He’d been blinded all the way through this. Blinkered first by Archie’s business income, then the discovery of his close working relationship with Shuggie Cowan, which had, in turn, steered him straight in Frankie’s direction.

Each new discovery had taken up room in his head—Billy Neeps and the baby, Jazmin McAllister’s suicide, Archie’s visit to Skye—so much so that he hadn’t stopped to consider the other possibilities. To go back to basics.

Who had the motive, the means, and the opportunity?

Assuming it wasn’t Frankie, and taking Billy Neeps out of the equation for the moment, then who did that leave?

Who had the motive?

The Krankies, mainly, if Billy was to be believed.

Christ, that would be a turn-up for the books, wouldn’t it?

But no. The geriatric panto stalwarts may well have had their reasons for killing Archie, but he couldn’t see them having either the means or the opportunity.

Or, given their age, the energy.

Not them, then.

Fellatio McFudd?

Same again. A motive, maybe, albeit a slim one. But how would the drag act have found them? And would he—or she, depending on the mood of the moment—be capable of murdering a family of four in cold blood? As far as Logan was aware, Ms McFudd had never killed anyone before. This would be a hell of a way to start.

Actually, that was a point.

“It wasn’t their first kill,” he realised.

Hoon looked up from where he’d been poking through the bones in his tub, hoping to find some more chicken to gnaw on.

“Eh?”

“The killer. You don’t go straight to stabbing a whole family to death on your first outing,” Logan mused. “I mean, two of them were kids. Wee girls. And it was controlled, too. That’s no first-timer.”

Someone who’d killed before, then.

Motive, means, opportunity, and experience.

Who did that leave?

Rufus Boyle, the cottage’s owner. He knew the family was staying there. Was he capable of murder? Maybe. He had an arrogance about him, and a temper, too. Men like Rufus had a sense of entitlement that allowed them to justify all sorts of things to themselves—sordid affairs, expensive coke habits, shady business deals. The odd bit of wife-beating, maybe.

But murder? Logan wasn’t convinced.

Besides, Rufus didn’t know about the money, did he? So, the opportunity and the means, in his case, but maybe not the motive.

It could’ve been random, of course. Just bad luck on the family’s part that someone chose that particular day to invade that particular house.

But, no. That didn’t feel right, either. Them sitting there with a big bag of stolen money? Hell of a coincidence.