Especially with Reuben waiting in the wings: the king is dead, long live the king.
They slowed to a crawl, squeezing the Big Car between a slab-like greying lump of a building and the whitewashed Pennan Inn. Out onto the tiny village’s only street. Houses on one side, the angry swell of the sea on the other.
Tufty took a left. Rain pelted the windscreen, clattered off the roof, sparked on the bonnet. ‘Bit bleak, isn’t it?’
Waves boomed against the seawall, sending up arcs of spray that hovered for a moment like heavy clouds, before smashing down across the tarmac.
Some of the houses faced front, but most of them stood sideways, with their gable ends pointing out at the storm. Narrow alleys separated the buildings, the front doors sheltering from the wind.
Tufty pulled the car over and pointed at a one-and-a-half storey, traditional Scottish house, with whitewashed walls and a Porsche parked out front. ‘That’s us.’ Another wave smashed into the seawall – the spray completely engulfed the sports car. He grimaced. ‘What do you think, wait for it to ease up a bit?’
‘Be here all week.’ Logan unclipped his seatbelt, pulled on his peaked cap, then struggled into his high-viz. Doing his best not to bash Tufty in the face with an elbow. ‘Come on then.’
It was like being pelted with frozen nails.
He slammed the car door and hurried across the road, slipping into the alley between the front of Peter Shepherd’s house and the back of the next one in the row as another wave crashed down.
‘Aaaaaagh! God … sodding … bloody…’ Tufty shuffled into the alley with his arms held out from his body, dripping, mouth hanging open. ‘Gagh…’
Logan tried the bell.
A trilling ring sounded inside, but no one answered.
One more go.
And again.
Tufty raised one leg and shook the foot. ‘I’m drenched.’
OK, so there was no one home. But then, given that Shepherd was lying on his back in a refrigerated drawer in the mortuary, waiting for his turn to be dissected, that wasn’t too surprising.
Logan tried the door handle.
Locked.
‘Could’ve jumped in the sea and I’d be drier…’
He turned. The house with its back to Shepherd’s had a couple of windows on this side. Light shone out from one of them, the glass all steamed up, what sounded like Led Zeppelin belting out in there. Logan knocked on the window.
A shadowy figure loomed, then wiped a hole in the fog revealing a lined face, with lots of dark eye make-up and a grey quiff. She frowned for a moment, then opened the window. Rock music pounded out into the rain, accompanied by the sweet buttery scent of baking. ‘HELLO?’
‘We’re trying to—’
‘YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP!’
Logan huddled closer. ‘WE’RE TRYING TO TRACE YOUR NEIGHBOUR. PETER SHEPHERD?’
‘PETE? NO, HE’S NOT HERE. HE… HOLD ON,’ she held up an arthritis-twisted finger, as Robert Plant’s wailing gave way to a guitar solo, ‘I LOVE THIS BIT.’ Nodding along with her eyes closed, thrashing away on a clawed-hand air guitar.
‘DO YOU KNOW WHEN HE’LL BE BACK?’
‘WHO?’
‘YOUR NEIGHBOUR.’
‘OH. HAS HE DONE SOMETHING?’ Still rocking along.
‘NO. WE’RE WORRIED ABOUT HIS SAFETY. WE… LOOK, CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN A BIT?’
She shrugged, then turned and padded back into the room. The music clicked off, leaving nothing behind but the booming waves, clattering rain, and howling wind. ‘There we go.’
‘Do you have a key to Mr Shepherd’s house, Mrs…?’
‘Call me Aggie. Give me a minute to grab my coat: I’ve got to go round and feed his cat anyway.’ Then she thunked the window shut and disappeared.
‘Here we go.’ Aggie swung the door open and stepped inside. ‘Onion? Unnnnn-yun, where’s kitten?’
Logan followed her inside. Shepherd had obviously had a bit of work done to the place. It might look all traditional and Scottish vernacular on the outside, but inside – the living room and kitchen were one big open-plan space full of gleaming surfaces, leather, and abstract oil paintings.
Shepherd and Milne’s container business must be making a fortune.
Tufty closed the front door behind him, and stood there, dripping on the hall tiles. ‘Gah…’
Aggie hobbled up the stairs. ‘Onion? Come on, time for nom-noms.’
Soon as she was gone, Logan poked Tufty on the shoulder. ‘You try Shepherd’s mobile again, and try not to get everything soggy. If he’s not dead, I don’t want him suing the force because you ruined his carpet.’
A dining room sat on the other side of the stairs, with a long oak table and matching chairs. The only other room on the ground floor was a study. Bookshelves lined the walls, all crammed to overflowing with textbooks, folders, lever-arch files, boxes, and hardback books. A proper office-style desk with a docking station for a laptop and a pair of flatscreen monitors on armatures. Swanky office chair with more buttons and levers than most family saloons. A pair of oak filing cabinets.
No diary or appointments calendar. But then everyone was all electronic these days, weren’t they? Whatever happened to the good old days, when people actually wrote things down, then left them lying around for police officers to find?
He scanned the bookshelves. The textbooks all had titles like Optimisation For Hydrocarbon Support Industries and Logistic Management in the Norwegian Sector – Regulations and Compliance Volume VII. The folders were just as bad. And the books all seemed to be true crime. Biographies of murderers and case studies on serial killers. A collection of gangster memoirs. All neatly ordered, alphabetically, by author and title.
So Milne wasn’t the only crime freak.
Logan tried upstairs.
A big bathroom, all done out in dark slate tiles and spotlights, with a freestanding enamel bath big enough for three. A box room, full of boxes. A small bedroom with a lot of lace and flowers in it, completely out of keeping with the rest of the place. And last, but not least, the master bedroom.
Aggie was on her knees at the side of the bed, bum in the air, one arm wiggling about in the space underneath. ‘Come on, Onion Pickle Pie, it’s only policemen, they’re not really that scary.’
A king-size bed dominated the room, with a maroon velvet headboard. Huge telly on the facing wall. Thick, smoke-coloured carpet. One wall a deep claret, the others stark white. Normal people didn’t have houses like this. This was what happened when you hired a decorator who specialized in boutique hotels.
Aggie sat back on her heels and bared her top teeth at Logan. ‘He’s not normally this shy.’
Logan wandered over to the window, looking down on the narrow alley that separated the two houses. ‘Do you look after his cat a lot?’
‘Only if he’s going to be away for more than one night. Onion doesn’t really like change. Likes to know his Aunty Aggie’s looking after him.’ Then she leaned forwards, bum up in the air again. ‘Come on, sweetie. I’ve got lovely tuna for you. Your favourite. Yum, yum!’
The room wasn’t just swanky-hotel designed, it was swanky-hotel clean as well. No personal knick-knacks,