Chapter 33 #2
‘Then ask. Come on. Go for it,’ she insisted. ‘And that wasn’t true, by the way. About killing that guy. I was lying. But then, what more do you expect from me? Not like you can trust me, or believe a word I say.’
She crossed her legs, rested her clasped hands on a knee, then nodded like she was giving him permission to continue.
‘So, go on. What else?’
‘You still haven’t told me where you were,’ Logan reminded her.
‘And I don’t have to. You’re not my dad. I told you where I wasn’t,’ Olivia replied. ‘I wasn’t killing anyone. Or shagging anyone. I think that covers it.’
Logan considered pressing the matter, but she’d only dig her heels in. A different approach was called for.
‘How did you feel when your father contacted you from prison?’
That one caught the girl off guard. She just stared back at him, silenced by the question, or maybe by her visceral reaction to it, which made it all the way to her eyes.
From the mirror beside them, Logan felt sure he heard something. A creaking of a floorboard, maybe. A rustling of a bag.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ Olivia asked, shifting in her chair.
‘Everything,’ Logan told her. ‘Were you happy he was getting out?’
Olivia shrugged, trying to make it look like she didn’t care, and wasn’t really fussed either way.
Logan saw through it immediately.
‘Were you scared?’
Olivia snorted. ‘Of him?’
‘Of what might happen when he got out,’ Logan clarified. ‘Of what might happen to your… existing living arrangements.’
‘Wow. You think I set him up so I could keep living with you? You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?’
‘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 knew a 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 knock on 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.’
‘I need a word, Jack,’ Ben told him.
‘Right. Well, I just—’
Ben stepped back and pointed to the spot on the floor where he’d just been standing. ‘Now. I need to talk to you now.’
Logan grimaced. He had been sure he’d heard Ben’s popcorn packet rustling behind the glass of the one-way mirror. He’d have heard everything. And he understood procedure better than most, so he’d know exactly the risks Logan was running by talking to Olivia in the first place.
‘Look, I can explain,’ Jack said, stepping out into the corridor and pulling the door closed. ‘She made clear that she would talk to me and me alone. I set the recording going so—’
‘She was with me, Jack,’ Ben said, cutting him off. ‘The other night. She was with me at the café, doing an extra shift.’
Somewhere in the pit of Logan’s stomach a yawning chasm opened.
‘What? What do you mean?’ he asked.
Not that it was hard to grasp. Not that there could be any way of misinterpreting what he’d just heard.
‘She’s been doing extra. She asked specially,’ Ben told him. ‘Said she wanted to save up.’
‘Save up?’ Logan asked. ‘Save up for what?’
Ben winced. Clearly, he’d been dreading this question. ‘I don’t think that’s my place to say.’
‘Ben,’ Jack urged.
The older man sighed, looked down at his feet, then met Logan’s eye again. ‘For the anniversary.’
‘Anniversary?’
The words were a struggle. ‘Of her moving in. With you pair. She, eh, she wanted to get you something.’
Logan almost choked on the first word that came to mind—‘fuck’—so he said it again, but with more emphasis.
‘Aye,’ Ben said.
‘Oh, Jesus!’ Logan groaned. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’
‘Aye, that too,’ Ben agreed.
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Because I didn’t know you were bringing her in!’ Ben replied. ‘If you’d said something, if you’d told me what you were planning, I would’ve set you straight.’
Logan grabbed his head and held it, like he was trying to contain an explosion.
‘Oh, God. What have I done?’ He looked back over his shoulder at the door. ‘This is… I’ve fucked this. This is all fucked.’
‘Maybe not. Maybe she’ll…’ Ben began, but he buckled when Jack flashed him a look. ‘No. No, you’re right. She did seem pretty upset. You should’ve told me, Jack! I could’ve said something.’
Logan could hear the hurt in Olivia’s voice again. The venom, too. When he blinked, he saw the pain on Shona’s face.
Oh, God.
What had he done?
‘It’s fine. It’s fine, I can sort this,’ he said, more to himself than to the man beside him. ‘I’ll… I’ll talk to her. I’ll explain. I’ll… Aye. I can sort this. It’ll be fine.’
He drew in a deep, steadying breath.
He opened the door.
The girl was standing there, arms folded, like she’d been waiting for him to return.
‘Olivia—’ he began, but she was already moving, already on the march, already sweeping past him out into the corridor.
‘Don’t,’ she warned. She turned her face away as she picked up pace, hurrying in the direction of the lift. ‘Please, just don’t.’