Chapter 117

Bethany grunted as she dragged her unconscious brother down the basement steps. She pulled him by the legs and didn't seem to care that his head bounced off every concrete step. He'd been unconscious longer than Eve, but Bethany clearly viewed her sister as the bigger threat. Eve was already tied to the post next to Poe. The drool leaking from the corner of her mouth had formed a pool on the floor.

Aaron was a deadweight, and although Bethany's expression was as fierce as it had been in the video Poe had just watched, she wasn't a heavy-set woman. It took her five minutes to secure Aaron to the post on Poe's right. Poe was now in the middle, literally and figuratively, of what had to be the sickest family squabble since Richard III had locked his nephews in the Tower of London.

Bethany had barely glanced at Poe, but with her brother and sister secured she finally had time to address the elephant in the room. She reached out and turned Poe's head to the side, examined the damage Eve's mallet had made. She wasn't rough, but she wasn't gentle either. Bethany wore her hair long. Despite the oppressive heat, a light scarf was tied around her neck.

She removed the gag Eve had put in his mouth. ‘You don't look as though you're having a good day, Mr Wrong-Place-at-the-Wrong-Time,' she said.

‘I've had better,' Poe admitted, wincing. If he got out of this, he'd have to congratulate Bradshaw on her program. The likeness she'd generated for Bethany was uncanny.

She touched his fractured eye socket. ‘Eve did this?'

‘With the mallet at your feet.'

‘Why?'

‘I asked her for a picture of Aaron. We were going to put it through some fancy age-progression software.'

‘That would do it,' Bethany nodded. ‘I suppose you'd better tell me who you are.'

Poe did. Explained what he'd been doing and why. How he'd ended up tied to a post in her brother and sister's basement. When he said it out loud, he realised just how foolish he'd been.

‘Do you know who I am?'

‘You're Bethany Bowman.'

‘Yet you seem surprised to see me,' she said.

‘You're not wrong,' Poe replied. ‘I watched you die.'

‘Please explain.'

Poe did. Told her that until the previous night she'd been the main suspect in the murder of Cornelius Green, her parents and her brother. He talked her through his meeting with Mad Alice and how that had started him down a path that ended with him being whacked on the head with a tent-peg mallet.

‘They filmed what they did to me?' Bethany asked.

‘Not just you. They filmed them all.'

‘I saw the camera, but I didn't think for a second there was film in it. Why on earth would they film themselves committing murder?'

‘Leverage,' Poe said. ‘As long as those tapes existed, no one could claim they weren't there. The tapes proved everyone was complicit.'

‘Well, it seems that rumours of my death, yada yada yada.'

‘I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't ask what happened that night.'

Bethany said, ‘Not yet,' and zapped him with the stun gun.