Chapter 42 #2
‘Let’s talk about how you’ve weaponised these poor people’s grief and anger for your own purposes.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Gavin warned.
‘No? Well, maybe you can fill in the gaps for me,’ Logan said, turning back to the sergeant. ‘Stop me where I go off track here, because from what I can gather, you didn’t kill Victor Belov or Kendrick Crichton because of some noble quest for justice. You did it for the money.’
‘Wrong!’ Gavin said, a little too loudly.
Feet shuffled uncertainly at the edges of the room. There were a few murmurs. Some whispers. The man with the shotgun held firm, though.
‘You took these people’s suffering, and you used it for your own purposes,’ Logan continued. ‘The bank manager. The blackmailers. Whoever it was that cut that throat and pulled that trigger.’
Logan looked very deliberately at the man with the gun.
‘You used them. All of them. To get rich.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ asked a man over on Logan’s left. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘He’s lying,’ Fleck assured them all. ‘Don’t listen to him.’
‘It was never about justice. It was about Eleanor Belov’s millions, and getting your grubby wee hands on them.’
‘That’s not true,’ Fleck insisted.
Logan risked a step towards him, raising his voice, shouting the sergeant down. ‘Stop lying to them, Gavin! You used them. You used those murders to try and frame Eleanor, to get us to bring her in.’
‘No. That’s not…’
‘It was her fingerprint. That’s what you needed. What your man at the bank needed,’ Logan continued, talking over the babbled objections. ‘Biometric security. A digital scan of her print, so you could authorise the movement of her money. Every penny of it.’
‘What the hell’s he talking about?’ another man demanded. ‘You said we were cleaning up the communities.’
‘We were. We are!’ Fleck insisted.
‘You must’ve been furious when Joe Robertson took that bag,’ Logan continued.
‘All that planning. The blackmail, so you’d know exactly where to intercept Victor Belov.
Leaving her bag there, trying to imply the wife’s involvement so we’d bring her in, and Joe almost fucks it up by helping himself to it. ’
‘Shut up!’
‘Did you have him killed, Gavin?’
There were audible gasps from the others.
‘No! No, of course not. He wasn’t… I didn’t… I told him to stay at home!’
‘Maybe he worked out what you were up to, did he?’ Logan continued, spitting the words out. ‘Maybe he was going to spill the beans, so you had to shut him up!’
‘No, it was him! He killed himself!’
‘Because of you. Because of what he saw, what he did. Because you brought that to him. You killed a man on his doorstep and left him there for Joe to find.’
‘We… we were cleaning up the community!’
‘Bollocks! You don’t give a damn about the community. About any of these people. What they’ve been through. You lied to them. This was about money, plain and simple. Not justice. Not even revenge!’
‘No. No, you’re wrong!’ Fleck roared, spit foaming around his mouth. ‘It was about revenge! It was only about revenge! On her! For what she did!’ His voice cracked open. ‘For what she did to my boy!’
Logan felt his grasp of the situation slip away. Just for a moment. Just while he recalibrated.
He’d figured out the plan over the past few hours. The ANPR hit, the bag, the fingerprint—all the many ways Fleck had worked to steer the investigation in Eleanor Belov’s direction, so he could get access to that high-resolution scan of her fingerprint, and pull off his theft.
That was the what of it. Logan had assumed the why was just bog-standard everyday greed.
But it wasn’t, he realised.
He should have worked it out.
The moment he’d seen this bothy on that map, he should’ve known.
Nice guy. That was how DCI Reeve had described the sergeant. Sad story, but nice guy.
‘Jason,’ Logan said. ‘Eleanor’s first husband. You’re the stepfather.’
‘No! I was his dad,’ Fleck hissed. ‘I was there from his first birthday!’
The words rang around the bothy, the grief from them saturating the air.
‘I’m sorry,’ Logan told him.
‘It was her. Her fault. She let him get into that state. Off his medication. Onto that other… junk he was sticking into himself.’ Fleck looked at Bosco then, hatred burning behind his eyes. ‘The baby. She told Jason it wasn’t his. That she’d had “an accident” on a night out with some friends.’
He laughed. It was a cruel, spiteful sound, as far removed from amusement as it was possible to be.
‘An accident. She accidentally fell into bed with some random guy after a drunken night out. Accidentally got herself knocked up, accidentally broke my boy’s heart into fucking pieces!’
He drew in a desperate, ragged breath, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his uniform.
‘He did it here, you know?’ Fleck whispered, eyes darting to the rafters. ‘From one of them beams.’
‘I know,’ Logan told him. There was no anger in it now. No performance.
‘Cost me my marriage. We couldn’t deal with it.
Wasn’t his mum’s fault, neither of us knew what to do.
But that was on her, too. On Eleanor. She took my son, my wife.
Nearly cost me my job. Nearly cost me everything.
’ Fleck shrugged. ‘She got married again a year later, like none of it had happened. Like Jason didn’t even matter. ’
‘So you wanted to punish her?’ Logan pressed. ‘By taking her money?’
‘Not her money. Jason’s money. My money,’ Fleck corrected.
‘Jason mined that Bitcoin on my laptops, using my electricity, under my roof. I showed him how. I set him up with it, helped him install everything he needed. And what? She just gets to keep it all? After what she’s done?
’ He shook his head, his face screwing up in disgust. ‘No. No, not happening. Fuck that!’
‘You must’ve known we’d figure it out, Gavin. You can’t really have thought you’d get away with stealing a hundred million quid?’
‘Stealing? No. No, I’ve not stolen anything,’ Fleck replied.
There was something about the way he said it—some dark glee that made Logan second-guess all his prior assumptions.
‘I moved it,’ the sergeant said. ‘To a dead wallet with no access key.’
‘You’ll have to forgive me, Gavin. I’m not really clued up on these things,’ Logan told him.
‘It’s just sitting there in a locked wallet on the Blockchain, with no means of anyone ever accessing it. It’ll sit there forever, out of her reach,’ Fleck explained. ‘Out of anyone’s reach, in fact. Just like Jason. Just like my boy.’
The room had gone silent now. The masks, and the stillness made it impossible for Logan to get a read on what the other people in the bothy were thinking. Were they struck dumb with horror over what Gavin had done, or standing in silent support of him?
It was easier to tell what the man with the gun was thinking. His stance hadn’t shifted, and the shotgun remaining trained on the centre of Logan’s chest.
‘But, you asked me how I thought I’d get away with it?’ Fleck shrugged. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t want to. It doesn’t matter. I just want to finish everything. Tick everything off, so I can be done. So I can face whatever comes next.’
He gestured down to Bosco on the floor.
‘That means killing him. See, I tracked all the way back from Jason’s dealer—the piece of shit who got him hooked on that poison after his slut of a wife told him what she’d done. Tracked back up the chain until I came to him. The main man.’
Fleck’s voice trembled, but not with grief this time. It was rage, just barely contained.
‘Your friend there, it’s his fault Jason fell as far as he did. If it hadn’t been for that junk in his veins, maybe he’d have listened to us. Maybe we could’ve helped him, and he could’ve been here. But no. He’s gone, because this piece of shit wanted to make money from his suffering.’
He glanced around, meeting the gazes of some of the others, recognising his own pain in their eyes.
‘From everyone’s suffering. When I found out he was being released—and I did find out, because I was paying attention, unlike you—then I knew the time had come,’ Fleck said. ‘I knew it was now or never.’
He inhaled through his nose, drawing himself up to his full height, like he was pulling all the parts of himself back together.
‘He dies here. Where Jason died. After that, it’s over, and you can do what you like to me.’ He smiled through his tears at the DCI. ‘I want you here for this. I want you to see justice done. I think you deserve it, too, after everything he did to you.’
He glanced at the shotgun, then at the man holding it.
‘Do it.’
The masked man at Fleck’s side shifted his aim, turning the gun on Bosco.
‘I can’t let you do this,’ Logan warned, side-stepping back into the line of fire.
‘Come on. Don’t be stupid here,’ Fleck said. ‘You know full well how many lives he’s ruined. How much damage he’s done.’
‘I do,’ Logan confirmed. ‘But that doesn’t mean you get to just execute him.’
‘Oh, so he gets to live? While Jason dies?’ Fleck gestured around at some of the other masked people still gathered in silence. ‘Trisha. Adam. Jenny. They all had to die, but he gets to live?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Logan intoned. ‘I didn’t say I liked it, but that’s just the way it is.’
Fleck stared at him. It was a cold, clinical look, like he was looking at a problem to be fixed, not at another human being.
‘Fine. We’re going to have to kill you now, anyway,’ he announced.