Chapter 91

‘Aaron Bowman was fifteen years old, Sergeant Poe,' Cobb said, ‘but he could easily have passed for twelve. He was gentle and sweet and he was petrified from the moment he arrived. He didn't understand why he was there and for some reason Cornelius was treating him more harshly than anyone else we'd worked with so—'

‘No one knows I'm here, Mr Cobb!' Poe snapped. ‘If you describe torturing children as "work" one more time your body will never be found. Are we fucking clear?'

Cobb swallowed hard and nodded once. ‘That's fair,' he said.

‘I need to know everything you did to him.'

‘I'm not sure I can, Sergeant Poe. The memory of it is . . . too painful.'

‘I don't care. I need to know.'

‘We tortured him!' he yelled. ‘Are you happy now? He was fifteen years old and we tortured him just like we tortured the others. He cried and he screamed and he begged us to stop and we wouldn't. We wouldn't stop hurting him and he wouldn't stop screaming.'

‘I need details, Mr Cobb.'

‘Why?!'

‘Because after the course he had a blazing row with his younger sister, Bethany,' Poe said. ‘I now think they were arguing about how she had failed to protect him from what you had put him through. This is why she ran away from home that night.'

Cobb winced.

‘And it's why she returned five years later to slaughter her parents,' Poe continued. ‘She'd wanted revenge for what they did to Aaron, but at the time she was only fourteen and wasn't physically strong enough. Or maybe she'd simply had time to mull it over. Decided that her parents didn't deserve to live any longer.'

‘I remember from the newspapers that the constabulary believe Aaron's murder was accidental. That the murderer hadn't meant to kill him.'

‘Murderer?' Poe said.

‘Aaron spoke warmly of Bethany. He said she was a wonderful person and the best sister a brother could ever have. From what he told me, if Bethany had accidentally killed him, she'd have been overcome with grief. She certainly wouldn't have hidden what she'd done. She would have waited beside his body until the police arrived.'

Which was exactly what Alice Symonds had said, Poe thought. ‘You don't think Bethany Bowman killed her parents, do you?'

Cobb shrugged. ‘I never met the girl. I suppose the more important question is what do you think, Sergeant Poe?'

Poe paused a beat. ‘I think I want you to start from the beginning.'

‘But I've already told—'

‘From the beginning,' Poe said.

So Cobb told his story again.

He told Poe about the mental and physical abuse of six young men and boys. He told Poe about the pornographic pictures he had held in front of their faces while Cornelius whipped the soles of their feet with a hosepipe. He said the area between the ball and the heel was particularly pain sensitive but remarkably resistant to injury, even bruising. He explained how when the courses were over he would bathe the boys' feet and apply a cooling balm. It was at this stage that Cornelius would tattoo everyone involved. He said it was a reminder of what they'd all been through. Poe asked again why the tattoos were the locations of graves, but Cobb insisted he hadn't known they were until that evening.

Cobb said he and Cornelius would meet with the concerned parents after each course had finished. They were anxious to discover if it had worked and what follow-up therapy would be required. Poe asked if the parents had known what the courses entailed, and Cobb confirmed they had. Poe made a note of this and underlined it three times. With nothing recorded anywhere, he doubted Superintendent Nightingale would have enough to arrest the parents for conspiracy to commit grievous bodily harm with intent, but he knew she'd give it a go.

Cobb eventually got to the end of his monstrous tale. Poe asked a few follow-ups but it was clear he'd been told everything. He reviewed his notes and saw he'd filled sixteen pages.

Poe had one last question.

‘Why aren't you dead, Mr Cobb?' he said.

‘I may have a drink problem, Sergeant Poe, but I can assure you I'm still a man of reasonable health.'

‘That's not what I meant and you know it. I want to know why we haven't found you stoned to death as well. It doesn't matter if it was Bethany or someone we don't yet know about who killed Cornelius Green, he was almost certainly killed for what he did to those boys. And even if you've massively exaggerated your own role, you're clearly as culpable as your former partner in crime. So I'll ask again – why aren't you dead?'

Cobb sighed. ‘Despite what I've just told you, I doubt this was a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, Sergeant Poe.'

Bradshaw occasionally used this Latin phrase. It meant, ‘After this, therefore because of this.' Or, if event B follows event A, event B must have been caused by event A.

‘You don't think there's a causality between what Cornelius did and what happened to him?' Poe said. ‘No cause and effect between the torture he inflicted and his own murder?'

‘I've already told you he was a manipulative man with terrible instincts; he collected enemies the way other people might collect bottle tops. I assume he was also involved in things he didn't need my help with.'

‘He was killed for something else he'd done?'

‘There will be many people who had cause to see him dead, Sergeant Poe, but I don't think the boys were ever one of their number. They were never angry with him. Not really, not when they saw what he was trying to achieve. Even if it didn't work, it came from a position of faith. As a result, no, I don't think I'm in any danger.'

Poe believed that Cobb believed that. While he was distraught at what he'd revealed, he didn't seem concerned about his own safety. Poe knew it was time to wrap up. Cumbria CID would have to follow up on this. They would push Cobb hard, but if he went ‘No comment' during interview they wouldn't be able to charge him. He was right; there were no more living witnesses.

There was just one last thing to do. Poe reached into his pocket and pulled out the age-progressed photo printout of Bethany Bowman.

‘If you go "no comment" on all this after you're arrested, you'll probably get bail,' Poe said. ‘Despite what you believe, I think you need to take your Osman warning seriously. If you see this woman, you run away as fast as you can. You're a weedy runt of a man and she's got a stun gun. So you run and you don't stop until you get to a police station.'

He handed the printout to Cobb.

‘Who's this?' he asked.

‘That's Bethany Bowman, Mr Cobb.'

‘But . . . no one has seen Bethany since she ran away from home. No one knows what she looks like now.'

‘Wrong,' Poe said. ‘We didn't know what Bethany looked like now, but then again, no one had asked Tilly to develop an age-progression program with a ninety-eight per cent accuracy rate. Eve gave me some old photographs of Bethany and Tilly put them through her program. She handed me this not thirty minutes before I came to see you. By tomorrow evening, Bethany's going to be the most famous thirty-year-old in the country. So, do me a favour and sleep with one eye open from now on. I would hate to think she might get to you before your trial.'

Cobb scrabbled around on the coffee table until he found a pair of reading glasses. The lenses were greasy and he wiped them on his shirt. Poe wasn't sure that would make them cleaner. Cobb stared in disbelief at Bradshaw's age-progressed image of Bethany Bowman. He flinched. What little colour he had drained from his face. His mouth formed a perfect ‘O', and he began blinking wildly. He looked like a condemned man. His hands started to shake so much it was as if the photograph was rattling.

‘You've seen her, haven't you?' Poe said. ‘Where? I need to know where and I need to know when, Mr Cobb. What was she wearing, what was she doing? Have you talked to her?'

‘Nooooo!' Cobb cried out, shaking his head and baring his teeth.

‘Are you OK?' Poe asked, standing up, aware the sudden change in Cobb's demeanour was similar to the change that had come over Nathan Rose. Right before he'd jumped through a loft hatch with a tow rope around his neck. If Cobb was about to do something stupid as well, Poe was ready to stop him. No way was he taking the easy way out.

‘Tell me where she is!' Poe urged.

Cobb shut his eyes and took deep, measured breaths. He did this for almost a minute. Poe didn't interrupt. After a while his manic expression faded into one of serenity, like he'd been meditating. His eyes opened.

‘Bethany Bowman didn't kill Cornelius Green, Sergeant Poe,' he said. ‘And if you circulate that image you'll look extremely foolish.'

‘You seem very sure.'

‘I am.'

‘Why?'

‘Because Bethany Bowman is dead,' Cobb said.

‘And how could you possibly know that?'

‘Because I'm the person who killed her.'