The sight of the bodies was bad, but the warning from Logan had done its job, and the tableau of horror that both Detective Constables had been bracing themselves for had been much, much worse.

There was something almost serene about the scene, now that Palmer’s team had cleared out. The family had all been together at the end, though whether that had been a comfort or a source of further pain, Logan wouldn’t like to guess.

They were beyond pain now, though. That was how he wanted to be able to look at it. That was where he wanted his mind to go.

It never did.

Instead, it focused on the lives cut short. The indignities they’d gone through. The loss of futures that would now never be. This way of thinking about their deaths offered very little in the way of consolation, but then he wasn’t here to make peace with any of this, he was here to catch the bastard who’d done it.

That was when he would finally take his comfort. And not a minute before.

“They must’ve been terrified,” Sinead remarked.

“Aye,” Logan agreed. Even with the tape on their mouths, and the light gone from behind their eyes, you could see the fear written all over their faces.

“Looks like a home invasion right enough,” Tyler said, and the usual chirp wasn’t there in his words. “Anything taken?”

“We don’t know yet,” Logan replied. “That’s what we’re here to find out. You two pick rooms down here, take a look, see if anything jumps out.” He noticed Tyler’s gaze go flitting to the doors. “Anything, Tyler, no’ anyone. House is empty, we’ve checked.”

“What?” Tyler chuckled, a little too forcefully. “Wasn’t worried about that, boss.”

Logan chose not to argue. He instead left the DCs to it and headed for the steep wooden stairs that led up to the converted attic above. It wasn’t a full staircase, but wasn’t quite a ladder, either. It was some hybrid of the two, neither one thing nor the other, and Logan’s height and girth meant some clumsy, undignified scrambling was needed to get him through the hole at the top.

The upstairs was one big bedroom, with an en-suite bathroom down at the south-facing end, and a large fitted wardrobe on the wall opposite. The room was built into the roof space, and three Velux windows faced out towards the road from one sloping wall, and three more faced the mountains behind on the other.

The ceiling was a single thin strip, maybe three or four feet wide. It was lower than normal, too, and the sense that the whole place was pressing in on him meant Logan kept his head tucked into his shoulders as he turned to survey the rest of the room.