She took his hand and wove her fingers between his. “I know it’s scary, Ty. But they have to know. He has to know.”

Tyler nodded, but didn’t yet look up. “I know. I know, it’s just…”

“It makes it all real?”

“Suppose. Maybe, aye. But not just that,” he said. He met her gaze then, and the fear and uncertainty in his eyes almost brought tears to hers. “What if they start treating me differently? What if it’s… you know, weird?”

“Weird how? They’re not going to starting ringing bells and shouting, ‘Unclean!’ or anything.”

Tyler smiled at that. “Aye, but… they would, wouldn’t they? Normally, I mean. If it was something less… serious.”

Sinead blinked as she realised the root cause of her husband’s hesitancy. “Wait… you’re worried they won’t rip the piss?”

“What? No!” Tyler considered this. “I mean, I don’t know. Maybe. Aye. I just don’t want it to be different, you know?”

“You do remember who we’re talking about, yes?” Sinead said, smiling. “Do you really think that lot could stop taking the piss for five minutes if they tried?”

Tyler gazed ahead at the station. The movement of the rain on the windscreen made the building’s walls shift and dance like the whole place was alive. A smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“You could be right,” he admitted. “And, I mean, it’s not like we’re not used to morbid stuff. We deal with death all the time, don’t we?”

“We do,” Sinead agreed, unclipping her seatbelt. “But you’re having a bollock chopped off, you’re no’ dying.” She gave his hand a squeeze, then nodded ahead at the shimmering station walls. “So, don’t you think it’s time we broke the news?”

* * *

DCI Jack Logan sat alone in his office, quietly making an arse of eating a bacon and fried egg roll. The egg was runnier than he’d been expecting, and the yolk had erupted out of the back of the roll on the first bite then splattered onto his desk.

Fortunately, this was far from his first bacon and fried egg rodeo, and he’d had the foresight to place the white paper bag the roll had come in directly in the splash zone, thereby saving his desk from the worst of the mess.

He couldn’t say the same for his hands. Yolk, grease, and melting butter were slowly cascading along the lengths of his fingers, dripping in oily blobs whenever they met the fold of a knuckle.

Usually, he’d power through, then surreptitiously lick the worst of it off when no one was looking, but there was too much mess already. He was just one bite in, and his hands were so covered he didn’t dare continue without first cleaning up.