LEALA KOTKELL opened the front door for them and Sholto went out first. He stopped in his tracks on the top step, blocking Darian’s exit. Looking over Sholto’s shoulder, Darian caught a glimpse of what had caused the breakdown ahead of him. A large, sleek car was in the driveway now, its engine still running and the driver behind the wheel. The man who had been in the back was out and walking fast across to the front door, a furious look on his face, and Durell Kotkell did fury like a pro. If Leala had phoned her husband as soon as Darian and Sholto arrived, then that driver must have put Jim Clark to shame getting up from Bank in that time. Kotkell could afford the speeding fines, although how his driver found roads clear enough to speed on is an otherworldly sort of mystery.
“Why exactly are you here without informing me first?”
He stood with his hands on his hips, a hard expression that was supposed to convey rising anger and provoke the subject into trying to placate him. It probably worked on his many staff.
Before either of them could answer, Leala said, “They upset Uisdean, upset him terribly. He’s had to go back to bed with another headache because of these men you hired.”
There was venom in those last few words and it was directed at all three people in front of her, although the sneer in the word “men” was just for Sholto and Darian. Sholto turned and looked at Leala with a hurt expression, as though she had betrayed a confidence. He said, “We were just asking a few questions relating to our investigations, trying to do the right thing, that’s all.”
Durell said, “That’s all? The man who assaulted my son is still out there and the most you’ve achieved on my money is to upset my son further.”
His tone was mocking and Darian had heard enough of it. “We had a few questions for him to help us rule out things that related to what we’ve uncovered so far. We were hired to do all we could to catch the attacker, and that means asking questions, even if they’re sometimes uncomfortable.”
“Uncomfortable? What uncomfortable questions do you think you have the right to ask my son?”
Sholto said, “Well, I’m sure you don’t want to talk about this out on the doorstep.”
“I asked the question on the doorstep and you can provide me with the answer here as well.”
Given the gaps between houses on the street they would have needed a loudspeaker for the neighbors to overhear them, so Darian said, “We asked him about his relationships, whether he was still in touch with someone we had thought might have been involved in the incident, and we can now rule that out.”
“Relationships? You think if this was some strop over a boy my son wouldn’t have said? I can assure you both he is a very responsible young man; he would not be keeping it to himself if it was something as mundane as that. Bloody hell, I would expect even the halfwits in uniform at Challaid Police could have solved that little puzzle.”
Sholto breathed out a sigh of relief that Darian had to cover by talking over it. “As it happens, we agree with you. It has nothing to do with his private life. But our investigation led us in that direction and it’s right and proper that we gather all the information before we ruled it out. We need to be thorough.”
“Thorough enough to upset both my son and my wife, both of whom have been through enough of an ordeal without you piling in on top of it. I’m beginning to think I may have hired the wrong people.”
He looked at them with an expression that was designed to be a challenge. Darian could feel his temperature rising, ready to snap back, when Sholto said, “Of course we’re very sorry if you feel that way, Mr. Kotkell. We were hired to get a result, to make sure we found the person responsible, and we weren’t going to hold back in doing that. I’m sorry it’s arrived here.”
Kotkell scoffed and said, “I should sack the pair of you, go and find someone with more good sense, which wouldn’t require much of a manhunt, but I won’t. You two need to buck up your ideas, start putting some proper effort into this instead of chasing easy options. I’ll give you a week, and if you haven’t made progress by then my reaction will be very bloody notable.”
His tone made it clear it was time to get the hell off his front step and into the city to look for his son’s attacker. They scuttled down the drive and along the street to where the Fiat was parked. There was another car along the road that actually looked like it was in the same price range, and presumably belonged to someone’s cleaner. They got in and Sholto started driving, eager to clear out of Barton.
Darian said, “The man’s an arsehole.”
“Aye, but the thing about arseholes is that they can cause a terrible stink. We need to work out what the attack was all about and if it wasn’t his bedroom business than we don’t have a single lead.”
“Why didn’t he sack us? A guy like that, upset with us, thinking we’ve done a bad job, why didn’t he sack us?”
“Bloody hell, Darian. Don’t talk us out of work. You’ve brought us enough bad luck this week already.”
Sholto kept driving, and Darian kept thinking about Kotkell and his surprising reprieve. A man who probably sacked people every day of his working life and could afford to replace them with any investigator of his choosing and yet he had kept them on. Darian thought back to the coincidence of Kotkell hiring them to investigate a case Corey’s station had shrugged off.