Page 48 of Better the Devil

Logan folded his hands behind his back as the detective superintendent closed the office door behind them.

‘I don’t have time.’

‘You have as much time as I say you have,’ Mitchell insisted. She pointed to the chair that sat across the desk from her own. ‘Sit. Now.’

Logan hesitated, fighting his instinct to argue. Arguing would get him nowhere. Arguing would just slow all this down.

He sat. The chair squeaked as if alarmed by the sheer weight of him.

Mitchell took her own seat across the desk. She ran her hand back and forth across her mouth, fingertips digging into her cheeks. Whatever was coming, she didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to speak the words into existence.

‘There a problem, ma’am?’

Mitchell looked away, took a breath, composed herself.

‘Yes. Maybe. Technically no, I suppose, but… There might be.’

‘That was a lot of words to not say very much,’ Logan replied. ‘What is it that?—?’

‘Bosco Maximuke’s out of prison.’

The world seemed to grind into slow motion. The sound of the traffic passing on the bypass faded away, replaced by a roaring in Logan’s ears, like the rushing of sand through a timer.

‘What?’

It was all he could think to ask. All the pressure in his chest would allow him to say.

‘I wasn’t informed. If I had been, you’d have been the first to know,’ Mitchell assured him.

‘Out? Bosco Maximuke isout? How? How can he be out?’ Logan demanded. ‘He went down for twelve years.’

‘Four years ago,’ Mitchell pointed out. ‘He’d have done another two at most.’

‘So why the fuck isn’t he?’

The detective superintendent drew in a long, slow breath.

‘Well?’ Logan demanded.

‘He made some kind of deal. Provided evidence that helped the Procurator Fiscal net a bigger fish.’

‘A bigger fish?’ Logan jerked forward in his chair, a finger stabbing at the desk. ‘He stood there and watched while that bastard Owen Petrie was going to kill us! Sinead. Tyler. Hamza. Ben. All of us. He stood there, and he fucking watched!’

His anger bubbled up, bubbled over, until his voice was barely more than a growl.

‘And Maddie. My daughter. He was going to stand by while that… While that sick bastard…’

‘I know, Jack. I’m aware. But, ultimately, he stopped that happening.’

‘Only because I tricked him!’ Logan roared.

He was on his feet, he realised. When had he done that? When had that happened?

‘Because if I hadn’t, then he was going to stand there. Watching. Fucking revelling in it!’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘Aye! We do! I fucking know that!’