Page 136 of Better the Devil

‘And by “friends,” you mean…?’

She looked away, then met his eye again and nodded.

‘How long?’

‘Since the start,’ Eleanor said. ‘I mean, it was going on from the start. When me and him got together. Longer than that, actually. Before. Ages before.’

‘To be clear.’ Logan leaned forward again. ‘You’re saying that Victor Belov and Kendrick Crichton were in a romantic relationship?’

Eleanor almost seemed amused by that. Almost.

‘I wouldn’t call it romantic, exactly.’

‘Sexual, then?’

She nodded.

‘For the tape, please,’ Logan prompted.

‘Yes. It was sexual. They were having sex.’

‘Victor was gay?’

‘Bisexual,’ Eleanor corrected.

‘And that didn’t bother you?’

She shook her head, then remembered the recording. ‘No, it didn’t bother me.’

‘You weren’t, you know, jealous? Angry?’

‘I didn’t care,’ she replied, and the indifference with which she said it was pretty compelling. ‘I was relieved, in fact. Made life easier, if anything. We knew where we stood.’

‘Which was where?’ Logan asked.

Eleanor shifted around in her seat. It was the most uncomfortable Logan had ever seen her. The Boy glanced at her from the corner, like this was a new one on him, too.

‘Marrying him was a mistake. It was a stupid rebound thing. By the end, though… I felt sorry for him, I suppose. If his brothers found out what he was, what he’d been doing, they’d have… God, I don’t know.’

‘Killed him?’ Logan asked.

She shrugged, like she didn’t know. Like it was a possibility.

‘I can’t imagine they’d have been best pleased with Kendrick Crichton, either.’

‘Yes, well, you can go right ahead and ask them that, should you ever find them,’ Fairweather said, in a tone that made clear he wasn’t going to tolerate this particular line of questioning much further.

Logan drummed his fingers on the tabletop, considering his next move. The Boy watched the hand from the corner,as if mesmerised by it. Fairweather, meanwhile, had returned straight back into standby mode.

‘Was Victor dealing drugs?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Eleanor countered, like she’d had the answer ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.

‘You said he wasn’t a good man. When I spoke to you at your house.’

She shrugged. ‘He was fine.’

‘You seemed to think otherwise at the time.’