Chapter 53

‘It was Alice who stepped in front of your car?' Doctor Lang said. ‘The woman who shouted at you when you visited the Children of Job?'

‘Yep, the one who called us sinners,' Poe confirmed. ‘Even Tilly.'

‘Was she trying to kill herself?'

‘Far from it. She figured it was the only way to make me stop.'

‘And you did?'

‘Of course.'

‘What did she want?'

‘To talk.'

‘She was lucid?'

‘Very much so,' Poe said. ‘The wild hair was gone, as was her stooped back. It was like the end of that film Tilly made me watch. This master criminal, the one the cops weren't even sure existed, had been in their office all day long and as he's leaving the station the limp gradually disappears and the arthritis in his hands clears up.'

‘The Usual Suspects.'

‘What is?'

‘The name of the film.'

‘OK. Anyway, she was like that. Turns out she adopted the guise of "Mad Alice" to ingratiate herself with the Children of Job. She'd been creeping around their compound for fifteen years like a world champion undercover cop.'

‘Which she wasn't?'

Poe shook his head. ‘She wasn't a cop.'

‘What was she?'

‘She was Bethany Bowman's best friend. And from the age of fourteen she'd been trying to find out why Bethany ran away from home, only to return five years later to butcher her family. She was convinced the answers were with the Children of Job.'

‘Oh, the poor thing,' Doctor Lang said. ‘Friendships at that age, particularly among vulnerable girls, which Bethany certainly appears to have been, can be all-consuming. Betrayals can be devastating. It usually manifests as over-the-top rage towards the betrayer, or complete denial.'

‘It was the latter with Alice. Even when we talked her through the evidence, she wouldn't accept Bethany was capable of murdering her parents and brother.'

‘And she only wanted to talk?'

‘She had something to give me,' Poe said. ‘Something she'd been guarding for sixteen years.'