Simon McLeod slipped the wraparound sunglasses back over the holes where his eyes used to be. ‘Come on then: who is it, and where do I find him? ’ A little smile escaped, then was quickly killed again. ‘So I can meet up with him and sort this out nice and peaceful, like Wee Hamish wants.’

Aye, right.

Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘He’s in the mortuary. He screwed his girlfriend over once too often and she staked him out on a kitchen floor, stabbed him three hundred and sixty-five times, then strangled him.’

Simon McLeod’s eyebrows lowered a fraction of an inch. ‘Hmm. . .’

‘What? ’

A sniff. ‘Sounds like my kind of girl. But I still want the bastard’s name.’

‘So you can go after his family? No chance. They had nothing to do with this. The guy who stole your cannabis got himself tortured to death, and you didn’t have to lift a finger.’ Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘Wee Hamish wants you to stop the beatings. Not like they’re doing you any good, is it? All that and you still didn’t find out who was stealing from you.’

Simon shrugged. ‘That’s what happens when you ask the wrong people the right question. Hypothetically speaking.’

‘No more beatings.’

A cloud of pale-blue exhaust growled out of the Transit’s exhaust.

‘Imagine there’s a businessman who’s invested a large sum of money to set up a number of indoor growing facilities and bringing over the specialists to manage them. Now imagine someone else comes along and steals from those farms. And that some of the businessman’s key . . . horticultural staff are missing. If you were that businessman, wouldn’t you think the gardeners were involved? Wouldn’t you encourage them to keep their farms more secure? ’

The Transit lurched forward a couple of feet, then stopped, engine still running.

‘You weren’t crippling the opposition, you were punishing your own people for being stolen from? ’

‘Call it a claw-hammer incentive scheme. Like the one your wee friend in there’s going to join soon as he gets out of hospital. Well, unless Reuben feeds him to the pigs first.’

Logan turned. ‘No one’s getting fed to the pigs! And they’re not getting their kneecaps pulped either. Fisher’s done: his only contact was the guy who got killed, he doesn’t know anything else. He gets a free pass.’

‘No one steals from me.’

‘He gets – a free – pass.’

The Transit van’s horn blared.

‘I’m serious, Simon. I find out something’s happened to him, or the dead guy’s family, and I come after you and your brother. And I ask Wee Hamish to do the same.’