Page 118 of The Mercy Chair

‘Which leads me to my next question: now we know Bethany Bowman didn’t murder Cornelius, who the hell did? I was going to ask if Joshua Meade was worth a pull, but I guess you’d say no?’

‘Anything’s possible, but Joshua doesn’t make sense,’ Poe said, shrugging. ‘I think it’s Aaron we need to be looking for now. I’m convinced that when he was old enough and big enough, he took his revenge on the parents who arranged for his baby sister to be murdered. It explains why it was only Noah and Grace’s bodies that were recovered.’

Nightingale twisted in her seat to face him. ‘He faked his death?’

‘It fits every fact we have. He kills his parents and leaves behind evidence that it was his dead sister who did it. He probably still had some of her stuff. Maybe he even blamed her for what he’d been through.’

‘And the row between him and Bethany?’

‘Never happened,’ Poe said. ‘Can’thave happened – Bethany was already dead. But Noah and Grace needed to explain away her absence to both Eve and the school. They make up a row between Bethany and Aaron. Eve wouldn’t have believed Bethany had run away after yet another argument with her parents – she was in almost permanent conflict with them by then – but running away after a row with her beloved Aaron? I imagine that was something Evewouldbelieve.’

‘And it was in Aaron’s interests to go along with it.’

‘It was,’ Poe nodded. ‘He’d just seen what his parents were capable of. And he had just been involved in his sister’s murder.’

‘And Cornelius’s murder?’ Nightingale said. ‘Do you think Aaron killed him as well?’

‘Hard to think anything else. If he’s alive, he has every motive.’

‘Why wait all these years though?’

‘No idea. Maybe he tried to forgive Cornelius but couldn’t. Or maybe something triggered him.’

They lapsed into silence as they worked out the kink in the new theory.

‘Badgers,’ Nightingale said eventually.

Poe blew out a whoosh of relief. The gap between the murders must have been bothering him more than he’d thought.

‘It was all over the news,’ Nightingale continued. ‘It was even on CNN and Al Jazeera.’

‘I remember. Sky News tried to interview me about it.’

‘That’s right,’ Nightingale laughed. ‘Sophy Ridge had to bleep out your response. But anyway, if Aaron had seen this on TV and understood the significance, it could have elicited something, a primal response he’d managed to keep in a bottle until then.’

‘Or maybe he just didn’t want Cornelius talking,’ Poe said. ‘He knew the badger would start an investigation, one that might lead to him. And he’d have known that somewhere there was a tape of his sister’s murder.’

‘So why not kill Israel Cobb as well?’ Nightingale said. ‘He’d already killed his parents and he’s now killed the man who engineered the whole thing; why not go for the set? Why not kill the man who slit his sister’s throat?’

‘We only found Israel because we put Tilly on it,’ Poe replied. ‘Alice hadn’t been able to find him, and she’d been looking for over fifteen years.’ He paused. ‘Or maybe there’s something we don’t yet know.’

Nightingale snorted. ‘In this case? I’d be surprised if there wasn’t. And you have no idea why Cobb showed you those videos? He must know he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.’

‘I don’t think he gives a shit. Which is weird, as he certainly gave a shit when I first got there. Couldn’t get his tattoo cover story in quick enough. Soon as he realised we’d linked them to the extra bodies in the graves he immediately blamed Cornelius. Said he had no idea what the alphanumeric strings meant. I don’t doubt that what he and Cornelius had done had eaten away at him over the years – hell, I cried all the way over here and I’ve only lived with it for an hour – but something happened tonight that moved him from keeping his role covered up to full disclosure. At first, I thought it was something to do with Bethany; he certainly had a visceral reaction to Tilly’s age-progression photo, but that doesn’t make sense. She’s dead, but so were the other five on the videos.’

‘Perhaps seeing her as the woman she would have become pushed him over the edge?’ Nightingale said. ‘Like you said, there’s only so much guilt you can suppress before it starts leaking. If the badgers triggered Aaron, maybe the age-progressed image of Bethany triggered Cobb?’

She checked her watch again.

‘We’ll have to revisit this, Poe,’ she said. ‘As far as I’m concerned it’s four a.m. and I have a warrant to execute. Let’s get these idiots out of bed.’

Chapter 105

Nightingale had said the cadaver dog, a black Labrador called Pat, would sniff out the blood in two minutes. Pat didn’t. In fact, Pat didn’t find any blood at all, not in the amount the videos had suggested he would.

Nightingale and her crew had woken Joshua Meade along with the rest of the Children of Job’s live-in members. He had objected and issued threats of religious persecution lawsuits, but it was water off a superintendent’s back to Nightingale. It was what happened when search warrants were executed and she’d heard it all before. Anyway, it was hard to take Joshua seriously. Puce-faced with rage, he was wearing an eighteenth-century nightgown, the kind worn by upper-class Victorians and out-of-touch Tories. If he’d been wearing a bedcap Poe would have assumed the man had an undisclosed Scrooge fetish.

Poe glared at Joshua, convinced he must have known something about what had gone on prior to his tenure at the Children of Job. Israel Cobb said no one else had been involved, but surely someone must have heard the screaming. Seen the bodies being taken out. Heard a rumour.

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