‘What about Bruce ?’
‘Don’t you dare tell him any of this. Any of it.’
I press the stop button. The caretaker’s grief is ten years old but it still sounds fresh. A month ago he told me he always thought about what I’d done after my daughter was killed and wished he’d had the courage to do the same thing to the person who killed his wife.
I think about what he did and I wonder if it justifies what I did to him. I wonder if there is some symmetry there, him lying on top of the coffin of the woman he loved, the woman who betrayed him, the woman he killed.
I eject the tape, put it back into the plastic cover and set it aside. I go through the rest of the log, looking for names that will stick out, knowing there has to be something here though I can’t think what. That’s part of the problem: all I’ve been doing is thinking, and suddenly I’m hitting a wall. There’s an answer somewhere in this list of names,it’s in these tapes, but I’m so involved in it all that I can’t see anything for what it is.
What am I missing?
I get up and walk out of the room. I leave it all behind me, the names, the numbers, the tapes and the dates, knowing that I need to clear my head so I can at least…
The dates!
Of course!
I head back into the room and I look at the timeline I’ve created.
If the killer confessed, then presumably he did so on the same day or in the days immediately following the girls’ disappearances.
The first date I look at is the day Henry Martins was buried.
The log says there was a confession that night. The log says the confession was made by Paul Peters. I find the corresponding tape and jam it into the machine. I wind it forward. Suddenly I feel more apprehensive about what I’m about to hear than I did of the other two confessions. This could be the recording of a man who did nothing more than steal his neighbour’s apples, or it could be the confession of a monster. I press play.
chapter fifty-one
‘I know who you are.’The voice sounds a little familiar but I can’t place it.
‘Do you have something to confess?’
‘You killed her, you know.’
‘What are you talking about?’Father Julian’s voice has a rushed quality, as if he has just entered the confessional after running from the rectory.
‘As if you strangled her yourself. What you do in life has consequences, wouldn’t you say, Father?’
‘Yes, of course, but what you’re talking about doesn’t make sense.’
‘All our actions have consequences, don’t they, Father. For all of us.’
‘We need to be aware and responsible for our actions, yes, that’s true.’
‘Even you, Father?’
‘Do you have something to say?’
‘Are there others?’
‘Others? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Other children. Like me. Are there others like me.’
We’re all children of God, no matter what our actions.’
‘I’m not talking about God.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m talking about you, Father Julian. I’m talking about your children. Are there more of us?’
‘Oh my God.’
‘See, you do understand. Your actions have consequences, Father.
Or should I say Dad?’
‘I… I don’t know who you are.’
‘Would you like to know?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m the man who just killed your daughter, Father. Her name was Rachel Tyler. She died slowly, Dad. She was my sister, and she died slowly.’
‘Jesus,’ Father Julian says, the word coming out in a whisper, and I can hear the pain in his voice. I know that pain. I think I even said the same thing when I picked up the phone to learn Emily was dead and my wife gone for ever.
‘I told her about you. She never knew her dad, but in the moments before she died I told her. She knew everything she wanted to know and then more than she could handle. Do you think that knowledge comforted her?’
‘I… I…’
‘You what, Father? You don’t know? You don’t know what to say? How do you think I felt, finding out who I was? How do you think it felt being abandoned?’
‘Please, please, don’t…’
‘Don’t what? You don’t even know what to do, do you, Father?
You feel helpless. Do you suddenly feel as though God has abandoned you? I know all about abandonment. You feel helpless and that’s exactly how Rachel felt in those last moments. Tell me, Father, do you still want to do something good for her?’
Father Julian doesn’t answer. I can hear his breathing. It sounds louder than it ought to be on a tape recorder with such a small speaker. The vocals are tinny, but that breathing is deep, like a wounded whale.
‘You can’t kill her,’ he says at last, but it’s such a ludicrous thing to say to a man who has already committed the act. ‘Please, please, tell me this is wrong.’
‘Bury her,’the. killer says.
‘What?’