Again: always nice to feel wanted.
Logan pulled on a professional smile. ‘Mrs Shaw? We’re here about your break-in.’
‘Oh?’ Peering around them at the street beyond, clearly looking for something. Or someone. It can’t have been Tufty, though, because seeing him just caused her to sag even more. ‘I thought you lot didn’t bother your backsides for anything less than a full-on murder these days.’
Logan spread his arms wide. ‘And yet: here we are.’
She let out a tut, then a long-suffering sigh. ‘You’d better come in then.’
Wow.
The tiny room looked as if someone had been through it with a petrol strimmer. Film posters hung in tatters from the walls, the bed lay on its side, the mattress slashed. Every drawer hung wide open, their contents flung about; wardrobe too.
A small desk – the kind kids were given to do their homework at was missing a leg, leaving it tipped back at a drunken angle. Allitsdrawers were open too, but there was no sign of the contents. Nothing computery on the floor or wedged on top of other broken things.
Mrs Shaw turned in place, flapping her arms like a lime-green penguin. ‘I meanlookat it! What sort of animal doesthis to a wee boy’s bedroom?’ Pointing at the piles of clothes. ‘All histhings.’
Logan stepped back out into the hall.
It was tiny too. But then this was a tiny house.
Paintings of Scottish pastoral scenes dotted the walls, between five doors leading off. Two hung open, revealing a tidy little lounge and a tidy little kitchen.
He tried the other three: tidy little bathroom, tidy little linen closet, and a tidy little bedroom.
Hmmm...
Logan stepped back into the maelstrom, where Mrs Shaw was picking up a pair of black boxer shorts – folding them, then turning around again, trying to find somewhere tidy to put the things.
‘And they didn’t touchanythingelse? Just your son’s room?’
She put the boxer shorts on the wonky desk and plucked another pair of pants from the floor. ‘I don’t know what Andrew will say when he gets home. They took his new laptop!’
‘But you didn’t hear anything?’
‘Well, I was fast asleep, wasn’t I. Soon as I’ve taken my pills, I’m out like a badger.’ Her shoulders dipped. ‘Came through to see if Andrew wanted a boiled egg for his breakfast and found...this.’
Not the best start to the day.
Logan snapped on a pair of gloves. ‘And where was your son when all this happened?’
‘Oh, he was out. Probably at a girl’s house.’ A smile. ‘Thinks I don’t know, but he’s just like his father: proper ladies’ man. Well, he isveryhandsome.’
She rescued a photo from the messy floor and held it out: a professional headshot, eight-by-ten, of a young man with a strangely...plasticface. Tidy little beard to go with the tidy little house, black hair swept back from a perfectly smooth forehead,plucked eyebrows, teeth so white they probably glowed in the dark. Sort of handsome, in a Made-By-Mattel way.
A curly signature was superimposed over the bottom of the image, with the words ‘ANDREWWALLACESHAW~AVAILABLEFORMODELLINGANDACTINGWORK’ and a mobile number.
So much for ‘wee boy’.
Mrs Shaw let out a wistful breath. ‘Not that his dad hung around for very long. Wandering eye to go with the wandering hands.’
Logan turned – surveying the wreckage again. ‘Jealous or jilted boyfriend, maybe? Or a girl he’s dumped?’
That got him a scowl. ‘My Andrew’s not some sort of...homewrecker! He’s been raisedright. Agoodboy. I madecertainof that!’
‘I’m sure he is, but we have to ask this stuff.’ Logan had a poke around in the debris. Clothes mostly, with the occasional airport paperback thrown in. ‘How did they get in? Your burglar.’
‘Don’t know. I was asleep, remember? But when I woke up the back door was lying wide open. And you can tell the insurance people Ialwayslock it!’ She folded another pair of scattered undies. ‘All they ever do is work out ways not to pay what they owe. What’s the point of insurance if they never honour their end of it?’