“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“No, no, it’ll help us get to know the place a bit better. Make our faces known.” He sat back in his chair, one hand slipping onto his stomach. “And who knows? In the interest of local relations, we may even have to force ourselves to have a wee something to eat…”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“She’s a strange woman, that one,” Logan remarked, as the BMW dipped and rose, clinging to the lines of the road.
“Aye, she’s that, right enough, sir,” Sinead agreed. “Some house, too. Was your room full of porcelain dolls in Victorian dresses?”
“Thankfully not, no.”
“I barely slept a wink. Kept thinking they were watching me.”
Logan grunted. “I wasn’t much better. I was convinced she was going to burst into the room and either kill me or ravage me during the night.” He shuddered. “And I’ve not yet decided which one I’d have preferred.”
Sinead held her breath as the Beamer banked around a sloping turn before suddenly levelling off again.
“Looked like the Westerly Wellness lot made it back alright,” she remarked. “Saw the minibus there when we passed.”
“Aye. They were all out doing yoga or whatever the hell it was when I took the dog out for a walk just after six,” Logan said.
Sinead looked pointedly at the DCI’s mobile. It sat on the charging pad on the dash, refilling the empty battery. “Any word from… anyone?”
“Maddie, you mean? No. Still nothing. Thought I had a bit of a signal for a while, but it didn’t come to anything,” Logan replied. “Thought about giving her a ring from the house phone, but it was too early before I went out with the dog, and by the time I got back that old bastard was stalking the halls in her nightdress like some Edwardian ghost.”
They sat in silence for a while, before Sinead turned back to him.
“And Shona’s fine?”
“Aye. Aye, like I said, she’s good.” Logan looked ahead again and guided them around another rolling bend. “You’re staring, Detective Constable. Why are you staring?”
“Staring, sir? Me? I’m not staring. I’m just… showing an interest.”
“You’re being a nosy cow, you mean.”
“And that, aye,” Sinead said. “But you’re good? Both of you, I mean? Together?”
Logan nodded. “Yes. If you must know, it is. We are. Good. We’re very good.” His lips thinned and he gave a half-shrug. “I mean, she’s still getting to grips with everything that happened. She’s been visiting Olivia. Just… I don’t know. Being there for her, I suppose.”
“That’s good of her,” Sinead said. “There a court date set yet?”
“Not yet,” Logan said. “Not for her, anyway. With her age, and the lack of any real concrete evidence against her, I reckon she’ll walk away with a slap on the wrist.”
Sinead nodded. “Tyler and I reckoned the same, yeah. She should be grand.” She fixed her gaze on a spot ahead, trying to combat the creeping nausea. “But Shona’s fine, though? No… long-term effects of what happened?”
“Eh, no. No. Not that she’s mentioned,” Logan said. “Why, has she said something to you?”
“No. No, just. You know. Like I said yesterday… What we went through, it was pretty rough. It’s still rough, some days worse than others. I know what it’s like for me, and I’ve had more than my fair share of trauma before all this. I’d just… I’d hate to think she was struggling.”
Logan side-eyed her. “Aye. Aye, I’d hate to think so, too.” He tapped his fingers on the wheel for a while before continuing. “Tell you what, when we’re done on this case, you have your talk with Tyler, and I’ll have one with Shona.”
“Deal,” Sinead said. She glanced down at her notepad, but didn’t let her gaze linger there for fear the act of reading in the moving car would make her throw up. “So, this MSP then…”
“Don’t tell me what party he’s with, for God’s sake,” Logan said before she could go any further. “I don’t want to unduly prejudice myself before I meet him.”
“Makes sense,” Sinead replied. “He’s not actually the constituency MSP. He got in on the list vote.”
“So, no bugger voted for him, then?” asked Logan, whose grasp of the workings of the Scottish Parliament’s electoral system was tenuous at best. Although, to be fair to him, no more or less so than anyone else’s, and he was, in this instance, broadly correct.