Chapter 592:

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“He confessed?”

“Yes.”

I pressed my palms together. “Please tell me there’s a smoking gun. Please tell me there’s a video of Gloria Lockwood handing him a fat envelope of cash and asking him to kill me.”

“There’s no video. But there is a confession.” He paused again, and the pause was doing something I didn’t like. “Hyacinth. He didn’t just confess to one crime.”

I looked at him. “What?”

“He’s worked for Gloria before. In a similar capacity.”

“He’s killed someone else? Someone I know?”

“Yes. And… there’s no easy way to answer the second question.”

I went still. “How long ago?”

𝘕𝖾𝘸 c𝗵𝗮𝗉t𝘦𝗿𝘴 ev𝘦𝘳y w𝗲𝘦𝘬 𝗈𝗇 𝘨𝗮𝗹ոo𝘃e𝗹𝘴.сo𝗆

Lochlan said, with difficulty, “Twenty-six years.”

Icy tendrils gripped my heart.

“He was the one who killed Marin Lockwood,” Lochlan said.

The word came out as barely a sound. “My… mother.”

He nodded.

I looked at the empty glass on the table and felt suddenly, absurdly thirsty, despite having just drunk all of it.

I said, eventually, “Take me to him.”

Cameron and two of his men stood when we entered the small hospital room. The man in the bed had a forgettable face. Lined, ravaged by something long-term and self-inflicted, made worse by the night’s events. His left arm was splinted. There were butterfly strips above his eyebrow, and he had the particular grey pallor of a man who hadn’t slept and knew he was about to answer for something.

He looked up when I walked in and started talking before I’d found somewhere to stand.

“You’ve got to get my daughter out.” His voice was a rasp. “Please. She’s—”

“You fulfil your end of the bargain,” Lochlan said, “and we fulfil ours.”

The man tried to push himself upright and winced hard, hand going to his ribs. He breathed through it.

For a long time, no one said anything. The man’s laboured breathing and the steady beep-beep of machines were the only sounds in the room.

“Talk.” Cameron prodded his shoulder.

“I used to drive for Gloria,” he said. “Years ago. Private hire, household staff, that sort of thing.” He stopped, coughed—a deep, unpleasant sound. “I got into a bit of bother. Money. I had a gambling problem, and I… I started taking things. Small things at first. Silverware. A crystal decanter. Things I thought she wouldn’t miss.”

He looked at his hands. “She caught me. Gloria.”

A nurse came in, moved around the bed to check his IV bag, and left without looking at any of us. The man waited until the door closed.

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