‘Fake. Well, not fake-fake – they’d nicked it off a blue Citroën Berlingo in Mannofield.’ Another yawn. ‘Bet you a fiver they abandoned the Golf and torched it before going on in a second car. So we’ll get nothing off it, even if we can find. . .’ He blinked at Logan, then frowned. ‘What? ’ Brushed a hand across his cheek. ‘Have I got pizza on my face? ’

‘We found a burned-out VW Golf in the Joyriders’ Graveyard: reported stolen Saturday morning – last seen by the owner, Friday tea-time. It was still warm.’

‘Plenty of time to get to the jewellers, cut the alarm cables, get in, tie up the proprietor and his bit on the side, rob everything, then sod off into the night.’

Logan took a biro from the mess on his desk and tapped it against his chin. ‘Interesting.’

‘Ooh,’ Rennie sat forward in the chair. ‘Maybe your victim’s one of the team? Someone got greedy, or they thought he was a snitch? ’

‘Would explain the gangland execution, wouldn’t it? ’

A knock at the door, then DS Chalmers stuck her head in. ‘Guv? ’ A huge grin split her face, teeth all small, pointy, and glinting. ‘We just got DNA back: it’s a match.’

Looked as if DCI Steel was right after all. There’d be bacon flapping its way past the window any minute now. ‘Get on to the PNC, I want—’

‘Criminal record? ’ She held up a manila folder.

‘And—’

‘Current address? ’ She placed a printout in the middle of Logan’s desk, then stood back, showing off her happy little teeth. ‘And there’s a pool car waiting outside for us.’

Cocky, ambitious, and efficient. Maybe not such a bad combination after all.

Chalmers took them out through the city limits, heading north on the Inverness road, sitting in the outside lane of the dual carriageway, doing eighty, with the blue flashers going. ‘. . .and you’d think he’d be a bit more grateful, wouldn’t you? At least now he knows where his precious Range Rover is. But he was a complete arsehole about it.’

Logan watched the fields go by, fluffy white sheep and big rectangular cows polka-dotting the swathes of almost luminous green. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘OK, so it’s a burned-out hulk, but he’ll have third-party fire and theft, won’t he? Don’t know what he’s moaning about, really. Just because we haven’t got a clue who stole it in the first place. . .’

‘Right.’ A fortress of pine trees flanked the dual carriageway for a minute, needles shining in the sunlight, the earth below wreathed in brambles and sharp-edged shadow. And then more fields. Aberdeenshire at its bucolic best, sliding by outside the car while DS Chalmers jumped from topic to topic in a perpetual-motion monologue.