Chapter 26

Are villains born? Or are they made?

Harri pondered the philosophy of evil as she sat in the car and waited for Sabih. She’d never believed in pure evil. Not in its truest sense. Most crime was mundane, a series of escalating events punctuated by a chargeable offence. Rarely had she encountered anything biblical, the forked-tongue, cloven-hoof malevolence of someone who sets out to harm another.

When she’d first met Ben, she’d found him sufficiently attractive and charming to dream of a life with him. He’d been warm and funny and they’d connected, but something had happened to change him. Some twist of circumstance had taken the man she’d fallen in love with and turned him into a murder suspect. He most definitely was a suspect. The evidence was starting to mount up. He had been at the hospital the night Elizabeth Asha’s body had disappeared, had access to the missing Cobalt 60, and Harri had detected traces of radioactive material in his car.

She shuddered. A poisoner most certainly fell into a category of evil that stood apart from mundane criminality. It was callous, premeditated, and executed with calm reflection. Had Ben always been capable of such evil? Had Harri fallen for the sham veneer of a decent man? Or had something happened to set him down this road?

Sabih emerged from his little terraced house and locked his front door. He hurried along his footpath and got in beside her.

‘All right, Kealty,’ he said, fastening his seat belt. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

‘Same here,’ she replied as she put the car in gear and pulled away.

‘You first,’ he said.

‘Dr Abiola didn’t hire me to do background,’ Harri confessed. ‘That machine I was using by his car, it’s a radiation detector. Keele is missing some Cobalt 60. It’s a radioactive isotope. She thinks the readings I picked up were high enough for a residue of contact.’

Sabih exhaled sharply. ‘Dammit, Kealty, you should have told me. So we’ve got a potential toxin? How would you like a motive? I spoke to the Ashas’ lawyer. When they died, everything went in trust to the kid, but if anything happens to him, guess who inherits it all?’

‘Benjamin Elmys?’ Harri suggested.

‘Acha beta,’ Sabih replied. ‘Absolutely. Ten per cent of the estate would go to the housekeeper. Ben Elmys gets the rest.’

Harri wrinkled her nose.

‘Do I smell or something?’ Sabih asked.

‘No more than usual.’ She flashed a cheeky smile. ‘It feels wrong. He doesn’t seem like the kind to kill for money. You’ve seen him, his place. He’s hardly even on this planet.’

‘Who can say why weirdos do the things they do? And he definitely scores high on the weirdo Richter scale.’

‘Is that your professional diagnosis?’ Harri scoffed.

‘Do you really need a second opinion?’ Sabih asked. ‘Anyway, it’s not my job to diagnose, it’s my job to investigate and incarcerate.’

Harri smiled and shook her head.

‘You’re the expert on this guy,’ Sabih said, and Harri’s smile fell. ‘You dated him. Was he this weird? Is that why you sacked him off?’