The Bosch Deception by Alex Connor Page A

the house and wasn’t to be disturbed. When the police demanded to talk to the children’s ward he emerged reluctantly and stood, truculent in a patched cardigan, answering sullenly.
    â€˜No, I don’t know where my nephew is. No, I don’t know why he ran off. Nicholas is a very irritating boy—’
    Honor had stepped in. ‘He said he wanted to visit friends.’
    The police and David Laverne had looked at her. Petite, black haired, intelligent. A good liar.
    â€˜You know who his friends are?’ one of the policemen had asked her.
    She had shrugged. ‘No, but he’s OK. Honestly. Nicholas will be back. He can take care of himself.’
    And he did come back, several times. In and out of their lives like a visitor. Never one of the awkward, ill-matched family. Not really …
    Finally making up her mind, Honor reached for her mobile and clicked down the stored numbers. She paused at the name Claude Devereux – a man she had spoken to many times, always about Nicholas. A man who had once worked with her other brother, Henry. She flinched at the thought of her dead sibling. Who would have thought Henry would die young? Henry, with his architectural practice in Paris, encouraged by Claude’s father, Raoul Devereux.
    Honor glanced back at the mobile and Claude Devereux’s name. It had been nearly a year since they had last talked, when Claude had told her Nicholas was working for a wealthy widow, Sabine Monette.
    â€˜He seems happy there. She has an estate outside Paris, and an apartment on the Champs Elysées. Nicholas looks after her, does odd jobs.’
    â€˜
Odd jobs?
’ Honor had queried. Her brother, doing odd jobs. ‘He won’t take my calls any more. I keep trying, but he won’t talk to me. He was always difficult, but now he doesn’t want anything to do with me. I didn’t turn against him. Everyone else did, but not me. And yet he cut me out of his life.’ Her tone had been injured, old wounds picked raw.
    â€˜Nicholas can’t get over what happened to him.’
    â€˜It was years ago—’
    â€˜He was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.For a priest, a believer, there’s nothing’s worse than being deprived of God.’ Claude had hesitated. ‘It shook him when he exposed the corruption and was punished for it.’
    â€˜He was naïve.’
    â€˜He was Nicholas.’
    For a time Honor had suspected that Claude and Nicholas were lovers, but when Claude became engaged to Eloise she realised that the Frenchman was just –
just
 – her brother’s friend. And in running away from his disgrace in London, Nicholas had chosen France as his adopted home. An ex-priest, repelled by the Catholic faith, barred from Mass and destined for a heretic’s burial.
    Nicholas’s religious fervour had been unexpected. A capricious mind, a restless character, he had teetered on the edge of criminality and promiscuity for years. As he entered his late teens he had bummed his way around London and the capitals of Europe, taken menial jobs, and then returned home only to be off again weeks later. Hardly the kind of person to choose a religious life … Honor thought for a moment. Perhaps the Church had offered him security. Nicholas had experienced a lot of danger, sex and excitement – perhaps he was tired. But why Catholicism? their beleaguered uncle had asked. You were raised as Church of England – why change? Honor had never understood that argument. In truth, the Laverne siblings hadn’t been raised in any religion. They had been English, middle class, well-schooled and intelligent. Religious devotion had been nothing but an unwelcome moral cuckoo.
    For another few moments she stared at the phone number and then dialled, waiting for Claude to answer. But it wasn’t his voice that came down the line, it was his wife’s, Eloise unusually