Hamza and Tyler both looked down at their work, trying very hard to pretend they weren’t there. Dave Davidson, who had until a moment ago been logging the evidence bags sent down the road by Geoff Palmer’s team, sat back in his wheelchair and prepared himself for a show.

He was in for a disappointment.

Ben removed his jacket and draped it over his arm before replying. “I had something I had to do,” he said, his voice several decibels lower than Logan’s.

“Something to do? During a key stage in an investigation?” the DCI snapped. “Well, I hope it was bloody important!”

“It was, actually,” Ben confirmed, standing his ground. “Very much so.”

Logan huffed and blustered for a few moments, making noises that sounded like words, but weren’t. Then, his hackles fell and he accepted with a grunt, that this approach was unlikely to get him anywhere.

“Aye, well. Fair enough,” he said. If Ben said it was important, then it was. He’d known the older man long enough to have learned that lesson many times over. “We were just going to have a catch-up, then call it a night. Want to come back fresh tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Ben said. Then, with a wink at Tyler, he followed Logan over to the board, and wheeled his chair out from under his desk to give him a better view.

“Right, gather round,” Logan boomed. The others, hearing all that unreleased anger in the DCI’s voice, hurriedly moved to join Ben in the semi-circle around the board.

Logan gave a very short introduction that consisted mostly of, “Sinead, you do the talking, will you?” and then he perched on the edge of a desk with his arms folded while the DC got herself organised.

Sinead hadn’t yet had time to properly update the board, so was working from several different notes on a selection of pads, and a handful of documents that had dropped into the inbox during the past few hours that they’d printed out.

The first minute or so showed off her full repertoire of ums and ahs as she tried to get things into some semblance of order, then she decided just to pick a page from the pile and start from there.

“Right, so, the family,” she began. “We’ve got details. Archie Sutherland, sixty-four. Former TV comedian who, as we know, went by the name ‘Archie Tatties’. He now runs—or ran—a small video production company based in Girvan. Doing well, based on what we got from Companies House.” Sinead looked down at her paperwork, then passed the top sheet to Ben, who sat nearest to where she stood. “Very well, actually.”

“Bloody hell,” Ben remarked. “He made all that through wedding videos?”

Tyler leaned over to read the page, spent a few seconds scanning it, then ejected a, “Jesus Christ!” when he found last year’s turnover. “What do they produce, Lord of the Rings?”