“Aye, that seems harsh, right enough,” he confirmed, then he picked up the note and read the name. Then, he read it again. And once more, while his brain tried to process what it was seeing. “And this is a person’s name, is it?”

“Yes. Not his given name, obviously. I don’t think that would be allowed. But that’s the name he goes by.”

Logan passed the note back to Tyler, and did his best to ignore the muttered, “Fucking hell.”

“And where will I find this gentleman?”

Billy pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose, and the magnifying effect doubled the size of his eyes. When he spoke, it was in the sort of hushed tone usually reserved exclusively for the phrase, ‘Don’t go near Castle Dracula.”

“Oh,” he said, “finding him shouldn’t be too hard.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

A sound emerged from Hamza that was quite unexpected. It was like a laugh with a question mark, or a cheer of confusion. It was not a sound he was aware of having ever made before, and he immediately swore an oath to himself that he’d never make it again.

It had done its job, though, and drawn the attention of Ben, Sinead, and Dave. They all looked over as excitement propelled Hamza up onto his feet.

“What’s happened, son? Have the lottery syndicate numbers come up, or something?”

“Afraid not, sir,” Hamza said, his Doric twang becoming stronger as his pulse quickened. “But I’ve found something. Archie Sutherland and his family were in Inverness the week before last.”

Sinead scooted her chair over. “What? How do you…? Oh! Is this on Facebook?”

“Aye. On one of the Inverness community groups,” Hamza said.

“And what’s the story?” Ben asked. “What are they saying?”

“Not saying much, sir,” Hamza replied. “But there’s a picture. Someone took a photo of the family at the train station. Looks like they were just arriving. They’ve got their bags, and…” He squinted at the screen. “Does that look like a blue holdall to you?”

Sinead confirmed that it did. “Bulging, too, like the ticket collector said. Looks like they were lugging the money around then, at least.” She indicated the rest of the picture. “But not the baby.”

“What?” Ben asked, hurrying over to join the younger officers at Hamza’s computer.

Sure enough, there was a slightly off-kilter picture on the screen that looked like it had probably been taken in secret. Archie and Donna Sutherland were in the process of filing through the platform turnstiles, the two girls right behind them.

There was no baby, no pram, and no travel cot. They had arrived in Inverness sans infant.

“Any other pictures?” Ben asked.