“Little fella,” Logan said, like that would be enough to explain everything. “He’s like a… a dwarf.”
“He’s a loan shark dwarf?” Shona asked.
“Aye.”
“He’s a little person with a big stash of money? What, is he a leprechaun or something?” Shona asked, then she waved away her own question before Logan could answer. “Forget it. So, he told you that Bernie… what, exactly?”
“Broke his wrist?”
“Bernie broke the little fella’s wrist, or…？”
“Other way around.”
Shona sat back, blinked several times in a row, then hunched over her laptop and started prodding furiously at the touchpad.
Sinead, who had been listening to the whole exchange, asked the question that had just come to Logan’s mind, too.
“Eh, is everything alright?”
“Uh… let me get back to you on that,” Logan told her, watching Shona scroll through a series of thumbnail images on her computer screen. “We’re just… I don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Aha! There. See?” Shona cried, double-tapping the touchpad. The small image grew in size to fill the whole screen. It was an X-ray that showed an arm from the elbow down to the tips of the fingers. “No damage. Not on that one, and not on the other one, either.”
“What?” Logan joined her in perching at the front of the couch. “What are you saying?”
“These wrists have never been broken. Not a break, not a hairline fracture, nothing.”
“Jesus,” Logan muttered. “So…”
“So, either your money lender’s lying,” Shona said, indicating the X-ray. “Or that body doesn’t belong to who we think it does.”
“Teeth,” Logan said.
Shona frowned. “Teeth?”
“His teeth. Did he have any fillings?”
“Um… His teeth were pretty badly damaged in the fire, but three, I think,” Shona said, her eyes darting back and forth like she was consulting a report inside her head. “I’ll have to double-check. Definitely at least two, though. Why?”
Logan stood up. He didn’t intend to, but his legs hoisted him aloft all on their own.
“It’s not him. The body. That’s not Bernie,” he said.
Sinead’s voice crackled from the mobile. “Well then, that begs the obvious question, sir.”
Logan nodded and looked down at the passport. “Who the bloody hell is it?”
Three minutes later, Sinead stormed into the makeshift interview room and thrust her phone into Oberon Finley-Lennox’s face so suddenly he gave a shriek of fright and covered his head with his hands.
“I’m sorry! I said I’m sorry!” he cried.
“Oh grow up, I’m not going to hurt you,” Sinead said. Behind her, Taggart gave a low, menacing growl.
“But he might,” Hamza pointed out.
“Look at the screen,” Sinead instructed. “Look at it.”
Slowly, like a tortoise emerging from its shell, Oberon removed his arms from his head enough to let him look at Sinead’s mobile, and at the blank, expressionless face of the man in the photograph.
“Do you recognise this man?” Sinead asked.
Oberon eyed her cautiously, like he was trying to figure out what she was up to. “Yes. Of course,” he said. “I mean, he’s younger here, obviously, but that’s him. That’s Bernie.” He tore his eyes from the screen, then looked between the three detectives who were now assembled there in the room with him. “I mean… it is, isn’t it? Or isn’t it?”
“You tell us.” Sinead moved the phone closer, and the MSP retreated further into his seat. “It’s not a trick. It’s not a test. It’s just a question. Is this Bernie the Beacon?”
“Well, yes! Obviously!”
“Thank you,” Sinead said, lowering the phone and turning away.
“You’re welcome. But, I don’t understand what—”
Sinead turned back. The look on her face snapped the politician’s mouth shut. “Do not speak to me unless I tell you to. Understood?”
For a moment, it looked like Oberon might be about to burst into tears, but then he nodded and lowered his head, cowed by her words and the manner in which she’d said them.
“Good,” Sinead said. She turned to Ben and Hamza. “Now, would one of you two mind charging Mr Finley-Lennox for me?”