“Hm? Oh, nothing,” Logan replied. “Just something I forgot to do.” He set a banknote down and picked up the tray. “Keep the change.”

Logan had spent a few weeks waiting tables back in his teenage years, but if he’d learned any lessons during that time, none of them had stuck. By the time he arrived at the table where Shona was sitting, both mugs were noticeably less full than when they’d started, and a puddle of hot dark liquid was swishing around on the tray.

“Sorry, might have spilled some,” he admitted, setting the tray down.

“Some?” said Shona, plucking a sugar sachet from the puddle before it could be completely dissolved.

“No’ really my strong point,” Logan said, pulling out one end of a wooden bench and sitting across the table from the pathologist.

“What, carrying stuff over short distances?” Shona teased. “I assumed that fell under the heading of basic motor functions.”

“Aye, well, you know what they say about assumptions,” Logan said, picking up his mug and giving the bottom a wipe on a partially sodden napkin.

They were tucked into the far corner of the inn, as far as possible from the handful of morning drinkers who sat in twos and threes, or stood gathered by the pool table. It was a climbers’ pub, and the bad weather and poor visibility on the hills meant the climbers had nowhere better to be.

“It’s nice,” Shona said, indicating the pub with a tilt of her mug. She paid particular attention to the assortment of malt whiskies on the wall behind the bar. “Just wish I A, wasn’t driving, and B, didn’t have to go cut up four human corpses.”

“Coffee’s no’ bad, though,” Logan said. He shrugged. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

Shona smiled, clinked her mug against his, then took a sip. It was good, she agreed, then she stared into empty space for a few seconds, her mind drifting off to somewhere far away.

Or maybe just trying to.

“You alright?” Logan asked her, for the third time that morning. “It was pretty rough back there.”

“It was,” Shona admitted. “Kids get to you a bit, don’t they?”

“They do,” Logan agreed. “But then… we think we can deal with death because we see it so often, but it can still mess you up from time to time.”

Shona shook her head. “Wasn’t the death bit,” she said. “Like you say, I’m well used to that. Wouldn’t get very far in this job if the sight of a few dead bodies gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

Logan wrapped his hands around his mug, letting the warmth seep into the muscles. “What was it, then?”

“It’s what happened before they died,” Shona said. “How scared they must’ve been. All of them, but the kids especially. Tied up like that. Helpless. Afraid. God, you can’t begin to imagine, can you?”