Logan pulled the mugshot photo of Roy Forman from his pocket and held it up.

Trevor sniffed, wiped a hand under his nose, leaving a shiny trail on the dirty skin. ‘Whatever Fusty did, I didn’t have nothing to do with it.’

‘When did you last see him? ’

‘He was mental.’

Sim settled down on the step next to him, blinking. Probably from the fumes, they were bad enough from the pavement, up close they must have been horrible. ‘Trevor, we’re trying to help Mr Forman, we’re not here to hassle you. We just need to know if anyone saw him last week. Maybe Friday, or Saturday? ’

The woman ran a pale tongue across chapped lips. Her voice didn’t go with the ratty, unwashed hair and missing teeth. Posh, and not local posh either, Inverness posh. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he? ’

Sim nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Sally. That’s why we need to—’

Henry Scott burst into tears. ‘He’s deid, he’s deid, he’s deid. . .’

Sally wrapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Shhh, shhh, it’s all right, Scotty, it’s all right.’ She squinted her good eye at Logan. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

Logan dropped down onto his haunches, so he was eye to eye with him. ‘You were Roy’s friend, weren’t you, Henry? You and Roy and Sally? When did you last see him? ’

‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t, I didn’t do it, I didn’t steal stuff. . .’

‘It’s OK, I’m not here about the shoplifting thing and I’m not going to arrest you, I promise. I just need to know what happened to Roy. Did you see something? ’

Sally hauled Henry Scott closer. ‘You think we’re just tramps, don’t you? Just drunks and junkies, but we’re people too!’

‘I know you are, that’s why we’re—’

‘We die all the time and you never do anything about it, do you? You don’t care. You’re just like all the other fascists.’

Sim sighed. Furrowed her brow. ‘We do care, Sally.’

‘If you cared, you’d do something about it! They take us in the middle of the night and they do experiments on us. . .’

‘Who do? ’

Her lonely eye whipped left and right, then her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘The government.’

‘He’s deid, she killed him: he’s deid, he’s deid. . .’

Logan shook his head. ‘The police are independent, Sally, the government doesn’t own us, they can’t make us do things. That’s why we want to find out what happened. . .’ He stared at Henry Scott. ‘Wait a minute: you said, “she killed him”. Who killed him, Henry? Who hurt Roy? ’