Sinead hesitated, like she sensed some sort of trap approaching. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Because it would be. It must be. Traumatising. Something like that,” Tyler continued. He still hadn’t looked at her, and was instead focusing on their synchronised steps. “It must leave a mark. In, like, your brain. Or whatever. It must do damage.”
“I… suppose so.”
“And, well, she should talk to someone, shouldn’t she?” Tyler continued. “If she’s still having problems with it. If she’s still struggling to process it. She should say. She should come out with it. She shouldn’t bottle it up.”
Sinead shot him a sideways glance. “Eh, no. No, I suppose she shouldn’t.”
“Because it could help. It could really help, I think. Telling someone she trusts. Someone who cares for her.”
“Like Logan.”
“What?” For a moment, Tyler looked hurt. Then, he remembered the charade. “Oh. Yeah. Shona. Logan. She could tell Logan, yeah. She should. Don’t you think?”
Sinead shifted her gaze to the sky. Grey clouds were woven together across much of it, but there were a few patches of blue dotted around here and there. A suggestion of better things to come.
“I suppose… she might just need time,” she replied. “Or maybe she just doesn’t want to worry him. Maybe he’s had enough on himself of late without her adding to the pile.”
“But that’s what marriage is about,” Tyler said, then he flinched. “Not that… not that they’re married yet. But who knows? Maybe one day. But they’re in a relationship, and that’s…” He stopped walking, sighed, and finally turned to face her. “Whenever she wants to talk. Whatever she wants to tell him. He’ll be there. I know he will. And he’ll understand. Whatever it is, he’ll understand.”
Sinead searched his face and saw nothing but raw, honest sincerity there. She stretched forward and kissed him on the lips this time, and without bothering to check if the others were around to see.
“I know he will,” she whispered, resting her forehead against his. “Always.”
They stood like that for a while, then Taggart’s insistent pulling on the lead dragged them apart.
“And, you know, if you ever need to talk to me about anything, that’s fine, too,” Tyler said.
Sinead laughed at that. “Nah, you’re alright!”
“Yeah.” Tyler grinned, as he slipped an arm around his wife’s waist. “Probably best not. I’m not much good at that sort of thing.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Sinead replied. “Maybe you’re better at it than I give you credit for.”
The set-up that Logan cobbled together in the interview room wasn’t exactly the traditional one. There was one chair—a moulded plastic number with metal legs and a hole low down in the back whose only possible purpose could be to show the top of your arse to the person sitting behind you.
Logan had selflessly given the chair to André, which had left him free to pace around the weirdo hippie bastard like this was some sort of military interrogation session that might turn to waterboarding at any moment.
André, to his credit, did not seem remotely concerned about the giant, surly-looking man padding in circles around him, and so far, none of Logan’s questions had caused him any distress, not even the blunt, out of nowhere, “Why did you kill him?” that could usually be relied on to put interviewees onto the back foot.
He hadn’t killed him, he claimed. He hadn’t heard from him in weeks. Hadn’t seen him in over a month. Bernie’s death was truly tragic, but it was hee-haw to do with him.
“So, tell me about the last time you saw him, then,” Logan said, stopping in front of the man in the chair just long enough to ask the question, then setting off on another lap around him.
“He tied himself to the gate,” André said, and he appeared amused by the memory. “Arms out. Like this,” he continued, then he spread his arms wide and briefly became a living image of Christ on the cross. “Bound to the fence rail.”
“Why?”
“To stop new arrivals. We had acolytes arriving for initiation. They come and go all the time, but that day happened to be a day when there were four arriving at once, and he thought he could put them off, I think.”
Logan stopped in front of him again. “How would he know you had four new people arriving that day?” he wondered. “Was that public knowledge?”