Page 130 of Final Betrayal

His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you trying to make me say?’

Scenarios were forming in her brain. What if it was all about the money and Megan wanted her stepfather’s cash? No, that didn’t make sense. ‘Maybe it was Cyril Gill who got you to stitch up your friend, then?’

Keegan shook his head, dots of dandruff drifting like fireflies through the air. ‘I don’t follow you at all.’

Good, Lottie thought. Confuse the enemy at all times. ‘Ten years ago, it’s possible that Cyril Gill wanted Bill Thompson out of the way so that he could proceed with a planning application.’

‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘The urban development project. You would have known. You told me yourself you’ve been working for Gill for nearly twenty years.’

He clamped his mouth shut.

Lottie continued. ‘Either you or Conor Dowling did Gill’s dirty work by taking Thompson out of the picture. Whichever of you it was, Dowling got the blame and paid with ten years of his life.

Keegan’s already puce cheeks turned purple. Snot poured out of his nose and he tried to sniff it back down his throat. ‘I had nothing to do with that.’

Lottie turned to Boyd. ‘I think he protests too much, don’t you?’

Boyd nodded, and she reckoned he thought he knew where she was headed with this. But he’d be wrong. She didn’t even know herself. She wished for the hundredth time that day that she wasn’t so distracted.

From the file she extracted a photograph. Sliding it across the table, she kept her eyes screwed onto Keegan’s face. His tongue ran the length of his teeth behind his lips, pushing out his jaw. Concocting a story? She knew he recognised the image in the photograph.

He shook his head. Too vehemently. ‘Don’t know what that is.’

‘It’s a coin. One of a number found in the vicinity of the young women’s bodies.’

‘So?’ He kept his eyes on the photo.

‘Explain it to me. Tell me what it means.’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You do know.’

He shrugged his bulky shoulders. ‘Looks like some sort of medal.’

She glanced at Boyd. A medal? They’d been so convinced the discs were coins that they’d become blind to the fact that they could in fact be something else. There were no inscriptions on any of them.

Boyd said, ‘What kind of medal?’

Another shrug. ‘It’s just a suggestion. I’ve never seen it before.’

She filed away his suggestion for later. ‘Tell me about the body in the tunnel.’

Now the puce faded to white. ‘You know about that?’

Bingo!

‘Yes. I do.’

He looked around the sparse room frantically. ‘Shit. If Gill was still alive, he’d go apeshit.’

‘Cyril Gill knew about it too?’

Clamped lips told Lottie that Keegan had gone too far. Said something he shouldn’t have.

‘Go on, Tony. You started so you can finish.’

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