Page 107 of The Mercy Chair

‘Delivering damnation,’ Poe finished.

‘They weren’t even people to him,’ Cobb continued. ‘He wouldn’t let us use their names. If we had to refer to one at all, we called him “it”. “Strap it to the mercy chair, Israel,” Cornelius would say. “It’s screaming too much, Israel; put a gag in its mouth.”’

‘“It” seems to be a popular word at the Children of Job,’ Poe said, remembering Bethany’s diary and how her parents had referred to her as ‘it’ as well. ‘And what happened to these men?’

‘I think you already know,’ Cobb said.

‘You forced those boys to kill these men?’

‘We did.’

‘How?’

‘You know how.’

Poe thought about the injuries found on the boy the badger had dug up. ‘They were stoned to death.’

Cobb nodded. ‘It was how they graduated. The purpose of the essential conditioning was so, at that moment in time at least, the boys hated gay men.Hatedthem. We made them believe that gay men had caused all their pain and humiliation. Gay men were why they were going to hell. And then we gave them a target for their hate. A chance to take their revenge. And to purge themselves of that terrible affliction.’

‘They took it?’

‘They all threw at least one stone.’

‘It was that easy? None of them resisted?’

‘Some did. The more devout ones couldn’t bring themselves to break the Ten Commandments. Murder is one of the great mortal sins.’

‘But they threw a stone anyway?’

‘They were all vulnerable and Cornelius was one of the most forceful men you could ever meet. Some needed the threat of the hosepipe again, but in the end they all did what was expected of them.’

‘You turned them into murderers,’ Poe said.

‘Christian soldiers. That’s what Cornelius called them. But as it happens, there is only so much essential conditioning you can do. In the end, only two of the six boys killed anyone. Nathan Rose did, but he was an easy case; he just wanted to please everyone. Didn’t matter if it was his parents, his friends or Cornelius. When we told him to stone his victim, he did exactly that. He didn’t need to be asked twice. The second boy to kill his victim was probably the only one of the six who believed what Cornelius was selling: that stoning the man in the mercy chair would put him back on God’s path.’

‘And the others?’

‘The rest all threw stones, but none of them did it with any real venom. Most didn’t even aim for the body. In my darkest days I like to think the four boys who resisted Cornelius as best they could, proved themselves before the eyes of God. That they were tested and not found wanting.’ Cobb reached for his vodka but the bottle was empty. Poe still had some in his stained coffee mug. Wordlessly, he passed it over. ‘What we did was evil,’ Cobb continued. ‘I understand that now. I think I understood it then, of course, but Cornelius was persuasive and he spent a lot of time dehumanising the men we killed. I felt nothing for them. It was as if we were putting them down.’

He put the dirty coffee mug to his crusty lips and drained the vodka in two noisy gulps. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds.

Poe took the time to sort through his most burning questions. ‘The tattoos?’ he said eventually. ‘Why put such incriminating evidence on your bodies?’

‘It was Cornelius’s idea,’ Cobb said. ‘He had contacts in churches all over the county and he knew when graves were going to be dug. Over one hundred people a week die in Cumbria, so he wasn’t tight for choice. It was my job to take the dead men to these isolated, rural graveyards. A man, it was always a man, would meet me there and together we would wrap the body in plastic sheeting and put it into what was an extra-deep grave. We would shovel fresh earth on top of the victim and tamp it down so he wouldn’t be seen on the day of the funeral. Cornelius tattooed the grave’s location on the people involved in each murder. I have six, as does Cornelius. The boys only had the murders they were involved with.’

‘As a reminder?’

‘As a warning,’ Cobb said. ‘Cornelius knew people grew consciences. This was his way of warning them they had been willing participants.’

Poe had heard enough. It was time to call in Nightingale. Cobb had rights and Poe was probably abusing them. And so far, all he had was a story. It fitted the facts as they knew them, but it was still just a story. It was time for Nightingale to match it against the evidence. He reached for his phone but stopped. He wanted to ask one last question.

‘And this is why you and Cornelius fell out, is it?’ he said. ‘In 2007, after Aaron Bowman was forced to go through this, you’d had enough. You said you’d threatened to expose him.’

‘I did.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve already told you, Aaron Bowman was a fragile—’

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