Page 108 of Better the Devil

‘Olivia, let’s just calm down and?—’

‘Can we just hurry up and do this?’ the girl demanded. ‘I want to get it over with.’

Logan tried not to notice the pain on Shona’s face. Tried not to instinctively reach for her, hold her, tell her it was all going to be OK.

Instead, he just nodded. ‘Right, then.’

He tapped his pass on the security gate. It slid open, and Olivia marched past him towards the lift.

When Shona moved to follow, Logan blocked her way.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.

‘Jack, get out of the way. I’m going in with her.’

Logan looked back over his shoulder, to where Olivia was already stabbing at the button to summon the lift. He shut his eyes for a moment, and breathed out.

When he turned back to Shona, the shake in his voice was almost under control.

‘No,’ he said.

The gate slid closed between them.

‘I’m afraid you can’t.’

‘Well,Mr Maximuke, I’d like to thank you for your time today,’ DCI Reeve declared, holding the door to the interview room open so that Bosco could step out into the corridor. ‘Getting to know you a little has been… well, it has really been something.’

Bosco ducked beneath the taller man’s arm and made a sound that was somewhere in the region of a laugh, just not particularly close to it.

‘It was my pleasure. You are good man, I think. When I pray to Jesus tonight, I will thank Him for you.’

Reeve’s smile, which was already the focal point of his face, grew wider. ‘I appreciate that. You be sure to tell the big guy I said hello.’

He started to lead the Russian along the corridor.

‘And if, while talking to Him, you remember anything that might be constructive or useful, and not just a lot of, you know,waffle and bullshit’—Reeve’s smile remained utterly sincere—‘you be sure to give us a call.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Bosco agreed. ‘I am just sorry that I could not have been of more?—’

He stopped dead in his tracks when the door at the far end of the corridor opened, and his daughter came storming through.

She saw him and slowed. For a moment, her eyes widened. Some look of horror wrote itself across the lines of her face.

And then, the mask of anger was pulled back down, and she swung a left into a room on a mumbled instruction from the detective looming behind her.

Logan and Bosco watched each other from along the corridor. Stared. Said nothing.

Finally, Jack turned and followed Olivia into the room, and the door clicked closed behind them.

‘Sorry about that,’ Reeve began. ‘Now, if you’d just like to?—’

‘Wait!’

Bosco pressed a hand against the corridor wall, like he was bracing himself there. Like he would not be moved.

‘Just… wait,’ he said.

He stood there in silence, peering into the empty space where his daughter had been, like the atoms in the air were tea leaves he could somehow read.