Page 113 of Better the Devil

‘I think you wanted him to stay in prison,’ Logan reasoned. ‘I think you were worried that him being out might make things more complicated.’

‘More complicated than living with the guy who put him in jail in the first place?’

Logan smiled, like this was banter, though he quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t.

‘Were you worried he was going to try and take you away?’

‘Take me away?’ Olivia seemed equal-parts confused and amused by the suggestion. ‘What, like I’m five? Or, did you think he was going to kidnap me, or something?’

She looked away, like she was looking back through the mists of time.

‘I used to be scared of him. I did. I mean, he’s my dad, so… there’s all that. But I used to be scared of him, even if I didn’t act like it. Even if I hid it, and that.’

She faced Jack again across the table. In that moment, he would’ve sworn she had never been afraid of anything in her life.

‘But that was then. He phoned me a few weeks back. But you know that, of course, don’t you? That’s what set all this off.’

Logan didn’t comment, just waited to see what was coming next.

‘He told me he was getting out. Said he was going to make things right, that he was going to make it up to me. Something about Jesus, too, but I wasn’t really listening by that point.’

She sniffed. It was dismissive, like the conversation had been no big deal, even before the Jesus stuff.

‘I told him he could piss off. I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him. I said that’—there was another crack in her voice, but she powered through it—‘I was happy. Where I was. That I didn’t need him anymore. That I had…’

She stole a glance at Logan. Just briefly. Just for a second.

‘…people,’ she concluded. ‘People who actually cared about me.’

Olivia folded her arms again, tighter than ever. Her voice, when it came, was flat and lifeless, like all the emotion had been stripped out of it.

‘I guess the joke was on me.’

Bosco Maximuke knewa thing or two about the murders of Victor Belov and Kendrick Crichton.

But that was about the extent of it.

He had the order wrong for a start. He claimed to have cut Victor Belov’s throat first—through the open side window of his parked car—before heading to Forres to shoot Kendrick Crichton in the face with a firearm he had subsequently misplaced, and which he was unable to describe in any real detail.

He couldn’t provide Kendrick’s address, say what room he’d shot him in, or explain what he’d done with the knife that had killed Victor Belov. He’d initially claimed he’d thrown it in a river, but had walked that back after DCI Reeve pulled up Google Maps on his phone and showed him that the closest river—the Spey—was a three-mile hike through bracken and heather from where Victor was killed.

‘I see what you’re doing, Bosco,’ Reeve told him, returning the phone to his pocket. ‘You’re worried about your daughter. I get that. I do. And, hey, I hear you. I’m worried about her, too. But the way you help her, it isn’t by lying, or trying to take the fall. It’s by being honest, and it’s by being open. That’s how you get her out of any mess she might be in. Not by making some false confession.’

Bosco considered the detective’s words. He sat in silence, a tiny vein pulsing on his temple, his pulse visibly hammering away in his throat.

Reeve waited, hands clasped together, thumbs tapping.

Bosco reached across the table, grabbed the detective’s notebook, and flipped it open.

‘I did it. I killed them,’ he insisted. ‘So do your fucking job and write.’

The knockon the interview room door was unwelcome. Logan tried to ignore it, but it came again just a moment later, fast and urgent, as if someone needed desperately to get in.

‘Just, eh, I’ll just be a minute,’ he told Olivia, rising from his chair.

He announced the pausing of the recording, then opened the door just as Ben Forde raised his hand to knock again.

‘Ben?’ Logan glanced both directions along the corridor. ‘What is it? It’s not a good time.’