‘I squelch when I walk.’ And to prove the point, he squelched away down the hall and out the front door.
That scratching noise sounded again.
And was that a whimper?
Logan peered up the stairs.
Yup, definitely coming from up there.
He climbed up to a tiny landing, where yet more books lay in wait, narrowing a space that was already claustrophobic because of the coombe ceilings. Two doors led off it, one of them rattling slightly as whatever it was scraped and whined.
The noise stopped as Logan turned the door handle.
He pushed it open, revealing a bedroom littered with yet more books. Discarded clothes lay heaped up on a wicker chair in one corner, a laundry basket overflowing in the other. A mound of cigarette stubs, ground out in a saucer. The whole room reeked of stale washing, fags, and a sort of dirty sweaty funk normally reserved for spotty teenagers.
No doubt about it, King’s missing professor was a bit of a slob.
But other than the mess, there was no sign of Captain Scrapey McWhinesalot.
‘Hello? Anyone there?’
Another whimper.
Logan hunkered down onto his haunches. Pitched his voice soft and low. ‘Who’s that?’
A manky old Jack Russell terrier tottered out from underneath the bed — cobwebs in his ears and dust bunnies on his flanks. He wobbled on his stiff little legs, tail going like a manic windscreen wiper as he stared up at Logan with cloudy eyes and whined.
Logan held a hand out for sniffing. ‘Hello, little man, did you get shut in here by mistake?’
The terrier did a shaky lap of him, yipping and yowling.
‘You need a wee, don’t you? I know that dance — Sergeant Rennie does the same one.’ He stood and clapped a hand against his leg. ‘Come on then.’
Then back down the stairs, the dog thump-lumping along behind him, scampering around Logan’s feet as they made their way along the hall to the front door.
Charlie squelched in through it before they got there, evidence crate swinging from one hand, and the ancient terrier went berserk — hackles up, barking and growling, making little feinted charges.
‘AAAARRRRRGH!’ Charlie flinched back against the wall, crate held out like a lion-tamer’s chair, eyes wide. ‘What the hell did you let it out of the room for?’
More barking, tiny brown teeth flashing.
‘He’s only—’
‘GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU LITTLE HORROR!’
Logan picked the poor wee thing up, holding him against his chest. The dog trembled in his arms, still growling at Charlie. ‘He needs a piddle.’
‘He needs a bloody muzzle! Get him out of here!’
‘All right, all right. Keep your squelchy pants on.’
Logan carried Professor Wilson’s dog out through the front door and into the sunshine. Popped him down on the gravel, where he immediately turned around and directed a bark towards the house. Charlie let loose a high-pitched shriek and slammed the door shut, sealing them outside. The terrier stared at it for a moment, then scuffed its back paws on the driveway, announcing that he’d won that argument, then tottered away around the side of the house.
Logan followed him, past the bins, through a patch of grass that had clearly seen a lot of pooping, but no scooping, through a clump of docken that was nearly shoulder-height, and into what might have been a back garden at one point. Now it was just a vast collection of weeds and unmown grass, with the corpse of a hen coop decomposing in its chicken-wire mortsafe. Butterflies danced whirling polkas through the hot air, flitting from one tangled clump of nettles to another. The rat-a-tat-tat of a belligerent woodpecker.
Shirley and Charlie had already done this bit, going by the back door’s liberal coating of fingerprint powder and the spiky white remnants of plaster in the grass where they’d taken casts of footprints.
Just a shame they hadn’t bagged and tagged the disaster area in the rumpled linen suit; grey hair, styled by lightning conductor and earwax; eggy stains on her lime-green shirt — unbuttoned so far it showed off way too much leathery cleavage; wrinkly face turned towards the sun. Basking, like an iguana crossed with a gonk. Phone clamped to her ear with one hand, massive e-cigarette in the other, puffing out plumes of strawberry-scented vape. Voice a gravelly growl, ‘Tell you, my arse is on fire today. It’s like the Battle of the Somme down there, only with fewer soldiers and more explosions. I’m...’ She froze for a moment, then opened one eye and looked at him. ‘Have to call you back.’
Logan sniffed. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Detective Sergeant Roberta Steel.’
She pocketed her phone as the wee dog snuffled around her feet. ‘Oh it’s you, is it? Those sodding sausages have had my guts like—’
‘“The Somme”. Yeah, I heard. And there was nothing wrong with my sausages yesterday. Perfectly good barbecued sausages.’
‘Then why are my innards trying to become outards?’
The terrier wobbled over to the hen run and cocked an arthritic leg.
‘I think it might have something to do with the Long Island Iced Teas you were knocking back all afternoon. No wonder your eyeballs look like two oysters drowned in Tabasco.’
‘Mmmph...’ She pulled out a pair of sunglasses and popped them on. Then nodded at the house. ‘So, you here for me, or for His Royal Highness? Can’t be me — I’m a paragon of sodding virtue, me.’
Aye, right.
Logan stuck his hands in his pockets. All innocent and casual. ‘So what’s he like to work for, King?’
‘Pff... You asking me to clype on my beloved DI? Cos you can ram that right up your liquorice allsort.’
King’s voice boomed out across the back garden / weed patch. ‘Should think so too.’ He scraped his left foot in the long grass a couple of times, nose crinkled in disgust. Matching suit jacket on over his blue shirt, face all pink and shiny in the heat. He frowned at Steel. ‘Is there any...’ A blink. Then he watched the ancient terrier snuffle his way past. ‘Is that Professor Wilson’s dog?’
‘Yup.’ Logan smiled. ‘He’s having a wee.’
‘OK...’ Back to Steel. ‘Any progress?’
She took another long draw on her fake cigarette — a huge metal tube of a thing with rings and protuberances all along its length, making it impossible to tell if the person who’d designed it had been going for ‘Sonic Screwdriver’ or ‘Steampunk Sex Toy’. Steel puffed out her strawberry fog. ‘Forensics aren’t finding much. Whoever did it, they didn’t break anything on the way in and wiped everything down before they left.’
Steel dug out her phone again and poked at the screen. ‘The Alt-Nat trolls are out in force, mind. And I quote: “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Hope you burn in hell you traitor bastard”, says Tartan Numpty One Three Six. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Where’s your English superiority now?” asks Willy Wallace Was Here.’
King sagged a bit, eyes screwed shut. ‘Great. So it’s already all over antisocial media.’
‘Oh I’m no’ finished yet. “For sale, both of Prof. Wanky Wilson’s balls. He won’t be needing them any more.” Hashtag, “One less English scumbag. LOL.” With three exclamation marks. Cybernat Ninja Thirteen Twenty.’
‘All right, we get the point.’
‘“What do you call one dead constitutional scholar? A bloody good start. ROFL”, according to We All Eight the English. That’s the number eight, not—’
King’s voice grew a sharper edge. ‘Enough! OK? Enough.’ Then he stifled a burp and winced. Crunched down another mint, rubbing at his chest. ‘When does this stuff start showing up in his timeline?’
Steel checked. ‘First one’s yesterday morning, nearly twenty-four hours before he was reported missing.’ She looked left, then right, then dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Which kinda implies someone out there was involved, doesn’t it?’