“Why would she be able to hear you, boss?” asked Tyler, bending so he leaned over the DI’s left shoulder. “You’ve not started the call.”
“What? How do you know?”
Hamza leaned over Ben’s right shoulder. “Well, it says ‘Start Call’ there, doesn’t it, sir?”
“What? Where?” Ben peered over his glasses at the button on the screen. “That one?”
“That’s the one, boss,” Tyler confirmed.
Ben prodded the button and waited.
“It’s not touchscreen, sir,” Hamza told him. “You need to use the trackpad.”
“The trackpad?” Ben squinted at the screen, then down at the keyboard. Then, he repeated his movement several times before asking the obvious question. “What’s that?”
“The square bit, boss. There, below the space bar.”
“Oh, the swipey bit? Well why didn’t you bloody say so?”
Ben shot them both reproachful looks like this was somehow all their fault, then moved a finger across the trackpad. The arrow cursor shot straight to the top of the screen, slid to the far right corner, and stayed there.
“Where’s the thingy? I’ve lost the thingy,” he said, eyes hunting the screen for any sign of it.
“It’s up there, sir,” Hamza said, indicating the top corner. “Would it be easier if I just dialled you in?”
“That definitely sounds easier, boss,” Tyler said.
“I’m not going to learn if you keep doing these things for me,” Ben said. “You just need to show me how to do it myself.”
Hamza had shown him how to do ‘these things’ for himself. He had shown him this exact thing three times now, and it wasn’t getting any easier.
“Maybe we could sit down next week sometime and go through it,” Hamza said, before quietly adding an, “again.”
“Shona’s going to be thinking we’re not coming, boss,” Tyler pointed out. “We were meant to be dialled in five minutes ago.”
Ben sighed and took his hands off the keyboard like he was turning himself in. “Fine. You give it a try. I’m telling you, though, there’s something wrong with it. You won’t get it to—”
Hamza clicked the button he’d drawn Ben’s attention to earlier, and after a further click to confirm, Shona’s face appeared on the screen.
“Aha! There you are!” she said. “I thought you’d stood me up.”
“Hello, Shona!” Ben bellowed, loud enough to make the pathologist pull an earbud from her ear in fright.
“You can just talk normally, sir,” Hamza told him.
“Aye, there’s a microphone, boss. She doesn’t have to hear you shouting all the way from Inverness.”
“Oh. Right, aye. Sorry about that,” Ben said. He was still projecting his voice more than usual, but it was an improvement.
Shona stuffed her earbud back in while her eyes searched the screen. “Jack not there?”
“No, he’s still out and about,” Ben said. “Not quite sure when he’ll be back.”
“Ah right. No rest for the wicked!” Shona said. “It’s the same here, actually. Pulled an all-nighter with your camper.”
“You’ve been at it all night?” Ben frowned. “You shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t especially urgent. You’ll be knackered.”
“No, I’m wide awake, actually,” Shona said, and the way she bounced around in her chair backed this up. “Petrol station at Tesco has got this new energy drink in. I stocked up on it. I am, not to put too fine a point on it, buzzing off my tits.” Her eyes widened even as she heard the words coming out of her mouth. “By which I mean I’m heavily caffeinated. Anyway, how are you all doing? It’s funny seeing you all on the screen like this. The way you’re positioned, you look like the video for Bohemian Rhapsody.”
She fell silent for a moment, sniffed, then clutched her head like it was about to explode.
“Sorry, I’m talking absolute shite. Clearly, I need to get some sleep. You’ll be after the post-mortem results?”
“Ideally, yes,” Ben said. He leaned a little closer to the screen. “Are you alright?”
“Fine!” Shona chirped. “Just, you know, got carried away. Haven’t done an all-nighter in years, so I thought, nothing to do, nowhere to go, why not?”
“You could’ve gone home,” Tyler suggested, which caught the pathologist off guard.