Never Coming Home (27 page)

Devlin was scanning the article. His mouth had gone hard. ‘Suicide? Ties the ends up nice and neat. For which I guess I should be grateful.’

‘It doesn’t actually
say
that this man Luce murdered Phil
 
–’ Kaz began hesitantly.

‘He did.’

Devlin dropped the
Standard
and looked up, straight into her eyes.
They
weren’t hard. They looked
 
… naked. The same way they’d looked upstairs for those few seconds, when she’d told him she’d seen the papers he’d collected. Desolate, and alone. Kaz shivered. This was real. She sat still and let him speak first.

He sighed. ‘Luce was the professional fixer who was hired for all this. The car crash
 
… everything. I need to tell you it all.’

‘Please.’ She wetted her lip. She had to ask. ‘Was
 
… was it something that we did that got Phil killed?’

‘No.’ Devlin squeezed Kaz’s hand and let go. ‘At least, in a way maybe I did, starting all this. I honestly don’t know.’ She saw the doubt in his face. Something rocked a little, deep down. Devlin vulnerable? He was letting her see it all. She fiddled with a strand of her hair. He was still speaking. ‘I’ll tell you what I know, and what I suspect, but first I need to tell you about Luce. The guy I
finally
watched die at 4.30 this morning.’ He rubbed his fingers over the knuckles of his left hand, just visible over the cast. The skin was split and scuffed. ‘Luce and I were in the same line of business.’ Kaz watched Devlin as he took in a deep breath, then let it out. ‘I worked for
 
… well, you saw them, this morning. Luce was mostly freelance. Liked to move around.’ Devlin’s eyes were dark, turned inwards. ‘There were rumours, even then, about how he got his results. Bottom line was, he got them. It doesn’t pay to ask too much. Well
 
–’ He paused. ‘We were never going to be buddies but we did okay together, when we had to. Then Luce started bringing this kid along with him to the party. The boy was about seventeen or eighteen – nephew, brother, cousin. I never got to the bottom of who he was. Might even have been Luce’s son – his protégée, anyhow. Some people said they were lovers, but I don’t think so.’ Devlin shifted restlessly. ‘There was a job – it should have been routine – we needed someone to work on the inside. Luce suggested the boy. There was no reason not. It was
meant
to be routine, but somehow the job went bad. I don’t know whether they made the boy, found out who he was, or whether the kid panicked and blew it. Perhaps he tried to sell us out. Who knows?’ Devlin looked away, staring through the window to the garden. ‘They dumped him in a disused office block, out beyond Canary Wharf. He was still alive when Luce and I found him, but he was in bad shape. And they were expecting us. Maybe that was the object of it all along, us, not him. Maybe the job never
was
routine.’ He swallowed. ‘The place was rigged. Not a bomb, incendiaries. They planned on taking us all out, in a nice, tidy fire. I got Luce away, but the boy
 
… he was dead before the fire took hold. Luce
 
… he went crazy, swore that the kid was still alive and accused me of leaving him because he’d fucked up – that he was an embarrassment. I’d saved
him
because he was more useful to my paymasters, and abandoned the boy.’ Devlin stopped, eyes blank. Kaz pushed his mug towards him.

‘Thanks.’ Devlin gulped coffee. ‘Luce and I
 
…
 
’ He looked for a while at the mug, then lifted his head. ‘My bosses kept us apart, which was fine by me.’ He lifted his hand to make a gesture, registered the weight of the cast, and put it down again. Kaz stayed where she was, waiting until he spoke again. ‘The stories about how Luce got results got worse – the things he’d begun to enjoy, with women especially. And the word went out. He wanted
me
. My people had stopped hiring him, and made sure I was well out of his way, but Luce wasn’t a fool and he was patient. He set up a scam.’ Devlin put down his mug carefully, so that it made no noise on the table. ‘Something he said today. About making preparations and us having a good time together before
 
… before he killed me. I think that his plan then was to fake two deaths, his own and mine. That way I was his – for as long as he wanted. Didn’t work.’ Devlin’s voice was clipped. ‘He put me in the hospital, but he didn’t get me. Three people died. Officially, Luce was one of them. So was I. I suppose it should have tipped me off when they didn’t find Luce’s body.’ He looked up. ‘I’d been thinking for a while about quitting. Had a plan, for the security business. I knew Bobby was getting restless, too. Didn’t take much persuading to get him to come in with me. It seemed like the right time. We moved off the radar. New lives, new names.’ His grin had an edge to it. Not quite on the mark. ‘Hell – it worked for three years.’

‘Until I asked you to help me.’ Nausea made her stomach lurch.

‘It was a billion to one shot that Luce was involved in this and that he and I had history. Not your fault. He saw me, at the crash site, before I even knew you existed. He’d been looking for me ever since.’ His eyes looked very clear on hers, cool and steady. ‘None of this was your fault. Luce was hired. Someone
bought
all those deaths.’

She couldn’t let it go. ‘And Bobby?’

‘Ah.’ He leaned back in the chair, head down, the thumb and forefinger of the good hand pressed above his eyes. Kaz gritted her teeth. What did she have to give him that could repair that hurt?

The silence lengthened, barbed.

Devlin straightened, dropped his hand. The stricken look on Kaz’s face caught him in the gut.

‘If Bobby is down to anyone, he’s down to me,’ he said softly. ‘Luce took him to get me.’
And if he’d known how things are, it would have been you.
The chill hammering through him wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before. Desolation.

‘I’m the one who has to live with that,’ he went on. ‘But Bobby was a pro. He should have been paying attention. He made a slip, had to have. When it comes down to it, all of us are responsible for our own lives and our own safety. Our own mistakes. Whatever Bobby did, or didn’t do, he paid.’
But way too much.

‘You really believe that?’ There was hope, laced with suspicion in her eyes. This woman was scary the way she could read him.
And isn’t that why you’re in this mess?
She was looking at him. He hauled himself back to her question. ‘I try to believe it. Mostly it works.’ He gave her the truth. ‘You have to have something, or you go nuts.’

‘I suppose you do.’ She was turning over an idea. When it came, it wasn’t what he expected. ‘Is there anyone else out there likely to be coming after you?’

‘What? No.’ He stopped, thought. ‘No. A couple I’ve pissed off maybe, but no one who’d want to see me bleed.’
The ones who might, those that are left, never knew who I
 
was.

He watched her curiously. There was still something going on in her mind, but she wasn’t sharing. When she got up and took the envelope from the counter something inside him closed down, cold. She upended it on the table. Papers spilled. She sat down and gathered them into a pile. Her fingers were jerky. Then she was looking at him again.

‘What is all this, Devlin? What does it have to do with Jamie?’

Chapter Thirty-Six

Devlin hunched down on the cold feeling, pushed his thoughts away from the messy, touchy-feely emotional stuff. Debrief. Marshal evidence and present the conclusions.
Oh, shit.

No way out of this now. She’d seen. She’d kissed him, loved him, taken him into her body – was that going to be the last time? Was there still some way out?
Never mind about saving your sorry ass. Doesn’t she have the right to know? No one here to tell her but you. So get your thumb out of your butt and do it.

He shifted the papers. Start with what was written. And then
 
… He didn’t want to think about
‘and then’
.

He pulled out the two key pieces. The bank statement and the phone account. The one she could see for herself, the other he’d have to interpret for her.

‘This
 
–’ he tapped the bank account – ‘is what Jeff had in his checking account when he died.’ He watched her eyes go round with shock. ‘The farm, the vineyard and the car were also all his, all paid for. Cash.’

‘But that
 
–’ Her voice faded.

‘Money from your wildest dreams.’

‘No.’ She was shaking her head, disbelief carving lines in her face. ‘Jeff never had that kind of money. Where
could
he get it?’

Don’t go there. Not yet. Get to the phone bill. That’s the way in.
He pulled the bill to the top.

‘See these three calls?’

‘Yes?’ Her face was shuttered, not hostile, but
 
…

He hesitated.
Get the hell on with it.
‘This one
 
–’ He pointed. ‘Last in the series to a-pay-as-you-go cell – virtually untraceable – except that the phone turned up in the Arno, the day after Jeff died. Caught up in debris under one of the bridges.’ He smoothed the paper. ‘Rossi located the police report.’

Kaz took a breath. ‘You think Luce had that phone?’

‘It’s a pretty standard MO.’

‘For someone in your line of work?’

He grimaced. ‘Yeah.’

‘So, Jeff may have been calling Luce.’ Devlin could almost hear her brain leaping to connect as she studied the printout. Clusters of calls of short duration, one after the other. ‘Calling and getting voicemail?’ she guessed. ‘He was desperate.’ Her voice was low, talking almost to herself. ‘Trying to placate Luce, or to call him off from whatever he was doing?’ Her voice hitched. Devlin watched intently. She was pale, but her chin was up and steady.

‘Looks that way.’ He watched her swallow and put it aside.

‘What about the others?’

‘This
 
–’ Devlin indicated. There was no good way to say it. ‘It’s a private line. To Scotland Yard.’ He waited, and saw realisation flair in her eyes.

‘Oh, God – That’s why Phil was killed.’

‘It’s a connection.’ Devlin reached over with his good hand to take hers, felt her relax instantly into his hold. ‘Maybe Phil found out something and tried to contact Jeff. Maybe Jeff was looking for help. We’ll probably never know exactly what the truth was. But there
was
a link.’

Kaz shut her eyes, drawing in a long breath. ‘If Jeff was desperate – he might have thought Uncle Phil would help. Phil was quite old-fashioned. He’d have done what he could, even though Jeff and I were divorced. He didn’t deserve to die for it.’

Devlin lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. Her fingers were cold. And there was more to come. And the last was the worst. He kept hold of her hand, jerking his head towards the papers that lay between them.

‘The third call
 
–
 
’ he swallowed – ‘was to the château in France.’

‘The château. Oh. No.’ Kaz surged to her feet, eyes suddenly livid in a white face. ‘You think my father? No, oh no!’ She shook her head, violently. ‘That’s just sick, preposterous
 
–’

‘Kaz!’ Devlin was up and round the table as she began to pace. He caught her and led her gently back to the chair, pushing her into it and standing over her. ‘Think about it. Who would want Jamie and who had the money to buy all this?’ He waved to the pile of papers.

‘But why? No, it can’t be.’ Her eyes were dark with disbelief.

‘It’s all circumstantial.’ He couldn’t lie and he couldn’t prove a line of it, but he hadn’t been out of the game so long that he did not know a pattern when it stood up and bit his ass. This one gagged in his throat like rank meat. ‘But it’s all there.’ He gestured to the papers.

Horror and disbelief were battling in those pitch-dark eyes. He savaged his lip. Get this
done
.

‘The other little girl – Sally Ann, she was with Jeff and Gemma and Jamie for a couple of days before she died – staying at a motel, like a family. The maid remembered them. Sally Ann was a run-away and she suited their purpose. The whole thing was rigged – the crash, Sally Ann and Gemma dying. Jeff had professional help. Luce’s help. Luce rigged it. It was one of the guy’s specialities. Accidents.’

It had always prickled on the back of his neck. Ever since he’d stopped beside that quiet road, as the sun set and a child died. That tiny feeling that something was
off
. That what he was seeing had been
put
there. He’d thought it was just that bloody sixth sense that had pulled him off the road in the first place, and made him an intruder in what he wasn’t supposed to find – and got him into this
 
… morass.

He looked up and froze. It was a toss up which was paler, Kaz’s face or the white T-shirt she was wearing.
Spit it out, and be done.