Page 116 of The Mercy Chair

Poe shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘And to be honest, I’m not sure she’d have accepted it anyway. You should have seen her, Doctor Lang. She was as fierce as a mongoose. When the argument was over and Aaron was ready to throw his second rock – a more manageable one this time – Bethany started taunting Cornelius. This fourteen-year-old girl, strapped to a chair and knowing she was about to die, began calling him names. Admittedly she didn’t seem to know any good swear words, so it was mainly “sinner” and the old Bowman family favourite, “bad biscuit”, but that simple act of defiance is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen. I honestly don’t think I’ve admired anyone as much as I admired Bethany Bowman.’

‘But she died anyway?’

Tears stung the back of Poe’s eyes. One rolled down his cheek. It wasn’t the first he’d shed over Bethany Bowman, and it wouldn’t be the last. He’d wept over the five dead men too, of course, but none of them had hit him as hard as Bethany. Right up until the end, her raw, untameable spirit had remained unquenched.

Doctor Lang passed him the box of tissues and took one for herself. She wasn’t crying, but liquid was brimming at the bottom of her eyelids. Poe dried his face and answered her question.

‘Cornelius made Aaron carry on throwing rocks until he was too weak to lift them,’ he said. ‘I counted seven in total.’

‘Did he kill her?’

‘No. I don’t think Aaron had the upper body strength to do more than bruise her.’

‘But you saw her die?’

‘I did.’

‘Was it Cornelius?’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘What happened?’

‘Israel and Cornelius had their second row of the night,’ Poe replied. ‘It was short and it was vicious, but when it was over, Israel Cobb, as he had previously, walked over to the mercy chair, pulled out his Stanley knife and slit Bethany Bowman’s throat.’

Chapter 103

‘You arrested him after that?’ Doctor Lang said.

‘Who, Israel Cobb?’ Poe said. ‘I read him his rights as soon as I’d watched the first video.’

‘You took him to the station?’

‘I called Superintendent Nightingale and told her what Cobb had told me. What he’dshownme. She sent someone straight over, but as he lived in the middle of nowhere we still had some time and I didn’t want to waste it. Not while he was so chatty. He still wanted to talk and I still wanted to hear what he had to say.’

‘What did you discuss?’

‘First of all, I wanted as much detail as I could get about the five men he and Cornelius had killed. I had other questions, of course, but this seemed to be the most pressing. I took the names of the boys who’d attended the courses, the four we didn’t know about. The names of the parents too. I asked him why we wouldn’t find Bethany’s body in the sixth grave. He said they’d used five of the graves to dispose of the dead men, but even though Cornelius had arranged a sixth for Bethany, Cobb didn’t use it. It’s another of the things that Israel and Cornelius had their falling out over. He didn’t tell Cornelius he had made his own arrangements for Bethany’s burial until the following day.’

‘Where was her body?’

‘Cobb wouldn’t say,’ Poe said. ‘He said that, rather than hiding her underneath someone else’s coffin, he’d found somewhere, in his words, “peaceful, on a sunny hill with a nice view”. He didn’t want her disturbed, not by us, not by Cornelius.’

‘Did you ask him the obvious?’

‘I did.’

‘You asked him why he’d told you any of this? He was sentencing himself to life in prison. Why would he do that?’

‘I thought long and hard about his motivations,’ Poe admitted. ‘At first I thought he’d panicked when he discovered we knew what his tattoos signified. Probably thought he’d have to cop to something and he knew he’d get away with whipping the boys’ feet. Although thereisa limit to consent when it comes to causing physical harm, when I told him Nathan Rose was dead, he knew there were no living witnesses left to contradict him. Admitting some culpability was more believable than a flat-out denial, and a lie is best hidden among truths. The tattoos were all in Cornelius’s handwriting, so I guess it might have fooled a particularly stupid jury.’

‘So why did—?’

‘Why did he decide to show me those videos? Why admit to murders he didn’t have to?’

Doctor Lang nodded.

‘He had his reasons,’ Poe said.

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