“Are we having to go back to the yes or no answers, Billy?” Logan asked. “Fine. Did you share Archie’s location when you were fixing his phone?”

Billy shook his head. “It’s not like—”

“Yes or no, Billy.”

“I mean… Technically? Yes.”

Logan kept his face still, fending off the surprise. It had been a stretch, he’d thought. A straw to be grasped at. He hadn’t really believed for one minute that it might be true.

Billy was still talking, although he wasn’t saying anything of any real note. “But not… I didn’t do it for anything… Not because…”

“So, we’ve established that you knew where to find him,” Logan said, shutting him down. “We’ve established that a car matching the description of yours was spotted at the scene. And we’ve established that he’d cost you a very lucrative career opportunity that you’d fought very hard to secure, and which could’ve potentially been life-changing.”

“And he concealed those facts from us,” Heather added.

“Yes! Very good point, Detective Chief Inspector!” Logan boomed. “And you concealed those facts from us.” He sat back and nodded at the solicitor. “You might want to phone home and let them know you’re going to be a while,” he suggested. “I think we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“What about the baby, Mr Pinnock?” Heather asked, her solemn stare not having wavered once. “Wee Senga. Did you take her from Archie after you killed him and his family?”

“I keep telling you, I didn’t kill anyone!” Billy sobbed. “And with regards to the tracking thing… It was unrelated to… When he came to the shop, we got to talking about a possible reunion show. He seemed keen. We decided I would pitch it. And I thought… If we were going to be working together…” He grimaced. “Archie was always unpredictable. The number of gigs we did in the early days when he was either late or just didn’t show up, you wouldn’t believe. He’d be in some other pub somewhere, or at the bookies, or… God. I don’t know.”

His spectacles had steamed up, his body heat misting the glass. He removed them, pinched the bridge of his nose like he was fighting off a migraine, then unfastened the top button of his shirt.

It really was very warm.

“I thought, if we were going to work together, I wanted to be able to find him. I didn’t want him doing that to me again. Leaving me holding the can, and looking stupid. It’s one thing doing it in a working men’s club in Newcastle, it’s another when it’s the BBC.”