Page 138 of Better the Devil

‘Aye, whatever you say.’

The thing in his gut shifted again. He thought about hitting her with the big one now, and going for the kill.

But he steadied himself. Not yet. That could wait.

He interlocked his fingers and leaned forward, keeping his tone light and friendly. Or, as light and friendly as it ever was, anyway.

‘Tell me, Eleanor,’ he began. ‘Why did Victor have a designer handbag full of money in the back of his car?’

‘Detective Inspector?’

The constable had to repeat herself twice before Hamza realised she was talking to him. He turned to see a female officer in her early thirties standing a few feet away, her notepad open and held in front of her like she was about to ask him for his autograph.

‘Uh, aye. Sorry. That’s me,’ Hamza said. ‘Everything OK?’

The constable turned and looked back the way she’d come, past the tent, and the SOCOs, all the way over to the cordon tape on the Aviemore side of the scene.

Several spotlights had been set up, and clouds of midgies swarmed around them, sizzling faintly whenever they got too close to the hot glass. The constable had to raise her voice to be heard over the chugging of the petrol generator.

‘There’s someone here to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘Says it’s important.’

Hamza peered past her into the dark, but the glare of the lights made it impossible to see anything more than a few feet past them.

‘Did they give a name?’

The constable checked her pad. ‘Callum Walker, sir. Says he’s local. Says he might have some information to share.’ She shook her head, like she was telling herself off. ‘Well, no, he says hedoeshave some information to share. I just wasn’t sure, you know, if he was just a crackpot.’

‘The jury’s still out on that one,’ Hamza told her. ‘Where is he?’

He followed the constable in a wide arc that skirted the edges of the cordon tape, then finally stopped almost directly across from where Hamza had been standing.

‘This is him, sir.’

Callum Walker stood on the other side of the tape, flanked by two more constables. He was clutching a disposable coffee cup in both hands, like it was the only source of heat in the world. A shiny foil space blanket—the sort of thing that got draped over the shoulders of runners at the end of a marathon—was wrapped around him. Neither was enough to stop him shivering.

‘Did we give him the blanket?’ Hamza asked.

The female constable shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘He brought it from home.’

Hamza shot her a sideways look, and she raised her shoulders in a tiny micro-shrug.

‘Right, thanks. I’ll take it from here,’ he told her, then he turned his attention to Callum. ‘Mr Walker. You OK?’

‘Is that him?’ Callum asked, and Hamza realised that the man’s eyes were locked on the tent that covered the remains. ‘Is that Joe? In there?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not able to discuss that,’ Hamza said. ‘You look like there’s something wrong, Mr Walker? You said you wanted to see me?’

Tears rushed in to fill Callum’s eyes, like a tap had been turned on somewhere in his head. He made a spluttering sound, then his whole face knotted up into a mask of devastation. He looked like a child who’d just watched a beloved pet being run over.

The noise that came out of him was raw and primal. Not a cry so much as a roar of anguish that rose up from his toes and turned all heads within a thirty-metre radius.

‘Um. Are you OK, Mr Walker?’ Hamza asked, despite the answer being an apparentvery much not.

Callum shook his head. He gripped his coffee so tightly that the hot liquid came shooting out of the little mouth spout and pooled in the plastic lid.

‘N-no,’ he said.

It was high-pitched. Desperate. His head was still shaking, like his body was trying to deny the words before he could finish saying them.