“I used to be a sprinter,” Ally Bally said, his eyes wide like he was staring back into the past. “I used to run roond and roond. Roond, and roond, and roond. Whoosh. You know? Just like… whoosh, so I was. Wasn’t I, Dinky?”
“The fuck should I know?” Dinky asked. “You’ve just been an old jakey bastard for as long as I’ve known you.”
Ally Bally’s smile widened and became a dry, rasping laugh that made Logan crave a throat lozenge.
“He’s good, isn’t he? Wee Dinky,” the old man said to the detectives. “He’s a good wee guy.”
“Well, I suppose that’s what we’re here to find out,” Logan said. “See, we’ve got reason to believe that you were at a caravan owned by Bernie the Beacon.”
“Was that yesterday?” Ally Bally asked.
Logan nodded. “Aye.”
The old man’s sun-ravaged brow furrowed into a series of deep grooves, like he was struggling to hold onto some thought. “Aye. No. That wasn’t us. We weren’t there. Were we, Dinky?”
“No,” Dinky confirmed. “We weren’t there.”
“Except you were,” Tyler said, addressing the man on the couch. “Because I saw you.”
“He says he saw me, Dinky.”
“Well, he couldn’t have.”
Ally Bally shook his head. “You couldn’t have seen me.”
“Aye, but I did. You opened the caravan door, and you saw me there.”
“Naw. I’d have minded seeing you, cos you’re a big squirrel,” Ally Bally reasoned.
“I wasn’t wearing this at the time,” Tyler said. “You opened the door, saw me and my colleague, and ran away.”
“Is that the Indian man?” Ally Bally asked. He winced. “Because, like, I didn’t see him either. Did I, Dinky?”
Dinky groaned, looked up at the ceiling, and asked the gods for a strength that apparently didn’t come.
“Right, fine. We were there,” he announced. “We were at the caravan yesterday.”
“You said we weren’t,” Ally Bally told him.
“You fucking know we were!”
Ally Bally folded his skinny arms. He looked genuinely hurt. “You shouldn’t make me confused like that, Dinky. It’s no’ funny.” He shifted his gaze to the detectives. “Were we there, or were we no’？”
“You were there,” Logan told him.
This seemed to please the older man. “I thought we were there, right enough. That’s what I was wondering. ‘Cause wee Dinky said that we weren’t. I thought…” He raised his hands and mimed his head exploding, complete with accompanying sound effects. “Know what I mean?”
“Tell you what, from now on just you tell us what you think happened,” Logan told him. “Forget about what Dinky said, alright?”
Ally Bally frowned. It was quite a slow process, like the signals had to stop for a rest somewhere between his brain and his facial muscles. “What Dinky said about what?” He looked across to the little man in the armchair. “Did you say something there, Dinky?”
Dinky slapped a stubby hand on his forehead, whispered, “Fucking hell,” and then completely gave up. “Fine. You want the truth? Like I say, aye, we were at the caravan yesterday. Alright? No crime in that.”
“Except the arson,” Logan said. “Pretty sure that qualifies as a crime.”
“Arson?” Dinky’s features squished together like his face was made of rubber. “What do you mean?”
“Thought you said we were telling the truth here, Dinky,” Logan continued. “The caravan. You burned it down.”
“What? No, we didn’t. Ally Bally, tell him. Did we burn down the caravan?”
The old man bit his top lip with his one good bottom tooth, and thought this over. “What caravan?” he eventually asked. “Did you get a caravan, Dinky? That’s pure magic, wee man! Can I get a shot?”
“No, the… Jesus. You’re getting worse, do you know that?” Dinky said, then he raised his eyes to Logan again. “We went there looking for Bernie. That’s all. We didn’t set fire to anything.”
“Why were you looking for him?” Logan asked. “I thought he wasn’t due a payment yet.”
“He isn’t. Wasn’t. But he would have been soon,” Dinky explained. “Hadn’t heard from him in a while, and considering what he bought with the money I loaned him, I wanted to make sure he hadn’t done a runner.”