The voice on the other end was nasal and gluey. ‘Hold on. . .’ She paused for a moment, then a massive sneeze boomed out of the earpiece, followed by some bunged-up sniffing. ‘Sodding hay fever. Sorry, erm. . . Here we go: PC Munro, she’s down to visit soon as she’s finished with a fatal RTI. You want me to put you through? ’

‘Just wanted to make sure it was—’

‘What? ’ A scrunching noise, then some muffled voices. ‘Sorry about that. The Super wants to know if you’ve spoken to your visitor yet, only he’s lowering the tone of the place.’

‘I don’t have any visitors: I’m out at Anthony Chung’s house.’

‘You’ve got a visitor in reception.’

‘Well . . . why didn’t someone say something? I’m not bloody psychic!’

‘We tried calling you about a dozen times.’

Brilliant. ‘I’ve been delivering the death message to Anthony Chung’s parents.’ Oh God. . . What if it was Wee Hamish’s lawyer, back for another round of How Screwed Are You? Logan licked his lips. ‘Who is it? ’

More scrunching and muffling. Then, ‘Seriously? That’s his name? OK. . .’ And she was back full-volume. ‘Someone called “Dildo”? From Trading Standards? ’

Logan let his breath out in a long slow sigh. Whatever Dildo wanted, it could wait.

‘DI McRae? ’

‘Tell him I’ll give him a call when I get back.’

‘But what about—’

He hung up.

PC Sim was grinning at him.

‘What? ’

She hooked a thumb over her shoulder at the shelves of DVD cases. ‘He’s got PlayStation games, and he’s got Wii games, but he doesn’t have. . .? ’

‘Is this going somewhere? ’

‘He doesn’t have any Xbox games, but look,’ she waved a hand at the stack of electronic equipment in the unit below the flatscreen TV, ‘he’s got an Xbox. Not a new one either, one of the old suitcase jobs.’

Sim hunkered down in front of the unit and pulled the black plastic games console from the shelf. It was about the size of two shoeboxes, with a big plastic ‘X’ on the top. ‘Isn’t even plugged into anything.’ She dumped it on the computer desk and pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. ‘Should be easy enough to. . . There we go.’ A click and the whole top came off.

Inside were two clear plastic bags of weed, half a dozen packs of Rizla papers, a few small metal tins, a little rolling machine, and a box of filters. No wires, no electronics.

Sim lifted one of the bags out and gave it a shoogle. The marijuana inside rustled. ‘Wow, that’s a poop-load of weed. Maybe he was dealing? ’

‘Anything else in there? Diary? Address book? Anything like that? ’

Sim went back to the hollowed out Xbox and rummaged about. ‘Nope. Couple of tins of resin, some pills, but nothing old-fashioned like a diary. Kids these days are all electronic.’