Well, while he was here, might as well be thorough.

He unzipped the sleeping bag and turned it inside out: nothing. The mattress was old and saggy, soft enough that he could lift the corners up and over and poke at the floorboards underneath. More nothing. He let the corner fall back and a puff of fusty dust billowed out into the air.

Logan turned and struggled to haul the mattress up from the short end of the cupboard. Bloody thing was like manoeuvring a dead body. . .

There: a plastic folder lay on the floorboards. He grabbed it and the mattress thumped back into place. More dust.

Inside the folder was a stack of press clippings about Witchfire being filmed in Aberdeen – the actors burbling about what a great script it was; the author hedging his bets as to whether it would be any good or not; some toad from the local council banging on about job creation and tourism opportunities; a photo op with the actors doling out soup to homeless people; another with a troupe of little kids in school uniform on the movie set, all grinning and holding swords. But the biggest thing was a copy of the script, marked up with green and yellow highlighter pen:

Witchfire

A Golden Slater Production

Based on the book by William Hunter

Script V: 4.0.2

The name ‘NICHOLE FYFE’ was written in red ink on the top-right corner. . . Nichole Fyfe. . . Nichole Fyfe. . . Wasn’t she the blonde woman? The one in that awful Disney romcom about undertakers last year? The one on the telly that morning with the red hair?

Logan pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket and stuck the weed and pills into it, sealed the sticky flap, and wrote down the details on the form printed onto the plastic.

‘. . .I mean it isn’t right, is it? Boy like that sniffing around our. . .’ Mrs Garfield’s mouth clicked shut as Logan walked into the room.

The kitchen was warm, the units painted a terracotta colour, French doors lying wide open, as if they were in the middle of the Mediterranean and not a housing estate in Northfield, overlooking the backside of Middlefield Primary School.

Chalmers nodded towards a mug on the counter. Her mouth turned down at the edges. ‘Milk and two.’

Probably came with free spit.

Logan dumped the evidence bag next to it. ‘I found this in your daughter’s room under the stairs.’

Chalmers whistled. ‘That’s a lot of marijuana.’

Agnes’s mum squared her shoulders, voice getting louder with every word: ‘You planted that, didn’t you? You planted it to deflect attention from the fact your lot are doing nothing to find my bloody daughter! You sick—’