For God’s sake. ‘Have they picked him up yet? ’

‘Do you really think I’ve no’ got more important things to worry about than who punched you on the bloody nose? You probably deserved it.’ She held up a hand, thumb and forefinger squeezed tightly together. ‘Hell, I’m this far away from doing it myself!’

‘Thanks. Thanks for the support. Really appreciate it.’ Logan marched out of her office and slammed the door behind him. ‘Cow.’

‘I heard that!’

Of course she did. Ears like a bloody vampire bat. He stuck two fingers up at the wood.

The corridor funnelled the noise from the main CID room, open-plan muttering and barely controlled chaos. Greasy coils of garlic, salami, and cheese tentacled through the air carrying with them the ghosts of pizzas past. His stomach gurgled.

Somewhere, deep within his head, someone was doing a Steve McQueen impersonation from the Great Escape, hurling that bloody baseball against the walls of the cooler. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

He turned his back on the siren scent and slouched through to his own office instead. A lanky figure with sticky-up blond hair was draped all over the visitor’s chair, feet up on Logan’s desk. Eyes closed, head back, mouth hanging open, making little grunting noises.

Logan opened one of the filing cabinet drawers, then slammed it shut.

‘Gaaah!’ DS Rennie jerked upright in his seat, eyes like nervous pingpong balls, jittering feet sending a pile of forms scattering to the carpet. ‘I’m awake, I’m awake.’

‘What are you still doing here? ’ The old office chair creaked as Logan settled into it. ‘You were snoring.’

Rennie stretched: arms up to the ceiling, legs hovering an inch over the tabletop. ‘You’ve been ages. . .’

‘Post mortem.’ What the hell happened to his desk? The whole thing was covered in other people’s paperwork. Why did every lazy sod in CID think this was the perfect place to dump their crap? ‘Now get your bloody feet off my desk.’

‘Sorry, Guv.’ Rennie screwed the palm of one hand into his eye socket, yawned again, shuddered, then sagged in the chair like someone had stolen all of his bones. ‘Went through all the witness statements and CCTV footage from the jewellery heist: three males, all in their late teens – early twenties. Local accents. Initial getaway car from the scene was a VW Golf.’ He hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his armpits. ‘Cold in here.’

Logan picked the forms up from the floor, added them to the rest, then started separating them out into piles for whoever touched them last. ‘Number plate? ’