Page 130 of The Mercy Chair

‘I do.’

‘Then I think you’d better explain.’

‘No!’ Eve shouted. She slammed down her mug; didn’t glance at the spilled coffee. ‘Bethany killed Aaron and she killed my mum and dad! I’m not having that bitch wriggling out of it! I don’t care what you think you’ve found, Sergeant Poe; there’s not an alibi she can provide that I’ll believe. She killed my baby brother and nothing you can say will change my mind!’

‘Perhaps we should listen to what Sergeant Poe has to say, darling,’ Thomas said.

Eve wriggled out from underneath his arm. ‘No! This is just like her. She didn’t take responsibility for her actions then and she’s not taking responsibility now.’

‘Bethany didn’t kill your parents and she didn’t kill your brother, Eve,’ Poe said. ‘And the reason I can say this with the absolute certainty Thomas has mentioned, is that by the time Noah and Grace were murdered, Bethany had been dead five years.’

‘Dead?’ Thomas said. ‘What do you mean “dead”?’

‘She was murdered in 2007. And this isn’t up for debate; her death was videoed.’

‘Videoed?’

Poe nodded. ‘I watched it yesterday evening. She was murdered in the old school basement at the Children of Job’s compound. She was one of six people who were killed while strapped to something they called the mercy chair. That’s where I’ve come from. We’ve found the murder site hidden behind a false wall.’

‘But who would do such a thing?’

‘I’m afraid that’s the other thing I’m here to tell you,’ Poe said. ‘She was murdered by three people, Eve. And one of them was your brother, Aaron.’

Chapter 114

As Poe led Eve and Thomas through the events of the last twenty-four hours, their resistance weakened and their resolve hardened.

‘That little bastard!’ Eve hissed after Poe had given them the PG-rated version of Bethany’s murder. He spared them the details he hadn’t been able to spare himself. No one needed to be inside his head right now.

‘Steady, Eve,’ Thomas said. ‘Sergeant Poe said Aaron was under duress and it sounds like he didn’t have a choice. And hewasa child.’

‘He had a choice about stealing her underwear though!’ she snapped. ‘And don’t give me that “he was a child” crap; Aaron knew Mum and Dad hated Bethany. He should have known they’d completely overreact.’

‘If it wasn’t Bethany who killed Eve’s family, Sergeant Poe, who was it?’ Thomas asked.

‘We now think it was Aaron,’ Poe said. ‘We think he waited until Eve was out of the house and he killed them for what they had forced him to do. Our working theory is that he faked his own death after leaving behind evidence suggesting it was Bethany the police should be looking for.’

‘Her clasp knife?’

Poe nodded. ‘The police had it on record that she had run away five years earlier and the only people who knew otherwise had a vested interest in keeping quiet.’

‘I never actually saw Aaron and Bethany rowing after he returned from that course,’ Eve admitted. ‘Mum and Dad told me it had happened and there was no reason for me not to believe them.’

‘The police got it the wrong way round?’ Thomas said. ‘They put their resources into looking for the dead person they thought was alive and didn’t consider the living person they thought was dead?’

‘That’s about the long and short of it,’ Poe said. ‘And although I wasn’t involved in the case back then, I know I’d have reached the same conclusion.’

‘And Cornelius Green?’ Eve said, her eyes red and fierce. ‘Did my darling brother kill him too?’

‘We think so.’

‘At least he did something right then.’

Poe said nothing.

‘Why did he wait so long?’ Thomas asked.

‘We’re in conjecture territory here, obviously,’ Poe said, ‘but we believe it’s possible that an event in a Shap graveyard a few months ago triggered this second bout of violence. A badger dug up a body that shouldn’t have been there and it was news all over the world.’

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