Page 108 of The Mercy Chair

‘They wereallfragile, Mr Cobb. They were all under duress. What was so different about Aaron? And why did you say you’d murdered Bethany? We know she and Aaron rowed about something when he got back from that course. That she ran away the same night.’

Cobb didn’t answer.

‘But I don’t think that’s what happened now,’ Poe said. ‘I think Aaron and Bethany were so close that even though you’d sworn him to secrecy, he told her anyway. I think she took the pragmatic, and in my opinion accurate, view that a fifteen-year-old boy wasn’t culpable for what he’d done. Not under those circumstances. I think she told Aaron that if he wouldn’t go to the police, she would.’

Still Cobb kept quiet.

‘So, when you say you murdered her, I think you did exactly that,’ Poe said. ‘I think Noah and Grace Bowman, who, for reasons we’ll probably never understand, hated their youngest daughter – they found out what she was planning to do and told you or Cornelius. She was murdered to keep your secret. A story was invented about her running away from home and everyone involved kept it. She’d run away before so no one looked too hard this time.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’

Poe shrugged. ‘Tell me I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘Tell me you didn’t involve Aaron in a murder just to “cure” his gayness. Tell me Aaron didn’t tell Bethany what he’d been forced to do.’

Instead of answering, Cobb got to his feet. He limped to his old-fashioned television and opened the cabinet it was sitting on. He had a video recorder rather than a DVD player. To the side of it was a pile of videocassettes. Six, all in plain cardboard boxes. Each box had a handwritten label, although Poe wasn’t close enough to read them.

‘What are they?’ he asked.

‘Theotherreason Cornelius and I fell out.’

Poe felt a jolt of nerves, like he’d touched an electric fence. He had a terrible feeling about this. He reached for his phone.

‘I need you to see something first, Sergeant Poe,’ Cobb said, watching him carefully. He removed the top cassette from its box and pressed it into the slot. It clunked its way into the guts of the machine. Cobb turned on the television. It was already on the video channel. He pressed play then spent a few seconds adjusting the tracking.

When he turned to face Poe, tears were already running down his face.

‘Aaron Bowman wasn’t gay, Sergeant Poe,’ he said.

Chapter 94

‘Were the videos what I think they were?’ Doctor Lang asked. ‘Were they the murders of those men? The ones Cornelius Green had lured from the streets of Manchester and Newcastle?’

‘And Glasgow,’ Poe nodded. ‘Israel had stolen the tapes before he left the Children of Job. He made copies and hid them carefully as an insurance policy. He kept the originals at home.’

‘And you watched them?’

‘I did.’

‘All of them?’

Poe nodded again.

‘Why?’

‘It was my job to watch them,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, Washington, but that shouldn’t be your job,’ Doctor Lang said. ‘That shouldn’t beanyone’sjob.’

‘If not me, then who?’

‘You can’t keep putting yourself into situations like this and expect nothing to happen. There’s a cumulative as well as an immediate psychological impact with traumatic events, Washington. At some point, you have to take a step back and let someone else shoulder the burden. Occasionally you have to put yourself first. Your nightmares are a warning shot; I doubt you’ll get another.’

Poe didn’t respond. He knew she was right. At some point, the bill became due.

‘I don’t think you should tell me what you saw on those videos, Washington,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for you having a psychotic episode.’

Poe paused for several moments. Eventually he said, ‘You say there’s a cumulative psychological impact to everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve done. And maybe you’re right—’

‘Iamright.’

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