MAEVE WAS waiting for him at her flat, looking more excited than he did when she opened the door. They went through to the living area in what was becoming routine.
As he sat Darian said, “I’ve had a couple of useful chats, although whatever direction they move us in, it isn’t forward. I do know for sure now that Cummins didn’t pay his own debt, someone paid it for him. That’s more evidence that he probably didn’t do it. I talked to him.”
“In prison?”
“Yeah, but it was off the record. I spoke to him and he didn’t speak back other than to point out that he doesn’t trust me. He was very confident that he’s going to get out, and quite soon. I don’t know if he was in on it from the start, but he’s in on something now. Someone killed Moses and then paid off the debt, maybe then they went to Cummins and told him he had no choice but to play guilty for a while.”
“He’s going to get life for someone else?”
“He doesn’t think it’ll be life, he’s certain it won’t even get to court. A few months and he’ll be back on the street, debt-free and able to return to the crumbling wreck of a life he had before.”
Maeve frowned and said, “If someone else clears his name, isn’t there a chance they implicate themselves in the process?”
“I don’t think that’s occurred to Cummins. Someone used him, got him to take a fall, and by the time he realizes they’re not going to bother getting him back out, no one will believe his accusations. He won’t know who was behind it all; Cummins will only have met a third or fourth or fifth party.”
Maeve nodded and said, “Well, while you were digging those bones up, I was doing some handy work of my own. I’ve been writing down way more notes, the stuff that everyone has said to me about this, going right back to when the police were questioning me about it. I think it was MacDuff who mentioned Moses’ paperwork, about how they hadn’t found any. I shrugged it off because of course he wouldn’t keep any when it was all incriminating to him and the people he was working with. But when I spoke to Frang he mentioned documents. It was just a passing comment, laughing about how complicated they were, but Moses always knew how to work it out. When the police went through the flat they didn’t find anything, neither did you and your boss.”
“No, we didn’t, but we checked thoroughly.”
“Maybe you did, but I think I know where his hiding place in the flat was. I thought it was just cash he kept in there. I was going to go check it when I knew the coast was clear.”
Darian gave her a look.
“Oh, come off it, you think Moses would have preferred I left it for DI Corey to find and slip into his pocket, or for the next people who live in the flat to stumble across it and take a holiday on his efforts?”
He said, “Fine.”
“No, not fine. Don’t give me that look and say that as if you’re judging me. That money would come to no good, but I could use it properly, the way it should be used. I can put it toward finding the person who did this. Isn’t that a better use?”
Darian raised his hands to calm her. “Okay, I get that, the money would be taken away and used for no good, but you should have been honest with me. If I’d known he was hiding things in the flat me and Sholto could have found it earlier.”
“I am being as honest with you as I can be. It’s not that long since DI Corey was accusing me of being some deranged killer. It could have been me instead of Cummins playing the scapegoat, only it would have been because the police round here can’t be bothered looking past the first target they bump into.”
She was close to tears. Darian got up and went across to the other couch and sat next to her. “That’s not going to happen, not now. We’re going to do all we can to find out who did this, and if the money can be used to help then I’m sure that’s what Moses would have wanted.”
He was speaking of a man he had never met, but Maeve didn’t point that out. She looked him in the eye and put a cold hand on his cheek. “I need your help, Darian. I would do it on my own, but with your help I feel like we can do this. We’re a good fit together, you and me. It works.”
“It does.”
There was a moment when they were half an inch apart. Maeve leaned in and their lips touched, but she moved to the side and turned it into a hug that lasted for thirty seconds. She was right, they were a good fit.
When she pulled back Darian said, “You still have your key?”
“I do.”