He looked out across the city that had once trembled at the mention of his name. “Mistakes were made, Jack,” he admitted. “I was… Christ, naive, I suppose, if you can believe that? You think you can step away, don’t you? Move on. Put it all behind you. Forget what we know. What we’ve done. Who we were. But we can’t, can we? It doesn’t work like that.”

“No,” Logan agreed. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Shuggie’s smile was one of grim disappointment. “Aye. Thought as much,” he said, then he motioned to the door with a jerk of his head. “Now, I suggest you two get going before our mutual acquaintances in the upper echelons of Police Scotland get wind of what you were doing here.”

Logan looked across the faces of the four men standing opposite. “What are you going to do to them?”

Hoon’s hand patted him on the shoulder. “Like the man says, Jack. That’s a family matter,” the former Detective Superintendent urged. “Best you and me don’t concern ourselves with the details…”

Chapter Forty-Three

Ben nursed a cup of tea as he stood studying the Big Board. It was a collage of information now—photographs, print-outs, and Post-Its linked together by lengths of thread and a system of colour coordinated pins.

There were statements, observations, maps, a timeline, and dozens of other scraps of information they’d managed to rustle up between them in the past few days.

And it told them, as far as Ben could gather, nothing.

No. That wasn’t true. It told them plenty—just not the thing they wanted to know.

It told them about a girl too ashamed of what she’d done to tell her parents about their grandchild.

It told them about a couple who’d thought they were helping. A child, given away.

A life lost to guilt, and to grief.

It told them all these things, and more.

What it didn’t tell them was who’d killed Archie Tatties, his wife, and her two children.

And yet… it was there, he thought. Woven into the web of information somewhere. Waiting to be unravelled.

Hidden, but only just.

“Any ideas?” asked Dave Davidson, the wheels of his chair squeaking as he rolled himself up. “Because I wouldn’t mind getting home for the weekend. Someone’s got to feed my fish.”

Ben took a sip of his tea. “Nothing jumping out at me yet,” he admitted.

“Could we just say ‘the butler did it,’ do you think?” Dave suggested. “Get it all wrapped up by lunchtime?”

“That would be nice, aye,” Ben agreed. “No butler, though.”

“Jesus. What sort of Mickey Mouse investigation is this, with no butler?” Dave grumbled. He shrugged. “Well, I’m out of ideas, then.”