“When did you last see Bernie?” Logan asked.
The sticky lint roller caught the end of Oberon’s tie, and the downward stroke almost throttled him.
“Wait,” he said, setting the roller down again. “You’re not… You don’t think I had anything to do with it? With Bernie’s death? You don’t think I killed him?”
“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” Logan said. “It has now, mind you. I mean, makes sense, when you think of it. Aye. Aye, I could see why you might want him out of the picture. Pain in the arse like that? Scaring your kids? You must’ve been raging.”
“I don’t think Mr Finley-Lennox would’ve killed Bernie, sir,” Sinead said.
Oberon clasped his hands together like he was about to drop to his knees in prayer. He shook them in Sinead’s direction, so the tips of his fingers were all pointing her way. “Yes! Thank you! Precisely!”
“More likely he’d have paid someone,” Sinead concluded.
Logan sniffed as he gave the MSP an appraising once-over. “Aye. Doesn’t look the type to get his hands dirty, right enough. Besides, what would the papers say?” He shrugged. “Probably nothing. Or just, ‘Who?’”
“This is… No. I’m not having this. This is unacceptable,” Oberon said. “I’m not having this in my own house. I’m not being accused of… whatever it is I’m being accused of. I’m not some… some common criminal that you can just push around. I am a duly elected Member of the Scottish Parliament!”
“On the list vote,” Logan reminded him.
“That’s irrelevant!” Oberon insisted. “Who’s your superior? I’m going to have my office contact him to put in a complaint.”
“Her,” Logan corrected. “It’s Detective Superintendent Mitchell, up in Inverness. And I’m sure she’d love another complaint to add to the pile.”
“Yes. Well, please do rest assured that she shall be getting one!”
“Oh, I have no doubt that she will,” Logan said. He looked around at the office, with its expensive old furniture and grandiose style, then gave the MSP a nod. “Keep your phone on for us,” he instructed. “I’ve got a feeling we’ll be talking to each other again very soon.”
Taggart bounced around excitedly when the detectives returned to the car, but managed to restrain himself enough to not come bounding into the front and onto their laps. Instead, he stuck his head between the gap in the front seats, and panted happily as Sinead patted his head.
Through the front windscreen, they watched Oberon’s Range Rover pull away from the house and go roaring up the road with a turn of speed that skirted defiantly close to the speed limit.
“What do you think?” Sinead asked.
“From a purely personal perspective, I think he’s an arsehole,” Logan replied.
“And from a professional perspective?”
“I think you’re right that he wouldn’t have killed Bernie himself.” Logan looked up at the house, with its dozen windows, and ivy creeping across the old red bricks. “But he’s certainly got the resources to have some other bugger do it for him.”
Taggart nudged his arm with his head, then licked his elbow through his coat. Logan begrudgingly reached back and tousled the dog’s fur beneath its chin.
“There, you needy bastard. Happy?”
Judging by the way the little dog’s tail wagged, he was over the moon.
“Right, you ready to face this road?” asked the DCI, starting the engine.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Sinead said with a groan.
Logan put the car into gear and stole a glance at his mirrors. For a moment, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Mrs Finley-Lennox peeking out through the blinds at one of the downstairs windows.
When he looked closer, though, she was gone.
“Right, then,” he announced, his gaze lingering there for just a moment. “Let’s get a shifty on.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ben was having problems of the technical variety. This was not unusual, but given that the technology he was currently attempting to use was so unfamiliar, and the internet speeds so poor, the problems were even worse than usual.
“Hello? Hello?” He tapped the screen of the laptop in an apparently random series of places then, when this achieved precisely nothing, he pecked at the space bar. “Can you hear me? I think there’s something wrong with this thing.”