‘Don’t shake your head at me, you bitch. Tell me. Tell me. You told me she was mine. You told me she was a gift from God.’
‘That’s how I think of her. That’s what she is.’ She turned her head a bit. ‘Please, Ollie. Please. She’s always been our child. No one else’s.’
‘The devil was in you.’
‘No.’
‘You know what that means, Eleanor. You need to go into the water.’
‘No. Please, no.’
‘You need to be washed clean. Whiter than snow.’ It was what Bethany had said to me on the phone when she was waiting for a chance to kill herself, it came back to me with a flash of insight. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
‘Please no, Ollie. Please.’
The cover was off the baptismal pool.
Wash me.
Whiter than snow.
Chloe, lying on the grass.
They had put her in the water and held her down. Gareth’s special ceremony, to persuade her demons to leave her. Everything Kate had feared, with the outcome she had dreaded.
And now Oliver was planning to teach his wife a lesson the same way.
‘Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light,’ Oliver said. ‘St Paul said that.’
‘Bethany isn’t Satan. Please, you can’t blame her for something I did.’
‘I can do what I want. I am your husband and you owe me respect.’ He brought his leg back and kicked her with stunning force, and I realised one thing: if I didn’t intervene, Oliver Norris was going to kill his wife right there, in front of me and his God.
‘You didn’t think about being her husband when you were sleeping with Kate Emery.’ I stepped through the door and let it swing shut behind me. ‘You’re being a little bit hypocritical, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Oliver spun around to face me, his hands balling to fists. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘I was looking for Eleanor. Can you step away from her, please?’
He didn’t move; I hadn’t really expected him to. She was lying at his feet, moaning softly.
‘Are you on your own?’
‘You know better than that,’ I said, smiling. If only he knew the truth. ‘But go back a bit. Why would I be looking for you, Mr Norris?’
‘I assumed.’
‘Because you’re feeling guilty. Not about this. And not about having an affair with your neighbour.’
Eleanor made a tiny noise and Oliver glanced down at her swiftly before returning to me.
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘It’s entirely my business. But as I said, that’s not why you feel guilty.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because you killed Chloe Emery. And you killed William Turner. And you killed Kate Emery.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Norris spat. ‘An invention.’
‘The last time I came here, before Chloe died, you mentioned a special ceremony that was going to take place here. You thought Gareth had been rehearsing for it, remember? And then you and he covered it up and changed the subject. That ceremony was for Chloe, wasn’t it? It was what you’d always wanted Kate to let you try. You’ve been trying to establish the church in this area, working on growing the congregation, trying to ingratiate yourself with the community by donating food to the poor. A miracle would be a big help for publicity. There’s nothing as desperate as the parents of sick children. And there was Chloe, who was perfect because she wasn’t as ill as her mother claimed, was she? Kate had worked to get her diagnosed with all of these worrying ailments and really she wasn’t so badly off. You saw the potential in her. The hope you could sell. A beautiful girl saved by the grace of God and the prayers of the Church of the Modern Apostles.’
‘You’re talking about things you don’t understand.’
‘I understand perfectly well that preying on credulous people is a good way to get rich. But it went wrong, didn’t it? You misjudged it. Bethany and Chloe came home when they thought it was safe but Eleanor brought Chloe to the church, like a lamb to the slaughter. And Chloe drowned.’
He wavered. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘How was it?’
‘Oliver,’ Eleanor said from the floor. ‘Be careful.’
He glanced down at her but he was distracted, thinking about what had happened. ‘It wasn’t my fault. It was Gareth. He – he got carried away.’ He shook his head, baffled. ‘It was so quick. If she’d been holding her breath …’
‘But she wasn’t. She was too scared. She breathed in water instead.’
‘We tried to revive her. I tried.’
It explained the broken ribs. A memory floated up from training: an instructor shouting at us. If you’re not breaking ribs you’re doing it wrong … ‘You didn’t call an ambulance.’
‘She was gone. Dead. It was too late.’
‘Who dumped the body?’
‘I did. Gareth told me to. I – I felt awful. I felt terrible. You can’t understand how distressing it was for all of us. It was an accident, nothing more.’
‘And William Turner?’
He looked shifty. ‘What about him?’
‘Did you know Kate was still alive when he came to see you? Was it all planned or did you have to think it through on the spur of the moment?’
He shook his head. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I know Bethany told William what had happened here – what happened to Chloe. I think he came to talk to you about it. Maybe he threatened you. You beat him to a pulp and then you dumped him in the river when you went down to see Kate. It was your bad luck that we were there already, but actually it couldn’t have worked out better, could it? Because we saw Turner’s car and found his body and it looked as if he’d been the killer, as if he’d gone into the river and drowned, and that was supposed to be an end to it.’ I laughed. ‘It’s no wonder you thought God was on your side.’
‘I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that.’
‘When I spoke to Kate, she asked me one thing about Chloe’s death. It was something a lot of people want to know when their loved ones are murdered, but the way she asked it was strange, when I thought about it afterwards. She said “Did they hurt her?” not “Did he hurt her?” I thought maybe she wasn’t sure if it was a male killer or a female one, but she meant “they”. She knew what you’d done, you and Gareth. She couldn’t get at Gareth but she could get you to come to her, and that’s exactly what she did.’
He shook his head, but without conviction.
‘You went rushing down to see her. You couldn’t believe that she was alive, when you’d been grieving for her in secret. You probably thought she’d forgive you for Chloe – after all, you’d meant well when you forced her into the water.’ I could see from the look on his face that I was right. ‘You never had any common sense when it came to Kate, did you?’
‘She took everything from me. Everything. She made me break my vows. She made me betray everything that mattered to me.’ Oliver Norris’s chest heaved as he fought back tears. ‘I destroyed everything I cared about. That woman made me. She tempted me and I fell.’
‘Oh please,’ I said. ‘You fancied her and you fucked her.’