Page 106 of The Mercy Chair

‘You’ve already said that.’

‘I have,’ Poe agreed. ‘You’re an experienced therapist; you’ll understand the theory underpinning aversion therapy.’

‘It’s a recognised technique,’ she said. ‘I rarely use it, but then again I rarely treat patients with addictive behaviour.’

‘Fair point,’ Poe conceded. ‘But, from what I’ve described, just how successful would they be at putting these boys back on the path to heaven?’

Doctor Lang considered the point carefully.

‘Trying to change someone’s sexuality doesn’t work,’ she said after a short pause. ‘This is a scientific fact. At best you’ve wasted your time; at worst you’ve caused untold psychological damage. And what Cornelius and Israel were doing wasn’t only ineffective; it was crude and cruel. Nathan Rose committed suicide when you challenged him about the course he’d attended. I thinkpost hoc ergo propter hocprobably did apply there. It sounds as though he killed himself because your visit brought back these terrible memories, memories I imagine he had successfully repressed. The brain’s like that; it will do its best to protect itself from traumatic events.’

Poe gave Doctor Lang a grim nod. ‘That much I know,’ he said.

‘Are you suggesting Bethany Bowman committed suicide as well? That she killed herself because of what happened to her brother? Israel felt responsible for her death, but he didn’tliterallykill her?’

‘That’s not what happened.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘No,’ Poe said. ‘And Nathan Rose didn’t kill himself because I reminded him about what he’d been through.’

‘How can you possibly know?’

Poe held Doctor Lang’s stare.

‘Nathan Rose killed himself because of what he’ddone,’ he said.

Chapter 93

‘I was telling the truth when I said we strapped those boys to the mercy chair, Sergeant Poe,’ Israel Cobb said. ‘And I was telling the truth when I said I showed them pictures of naked men while Cornelius whipped the soles of their feet.’

‘But what were you lying about, Mr Cobb?’ Poe said.

‘I haven’t lied. But I have sinned against you.’

‘How?’

‘The sin of omission, Sergeant Poe,’ Cobb said. ‘I told you that although each course was tailored to the individual boy, they all shared two common elements.’

‘You did. Bible readings at the start, a good old feet whipping at the end.’

‘The course didn’t conclude with the boys being tortured in the mercy chair, Sergeant Poe. That wasn’t the big set piece, the finale, the thing that put them back on the straight and narrow.’

‘Other than you and Cornelius Green being a pair of sadists, what was the point of it then?’

‘We called it essential conditioning,’ Cobb said.

‘What the hell does that mean? Essential conditioning for what?’

‘For what came next.’ Cobb stopped looking at Poe and cast his eyes to the floor. ‘You want to know who the people in those graves are?’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

‘I do.’

‘They were nobodies, Sergeant Poe. Worse than nobodies. Abominations. Unrepentant sinners. People who had been given the gift of life and spat it back in God’s face. According to Cornelius anyway.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Men, Sergeant Poe.Gaymen. Cornelius would go to Manchester or Newcastle or Glasgow and scour the streets for the homeless and the drug addicts and the rent boys until he found the ones no one would miss. He offered them salvation, a roof over their heads, a warm meal, but really he was—’

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