“Might need to get a warrant,” Sinead suggested.

They both waited for Ben to respond. He eventually picked up on the silence and gave a little start. “Oh. Aye. Aye, hoof it up to the high heid yins and let them sort it out. Might as well get them working for their money.” He yawned and rolled his head around, stretching his neck muscles. “What else have we got going on this morning?”

“Donna Sutherland’s sister is coming over from Glenrothes to do the formal identification at some point early today,” Sinead said. “I don’t know if you want one of us there, or…”

“We’ll get someone up in Inverness to go in with her. No point one of us driving up, only to have to come back down again an hour later.”

Dave Davidson called over from his desk. “I can phone up and get that sorted, if you want?” he suggested. “Doing naff all else.”

“Aye. Do that. But then we’ll put you to work,” Ben replied. “We still don’t know how long the family was on Skye, and what they were doing while they were there. We need to trace their movements. Find out where the journey started, see if they had the baby with them the whole time.” He turned to Hamza. “Still nothing turned up from Missing Persons?”

“Not a cheep, no. Nobody’s reported any lost babies.”

“And it definitely wasn’t their own?” Ben asked. “We’re sure about that?”

“Sure as we can be, sir,” Sinead said. “Unless it was some sort of overnight pregnancy, I don’t see how it could’ve been Donna’s.”

“Could it have been his, though?” Hamza wondered. “To another woman, I mean?”

“That’s possible, I suppose,” Sinead conceded. “It could explain why nobody has reported it missing.”

“Talk to family and friends,” Ben instructed. “See if any of them have any ideas who the wee one might belong to. Jack’s right, we find the baby, and we find who killed the family.”

He looked to the window, and to the hills beyond. Snow still dotted the top of Ben Nevis, even this close to summer. He shivered at the sight of it, and at the thought of something else.

“I just hope the poor wee thing’s alright.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Billy Neeps had always been the quiet one. The straight man. The patsy. Archie Tatties had been the one making the jokes, but Billy had been the one the audience inevitably laughed at.

At. Not with.

Here, in his shop almost four decades later, it wasn’t hard to see why.

There was just… something about him. An aura. Or a pheromone he gave off, maybe. Whatever it was, it fostered in Logan—a man who despised bullies—an urge to flush the man’s head down the nearest available toilet.