‘Almost from the first,’ he says. ‘Someone planted that evidence. It didn’t take me long to realize you were the only one clever enough.’
Of course. He’d known that Maggie Rose and Daisy Baron were one and the same, long before that first Parkhurst visit. She would have seen any gleam of recognition in his eyes, any sudden, sharp realization of the truth. He has been playing the game for as long as she. Only he has been playing it better.
He tries to smile, doesn’t quite make it. It will cost him dear, this knowledge of what he has turned her into.
‘And the only one who hated you enough,’ she says.
He is so very, very sad. ‘Still?’ he asks her.
She shakes her head. ‘No.’
‘Well, that’s something, I guess.’
Twenty years ago, on this very spot, he’d barely been able to keep his hands off her. Now, he sits apart. She reaches out and traces her index finger along the back of his hand. He glances down at it.
‘Seriously?’ she says. ‘I was the first person you thought of? After all this time?’
His hand turns and, after a moment’s hesitation, takes hold of hers. ‘The whole cave business more or less convinced me.’ He looks around. ‘Especially when Myrtle was found in here. Then you sent my mother those books. Did you think I’d forgotten you were called Margaret? That I never knew your middle name? The books clinched it. You never did get the hang of participles, did you? And it’s not, “too young an age”, it’s “too early an age”. How many times did I tell you that?’
She edges closer. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still a grammar fascist.’
‘What happened to Sirocco?’ he asks her.
She doesn’t reply and he sees what has happened to Sirocco.
‘You knew that,’ she says quickly. ‘You knew when you chose to involve her. When you sent her with that last letter.’
He doesn’t argue. The darkness that seeped into her all those years ago has found its way into him too.
‘The police will get to my house soon. They’ll find her. They’ll work out that I killed the other three. They’ll know you’re innocent.’
‘Jessie, Chloe, Myrtle,’ he says, as though their names are seldom off his tongue. ‘Did there need to be three?’
‘Two could be coincidence,’ she says. ‘Three makes a serial killer.’
He nods slowly and she thinks she will have to work hard to chase that sadness away. But that’s OK. They have plenty of time.
‘Odi and Broon? Did she see you coming in here? Is that why?’
Maggie is getting bored, talking about dead people. This isn’t why she came. ‘Who knows? Odi was scared of me, but then again she was scared of everything. I just don’t like loose ends.’
‘Looks like I’m a free man.’ His face brightens, but the look of levity is forced and false. ‘Although, technically, I could still be charged with stealing a plane.’
She smiles too. ‘Can’t help you with that one, I’m afraid.’
‘So, what was the plan? Leave me there to rot? When the police found that office you hired, that computer, that frigging pen with my fingerprints on it – how did you do that, by the way? – I thought that was it. That I’d have one last visit, you’d smile your little cat-like smile and I’d never see you again.’
His gaze holds hers and doesn’t falter.
‘It was the pen you signed my contract with,’ she says. ‘I just changed the ink and removed the cap. And, no, I would never have left you to rot. I thought perhaps we’d fall in love, that I’d become a prison wife, devoted, loyal, working tirelessly for your release but never quite managing it.’
‘Keeping me exactly where you wanted me. Totally in your power.’
‘Something like that. Of course I also have enough evidence hidden away to have got you out at any time, should my mind have changed.’
‘Victims’ hair? Clothes? In a safety deposit box somewhere? Ready to plant on some unsuspecting patsy?’
She smiles.
‘So what happens now?’
She shrugs, feigns carelessness, even though her heart has never beaten faster. ‘You’re a free man. The dead woman at my house will ensure that. I’ll be the killer of six people, you’ll be the innocent man, wrongly accused. You’ll be a national hero. You can return to your profession, make a fortune from public appearances, start a family, have the life you used to dream about.’
‘And you’ll be behind bars?’
‘Oh, I didn’t say that.’
He looks long into her eyes and she knows he has guessed her intentions. If Hamish turns his back on her tonight, she will climb to the highest point of the Gorge. She won’t be the first wronged woman to seek solace on its cold, high edge.