Page 151 of Better the Devil

‘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. ‘Itwasabout revenge! It wasonlyabout 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 thewhatof it. Logan had assumed thewhywas 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 hisdad,’ 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…junkhe 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,accidentallybroke 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.Mymoney,’ 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.’