Page 32 of Better the Devil

Dave opened the folder and found a single page inside. He scanned the front, then turned it over in case there was something he was missing on the back.

‘Driving without insurance?’ Dave compared the printout to all the boxes sitting on his desk. ‘Driving without insurance. That’s it?’

‘That’s all they ever managed to pin on him.’

‘What about the brothers?’ Dave asked. ‘They been done for anything?’

Sinead groaned, got to her feet, and gripped the handle of the trolley. ‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘But there’s half a dozen more boxes through there, so I guess we’ll find out.’

‘Don’t worry,Mrs Belov, the lad’ll be fine. DC Neish is good with kids. He’s got two of his own. Twins.’

Eleanor blinked. Her largely immobile forehead struggled to frown, and she looked off in the direction of the hallway, like she had no idea what the DCI was on about.

‘Oh. Jack. Yes,’ she said, after a moment. ‘He’ll be fine, yes. He’s… resilient. I haven’t told him about Victor yet. I’m not sure he’ll care.’

‘Wasn’t Victor…?’

‘No. God, no. He’d have insisted on naming him after himself if he was. No, Jack’s dad passed away before he was born.’

A mental notepad tucked away in one of the more suspicious regions of Logan’s brain flipped open.

‘Oh? I’m very sorry to hear that. Do you mind if I ask…?’

‘Suicide,’ Eleanor said, cutting him off. Her face visibly hardened before Logan’s eyes. ‘Left a note, took himself out to a bothy in the middle of nowhere, and hanged himself.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Eleanor shrugged in a way that suggested she didn’t care. The way she sucked in her bottom lip and nodded said otherwise.

‘He was bipolar. They were trying to get his medication right. Needless to say, they didn’t. He started using other stuff. Uppers. Downers. Everything. Went from weed to heroin in about a month and a half. Must be some sort of record.’

Logan assured her that it wasn’t. She almost looked disappointed.

‘I was away for the weekend when he did it. Maternity shopping in Glasgow with my mum. It’s all documented in police records. You can look it up.’

The white leather couch creaked as she crossed her legs and stretched an arm out across the back of the cushions.

‘Can’t have you thinking I’m some sort of Black Widow, after all.’ A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. Her red lipstick shone in the glow of the ceiling-mounted spotlights. ‘Losing one child’s father is unlucky. Losing two is a pattern. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

Logan drew a breath in through his nose, and shook his head. ‘No. Not really. I was just feeling sorry for you, I suppose.’

‘Please. God. Don’t. I’ve had enough pity over the years to last me a lifetime. You can keep it. I don’t want it.’

She turned her head and looked away again. Her fingers drummed on the couch cushion. From out in the hallway, there came aslap-slap-slapof something hitting the floor. A ball, maybe. Whatever it was, it was getting louder as it drew closer.

‘I’m sorry Victor’s dead. I am,’ Eleanor said, still gazing off in the direction of the sound. ‘But he wasn’t a great man, and hecertainly wasn’t a good one. Our relationship was complicated from the start.’

‘How so?’ Logan asked.

‘Because I was basically still a child. Because I was still grieving Jason. We’d been together since first year in school. We were high school sweethearts, I suppose, if you want to get sentimental about it.’

Even though her face was still side-on to Logan, he saw something shifting in her expression. It softened in a way he hadn’t seen before. Her eyes sparkled, like the memory of her childhood boyfriend had awakened something in her.

Out in the hallway, theslap-slap-slapdrew level with the living room. Logan watched, stony-faced, as Tyler came bouncing past on a space hopper, little Jack clapping excitedly beside him.

A look passed between the two detectives. It was a look that said, ‘Sorry, boss. This isn’t what it looks like.’

They both knew that it very much was what it looked like, though. Logan gave a tiny, incremental shake of his head, then turned back to Eleanor as Tyler went bouncing off up the hallway.