gaffer tape. Mouths sealed shut with strips of the same. Blood pooling on the carpet beneath their huddled bodies.

Logan had arrived first, hitting the outskirts of Fort William while the rest of the team were still getting themselves organised back in Inverness. He’d even beaten Geoff Palmer and his army of white paper suits, and he stood alone in a stranger’s front room now.

Just him and the dead.

The room was nice, assuming that you could overlook the corpses. It was simple and unfussy, with faintly grey walls and a few tartan trimmings, and the way it balanced style and easiness of cleaning clearly marked it as a short-term holiday rental.

Some of the touches—the plump cushions, the rustic oak table, the reclining armchair by the fireplace—indicated a room designed to look cosy. Right now, though, it was cold. Bitingly so. The ashes in the hearth told him a fire had burned itself out, and the lack of any discernible traces of heat from the embers suggested it had happened at least a day ago.

The Uniforms guarding the scene had given him what little information they had when he arrived. The family had been staying for a week, and were due to check out first thing that morning.

The cleaner had turned up to find the curtains closed and the front door unlocked. She came in, freaked out, then ran off, and was currently hyperventilating into a cup of tea at the small polis station in Glencoe Village. Her boss—the house’s owner—had been on the phone to her at the time of the discovery, and had called 999 once he’d realised what the hell was happening.

There was no sign of forced entry. The windows were all intact, and Logan had noticed no damage to the door or frame. If the door had been unlocked, someone could have just walked in. Or, they could’ve knocked, waited for someone to answer, and talked their way inside.

Logan retreated into the hallway. There was a small, spindly-legged table against the wall across from the door. A vase stood upright, a visitor guest book undisturbed. A struggle was unlikely, then.