“I, eh, I had a good night. On Saturday. The wedding, I mean,” Shona said. “We should definitely do it again. Ourselves, I mean.” Panic flashed across her face. “I don’t mean… I don’t mean a wedding, I just meant a night out. Pub. Or… restaurant. We’ve been talking about it for how long now?”

“A long time,” Logan conceded.

“We should definitely… At some point.”

“We should. We definitely should,” Logan agreed. “At some point.”

Shona smiled. Nodded. Did something unusual with her hands that she couldn’t quite offer any explanation for. “Yes. Definitely at some point.”

There was an awkward moment during which neither of them quite knew what to say or do. There was a moment of half-contact that wasn’t quite a hug, but was somewhere in that vicinity, then Logan said his goodbyes and headed out through the swing doors.

Shona exhaled, admonished herself with a low mutter, then straightened suddenly when one of the doors swung open again.

“Fuck it,” Logan announced. “Assuming that both of us aren’t up to our necks in all this, what are you up to next Friday?”

Chapter Sixteen

It took Logan seventy minutes to make the drive from Inverness to Fort William, three minutes to get from the car park to the Incident Room, and then a further twenty seconds to fly off the handle.

“What do you mean you’ve got no idea?” he demanded, glaring at the two DCs and the DS like a hawk deciding which unsuspecting field mouse to swoop down on. “How the hell can we have no idea?”

“It’s… We just can’t find any record, sir,” Hamza said, putting himself in the firing line. “We managed to speak to both families—liaisons are with them now offering support—and neither of them knew anything about a baby. It wasn’t theirs. Not unless Mrs Sutherland gave birth in secret.”

Sutherland. That was it. Archie Tatties’ real name. Archibald Sutherland.

“And given that her ex-husband and her sister both saw her regularly, we reckon we can rule that out,” Sinead explained.

“Did you check with Missing Persons?”

“Nothing about any babies going missing, boss,” Tyler said. “Nothing outstanding, anyway.”

“So… where the fuck did it come from?” Logan asked. “The taxi driver’s sure there was a baby?”

“He was adamant,” Hamza said. “Couldn’t say if it was a boy or a girl, but he reckoned it was very young. A few weeks, maybe, although he only got a quick look. Said they had a pram and a travel cot, too. The wee one slept the whole way down the road, apparently. Didn’t make a cheep.”

“He’s sure it was alive, though?”