Chapter 125

Aaron was dead too. Bethany hadn't dispatched him with the same kind of frenzy as she had Eve. Her eyes hadn't burned with rage. She had remained calm and methodical. She had ignored Aaron begging for his life and hit him as hard as she could on his temple. The crunching sound, like the first bite of a crisp apple, was loud and decisive. Poe knew if it hadn't killed Aaron outright, it would have knocked him insensible. Bethany hit Aaron again. And again. Blow after blow, forehand, backhand, like she was playing herself at Swingball. After what seemed like an age, but was probably no more than thirty seconds, she stopped. She reached over and checked her half-brother's pulse.

‘It's done,' she said to Poe, her face wet with tears. They had made tracks in Eve's dried blood.

Poe said nothing. He didn't think there was anything he could say. It might have been after the sixth blow, it might have been after the seventh, but at some point an arc of blood had spilled far and wide. It felt warm on the side of Poe's face. He could taste it. He could smell it. He could feel it clotting in his hair.

He didn't know if it was the distress of what he'd just witnessed or his ongoing head trauma, but Poe was hanging on to consciousness by a thread. If he hadn't been tied to the basement post he'd have collapsed. The vision in his remaining eye was cloudy and the ringing in his ears had grown steadily louder. His head slumped to his chest. He vomited but made no move to avoid it. It splattered down his shirt and pooled on his groin. I'll have to throw away my belt, he thought. For some reason this bothered him. And then it made him giggle. He started to cry. Not the great wracking sobs of Aaron, but the gentle weeping of someone who'd had enough.

Bethany looked on in pity.

‘You seem like a decent man, Sergeant Poe,' she said. ‘Which makes what I'm about to do even harder.'

She picked up the tent-peg bag.

‘I'm not giving you the option of refusing,' she said. ‘I don't want you feeling shame for choosing it. Wearing the hood is my choice, not yours.'

Poe grunted. From the moment Bethany had zapped Aaron, he'd known there was no chance he would walk out of the basement. He'd known that for Bethany to stay dead, he would have to die. Superintendent Nightingale and Bradshaw and Estelle and Flynn would think he'd stumbled upon Aaron Bowman tidying up loose ends. They'd assume Poe had been, as Bethany had put it earlier, Mr Wrong-Place-at-the-Wrong-Time. That his luck had finally run out. With Bethany being officially dead, the police would reach the only conclusion available to them – that Aaron had returned to kill Cornelius Green, and then, for reasons known only to him, he'd also murdered his sister Eve and her husband Thomas. And when Bethany murdered Poe, there would be no one left alive to explain that Thomas and Aaron were one and the same.

Poe's case would never be closed, but it would quickly grow cold. With nothing for his friends to do but get over it.

‘I'll wear your hood,' he said. ‘But do me a favour?'

‘If I can.'

‘Go far away from here. Find some peace and live your life. Forget about what was done to you and forget about what you had to do. Make my death mean something.'

‘I will,' she nodded. ‘Are you ready?'

‘I am.'

She placed the canvas bag over Poe's head and pulled the drawstring tight. It was rough and smelled of wood and earth. It was pitch black but he closed his eyes anyway.

‘I'm so sorry,' Bethany said, her voice muffled.

Nothing happened.

No pain. No sudden white light. No . . . eternal nothing.

Instead there was a new voice in the basement. A woman's voice.

‘No, Bethany! This is wrong! He's a police officer!'

Poe jerked his head up. Turned to face where he thought the new voice had come from. ‘Alice, is that you?'

No reply.

‘Alice, if it is you, get out of here!' Poe screamed, thrashing and writhing, straining with every ounce of strength, testing his restraints until his bones ached and his sinews stretched. They didn't budge. ‘She was your friend, Bethany; please don't hurt her! Alice, run!'

‘Why would I hurt her?' Bethany said.

And then things did go blank.