He looked down at the photograph, realising now why the man had looked so familiar. He was the Scottish Parliament member for the local constituency, and no doubt popped up on the news from time to time. He wasn’t one of the big hitters, though, and things generally had to be pretty desperate before the media turned to him for a quote.
The photograph was taken from behind a bush, judging by the foliage in the foreground, and showed the politician putting a black bag into his green wheelie bin. To the casual observer, it was a late-middle-aged man taking the rubbish out, but there was no saying what Bernie saw in the photo, or why he felt the need to pin it to his wall.
“Was he aware of this grudge?” Logan asked. “The MSP, I mean. Did he know Bernie was spying on him?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s put in umpteen complaints. Got really angry a couple of times, when Bernie accosted him while he was out with his daughters. He’s got a non-harassment order out on him at the moment.”
“And did that put a stop to it?”
Tanaka shrugged. “I mean, he hasn’t put in any more complaints lately, so presumably, yes.”
Logan studied the man in the photo, and wondered how recently it had been taken. “Is he around at the moment? Is he here or in Edinburgh?”
“Why would I know that? I don’t have his diary,” the constable sniped, before she remembered the seniority of the man she was talking to, and worked quickly to salvage the situation. “I could find out, though, sir.”
“Aye. You do that,” Logan told her, shooting her a look that made it clear he’d picked up on the insubordination, but was choosing to overlook it just this once. “Is there anyone else Bernie was rubbing up the wrong way round here?”
“Pretty much everyone at one point or another,” Constable Tanaka said. “He could be an annoying bastard when he wanted to be.”
Great. That narrowed it down.
“You think it’s murder, sir?” the PC asked.
“We’re not sure yet,” Logan replied. “Could’ve been an accident.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Logan considered the photo in his hand, then the caravan behind him. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t think so. But fingers crossed that I’m wrong.”
Forty minutes later, Logan stood in the makeshift Incident Room, taking it all in. It had changed quite a bit since he’d had his little chat with Herbert.
Space-wise, there wasn’t much taking in required. The room was about a quarter of the size of the Incident Room in Fort William station, which in turn, was significantly smaller than the one in Inverness.
Two mismatched desks—one a flat-packed laminate thing, the other made of scuffed black metal—stood against the wall across from the door, facing one another. A long extension socket trailed from a plug on the opposite side of the room so those using the desks could plug their laptops in, and Sinead was in the process of taping the cable down so nobody tripped over it.
There was a single chair, which Ben had already claimed, despite the fact that it was a hard plastic thing with no wheels, and a few inches too short to make sitting at either desk in any way comfortable.
Various bags and boxes had been shoved into a corner, then an attempt had been made to hide them with a piece of bright blue tarp that only served to draw attention to them.
Perhaps most notable of all was the six-foot-tall squirrel that stood propped in the corner on Logan’s right, and which had caused him to eject a hissed, “Jesus!” when he’d first entered the room and clapped eyes on the bloody thing.
After the initial moment of fist-clenching alarm, Logan had recognised the outfit as ‘Dinny the Drink-Driving Squirrel’—the mascot of a public awareness campaign that had been run across Scotland eight or nine years ago.
Logan had never quite understood the need to have a talking cartoon squirrel fronting the TV adverts and rocking up at gala days. Very few eight-year-olds drank to excess, and fewer still took to the roads afterwards, so quite why the campaign seemed targeted at them, he had no idea.
“Is this…？ What’s this?” Logan asked, taking in the whole of the room. This involved moving his eye just a fraction of a millimetre in each direction. “Is this it? This can’t be it.”
“This is it,” Ben confirmed.
“This can’t be it,” Logan insisted, but Ben once again confirmed that it was.
“Sinead managed to find us a Big Board, sir,” Hamza said, indicating the rectangle of cork that now sat precariously balanced on a three-legged wooden artist’s easel.