‘Of course,’ he said, a touch of sadness in his face. ‘Irony is, Mark probably would have known people who could take it for him. But we don’t. All we have is the police, for what it’s worth. No good thinking about revenge—all the things they say about it are true.’
She nodded and felt guilty for keeping Lucas a secret from him. She knew all the clichés about revenge, too—how it served no purpose and provided no gain. But she was locked onto this path because she needed to know who’d killed them, and once she knew, how could she not want them to suffer for what they’d done?
She’d thought she wanted justice, but Lucas had opened her eyes to that paper-thin fallacy. Justice, even if it were done, would mean a prison sentence and that would never be enough. The burden of the survivor was hers; that’s all there was to it. They had to die.
When Lucas picked her up, she was in the car for a minute or so before she realized it was his Mercedes from Switzerland.
‘You drove here? I mean, to England?’
‘It’s not a bad trip, and I had to call on a couple of people en route.’
She took in the surroundings, feeling oddly connected to his world again by being there. She opened the glove compartment where the CDs were but instead of the previous selection there was a new series of discs.
‘You’re learning French?’
‘Trying to. C’est très difficile.’
She was puzzled by this apparent branching out; he didn’t strike her as someone who liked stepping outside his routine. She was about to press him on the subject but he said, ‘Aren’t you curious as to why I called you or where we’re going?’
‘I just assumed you found out something.’
‘I found the guy who killed your family. I’m taking you to him.’
‘Already?’ She couldn’t believe it. After a summer of inertia and frustration she hadn’t expected Lucas to produce results in a little over a week. She wasn’t even certain she was ready.
‘This was the easy bit. I haven’t found the guy who ordered the hits. I’ve found the guy who carried them out. But he’ll lead us to someone else and so on.’
She wanted to tell him to turn back to the hotel, to hand the man over to the police and let them follow his leads, to forget about the whole thing. And yet she wanted to see him, to see the last face her brother had seen as he’d looked up from his bed. She wanted to look into those eyes and see what was there.
‘Where is he?’
‘In a derelict engine shed. Wouldn’t have been my choice but the guy I have working for me has a melodramatic streak.’
‘You’re holding him captive?’
‘I don’t think he’d have accepted an invite.’
‘Did he put up a fight?’
‘No, it was . . . We just brought him in. He’s a Bosnian Serb, Vasko Novakovic, based in London for about seven years, works for himself.’
‘Has he told you anything?’
‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
‘Will he tell us anything?’
‘Who can say?’ He paused and she expected it to go on indefinitely, but after a few seconds he added, ‘I was wrong, by the way. As far as anyone knows, your dad didn’t have any enemies.’
‘But . . .’
‘I mean from the old days. Whoever did this is probably someone close to him now, a disgruntled employee, or . . . Well, someone close, anyway.’
She found it hard to believe that anyone who’d known her father or worked for him could have hated him that much. A business rival, yes, or someone he’d inadvertently crossed in the past, but not someone close; her dad hadn’t been the kind of person to inspire that kind of hatred. It had to be a stranger, just like the stranger Lucas was driving her to now.
‘I think you’re wrong. I mean, surely you can’t account for everyone from the past, and you can’t account for business rivals. Think of all the businesses he owned.’ She thought of the folder Simon had given her and decided to study it when she got back to the hotel. ‘I just can’t see it being an employee.’
‘Maybe not.’
He fell silent. He seemed to be enjoying part of this, the intrigue perhaps. She hadn’t thought so in Italy but maybe he enjoyed the killing too, finding some thrill in pulling the trigger and ending a life. For all she knew, the man he was taking her to was the same. Perhaps rather than doing the job coldly and dispassionately he’d knocked on the door of their family home and got a power trip out of the murders he’d committed there—a seductive combination of pleasure and profit all rolled up into the destruction of a family.
They drove across a stretch of wasteland before reaching the brick engine shed, its windows smashed, part of the roof missing. Buddleia bushes were growing wild around it, still full of purple flowers but looking forlorn in these surroundings.