Page 49 of Better the Devil

‘All we got him on was false imprisonment. That’s what we knew for sure would stick. That’s how we knew we’d get him off the streets.’

‘For four years? Twelve, I could live with. Six, if it came to it, butfour? For what that bastard did?’

Mitchell clasped her hands together. ‘I’m as unhappy about it as you are.’

‘Oh, I doubt that very much!’ Logan spat back at her. ‘They should’ve told us. We should’ve had fucking warning of this!’

‘They should. We should,’ the detective superintendent agreed. ‘And rest assured, I’ll be raising that at the highest level.’

Logan was sitting again. He hadn’t noticed that happening, either, though he got a sense that his legs had given way beneath him.

Olivia. Christ. What about Olivia? What was he going to say to her? How was she going to feel about her father being free?

How was it going to affect her? Them? Shona?

Him?

A thought hit him. He was annoyed that it had taken this long.

‘When?’

Mitchell pursed her lips, like she didn’t want to say.

‘When did he get out?’ Logan pressed.

‘Five days ago,’ Mitchell said.

‘Five days? Five fucking days?’

Logan was on his feet again, but it was deliberate this time.

‘I’m getting him brought in.’

‘Jack…’

‘Four days after he’s released, one of the heirs to his empire winds up with his throat cut in a lay-by? And we’re supposed to believe that’s a coincidence? No. Bollocks. I’m bringing him in.’

Mitchell sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, like she was fending off a headache. ‘We need to be careful.’

‘Careful? Aye. No bother. You can watch me carefully drag the evil bastard through the corridors by his fucking eyelids!’

‘That’s enough!’

She didn’t shout. As usual, she didn’t have to. Detective Superintendent Mitchell didn’t have to get loud to make her voice heard.

‘I get that you’re upset, Jack. For all kinds of reasons. For him being freed, for what he did to you all, for what it means for your home situation. For the sheer disrespect of being among the last to bloody know.’

That last part was said through gritted teeth. Clearly, Mitchell was feeling the sting of that one, too.

‘But we’re in an upsetting job, you and I. We face upsetting things every day. And part of that job is learning to compartmentalise those things to the best of our abilities. Bosco Maximuke is free. That’s not an attack on you, or a slight on me. It’s just how it is.’

‘It’s not right,’ Logan muttered, but his initial burst of rage had burned itself out, and there wasn’t the same fire in him now.

‘No. But it’s where we are, and it’s what we’re dealing with,’ Mitchell told him. She tapped her thumbs together, and considered her next few words carefully. ‘Besides, I am assured that his time behind bars has changed him for the better.’

‘Changed him? No.’ Logan refused to believe that. ‘People like Bosco Maximuke don’t change. They evolve. They adapt. Deep down, though, underneath it all, they’re the same monsters they always were.’

He pushed the chair back under the desk and leaned down, gripping the back of it. ‘I’m bringing him in.’