Never Coming Home (28 page)

‘Jeff didn’t do what he did for any insurance money.’ His vocal chords were gritty. He sounded as tired and as old as dirt. ‘I’m not even sure that there
was
insurance money. That was a cover. Jeff was
paid
. With this.’ He tapped the financial statement, with its column of unbelievable figures. ‘And then, once he was in – maybe he was blackmailed, probably threatened.’

‘And then we found him. Put more pressure on.’ Kaz’s voice wasn’t much above a whisper.

‘I can’t say that it didn’t happen that way.’ Devlin sat down slowly. His bruises were aching like a bitch, and there was still more of this to do. He pointed a finger. ‘No blame, Kaz. This was a guy who connived in the death of his lover and a child, for money.’

‘That’s what he couldn’t face. Why he killed himself
 
–’

Devlin shook his head. ‘Jeff didn’t kill himself.’

‘What?’ Kaz’s eyes flared open. ‘But – I saw his body. The police, they said he’d stabbed the waitress, and her little boy
 
–’ She put her hands to her mouth.

Devlin wanted to reach out to her, but her eyes were too dark, too huge. He had to get past this first.

‘Jeff didn’t murder them. That was the first scenario, but it didn’t stand up. There were other DNA traces on the scene. The police know there was another man, but they haven’t released that information. I’ve seen the report and the pictures. That crime scene had Luce’s hallmarks all over it.’ He clamped his jaw tight for a second. ‘Jeff didn’t kill Giuliana and her son, and he didn’t kill himself – it was murder made to look like suicide. Luce killed them all.’

He watched as her eyes widened even further. She had to be reeling under the weight. ‘Did
we
make that necessary? Asking questions? Stirring things up?’

Luce said so. But when did they make him the fountain of truth? He was goading you, wanting you to feel like this. Go with what your head is telling you, not with the guilt. She doesn’t need to share that burden.

He shook his head. ‘We stirred things up, but the stuff was there to stir. Jeff was a liability, long before we showed up. While he was alive, there was always a possibility that he’d tell someone about what he’d done. Or demand more money. If I had to take a guess, I’d say it was always planned that way. He was going to die, whatever happened. Luce tidied house. He’d done it before, in almost exactly the same way. A hanging in a barn. When I saw Jeff, I remembered. That’s what first started me wondering
 
… the way Jeff died.’ He gave a tight laugh. ‘What do they say – thinking the unthinkable? I asked Munroe and Rossi to dig. Things began to add up, but in the wrong way. It turned up your father, Kaz.’ Now he put out his hand to clasp hers. She didn’t pull away, but her fingers just lay, limp, in his hold. There was a deep, dark, cold spike, down into his rib cage. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No.’ Her eyes focused. She shook her head gently. Her
fingers curled to close over his. Balm trickled over the pain in his chest. ‘It
 
…’ She stopped. ‘You really are
sure
, about Luce?’

Devlin looked away. If he’d been faster, slicker,
better
maybe Luce would still be around to talk. Except that he never would have.

But he did tell you. He told you who died, but he never told you who
paid.
Fool.

Memory of a lisping voice, triumphing in the half-light of early morning, threaded through his mind. ‘I’m as sure as I can be. He confirmed it, this morning, when he thought he was going to kill me. I can’t
prove
it – but it’s what he does – did. Arrange accidents. There was never any one better.’ He leaned away, detached himself reluctantly from Kaz’s hold. ‘The whole thing was a setup – Jamie was the prize. Someone was prepared to expend money and blood to get her. This kind of thing – any kind of crime. You have to ask – who benefits? We’ve been looking at this the wrong way round. Jeff didn’t need to go through all this to get his daughter. He could have challenged you in the Courts if he’d wanted more access. More access wasn’t enough. It had to be
everything
. If Jamie had simply been snatched, if Jeff had disappeared with her, would you ever have rested until you found them?’ He didn’t need Kaz’s vehement head shake to confirm it. ‘You had to believe it. That Jamie was never coming home. This
 
…’ He put his good hand down on the pile of papers lying on the table. ‘It took planning and money. A whole heap of it. Jeff – I don’t believe he was up for planning something like this. But he couldn’t resist the money. Your father has the cash to fund this, the connections to find Luce. There’s some shady stuff in the art world. It would take a while to find someone with Luce’s talents, but if you have patience
and
money, everything is out there, to be bought. It all comes back to that. Who had money to buy this? It’s the only thing that fits. And Jeff tried to ring your father, just before he died.’

‘But
 
…’ Kaz stopped. Devlin waited. Her eyes were turned inwards, to her thoughts. Terrible things that he’d put there. ‘This is difficult to say about my own father, but Oliver really has no time for children. Trust me on that.’

Something that was the vestige of a smile twisted the edge of her mouth. Devlin felt the shudder run through him, the urge to kiss her, to blank out the anguish with something more powerful – except who said that it was more powerful? He looked away.
What the hell are you thinking of?

‘Oliver has only ever remembered intermittently that I exist,’ Kaz said slowly. ‘He never really wanted me. Not
me
 
–’ Devlin heard old pain in the drawn breath. ‘Why would he want
 
–?’

He saw the payoff hit her, like the force of a blow. The answer to her own question.

‘Because Jamie had talent. I don’t.’ Her voice had hollowed out. ‘No.’ She scrabbled in the air, as if trying to clear cobwebs from around her face. ‘It can’t be – children get snatched, people take them, evil people
 
–’

‘Kaz.’ Devlin rose and turned her, gently, towards him. ‘Jamie wasn’t snatched off the street, enticed into a waiting car. There was an elaborate plan to make it look like she was dead. The only person who could have set that up was Jeff. Everything points to him having expert help, and being paid to do it. Whoever paid him didn’t want just any child, they wanted
your
child. Insane as it seems, who else is there?’

Kaz’s head was down. He watched the long shudder ran through her. ‘If it’s true
 
…’ She raised her chin slowly. Her eyes had gone from bleak to fire. ‘He had all those people
killed
to cover up the fact that he’d taken my daughter – because he thought she could
paint
. He wanted me to give her to him
 
–
 
’ Recollection spiked her voice with wonder. ‘I brushed him off. I thought he was joking. I told him that maybe, when she was older, she could spend some of her school holidays with him. If she wanted.’ She made a choking sound. ‘He was angry, but that wasn’t anything new. That’s just Oliver. Oh, God
 
… he took my little girl, just to feed his ego, and something happened and she died. She died in a strange place, away from me, away from everything she knew. She wasn’t even with her father.’

Devlin gritted his teeth. Kaz’s face had set and hardened into something beyond pain. Her hand shot out, trapping his good arm. ‘Devlin, if that bastard took my daughter, we have to prove it. And then we have to make him pay.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Kaz stared down at the grey water. The delicate struts of London’s prettiest bridge soared above her, but she didn’t see them. She’d got here almost at a run, drawn by – what – the power of the water, the memory of her child? She’d had to get out of the house, to deal with the adrenalin rush of emotion that was threatening to burst right out of her skin. But now she was here – her limbs seemed leaden. All she could do was lean on the parapet and stare.

A young man jogged by, then stopped, pulling earphones out of his ears. ‘Hey, I say, are you all right?’

Kaz looked up at him blankly, then focused abruptly on the concern, overlaid by a heavy dose of alarm, in his face.

‘Yes.’ She dredged up a smile, wondering what it looked like.
No, I’m not planning to jump off Albert Bridge. I’m just coming to terms with the idea that my father, a man I respected, even if he was difficult to love, is a kidnapper. Who hired a contract killer to cover it up. Oh, and I have another killer in my bed. An ex-killer, but maybe not too ex
 
–.

The escalating panic in her Good Samaritan’s face brought her back to her surroundings. His eyes were skittering all over the place, searching for help. He’d flipped, in a second, from fear for her safety to fear for his own. She made a gigantic effort at a smile that wasn’t just the baring of teeth. ‘Thanks, but I really am okay. Just trying to straighten something out in my head.’

‘Oh. Oh, well, if you’re sure
 
–’ His relief was almost comical.

Kaz watched him jogging towards the end of the bridge. The sun was going down and a cold, brisk wind had sprung up off the river. Gulls were diving on something embedded in a dirty tide mark of sand, at the lip of the water. She closed her eyes against a wave of desolation. Oliver. Her father. Could she really believe that he would do this? Had genius turned to madness? Had she signed her own daughter’s death warrant when she’d laughed in her father’s face?

Her throat closed, over a bitter ache. She’d enjoyed it. Just for a second. She’d finally had something that Oliver wanted, so she’d enjoyed that brief, mean flash of power. Retaliation for years of trying too hard and being ignored, of never being good enough to hold her father’s attention. Small and petty and childish. If she’d known then what he would do
 
–?

She put out her hand, to feel the cold metal of the bridge. How could she have known? How could anyone? Even now she couldn’t be sure, but it made horrific, horrible sense. She trusted Devlin. That small shock, that wasn’t really a shock, went through her once more. The man was a killer, which made him just the man she needed. She could figure out what a killer was doing in her
bed
later. Sometime.
Or you could just forget it. Take what the man is now, not what he was
.

She turned away from the water. This wasn’t just about her. Suzanne
 
… would her mother believe it? She’d loved the man, lived with him
 
… Kaz exhaled. No need to go there yet. Before she had fled out here, she’d asked Devlin for proof. Whatever they could get. She’d left him reaching for the phone. By now he might have something to tell her.

Devlin stretched out on the couch, staring at the ceiling, the cast resting uncomfortably on his chest. The arm was awkward, but not painful. The rest of his body was doing overtime to make up. He had a bruise the size of Africa blooming, in a hundred shades of purple, on his hip, and the tenderness of his back and buttocks suggested that they were pretty much in the same state. He could get up and go in search of painkillers, or he could lie here and wait for Kaz to come back and hope she’d kiss it all better. She could just about kiss him every place she chose.
Please.

She might have decided to add a few bruises of her own. He’d asked her to believe incredible things about the man who’d fathered her. A man half the world venerated. She needed something more than gut instinct and patterns, if it could be found. He didn’t blame her. She’d asked for proof, then she’d lit out, at the speed of light, in what he hoped was just adrenalin rush.

He dragged his mind back to the phone calls he’d just made. He’d done what he could. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Devlin shut his eyes. To sleep would be good. Classic avoidance tactic. Except it wasn’t working. His mind circled back to the dawn, to a derelict building next to a rail line. He scuffed his hand against his cheek. The kill had been virtually an accident, the desperate, gut instinct of an animal to survive. And there wasn’t a creature on the planet that would mourn for Luce. Hell – they’d be lining up and taking numbers to dance behind his coffin. But a kill was a kill. And it was the last.

Devlin pushed his tongue up against his teeth, feeling the flicker of pain. He was reaching for unfamiliar emotions, exploring areas in his head he hadn’t visited in – Christ knew. Maybe never. It was like a minefield in there and he had a blindfold instead of a map. There was sweat on his face. Kaz knew he’d killed a man and she’d accepted it. More than that, she’d taken him – Hell! His body was getting hard just remembering where it had been
 
…

He’d told her things he’d never told a woman and the really crazy thing was, he didn’t care. But could he ask her
 
–

The phone rang. He almost fell off the couch as he reached for it. Behind him a door slammed. Unexpected relief flooded his body when Kaz called his name. She appeared briefly in the doorway and waved a hand when she saw he was occupied. He wrenched his mind back to the telephone call.