it’s—’
Logan switched the radio off and pulled onto the wide gravel driveway.
The Scene Examiners’ grubby white Transit sat right outside the farmhouse, next to an unmarked grey Vauxhall pool car, a Volvo in shades of rust and gastroenteritis brown; and a perky little red Fiat.
He parked next to it, grabbed his hat, and climbed out into … Holy mother of fish.
The burning air caught in his throat, wrapped itself around his Police Scotland uniform, and tried to grind him into the ground.
Bees bumbled their way between the flowering weeds that lined the drive, hoverflies buzzing amongst the thunderheads, house martins reenacting the Battle of Britain – jinking and swooping and diving, while a clatter of jackdaws looked on from the farmhouse roof.
Logan pulled on his hat and limped for the front door.
It wasn’t locked. Or even guarded, come to that.
Which was a bit lax.
He stepped into a dusty hallway, the walls punctuated by dusty photos in dusty frames, between dusty bookshelves stuffed with dusty books. A half-dozen doors led off the hall, most of them open. A staircase leading up, with dusty piles of yet more books at the outside edge of every tread.
The clicker-flash of cameras burst out from one of the doorways, into the hall. Logan paused at the threshold and peered inside.
It was a kitchen, full of yet more books. Stacks and stacks of them. Newspapers too. And a manky bin-bag-left-in-the-sun kind of smell. Two figures, one short and pregnant, one tall and broad, both in full SOC get-up, busied themselves around the kitchen table, taking photos and swabs. Fingerprint powder greyed nearly every other surface.
They’d rigged up a half-hearted barricade by stretching a line of yellow-and-black ‘CRIME SCENE – DO NOT CROSS’ tape across the doorway.
Logan waved at them. ‘Hello?’
The pregnant one looked up from her DNA sampling, features obscured by a facemask and safety goggles. ‘You’re back at work then?’
‘Apparently. DI King about?’
The smile vanished from her voice. ‘His Majesty is swanning about somewhere. If you find him, tell him we’re out of here in twenty. Got other, more important crime scenes to deal with.’
‘Thanks, Shirley.’ Logan carried on down the corridor, past the stairs, past the bookshelves and their dust-furred books – ninety percent of which seemed to be Scottish history with the occasional Mills & Boon thrown in.
A clipped voice came from a room off to one side, as if every word was being throttled to stop it screaming, emphasising the Highland burr. ‘No, Gwen, I didn’t. And you repeating it over and over doesn’t make it true.’
Logan stepped into the doorway of a cluttered study, lined with yet more overflowing bookshelves. One wall was devoted to a cluster of framed photos – proper full-size head-and-shoulder jobs – each one depicting a different grey-muzzled Jack Russell terrier. And crammed in, between everything else, were newspaper clippings, stuck to the wallpaper with thumbtacks. A desk sat in front of the room’s only window, piled high with papers, three monitors hovering above it on hydraulic arms. An ashtray as packed with dog-ends as the bookcases were with books.
And in the middle of all this stood a man in his shirtsleeves. A bit overweight, his swept-back blond hair a bit higher on his forehead, the dimple in his chin a bit more squished up by the fat that gathered along his jawline. Big arms, though, as if he used to be a prizefighter who’d let himself go after one too many blows to the head. His silk tie hung at half-mast and his bright-blue shirt came with dark patches under the arms.
His features creased, as if whoever he was on the phone with had just stabbed him in the ear. ‘No … Because I’m working, Gwen. You remember what that’s like? … Yes.’ Then a longer pause. ‘Yes.’ A from-the-bottom-of-your-socks sigh. ‘I don’t know: later. OK. Bye.’
He hung up and ran a hand over his face.
‘DI King?’ Logan knocked on the door frame. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’
King smoothed himself down, slipped his phone into his pocket, and forced a smile. ‘Inspector McRae. Thought you were still off on the sick?’
‘I get that a lot. So … Missing constitutional scholar?’
‘Can we skip the foreplay, please? You’re not here about Professor Wilson – the call only came in an hour ago, not enough time for anyone to have screwed something up.’ King popped an extra-strong mint in his mouth, crunching as he talked. ‘So come on, Mr Professional Standards, what am I supposed to have done wrong?’
Logan wandered in, hands behind his back as he frowned his way along the articles pinned to the wall. The headlines all followed the same theme: ‘SCOTLAND IS SETTING ITSELF UP TO FAIL.’, ‘RISE UP AND BE THE FAILURE AGAIN.’, ‘WHY THE SCOTS NEED THE UK MORE THAN IT NEEDS THEM.’…
He nodded at them. ‘Looks like the Professor was a man of strong opinions.’
‘The man’s a Brit-Nat tosser. If he thinks Scotland’s so crap, why doesn’t he move back to Shropshire?’
‘Interesting you should say that …’
King stood there, being aftershavey.
Logan skimmed the nearest bookshelf. The whole thing was dedicated to volumes on economic theory and political science. ‘It’s a bit overkill, isn’t it? This is a simple missing person case, wouldn’t have thought it warranted a full-blown Detective Inspector. Especially not one as esteemed as yourself.’
King folded his arms. Chest out. ‘OK, what’s this all about?’
‘Just wondering why they sent you.’
‘When Professor Wilson’s colleague reported him missing at eleven-oh-two this morning, she told Control the kitchen was covered in blood. We thought it might be serious.’
‘Ah. That clears it up.’
A sigh. ‘And it’s politics. He’s been having a go in the media about our handling of these White-Settler arson attacks. Says we’re complacent. Says we don’t care about Alt-Nats burning out English businesses. The brass don’t want anyone saying we didn’t take his disappearance seriously.’ Another extra-strong mint disappeared between King’s crunching teeth. ‘And you still haven’t answered the question.’
‘Alt-Nats?’
‘You know how the Alt-Right is full of white supremacists, gun nuts, racists, and neo-Nazis? Well, Alt-Nats are our own home-grown version. Only without the guns and Nazis. And it’s the English they hate.’
Strange the things you missed being off on the sick for a year.
Logan shook his head. ‘Makes you proud to be Scottish, doesn’t it?’
‘You see “Alt” in front of anything these days, you know what you’re getting: Arrogant Lowbrow Tossers.’ All said without
