Page 150 of Better the Devil

‘Oh, I do, aye. Only too bloody well, in fact,’ Logan confirmed. ‘I also know that, rightly or wrongly, he’s served his time.’

It was Fleck’s turn to laugh. ‘Oh, come on. You don’t believe that any more than we do. You know he’d be straight back up to his old tricks in no time.’

‘I don’t know that, no,’ Logan countered. ‘Neither do you.’

‘Don’t lie to yourself, Jack!’

‘Lying?’ Logan nodded slowly, like he was giving the word some thought. ‘OK, Gavin, let’s talk about lying, will we?’

He turned on the spot, meeting the eyes of as many of the gathered men and women as he could.

‘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!’