Chapter 38 #2
By the time he switched his gaze back to Eleanor, she was looking more relaxed again. Unbothered by his questions, or by the implications of them. Once again, she almost seemed amused by the theatre of it all.
Something about that look stirred something deep in Logan’s gut. He shouldn’t go for it yet, though. He should keep skirting around it, picking away at the edges, seeing what else he might uncover.
‘Tell me about what happened to Jason. Your first husband.’
That one caught her by surprise. She sat there blinking for a few seconds, before pulling herself together.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It must’ve been devastating for you. First love. High school sweethearts,’ Logan said.
‘It was.’
‘Is this really relevant?’ Fairweather asked.
‘It broke me,’ Eleanor said, ignoring him.
‘I can imagine. And I’m sorry to go over it all again, but he took his own life, yes?’
Something glassy passed over her eyes, like a protective layer. ‘Yes. He’d been struggling for a bit. Mentally. Got into doing drugs. On the street, in the flat. I told him he had to stop. That we had a baby on the way, and he couldn’t keep doing it.’
‘And?’ Logan prompted. ‘Did he?’
‘Well, he went out to a bothy near a place called Devil’s Point and hanged himself. So, aye. I suppose he did, in a way.’
There was still bitterness and anger there, Logan could tell. But she was keeping a tight leash on it.
‘I’m sorry,’ Logan said.
‘Wasn’t your fault,’ Eleanor replied. She looked to the door, then around at the room, like she was only just clocking where she was. ‘Where’s that other detective? The one who was good with Jack?’
‘Home,’ Logan told her. ‘He’s got kids of his own to get to.’
Eleanor nodded, like this made sense. ‘He was good with him,’ she said again. ‘It was nice. Nice change from the way you lot usually are.’
‘Aye, well, being the wife of a suspected drug trafficker’ll do that, I suppose.’
She sneered at that. Actually sneered, her nostrils flaring in disgust like he’d turned around and broken wind in her face.
‘Aye, whatever you say.’
The thing in his gut shifted again. He thought about hitting her with the big one now, and going for the kill.
But he steadied himself. Not yet. That could wait.
He interlocked his fingers and leaned forward, keeping his tone light and friendly. Or, as light and friendly as it ever was, anyway.
‘Tell me, Eleanor,’ he began. ‘Why did Victor have a designer handbag full of money in the back of his car?’
‘Detective Inspector?’
The constable had to repeat herself twice before Hamza realised she was talking to him. He turned to see a female officer in her early thirties standing a few feet away, her notepad open and held in front of her like she was about to ask him for his autograph.
‘Uh, aye. Sorry. That’s me,’ Hamza said. ‘Everything OK?’
The constable turned and looked back the way she’d come, past the tent, and the SOCOs, all the way over to the cordon tape on the Aviemore side of the scene.
Several spotlights had been set up, and clouds of midgies swarmed around them, sizzling faintly whenever they got too close to the hot glass. The constable had to raise her voice to be heard over the chugging of the petrol generator.
‘There’s someone here to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘Says it’s important.’
Hamza peered past her into the dark, but the glare of the lights made it impossible to see anything more than a few feet past them.
‘Did they give a name?’
The constable checked her pad. ‘Callum Walker, sir. Says he’s local. Says he might have some information to share.’ She shook her head, like she was telling herself off. ‘Well, no, he says he does have some information to share. I just wasn’t sure, you know, if he was just a crackpot.’
‘The jury’s still out on that one,’ Hamza told her. ‘Where is he?’
He followed the constable in a wide arc that skirted the edges of the cordon tape, then finally stopped almost directly across from where Hamza had been standing.
‘This is him, sir.’
Callum Walker stood on the other side of the tape, flanked by two more constables.
He was clutching a disposable coffee cup in both hands, like it was the only source of heat in the world.
A shiny foil space blanket—the sort of thing that got draped over the shoulders of runners at the end of a marathon—was wrapped around him.
Neither was enough to stop him shivering.
‘Did we give him the blanket?’ Hamza asked.
The female constable shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘He brought it from home.’
Hamza shot her a sideways look, and she raised her shoulders in a tiny micro-shrug.
‘Right, thanks. I’ll take it from here,’ he told her, then he turned his attention to Callum. ‘Mr Walker. You OK?’
‘Is that him?’ Callum asked, and Hamza realised that the man’s eyes were locked on the tent that covered the remains. ‘Is that Joe? In there?’
‘I’m afraid I’m not able to discuss that,’ Hamza said. ‘You look like there’s something wrong, Mr Walker? You said you wanted to see me?’
Tears rushed in to fill Callum’s eyes, like a tap had been turned on somewhere in his head. He made a spluttering sound, then his whole face knotted up into a mask of devastation. He looked like a child who’d just watched a beloved pet being run over.
The noise that came out of him was raw and primal. Not a cry so much as a roar of anguish that rose up from his toes and turned all heads within a thirty-metre radius.
‘Um. Are you OK, Mr Walker?’ Hamza asked, despite the answer being an apparent very much not.
Callum shook his head. He gripped his coffee so tightly that the hot liquid came shooting out of the little mouth spout and pooled in the plastic lid.
‘N-no,’ he said.
It was high-pitched. Desperate. His head was still shaking, like his body was trying to deny the words before he could finish saying them.
His shoulders heaved. His breath broke into tiny, fractured pieces.
He finally tore his gaze from the tent, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet Hamza’s eyes.
‘I’ve… I’ve done something.’ The words were a squeak now. ‘I’ve done something terrible.’