Page 53 of Better the Devil

There was a crack. There was pain, and blood, and screaming, and barking from the hallway.

Logan had the hose wrapped around the Russian’s neck, and was starting to pull it tight when his shaving mirror smashed across the back of his head.

Bosco was digging his fingers below the hose, pulling on it, trying to wrench it free as blood pumped from his nose and down his chin.

‘Stop it! Stop it! Jack, stop it, please!’

Olivia wasn’t shouting so much as sobbing. Taggart hung back in the doorway, his fur standing on end, his eyes bulging as he barked and growled in panic.

‘I let him in! I told him he could come in!’ Olivia said. She dropped the frame of the broken mirror, and tried hauling at Logan’s arm. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she pleaded and pulled. ‘Stop it. Don’t. Please, don’t do this.’

Bosco was turning purple. Good enough for him. Good enough for the bastard.

After what he’d done? Given what he was? He deserved this. He deserved this, and more.

‘Please,’ Olivia whispered. She banged a fist against Jack’s chest. There was no strength to it, though. He barely felt a thing. ‘Please. Don’t.’

Logan’s hands shook. This man was a monster.

This monster was in his home.

He had every right to do this.

But, of course, that wasn’t true.

With a final roar, Logan released his grip. Bosco collapsed sideways, coughing and wheezing, as the hose uncoiled itself.

Logan stood above him, towered over him, staring down, his chest rising and falling with the force of his breath.

‘It… It is OK, Jack,’ Bosco said. His accent hadn’t been dulled by his time in prison. Quite the opposite, if anything. ‘You no worry. Please, no worry.’

With some effort, he propped himself up on an elbow. When he smiled, he showed teeth that were slicked red with blood.

‘No hard feeling, yes?’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There werea lot of police vehicles parked along the roadside at the bottom of Kendrick Crichton’s driveway. A section of the road had been cordoned off, and two small armies of uniformed officers stood gathered at opposing strips of tape.

Hamza wound down his window as he pulled in behind a marked car, beckoning over a sergeant he recognised from the station.

‘What’s going on?’ Hamza asked. ‘This is a lot of bodies.’

The sergeant scratched at the back of his head. ‘Aye, sir. It’s, eh, it’s the Grampian lot. North East. Whatever we’re calling them now. They’re saying it’s their case.’

‘Aye, well, they’re wrong,’ Hamza said. He pressed the button to slide the window back up, and got out of the car. Ben scrambled out of the passenger side, and followed as the DI set off towards the tape.

‘They say it’s their turf, sir,’ the sergeant continued. He winced. ‘They’re not wrong. It’s technically in Moray, so…’

‘It’s our case,’ Hamza told him. ‘There’s a very clear connection to an ongoing investigation.’

The sergeant, who looked young, and was looking younger by the second, could only shrug. ‘I, eh, I don’t know anything about that, sir. But if it’s true, it’s not me you need to be talking to.’

He pointed past the cordon to the end of the victim’s garden path. A man stood there, surrounded by other men and women in white paper suits. He was standing on a step, putting him a full head taller than the Scene of Crime team members gathered around him. It made them look like schoolchildren sticking close to their teacher.

The man was tall—not Logan tall, but few people were—and dressed in a red and black checked shirt which had the whiff of a lumberjack about it. He was smiling—a big, warm, open grin that seemed to be working wonders on the SOCOs, who giggled and fawned, hanging on every word.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Ben.