Page 128 of Rat

“For me to talk.” Sebastian sighed. “Formeto explain.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s the problem.”

He pulled the plastic bag out of his pocket and covered part of the bench. “Now sit.”

Rory sat down and stared at his lap. “Why did you keep asking for the time?”

“You’ll see in a minute.”

Sebastian sat down, then yanked off his gloves. “Put these on.”

Rory frowned, then did as he was told. Sebastian’s gloves were warm and soft.

Sebastian turned to him.

“I’m sorry about your sister.”

Rory widened his eyes and pressed his back to the bench, then he remembered the letter he’d written. “You read the letter?”

“No.”

He frowned. “Then how do you know about Erica?”

Sebastian pursed his lips and exhaled. “Not yet. I need to tell you about Lester first.”

Rory swallowed the lump in his throat. “Lester? What about him?”

“I deserved every second of that sixteen years. I’m the only one in that prison who thinks their time was lenient, who thinks they deserved more.”

“You said he betrayed you.”

“He did. I hadn’t seen him for a year, and when he called me out of the blue, he sounded odd. He wanted me to help him with a scam, and fast, and I did what I do best…”

Rory frowned. “Which is?”

“I set up a con, but I had no idea I was being watched, followed, stabbed in the back by one of my dearest friends, and when I found out, I lost it. I couldn’t understand why he’d come back after a year and try to ruin me. And in a moment of anger, I killed him. I know you’ve listened to that recording…”

“How do you know—”

“I also know you didn’t hear all of it.”

“What do you mean?”

Sebastian took a deep breath. “I tried to bring him back, I called for help, phoned an ambulance and did everything they told me to, but it was too late. I’d done too much.”

Sebastian stared down at his hand and shook his head. “I went down for murder, I didn’t dispute it, I didn’t plead not-guilty or beg for leniency, I accepted it, but what I couldn’t accept was him turning on me. For years I’ve wondered why.” He lifted his head and stared past Rory. “William Hamish.”

“What?”

“He harassed Lester, put pressure on him, paid people to loiter outside his house and threaten him. He made Lester’s life hell for a year. His wife got fed up and left, and Lester started drinking, gambling and got himself into a shit load of debt. He was facing jail time for several charges until Hamish offered him a deal. The bastard that had put him in that state was offering to save him, bail him out. All he had to do was expose me for the con artist I was.”

Rory licked his lips. “You did deals on the dark web. Hamish gave me a file about you … You’ve sold bombs to terrorists, weapons to gangs—”

Sebastian shook his head. “I once sold a bottle of air to this guy for a hundred thousand pounds, convinced him it was full of this deadly gas, and another, a vial of pink liquid, told him it was so unstable, a single drop in water could make a nuclear explosion. I even had a gun that could vanish into thin air after a shooting; I called it the ghost gun. I’m a con man, and I conned arseholes, the lowest of the low.”

“How?”

---