Well, maybe the one about needing to lose weight. That one was harder to shrug off, right enough.

Moira held the mouthpiece of the phone pressed to her shoulder and glared at the nurse until she left. Only then did she put the phone to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Moira?”

“DI Forde, is that you?” she asked. “God, you sound old on the phone. Frail.”

“Cheers for that, Moira,” Ben replied. “I got a message you wanted to speak to me.”

“Well, obviously! Why else would you be phoning, if you didn’t get the message?” she asked, then she pressed the phone to her ear and scowled. “Who’s that woman shouting in the background?”

“That’s just Sinead,” Ben replied. “Sounds like there’s been a change of plan on something. Was there something the matter? Do you need help with something?”

“No, I do not need help!” Moira spat, offended by the very suggestion. “I’m calling about this silly magazine of yours.”

There was a momentary pause from the other end of the line. “The magazine? What about it?”

“There’s a celebrity news section,” Moira said. “I mean, they say ‘celebrity’ but I’ve never heard of half of them. They’re either has-beens, or never-weres, if you ask me. Not that you would.”

There was a note of exasperation in Ben’s response. “Well, I’m sorry to hear they’re no’ up to your high celebrity standards, Moira, but I’m sort of in the middle of something here. Can this maybe wait until I can get back in...?”

“I didn’t ask you to call so I could tell you about the section itself.” Moira tutted. “What do you take me for, Detective Inspector? Some needy young thing?”

“Well, no…” Ben admitted.

“There’s an article in it. It’s about one of those has-beens I mentioned.”

She looked down at the magazine spread out on her legs. There, buried way at the bottom of the right-hand page, was a photo of a man with thinning hair, thick glasses, and two malformed turnips for tits.

“And given what you mentioned when you were here before,” Moira continued, “I think that it might be important.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

Frankie was not hard to spot. He sat on a swing, arms hooked around the chains as he brazenly skinned up a joint. There was no mistaking him. He was shorter than his uncle, but otherwise, he could’ve been Shuggie Cowan himself, stepped right out of some time vortex from forty years in the past.

Physically, at least. The mannerisms were all wrong. For as long as Logan had known him, Shuggie had been slow. Composed. Deliberate. Frankie’s movements were the opposite of that.