But instead of driving off he found himself indulging in some outside-the-box thinking. If Terry Walsh had done what Deacon wanted him to have done, he must have had a damn good reason. It had been out of character: first, to have any dealings with a jumped-up mugger like Bobby Carson; secondly, to make the kind of mistakes that left him exposed to the risk of discovery; finally, to protect himself in a way that actually drew attention to what had gone before. In ten years’ hard looking, Deacon hadn’t seen Walsh make those kinds of bad business decisions. So maybe Voss was right and it wasn’t business. He knew it was nothing to do with the bulk paper trade; the paper was only a fancy wrapping for how Walsh made his money. Drugs, gambling, girls, and dry-land piracy. When Terry Walsh stole from someone, it wasn’t their wallet and their fiancée’s necklace, it was a juggernaut full of cigarettes or whisky that left the motorway one junction short of its destination and turned up twelve hours later and a hundred miles away, empty but for the driver locked in the back in his underwear.
