“Mr Gibson is the one who phoned in the report about the body,” Hamza explained.
“Is he? Is he, indeed?” Logan said. He adjusted his mouth into something almost smile-shaped. “So you’re the reason I got called in on my day off.”
Herbert blinked, frowned, and swallowed all at the same time. He was not a tall man, so even standing he’d have been dwarfed by Logan. Sitting, he could only tilt his head all the way back so he could look up at the towering detective.
“We haven’t found the body yet, I understand,” Logan continued. “You definitely saw it, though, Herbert? You’re not pulling our leg, are you?”
Herbert shook his head. “N-no, no. I saw it. I definitely saw it. It was there. He was dead.”
Logan raised an eyebrow. “He?”
“What?”
“I understood from one of my colleagues that you said the body was burned beyond all recognition.”
Herbert pressed his blackened hands together, like he was getting ready to pray or beg for mercy. If the bastard was lying, though, neither one would do him any good.
“It. I mean… it was dead.”
“But you don’t know where.”
“Not… not exactly. But roughly. I told them roughly where to find it.”
“And yet, they have not,” Logan said.
He pulled out the chair directly across from Herbert and lowered himself onto it. It lost him some of his height advantage, but made it much easier to eyeball the man sitting opposite.
“It’s there. It’s definitely there. I saw it. I’m not lying,” Herbert insisted.
“Who said you were lying?” Logan asked. He turned and looked back at Hamza and Sinead. “Did you say he was lying?”
“No, sir.”
“Not us, sir.”
“Nobody’s said you’re lying, son,” Logan said, fixing Herbert with that glare again. “Because you look like you’re brighter than that. You look like you’re smart enough not to waste police time like that. I mean, clever-looking lad like you, you’d know just what an absolute shitshow that would be for you, were you to have made something like that up. On my day off, of all days.”
He let that sink in for a moment, then leaned forward a little and lowered his voice, like he was sharing a secret. “But now would be the time to say, if you were lying. Before any more damage was done, and taxpayers’ money spent. Now would be the time to tell us if you were making it all up.”
Herbert shook his head. “I wasn’t. I’m not. Honest. It was there. I saw it.”
Logan sucked in his bottom lip, scraped his teeth across the stubble, then nodded. “Fine. Good. So, mind telling us what you were doing out there in the arse end of nowhere then, Herbert?”
“I was just… I was hillwalking.”
“In them shoes?” Logan asked, rocking himself onto the back legs of his chair so he could look under the table at Herbert’s mud-slicked footwear. “Who goes hiking in a pair of Converse trainers?”
“Mr Gibson was happy to let us look in his bag, sir,” Hamza said.
Herbert’s head snapped up, his eyes widening. “I didn’t know I had a choice!”
“We expressly asked for your permission,” Sinead reminded him.
“Well, yeah, but I thought you were just being polite! I didn’t realise I could say no.”
“Why would you say no?” Logan asked. “Unless you’ve got something to hide.”
Herbert’s eyes somehow found it in them to widen further. “What? No. No, I just…”
“Did we get a look at Mr Gibson’s phone?” Logan asked.
“No, sir,” Sinead replied. “He claims he’s forgotten the PIN to access it.”
“It’s… it’s the stress,” Herbert said, shrinking a couple of inches under Logan’s withering gaze. “It’ll come back to me.”
“We did find some interesting items inside the bag though, sir,” Hamza said.
“Did we now?” Logan rubbed his hands together as the bag was placed on the table before him. “This is exciting,” he said, lifting the flap. “I wonder what I’ll find.”
First out of the bag were two cans of red spray paint. Logan turned the canisters over in his hands, gave them a shake until they rattled, then set them down, lined up, between himself and Herbert.
“Interesting hillwalking equipment you’ve got there, Herbert.”
“That’s not all, sir,” Sinead said. She indicated the bag with a nod. “It gets better. Or worse, depending on how you look at it.”