Damaged Goods (DS Leah West Book 18): A fast-paced crime thriller (DS Leah West Crime Thrillers) by Nic Roberts & Ari Thorne

Author:Nic Roberts & Ari Thorne [Roberts, Nic & Thorne, Ari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Paddy Nolan looked at the detectives as though they’d just signed his death warrant, which essentially, they had. He held his hands in his face.

It’s not every day you find out that one of your employees is involved in drug smuggling and your complicity is suspected, Leah thought to herself, wondering how he was going to take it.

“I think I’m going to be fucking sick,” he finally exclaimed, holding his hand over his mouth, and for a moment, Leah wondered if they were going to need a waste bin. “So how long was he supposed to have been pulling this shit for?”

Leah and Jonesy exchanged a look, having already worked out a possible answer. “We think he would have been doing it shortly after he started working for you,” she explained, before quickly adding, “Not straight away, of course. He would have needed more time to get a decent system in place.”

“A system?” Mr Nolan stated disbelievingly, wishing that this was a bad dream he was about to wake up from. “A fucking system!? I trusted that boy! I gave him a job and a career, and this is how he thanked me?”

Leah tried to remind herself that the indignancy could be for show, a way to lull the detectives into a false sense of security. “We’re still trying to work out how he was doing it,” she stated neutrally, conscious of the offence she was going to cause with the next statement. “Specifically, how he was able to get away with it for so long.”

Mr Nolan looked at them both indignantly. “What, you can’t seriously be suggesting that I had anything to do with this, can you?” he asked, gesturing to himself. “I’m a pillar of this community!” He rushed over to the desk in his office and pulled out a stack of handwritten letters. “I still get letters from people thanking me for giving their families a good send-off! I’m very proud of the services I’ve offered. My dad had no business acumen and practically ran it into the ground! I’m the one who set the path right, damn it! And now what? All my life’s work is going to go to waste because of one stupid boy?”

It was a half an exclamation and half a question, as he was fishing for the detectives to tell him whether he was going to have to shut up shop, something which Leah quickly picked up on.

“We’re not looking to close down the funeral parlour,” she tried to assure him, knowing that they were still going to need his cooperation moving forward. “But we’re going to need to have a closer look at the forms for the people that you and Ben buried since he started working here.” She wondered if she was going to have to come back with a warrant.

But to her relief, Mr Nolan walked over to his laptop, loaded it up, and opened a number of files and placed them in front of the detectives on the coffee table.

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