“Fine,” he said, standing. He stood by the hole in the floor and looked down at Tyler waiting at the bottom. “Tell him I’ll be right with him.”

Chapter Ten

“I was thinking I might head down the road now, sir. That alright with you?”

DI Forde looked up from the mug of tea he’d been staring into, blinked once, then gave DS Khaled a nod. “Hm? Oh. Aye. Good idea. In fact…” He fished around on his desk until he found his reading glasses, balanced them on the edge of his nose, then studied his phone screen. “Why don’t you head to the polis station down in Glencoe? Cleaner who found the body’s there. She’s apparently keen to get home.”

“I can do that,” Hamza confirmed.

Ben wrote down the details from the text, then tore the page from his pad and handed it to the DS. “Good lad. When you’re down there, I’ll check in with Scene of Crime, see what Palmer’s got to report.”

“Rather you than me,” Hamza replied.

It was safe to say that none of the team really clicked with Geoff Palmer. In fact, it wasn’t a stretch to say that they all actively disliked the man. Nor was it a stretch to assume that they were not alone in this. Palmer was not an easy man to get on with. Not in a professional capacity, at least. None of the team had suffered the misfortune of having to socialise with him away from work, so they couldn’t say what he was like off-duty, but they could all hazard a bloody good guess.

“What? Oh, yes. Never a pleasure,” Ben said.

Hamza started to move away from the desk, then stopped. “Are… are you alright, sir?”

“Fine, son.”

“Right. It’s just, you seem… a bit distracted.”

Ben smiled and sat up a little straighter in his chair. “Just deep in thought.”

Dave Davidson shouted over from his desk by the door. “First time for everything.”

“Oi! Watch the bloody cheek, you!” Ben warned him, but it was, like most things the DI did, good-natured. He turned back to Hamza. “Off you get down the road. I’d maybe give Tyler or Sinead a ring, let them know you’re on the way and that you’re dealing with the cleaner.”

Hamza started to move again. Again, he faltered almost immediately.

“Tyler and Sinead? Are they not meant to be off?”

“Meant to be, aye,” Ben confirmed. “Cancelled it, though, and came in.”

“Oh,” said Hamza. He turned and looked at the desks the DCs usually sat at when they were stationed in Fort William, like some explanation might be written there. “How come?”

Ben shrugged. “Beats me, son. By the sounds of things, though, it’s a good thing they did. Going by what Jack’s told me, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

* * *