I glanced at the two men opposite. Both had their eyes fixed on me, expectant.
“It started with a man who wanted so desperately to escape his roots that he lost his sense of morality somewhere on the journey,” I began, staring Marc straight in the face.
He made a growl of protest, shifted his weight as if to stand, but MacMillan stilled him with a small movement of his hand. “Sit down, Mr Quinn,” he warned softly. Marc subsided, looking disturbed with himself that he should have obeyed the Superintendent's quiet command.
“When you've no money, no qualifications and are given no quarter by anyone, drugs must seem a very attractive proposition,” I went on neutrally. “Where better place to sell the more up-market stuff – Ecstasy, cocaine, speed – than in a nightclub? After all, the boys on the door will make damned sure nobody brings their own in, so they're a captive market, a ready audience. And it was all going swimmingly until Angelo Zachary stepped out of line.”
Marc's head came up. He was too proud to beg me to stop, but there was the fear in his eyes now, and maybe even a trace of hurt surprise, too. I closed my heart to the fact I held his future, his freedom in my hands, and pressed on.
“Angelo, you see,” I told MacMillan, “has some nastily sadistic tendencies. When he's not playing SS man here, he likes to watch videos designed for a very specialised taste – that's when he's not beating up his girlfriend, of course.”
I glanced at the Superintendent, not entirely sure what I'd see, but both he and Marc were sitting impassive. MacMillan gestured silently for me to go on.
“Unfortunately, they don't come cheap, and Angelo hired out rather a lot of these videos, from a guy called Terry Rothwell.” The policeman tried not to show he had just snapped to attention, but I caught the betraying twitch of his hands.
“He had so many, built up such a tab, that when Terry eventually insisted he settle up, Angelo couldn't do it. So, he faked a robbery here at the club. He nicked a few expensive items of office equipment, like a lap-top computer, making sure others took the blame, and paid his debt that way.”
That was one thing Marc hadn't figured out. Not until I'd opened up to him that night in the flat. He'd agreed to set the trap for Angelo not because he wanted to see if he'd killed Terry. Oh no, he already knew all about that. He wanted to know if Angelo had committed the far more serious crime of lying to him.
“The only trouble was,” I continued, “that I think the lap-top had been used to record information about the drugs being dealt here, and although Angelo wiped the data files, he thought he'd get cute and not tell Terry about the password. If he hadn't done that, Terry would probably never have looked any further into it. As it was, he just made it more suspicious. And Angelo wasn't to know that Terry would have a friend who had another friend who was good enough with computers to retrieve the files.”
“You.” MacMillan murmured the single word as a statement, not a question.
I nodded briefly, wanting to keep Sam out of this. “I didn't know where he'd got the damned thing, but when I told him what data we'd managed to restore, Terry obviously decided to have a go at a little light blackmail.”
It was MacMillan who nodded now, understanding. “And when he tried that, Angelo killed him,” he said, almost to himself. He moved quickly to his feet. “I'll make sure we've got Zachary.” He frowned as he noted my more obvious injuries. “Will you be all right on your own here with him for a moment?”
“I expect so,” I said. Even in this state I was fairly sure I could handle a handcuffed man on my own. It seemed so wrong to see Marc restrained in that way, as though all his self-confidence and polish was slipping away.
MacMillan nodded, as though he hadn't really doubted that I could, and hurried from the room.
As the door closed behind him I glanced at Marc, taking up the thread again for his benefit, and feeling I could speak more freely now. “The problem was, when Angelo went round to see him, Terry didn't have the lap-top to give back to him, not with any persuasion. It could be that Angelo had meant to kill him anyway – he's certainly the type – or maybe he just lost his rag. Whichever way it happened, afterwards Angelo panicked, and he came back to tell his mate, Len what he'd done.”
I remembered Dave's report of the conversation he'd overheard. Len telling Angelo that he'd gone too far this time, that he didn't think he'd be able to cover up for him. At the time I'd thought Angelo was dealing drugs off his own bat. Now I knew different.
“Of course, the first thing Len did was turn to you.” I flickered my gaze towards his face, but was not rewarded with a response. “Len thinks you walk on water,” I said. “He would follow you to hell and back and not turn a hair.” I paused, then couldn't resist adding icily, “It's a good job, because after this, he's probably going to have to.”
Marc's face twisted then. He must have known what was coming, but had still hoped against hope that I would veer off course at the last minute. I watched the realisation form for a few moments before I dug the knife in.
“He knew you would take care of the problem, and that problem was me. I suppose I should have known,” I murmured. “The first time I met you, you gave me fair enough warning. If you work for me, you don't break the rules, you said. Not for anyone.” I shrugged. “I didn't realise you meant your rules. I unwittingly stepped on your toes, so you sent the boys round. Nothing personal, that's just the way the game goes. Simple, really.”
He spread his hands to the limit of the handcuffs' chain, then let them drop back into his lap. “I couldn't just let it go, Charlie, you must realise that.” I was surprised to hear a note of pleading in his voice. “I never dreamed you'd get so involved, would take it so far. I told them to go easy on you. They didn't listen.”
I gave a short, harsh laugh. “And I'm supposed to be thankful for that? Oh you told them to go easy on me all right, but not so easy. You didn't bother to tell them that Charlie wasn't a bloke's name, did you? What's the matter, Marc, afraid your boys wouldn't have the stomach for beating up a woman? Well, at least they didn't quite manage to stick a knife in my guts, like poor old Terry got from Angelo, now did they?”
He tried to run an exasperated hand quickly through his hair, nearly smacked himself in the face when the other one came along with it. Even his coordination seemed to have gone.
“That was a mistake. Angelo went too far.” He stopped, took a breath, started again. “All I wanted to do was scare you off, stop you from following this course. I should have known that you wouldn't scare so easily.” He tried a half-hearted smile, rose and made as if to move towards me. “Charlie, it doesn't need to end like this.”
“That's plenty far enough, Marc.” There must have been something in my face. He searched it for a long moment, then advanced no further.
“The really ironic thing is,” I went on, “that Terry didn't have anything to threaten you with anyway. All we were able to get off that damned computer were a few file names and one list of dates. There was nothing that couldn't have been explained away or swept under the carpet.” Marc closed his eyes as if asking his God to help him.
“I don't know how Terry got to know about what was going on here. Maybe Angelo offered him something in the beginning as a trade. Terry wouldn't have accepted it. He was very anti-drugs.
“Whatever,” I continued, “Terry had enough to drop a few of the right words onto Angelo. Did he ask for money? A charitable donation, maybe? That would have been like him. Striking a blow for freedom, he would have seen it as. A bit of private enterprise.”
“Charlie—” Marc protested.