by the wind. A shed sat in the bottom corner, surrounded by terracotta pots, their contents covered with white fleecy material. What looked like a vegetable plot lay along the far end of the garden. All very bucolic and genteel. Perched on the edge of the world.
He checked his watch. Half eight and there was still no sign of Tufty. Knowing Logan’s luck, Mrs Milne had probably left the front door open and Tufty had got out. He’d be climbing trees, chasing cars, and pooping on people’s lawns.
The room was quiet, just Logan and the hummmm-swoosh-hummmm-swoosh of the dishwasher.
He dug into his pocket and came out with the two business cards. Well, a promise was a promise… He ripped both up and dumped them in the pedal bin.
A newspaper lay on the worktop next to it, open at the crossword. Half the grid was filled in, a blue biro sitting next to the paper. Logan peered at the clues.
She’d got four down wrong.
And that wasn’t how you spelled ‘DISCONTENT’ either. Or ‘INCALCULABLE’.
Then Mrs Milne’s voice cut across the dishwasher. ‘Sorry. I had to change the cartridge in the printer.’
Logan turned. ‘You’re a crossword person.’
Pink flushed her cheeks. Then she held out a small stack of paper. ‘Bank statements for the last twelve weeks.’
‘Thanks.’ He flicked through them.
Regular entries for petrol and food. A pub in Peterhead every Wednesday. A few entries for Amazon. Some for Waterstones in Elgin… Nothing jumped out.
Mrs Milne picked the newspaper up and ruffled it back into shape. ‘Martin was always the puzzle solver. Into his Miss Marples and his crime drama on the TV.’ She closed the paper, shutting away the crossword. Smoothed it down. ‘Don’t know why I bother really, I’m always terrible at it.’
There, spread across the Aberdeen Examiner’s front page, was a photo of the entrance to the woods, all cordoned off with blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape. A uniformed constable stood behind the line, in the pouring rain, while behind him a patrol car sat with all its lights on. ‘GRISLY DISCOVERY IN MACDUFF WOODS’ with the sub-headline ‘IS BODY IN WOODS MISSING BUSINESSMAN?’
No wonder she’d thought the worst when they’d turned up on her doorstep.
Logan reached out and took the newspaper from her. ‘You shouldn’t be reading this kind of stuff. They don’t know anything, they’re just speculating. Making things up to sell more copies.’
‘Keep it.’ Mrs Milne turned away. ‘I never liked doing the crossword anyway.’
Her back was broad beneath the damp jumper, but rounded, as if she spent a lot of time trying to make herself look smaller. Maybe her husband was a short man and he didn’t like being towered over? Little man syndrome.
The dishwasher whispered and moaned.
Rain spattered across the kitchen window.
Logan folded the newspaper and tucked it under his arm. ‘We’re going to do everything we can, I promise.’
She didn’t turn around. ‘Thank you.’
Then the kitchen door thumped open and Tufty poked his head in. About time.
He pulled on a big grin. ‘Katie? Can I ask a…’ He nodded back towards the front of the house. ‘It’s a quickie.’
She followed him down the hall, Logan bringing up the rear.
‘Any idea who this is?’ Tufty pointed at one of the framed photos. A close-up group of eight men, standing around a barbecue in T-shirts. Baseball caps and sunglasses. Sunburn and grins. A couple had their drinks raised in salute. ‘On the left, with the corn-on-the-cob.’
Mrs Milne blinked, frowned. ‘It’s Pete. Peter Shepherd. He’s Martin’s business partner. Him, Martin, and Brian set up GCML together nine years ago. Why?’
‘Cool, cool.’ Tufty tapped the frame. ‘And he lives…?’
‘Pennan. He’s got one of those sideyways houses. Look, why do you want to know?’
Tufty shrugged. ‘Just interested. Any chance I can borrow the photo?’
Logan fastened his seatbelt. ‘Well?’
Tufty waved through the windscreen at Mrs Milne. Then turned the wheel and took them out of the little development. Soon as he got to the junction with the main road, he reached back into the footwell and pulled out the framed photo of the barbecue. Passed it over. ‘Notice anything?’
‘They’ve burnt the sausages?’
‘Guy on the left, Peter Shepherd. Check the arm.’
Martin’s business partner had a green T-shirt with a sort of Viking logo on the front. He’d ripped the sleeves off, exposing the swollen biceps of someone who spent far too much time down the gym. And there, on his left arm, was a narwhal tattoo.
Banff sulked beneath the heavy lid of stone sky, the buildings crouched together in the rain. Tufty took them in through the limits and down the hill. ‘Station?’
‘Pennan.’ Logan pressed the talk button on his Airwave. ‘Maggie, I need you to look someone up for me. Peter Shepherd, lives in Pennan.’
‘Give me a minute, Sergeant McRae, the MIT are hogging all the bandwidth so everything’s running like a slug.’
Tufty took a right, onto Castle Street – its rows of old-fashioned buildings giving way to the same buildings but with shops occupying the ground floor. ‘Sarge, should we not… You know, tell DCI Steel that Shepherd’s her corpse?’
‘No guarantee it’s him, Tufty. We’re just doing a bit of legwork. Making sure we don’t waste anyone’s time.’
‘Yeah, but—’
‘When Mrs Milne reported her husband missing, did you go talk to everyone at his company?’
‘No one had seen him since Friday. He bunked off early, about half three, which was par for the course.’
‘What about Shepherd?’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t ask. We were looking for Milne, didn’t even know Shepherd existed.’
Which was fair enough.
A handful of bodies tramped through the rain, bent nearly double under its relentless assault. All the cars had their headlights on, edging along not much faster than the people on the pavement.
‘What about this Brian person, the other partner?’
Something crawled across Tufty’s face, wrinkling bits of it,
