Chapter 58

Poe ordered more hot drinks. He did this at the bar rather than at their table. Not because the hovering waiter was incompetent, but because he needed time to think.

‘What's happening?' Linus asked.

‘Hard to tell,' Poe admitted. ‘According to Alice, Noah and Grace Bowman were emotionally abusing Bethany.'

‘And it wasn't just an ultra-strict upbringing?'

‘Alice believes Bethany was unfairly singled out. According to her, the root cause of all Bethany's behavioural problems was the way she was treated by her parents.'

‘What's the problem then? Doesn't this provide the motivation the case was lacking all those years ago?'

‘The problem, Snoopy, is that Alice is supposed to be Bethany's friend,' Poe said. ‘And if this was the sentencing part of a court case, I'd say she was doing a superb job of offering mitigation.'

‘It doesn't add up?'

‘There's a contradiction I'm not seeing yet. Why vehemently deny Bethany was capable of doing something while simultaneously providing the missing motivation?'

‘Maybe they aren't friends.'

‘Maybe,' Poe conceded. The barman brought a tray over. Fresh coffee for him, green teas for Bradshaw and Alice. Poe picked it up and began walking back to the table. He stopped and returned to Linus. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, Snoopy, you can start by abusing the powers of the state.'

‘What do you want?'

‘Dig out everything you can on Alice Symonds. I want to know if she's the real deal or if she's rat poison squared.'

Poe didn't wait for an answer. Linus either would or he wouldn't. And even if he refused, an hour of Bradshaw rooting through the life of Alice Symonds was worth a week of the security services doing it anyway. He got back to the table, passed Alice her drink and said, ‘What aren't you telling me, Alice?'

She blew on her tea and studied his face. ‘The more important question is why are you still focusing on what happened in 2012?'

‘You think Grace, Noah and Aaron Bowman being butchered like pigs isn't worth focusing on?'

She shook her head. ‘No, I don't.'

In anyone else that would have been an outrageous statement, but he sensed he was being tested again. ‘Then what is?'

‘The catalyst, Sergeant Poe,' she said. ‘You say the murders are the most important thing, I say they're the end result of something that started five years earlier.'

Poe worked backwards. The Bowmans were murdered in 2012. Five years earlier was 2007, the year Aaron attended one of Cornelius Green's secret courses. But Alice was interested in Bethany, not Aaron.

‘Bethany ran away from home in 2007,' he said eventually. ‘Although she returned in 2012 to murder her family, 2007 was the last time she was seen. You think the catalyst for what happened in 2012, and for what's happening now, was what caused Bethany to run away from home in the first place?'

Alice nodded her encouragement.

Poe frowned. ‘But you've told us what the catalyst was: she had a horrific childhood and she hated her parents.'

‘Then why am I here?' Alice said. ‘Why have I spent years shuffling around the Children of Job? Why am I Mad Alice?'

‘You don't think she did run away?'

‘No, I believe she did.'

‘Then what?'

‘She'd run away before, Sergeant Poe. More than a few times actually. She would stay at my house, her refuge she called it, or she would hide out in the woods. Never for more than a day. Attention-seeking behaviour really.'

‘But it was different in 2007?'

‘Something happened, Sergeant Poe,' she said. ‘And it must have been awful because she didn't stop at mine to collect her things; she just stuffed some clothes in her schoolbag and disappeared. Some people think she got on a bus in Keswick; others that she hitchhiked to the M6 and got a lift with a lorry driver.'

‘What do you think?'

‘That unless she'd had no choice, Bethany wouldn't have left like that. Not without saying goodbye to me.'

‘You were that close?'

Alice's face coloured. ‘We were.'

‘Maybe you were more than close?'

‘We were.'

‘She was your girlfriend?'

‘Neither of us was gay, Sergeant Poe. We kissed once. I suppose we were experimenting. Certainly nothing more.'

‘Did Noah and Grace Bowman know about the kiss, or any other experimenting Bethany might have done? Was that why they hated Bethany?'

‘They didn't know. I'm sure of it.'

‘But if they did, would they have tried to stop her?'

Alice shrugged. ‘I doubt they'd have cared enough. Not unless she'd flaunted it in front of their friends.'

Poe wasn't convinced. Young love was a weird and powerful thing, and it wasn't easily hidden. And if Noah and Grace Bowman had found out and tried to stop the relationship, Bethany could have reacted violently. It didn't explain the five-year gap between her running away from home and returning to murder her parents, but it did explain some of the animosity they had towards her. The more Poe thought about it, the more he thought Alice was right: the answer wouldn't be found in the present, it would be found in 2007, the year Bethany ran away from home and the year Aaron attended his course.

‘I'm told Bethany and Aaron had a blazing row immediately after he got back from the course he attended,' Poe said. ‘Do you think that was why she ran away?'

Alice nodded. ‘And in all the time I've spent there, I've never heard a whisper about what went on,' she said. ‘If anyone knows, they aren't talking.'

‘Yet you knew enough to leave me that note.'

‘That was years of putting two and two together. The existence of courses came from me pestering Eve about what Bethany and Aaron had rowed about. That the courses had stopped after Israel Cobb was banished from the Children of Job, I picked up by paying attention to Cornelius when he flew into one of his rages.'

‘Did you speak to Aaron Bowman about what he'd been through?'

‘He refused to talk about it. In fact, Aaron didn't speak to me again after Bethany ran away. He withdrew into himself. It wasn't long after that his parents began home-schooling him.'

Poe sighed. ‘We're speaking to another witness tonight, someone else who might also have attended one of these courses. Perhaps he'll be prepared to talk.'

‘Good luck with that.'

‘You don't think he will?'

‘I think there's an impenetrable fog of secrecy around those courses, Sergeant Poe. No one talks about them. And I mean no one. Cornelius Green and Israel Cobb ruled the Children of Job with a rod of iron and even now, with Cornelius dead and Israel in the wind, I don't think anyone will speak out. Something happened on those courses and I think everyone now wishes it hadn't.'

Which sort of fitted with what Joshua had said about now being the time to redirect the narrative. He had clearly wanted to move on from the Children of Job's Cornelius Green era. But Poe hadn't been exaggerating when he'd told Israel Cobb the truth was like a swamp bubble. In his experience, particularly when Bradshaw was on the case, it always rose to the top. And the longer it had been under the mud, the smellier it often was. Poe wondered if that would be the case this time. He suspected it would.

‘You say Bethany couldn't have killed her parents because she wasn't capable of killing her brother,' Poe said. ‘But, given what you know, do you think she would be capable of killing Cornelius Green?'

Alice considered the question carefully. Eventually she said, ‘If she held him responsible for Aaron's death, then yes, I think she would.'

‘But do you think she did kill him?'

‘On my lighter days, when the sun is shining and the lambs are gambolling about the fells, I sometimes imagine the life Bethany made for herself. I like to think she found her peace, somewhere far away from here. She's with people who love her and she has a job she enjoys. Maybe she even has children of her own.'

‘And on your darker days?'

‘The same, but it's cloudy,' Alice said. ‘You have to understand, Sergeant Poe: Bethany is a survivor. She experienced something neither of us can truly comprehend and yet, despite her problems, she never stopped smiling. You ask if she was capable of killing Cornelius Green – absolutely. Do I think she did? Absolutely not. I have no doubt Cornelius Green's death was a long time overdue – the man was monstrous – but I don't think for a second Bethany returned to the life she left to do it. Why on earth would she?'

‘Maybe she wanted to pop a swamp bubble,' Poe replied. He swigged down the last of his coffee. It was muddy and bitter, and like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. ‘What things?' he said.

‘Excuse me?'

‘You said Bethany wouldn't have left without stopping at yours to collect her things.'

‘And you said how would you know if I was spinning you a yarn? That it's possible I'm making this whole thing up.'

‘Poe says until he's hit a witness at least three times with his interrogation truncheon, whatever comes out of their mouths is as much use as white dog . . . dirt,' Bradshaw explained. ‘Except he doesn't say dirt. And his interrogation truncheon is a metaphor for shouting at someone.'

Poe shrugged. ‘I'm a police officer,' he said. ‘Not trusting people is my default position.'

‘I just want to know what happened to my . . . friend,' Alice said. ‘That is my only concern. It's why I've spent so long as Mad Alice and it's why I left that note under your windscreen wiper.' She reached into her tote bag. She removed something bulky and placed it on the table. It was a book; thick, tatty and leatherbound. ‘And luckily, you don't need to take my word for it.'

‘What's this?'

‘The inside of Bethany's mind, Sergeant Poe.'