Chapter 93

‘I was telling the truth when I said we strapped those boys to the mercy chair, Sergeant Poe,' Israel Cobb said. ‘And I was telling the truth when I said I showed them pictures of naked men while Cornelius whipped the soles of their feet.'

‘But what were you lying about, Mr Cobb?' Poe said.

‘I haven't lied. But I have sinned against you.'

‘How?'

‘The sin of omission, Sergeant Poe,' Cobb said. ‘I told you that although each course was tailored to the individual boy, they all shared two common elements.'

‘You did. Bible readings at the start, a good old feet whipping at the end.'

‘The course didn't conclude with the boys being tortured in the mercy chair, Sergeant Poe. That wasn't the big set piece, the finale, the thing that put them back on the straight and narrow.'

‘Other than you and Cornelius Green being a pair of sadists, what was the point of it then?'

‘We called it essential conditioning,' Cobb said.

‘What the hell does that mean? Essential conditioning for what?'

‘For what came next.' Cobb stopped looking at Poe and cast his eyes to the floor. ‘You want to know who the people in those graves are?' he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

‘I do.'

‘They were nobodies, Sergeant Poe. Worse than nobodies. Abominations. Unrepentant sinners. People who had been given the gift of life and spat it back in God's face. According to Cornelius anyway.'

‘Who were they?'

‘Men, Sergeant Poe. Gay men. Cornelius would go to Manchester or Newcastle or Glasgow and scour the streets for the homeless and the drug addicts and the rent boys until he found the ones no one would miss. He offered them salvation, a roof over their heads, a warm meal, but really he was—'

‘Delivering damnation,' Poe finished.

‘They weren't even people to him,' Cobb continued. ‘He wouldn't let us use their names. If we had to refer to one at all, we called him "it". "Strap it to the mercy chair, Israel," Cornelius would say. "It's screaming too much, Israel; put a gag in its mouth."'

‘"It" seems to be a popular word at the Children of Job,' Poe said, remembering Bethany's diary and how her parents had referred to her as ‘it' as well. ‘And what happened to these men?'

‘I think you already know,' Cobb said.

‘You forced those boys to kill these men?'

‘We did.'

‘How?'

‘You know how.'

Poe thought about the injuries found on the boy the badger had dug up. ‘They were stoned to death.'

Cobb nodded. ‘It was how they graduated. The purpose of the essential conditioning was so, at that moment in time at least, the boys hated gay men. Hated them. We made them believe that gay men had caused all their pain and humiliation. Gay men were why they were going to hell. And then we gave them a target for their hate. A chance to take their revenge. And to purge themselves of that terrible affliction.'

‘They took it?'

‘They all threw at least one stone.'

‘It was that easy? None of them resisted?'

‘Some did. The more devout ones couldn't bring themselves to break the Ten Commandments. Murder is one of the great mortal sins.'

‘But they threw a stone anyway?'

‘They were all vulnerable and Cornelius was one of the most forceful men you could ever meet. Some needed the threat of the hosepipe again, but in the end they all did what was expected of them.'

‘You turned them into murderers,' Poe said.

‘Christian soldiers. That's what Cornelius called them. But as it happens, there is only so much essential conditioning you can do. In the end, only two of the six boys killed anyone. Nathan Rose did, but he was an easy case; he just wanted to please everyone. Didn't matter if it was his parents, his friends or Cornelius. When we told him to stone his victim, he did exactly that. He didn't need to be asked twice. The second boy to kill his victim was probably the only one of the six who believed what Cornelius was selling: that stoning the man in the mercy chair would put him back on God's path.'

‘And the others?'

‘The rest all threw stones, but none of them did it with any real venom. Most didn't even aim for the body. In my darkest days I like to think the four boys who resisted Cornelius as best they could, proved themselves before the eyes of God. That they were tested and not found wanting.' Cobb reached for his vodka but the bottle was empty. Poe still had some in his stained coffee mug. Wordlessly, he passed it over. ‘What we did was evil,' Cobb continued. ‘I understand that now. I think I understood it then, of course, but Cornelius was persuasive and he spent a lot of time dehumanising the men we killed. I felt nothing for them. It was as if we were putting them down.'

He put the dirty coffee mug to his crusty lips and drained the vodka in two noisy gulps. He squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds.

Poe took the time to sort through his most burning questions. ‘The tattoos?' he said eventually. ‘Why put such incriminating evidence on your bodies?'

‘It was Cornelius's idea,' Cobb said. ‘He had contacts in churches all over the county and he knew when graves were going to be dug. Over one hundred people a week die in Cumbria, so he wasn't tight for choice. It was my job to take the dead men to these isolated, rural graveyards. A man, it was always a man, would meet me there and together we would wrap the body in plastic sheeting and put it into what was an extra-deep grave. We would shovel fresh earth on top of the victim and tamp it down so he wouldn't be seen on the day of the funeral. Cornelius tattooed the grave's location on the people involved in each murder. I have six, as does Cornelius. The boys only had the murders they were involved with.'

‘As a reminder?'

‘As a warning,' Cobb said. ‘Cornelius knew people grew consciences. This was his way of warning them they had been willing participants.'

Poe had heard enough. It was time to call in Nightingale. Cobb had rights and Poe was probably abusing them. And so far, all he had was a story. It fitted the facts as they knew them, but it was still just a story. It was time for Nightingale to match it against the evidence. He reached for his phone but stopped. He wanted to ask one last question.

‘And this is why you and Cornelius fell out, is it?' he said. ‘In 2007, after Aaron Bowman was forced to go through this, you'd had enough. You said you'd threatened to expose him.'

‘I did.'

‘Why?'

‘I've already told you, Aaron Bowman was a fragile—'

‘They were all fragile, Mr Cobb. They were all under duress. What was so different about Aaron? And why did you say you'd murdered Bethany? We know she and Aaron rowed about something when he got back from that course. That she ran away the same night.'

Cobb didn't answer.

‘But I don't think that's what happened now,' Poe said. ‘I think Aaron and Bethany were so close that even though you'd sworn him to secrecy, he told her anyway. I think she took the pragmatic, and in my opinion accurate, view that a fifteen-year-old boy wasn't culpable for what he'd done. Not under those circumstances. I think she told Aaron that if he wouldn't go to the police, she would.'

Still Cobb kept quiet.

‘So, when you say you murdered her, I think you did exactly that,' Poe said. ‘I think Noah and Grace Bowman, who, for reasons we'll probably never understand, hated their youngest daughter – they found out what she was planning to do and told you or Cornelius. She was murdered to keep your secret. A story was invented about her running away from home and everyone involved kept it. She'd run away before so no one looked too hard this time.'

‘That's what you think, is it?'

Poe shrugged. ‘Tell me I'm wrong,' he said. ‘Tell me you didn't involve Aaron in a murder just to "cure" his gayness. Tell me Aaron didn't tell Bethany what he'd been forced to do.'

Instead of answering, Cobb got to his feet. He limped to his old-fashioned television and opened the cabinet it was sitting on. He had a video recorder rather than a DVD player. To the side of it was a pile of videocassettes. Six, all in plain cardboard boxes. Each box had a handwritten label, although Poe wasn't close enough to read them.

‘What are they?' he asked.

‘The other reason Cornelius and I fell out.'

Poe felt a jolt of nerves, like he'd touched an electric fence. He had a terrible feeling about this. He reached for his phone.

‘I need you to see something first, Sergeant Poe,' Cobb said, watching him carefully. He removed the top cassette from its box and pressed it into the slot. It clunked its way into the guts of the machine. Cobb turned on the television. It was already on the video channel. He pressed play then spent a few seconds adjusting the tracking.

When he turned to face Poe, tears were already running down his face.

‘Aaron Bowman wasn't gay, Sergeant Poe,' he said.