‘She just said she doesn’t want anything,’ the girl grumbled, mortified at nothing, the way only twelve-year-old girls can be.
The woman placed a ten-pound note in the jar as she left, singing the place’s praises. ‘That just saved me a couple of hundred pounds on buying a new Switch,’ she told everyone, and Sachin proudly added another chalk mark to the board on the wall.
‘She means we just saved another console from ending up in a rubbish dump,’ McIntyre called out, as he set about repairing an old coffee machine from the nineties.
‘Twenty-two repairs completed today,’ Sachin said, sitting back down. ‘And a good few quid in donations.’
‘And we’ve a full till here,’ added Senga.
‘We’ll need it for more zippers, and thread for the sewing machines,’ Roz chipped in before anyone else could claim it.
‘We’re almost out of glacé cherries and bicarb for the scones,’ Rhona put in.
‘Could do with a bit more silver solder, actually. And some paraloid B-72, and some chaser’s pitch, come to think of it,’ added McIntyre, scratching behind his ear.
There was always something the shed was running short on, meaning donations were immediately ploughed back into the community, just as McIntyre had intended when setting the place up.
Ally had been rubbing away the ache in her lower back from hunching over her workbench and was making her way to the door to turn off the neon sign when two men approached from the courtyard, police officers, both with serious, straight-lipped expressions.
‘Um… Dad?’ Ally called back into the shed.
‘Charlie McIntyre?’ the tallest of the men asked. He wore a black chequered cap and a high viz vest over his black uniform.
Ally stood back to let them pass. The smaller, younger man glanced at her with brown, wary eyes. He was dressed in all black and was hanging back a little, letting his colleague take charge.
‘That’ll be me,’ Ally’s dad identified himself, pulling his soldering goggles from the top of his head.
‘I’m Chief Inspector Edwyn. My colleague here is Special Constable Beaton. We’d like to have a word, sir, about your…’ He cast his hand around as though he wasn’t quite sure what kind of setup this was. ‘Repair business?’
‘Anything you want to say, the volunteers can hear it too,’ McIntyre replied genially.
‘In that case, I’d be grateful if you locked the doors,’ said Edwyn.
‘Sorry, but what’s this about?’ Ally chirruped, stepping between the Inspector and her father, her already frayed nerves zinging with alarm.
Sachin was locking them all in, having made sure there were no customers left hanging about the courtyard.
The Special Constable took exception to Ally challenging his senior officer and asked if she’d give his colleague ‘a wee bit of space, please, miss.’
Edwyn pressed on, undeterred. ‘We’ve reason to believe that you may have received and processed stolen property.’
This set the Gifford sisters off in vehement protest about how they’d done no such thing.
‘That doesnae sound very likely,’ Sachin chimed in, and even Cary Anderson put on a show of silent indignation, shaking his head and tutting at the very suggestion.
‘What evidence have you got to come in here bandying around accusations like that?’ Ally snapped, now facing down the brown-eyed man with a badge on his pocket confirming his name and rank, Jamie Beaton, Special Police Constable.
Edwyn was taking a plastic wallet full of images from under his arm, which drew the volunteers in a crowd around him to get a glimpse, except for Willie and Peaches who hadn’t dared move and were surreptitiously filming everything on their phones to show their friends at uni.
Roz came to stand beside her husband and, taking one glimpse at the pictures, her face fell.
‘Ah!’ said McIntyre.
‘Ah, indeed,’ the Chief Inspector echoed.
In his hands were stills from the Highland Spotlight programme that had aired the night before; close-ups of McIntyre’s hands and the laser as he carefully erased the engravings on those fine pieces of jewellery the day the news crew visited back in May.
‘Elaine,’ McIntyre tolled.
