This was a dangerous man with nothing left to lose.
“We know what happened to your daughter, Alan,” Logan told him.
“Shut up.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Shut up!”
“But none of that is Jameelah’s fault,” Logan continued. “None of what happened is down to her.”
“He killed my little girl! Why should he get to keep his?! How is that fair?”
“Fair? It’s not. God. No, nothing’s fair about any of this, Alan,” Logan replied. “Nothing’s fair about losing a child. Nothing’s fair about losing any loved one. But… your daughter?”
He shook his head, and risked a tiny step closer. They were maybe twenty feet apart. No chance either Logan or Tyler could rush in fast enough to catch her before she fell.
“I’ve got a daughter. She’s older now. Married. But the thought of something happening to her? The thought of losing her? No. No, that would not feel fair,” he agreed. “But just because something isn’t fair, doesn’t mean it’s some other bugger’s fault, Alan.”
“It was his fault. It was all his fault!” Alan spat. His eyes searched the sky, like they were being watched. “And them! His fault, and theirs!”
“We spoke to your wife, Alan. She told us what happened. To Lucy. How she got sick. How you did everything you could.”
“They made her sick!”
“They didn’t, Alan,” Logan said. “Nobody made her sick. Not on purpose. It was just… It was tragic, and it was unfair, and I can’t imagine how terrible it must’ve been. But it was nobody’s fault. And it certainly wasn’t Jameelah’s. Hurting her, killing her…” Logan shook his head. “What would she say, Alan? What would Lucy say if she knew what you were doing?”
The words came out of him like some sort of primal roar. “Don’t you say that! Don’t you say her name! You didn’t know her! You don’t know!”
“You’re right, I don’t know her. But you did. You do. So tell me, is this the legacy she’d want?” Logan pressed. He chanced another step forward. Alan’s eyes darted to the detective’s feet, but he said nothing. “Is this how Lucy would choose to be remembered, if she could? As the catalyst for an innocent girl’s death? I bet she never hurt a fly in her life, did she?”
Alan’s head shook. A tear cut through the grime on one cheek. “No. She was… she was kind. She was kind, and she was funny, and she was beautiful.” He sniffed like he could draw his grief back into him. His face darkened. “And she’s gone. He took her. My little girl, he took her away. So I’m going to take his away. I’m going to kill his daughter, like he killed mine.”
“But I don’t think you are, Alan,” Logan told him. Another step. Closer. “I think, if you were going to do that, you’d have done it by now. I think you know that you shouldn’t. That you can’t. That you won’t do it. You know Jameelah has done nothing to you, Alan. You know how disappointed Lucy would be in you if you destroyed her memory like this. That’s why you haven’t hurt her yet. And that’s why you won’t do it now.”
He chanced three steps in a row. Tyler hadn’t moved, and so was several paces back now. Alan Rigg was no longer looking Logan in the eye and was fixated on his feet, instead. He hadn’t objected to the detective coming closer, but then he was still safely out of reach. Still too far away.
There was no way Logan would reach Jameelah in time if Alan decided to give her a push. No way he could stop her smashing onto the rocks and tumbling into the foaming water below. One shove, and she was gone.
“Let me take her, Alan. We can talk. Man to man, father to father. This is not a complete disaster yet, Alan. There are a lot of happy endings still available to us here.”
Alan flinched, like he’d been struck. “It is. It’s too late. I already did it. I already killed him.”
Logan nodded, just once. “The man in the tent. Who was he?”
“He was me,” Alan said, his movements were becoming jerky, his voice a hiss barely audible above the wind and the waves. “And I’m him. Or was going to be. Because, you’d figure it out. Someone. Maybe not you. But someone would figure out what had happened. Why I’d done it. But, if I was dead, then I was dead, and you wouldn’t look for me. So I found someone in Glasgow that nobody would miss, and I swapped. Me for him. Him for me. He would be me, and I would be him. You see?”