21. Some Digging

Leonie

Alone in the flat, Ghost and I sat together on the sofa. He flopped on his back, pressing his side into my leg as I tried to mark another dissertation. Every other paragraph I read, I rewarded myself by giving him a little belly scratch.

When I first decided to train as a lecturer, I thought I might make a difference. It had just taken me further from my life calling. In the last few months, knowing I had another year of my PGCHE course put me in a bad mood.

Visiting Mum, she’d always mutter about how I gave up the Castillo empire for whiteboard pens. I was born for a very different path. It was an alleyway always looming in the shade, running parallel to my current pretty walkway, but a crossroad was coming.

I had pushed the hypothesis on armed robbery and murder back to the bottom of my to-do list and was marking the most ridiculous title. Society Has Moved On: how the characters in Romeo and Juliet would be charged then and now. I had no idea who their dissertation tutor was, but I still couldn’t quite believe they’d signed off on it.

Issy’s copy of Romeo and Juliet was dog-eared and annotated to the high heavens. It was a copy from her degree that we had shoved on the shelf of our hallway to make us seem intellectual. It was the book I should have grabbed Friday night.

Though it rested on the arm of the sofa, I decided to load up the movie with Leonardo Di Caprio instead.

Despite the Hawaiian t-shirts and guns, it was a pretty close adaptation.

Mercutio lay on the stage dying and I nearly missed my phone ringing, but Ghost sat upright and stared at the vibrating coffee table.

I turned down Mercutio’s cursing on both houses and picked it up.

It was Robbie, one of the lawyers from my old job. A bit of a crook, but an absolute softie whom I’d introduced to the Belovs since Derek had taken a part-retirement.

“Leonie,” he said, voice gruff.

“Robbie,” I said, imitating his low baritone word.

“I’ve got news.”

At how serious he sounded, I turned off the TV. “Go on.”

“Anton gave me a heads up to look at some accounts Derek neglected… we’ve done some digging. A lot of digging.” There was a pause and then he took a deep breath. “We found something that was overlooked. Firdman’s mother had a bank account in the Cayman Islands. Fifty grand was transferred into it two days before your father was killed. Two hundred grand appeared in it the day after he was killed.”

“Transferred?” I asked, trying to stay rational and in the conversation before my mind spiralled.

Anton, Dom and Issy’s uncle, had always been on my side when it came to Firdman needing to remain locked up forever. Though I rarely saw him, I’d thought he could give me the heads up on something like this.

“Still trying to figure that out,” he said awkwardly, voice strained. “The money has a long, long, long route so far. Every account we find seems to be a decoy, leading us to another decoy. I don’t want to say untraceable…”

“How good is your hacker?”

“She’s good. Oh, she’s really good.”

“I know someone better,” I told him, putting him on speaker and already loading up my texts. “Send it all to me, please, Robbie.”

“I don’t— should I come over? We can go through this together. You probably need…”

“Thanks, Robbie,” and I hung up before I cried.

Because I was going to cry. The tears were there, after all these years of knowing I was right. But they stayed there, burning my eyes but held captive by another realisation.

I was right.

And also very wrong.

Because Derek would have known. He wouldn’t have missed something like this. He wouldn’t have.

But we needed proof.

I rang Dom’s number because Derek, one of my two godfathers, had a hand in killing my dad.

And he was the sole man who could help me keep him in prison. If I made a move against him, if I hired anyone else, it would be obvious I knew.

It would be a risk.

I needed Dom’s help.