Tyler decided to defer the rest of the conversation to Logan, and passed it to him with a nod and a shrug.

“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Jack Logan. This is my colleague, DC Tyler Neish.”

Down on the floor, the woman whipped her hand away from her face, and stared up at the men in shock.

“Oh. Shit,” she hissed, then she scrambled to her feet using the sink below the bar for support. She jumped to her feet, smoothed down her Honey B’s t-shirt, then managed to arrange her face into something that was somewhere within the same postcode as a smile. “Sorry, I thought you were punters.”

“Are you alright?” Logan asked, his eyes creeping down to the floor where she’d been lying, as if in search of an explanation.

“What? Oh. Yeah. Just hungover. Late night. Couple of the regular guys got hitched, and we threw a big bash for them. Didn’t get cleaned up until after four.”

“A wedding? Nice one. I got married on Saturday,” Tyler announced, before quickly adding: “Aye, but not… To my wife, I mean. My woman wife. Not, like, to a fella. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s good. It’s great! More power to them. To you. Unless… are you? Or are you not…?”

“I am, aye.”

“Right. Good,” Tyler said, floundering. To his horror, he found himself giving her a double thumbs up. “Well done.”

Logan regarded the DC for a second or two. “Your ‘woman wife?’” he muttered, then he turned back to the barmaid. “Can I maybe get him a lemonade, and he can go sit quietly in the corner?”

The barmaid reached for a glass, but Logan raised a hand to stop her.

“It’s fine. I’m joking. I can’t let him out of my sight. He’ll only wander off,” he said. “We won’t take up much of your time…?”

“Katie.”

“Nice to meet you, Katie. Like I say, we won’t take up a lot of your time. We were just hoping you might be able to point us in the direction of someone.” He nodded to Tyler, who slid Billy Neeps’ note across the bar without a word. “I believe he’s a regular here?”

The barmaid glanced at the note without picking it up. “She,” she corrected.

“Sorry?”

“When she uses that name, she’s she. Not he.” There was a furtiveness to her now. Her eyes flitted between the detectives, then once to the front door, like she was sizing up her chances of a clean getaway. “What’s it about? Is she in trouble?”

“Not that we know of,” Logan said. “We just think that he—sorry, she might be able to help us with something.” He could sense the barmaid’s reluctance, and offered what he hoped would be a reassuring smile. “We just want to talk, that’s all.”