If the big fella started throwing his weight around, Logan might be able to handle him one-on-one. That would leave Tyler to deal with everyone else, though, and while one of them was currently clinging to the ground and whimpering, danger radiated off the man in the swing. The other group would quickly jump in at that point. Logan could already sense their growing interest, like sharks smelling blood in the water.

He shouldn’t have brought Tyler here. Not to someone like this. What had he been thinking?

“I told you to continue,” Frankie said. “Archie. What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

The joint, which had been standing erect at one side of Frankie’s mouth, suffered a sudden case of Brewer’s Droop.

“What? What do you mean he’s dead? How’s he dead?”

“Just the normal way. By not being alive,” Logan told him. “Him and his family. Wife and her two girls. All dead, Frankie.”

“Shitting fuck,” Frankie remarked. He sniffed, twitched, then pawed at one ear like a cat with an itch. It was involuntary, Logan thought. Some form of Tourette’s, maybe, or just damage caused by a childhood of too much drink and too many Class-A’s. “Nae luck, eh?”

“I hear you and he were in business together, Frankie,” Logan continued. “I got the impression that things weren’t exactly rosy between the pair of you.”

“He was a jumped-up fucking nobody who thought he was the big-fucking-I-am, you mean?” Frankie hoiked up a mouthful of phlegm, then gobbed it onto the ground near the DCI’s feet. “Because, if so, then aye, you’re spot-on, pal. Big-mouthed thieving fucking arsehole, who thought he knew best. And you can get your fucking secretary there to write that down.” He grinned and winked at Tyler. “Alright, sweetheart?”

“He stole money from you,” Logan said.

Frankie’s head jerked. His tongue flicked across his lips and his shoulders twitched up to ear height before dropping back down.

“Who told you that?”

“Lucky guess,” Logan said.

“My arse. You found him with it, you mean. That belongs to me, by the way. I can fucking prove it, too.”

Logan ignored the unblinking glare of Budge and fixed Frankie with one of his more intense looks. “That’s the thing, Frankie. We didn’t find it. Whoever killed them took it.” He shrugged. “Took it back, maybe.”

“Oh aye, here we go. Here we fucking go!” Frankie barked, springing to his feet. He flew at Logan, face knotting itself up in rage like he was losing his temper.

He wasn’t completely losing control, though. You could tell by the way he slowed his approach when Logan failed to so much as blink. He stopped a couple of feet from the DCI, right before the height difference made him look too ridiculous.