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‘She’s a damaged kid. I had no idea how damaged. But Max isn’t responsible. She is.’
Erin’s back arches. ‘Joe, that’s ridiculous. She’s not capable and you know it.’
As Joseph meets his wife’s gaze, his heart crashes away from him. He wonders how it’s possible to feel such overwhelming hate and also such overwhelming love.
‘Tell the truth,’ he begs her. ‘Erin, for fuck’s sake. You can see what’s going to happen if you don’t.’
‘I am, Joe,’ she sobs. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Gabriel points at the chair. ‘Up. Now.’
Erin’s sobs grow louder. ‘Can we please slow this down? You don’t have to do this, Gabriel. There must be another way.’
‘Tilly killed your brother,’ Joseph says. ‘And then she killed Drew to stop her talking.’
‘Joe,’ Erin moans, ‘you fuckingburiedhim!’
He flinches at that, thinks that his wife, albeit unwittingly, might just have buried him, too. He feels the rope chafe at his neck. Sees Gabriel’s eyes burning even more brightly than they were. With Erin deploying all her guile to make him a liar, perhaps his only defence is the truth.
‘Yes, I did,’ he says. And with his admission it feels like the whole world has frozen on its axis, waiting in anticipation ofwhat comes next. ‘Because at the time I thought your brother’s death was a tragic accident. I was scared for my son, what that might mean for him, and I didn’t want one tragedy to become two.’
‘Dad,’ Max croaks. ‘Don’t do this.’
Joseph’s mouth is so dry it’s difficult to speak. ‘I put Angus in my car and drove him to Black Down. If you don’t know, it’s a beauty spot fifty or so miles south of here. I can take you there if you want. He’s buried in rough ground a hundred yards from a road I found near the summit.
‘Max isn’t the reason this happened. If he’s guilty of anything it’s naïvety, but that’s not a crime that deserves his life as punishment. Tilly killed your brother, Gabriel. She killed Drew, too. And then I covered it up.’
Gabriel waits a beat, as if satisfying himself that he’s heard everything. Then he whispers, ‘Up.’
And with that, Joseph realizes he’s failed. He doubts he even has the strength to climb on to the chair, but when Gabriel pulls on the rope, he finds it from somewhere. Even once he’s up there, the pressure around his neck doesn’t slacken. He feels his head beginning to swell.
Beside him, Max’s heels drop a second time. The boy makes a sound like tearing tape. This time he looks too exhausted to lift himself back up.
‘Erin,’ Joseph pleads. ‘You can’t just sit there and let this happen. Please. For God’s sake – do the right thing before it’s too late.’
Gabriel turns to her. ‘You want me to cut down his son? Put your daughter up there instead?’
Joseph stares at his wife. Never has he seen such an agony of conflicting emotions in a human face. She glances at him, tears rolling down her cheeks. And then, teeth clenched, she shakes her head.
Gabriel begins to secure the rope’s loose coils around the tree trunk.
So much adrenalin is rushing through Joseph’s system that his teeth start clattering inside his mouth. He looks at his son, at his wife. He looks at the first stars beginning to glimmer in a red sky.
And then, addressing Gabriel, he says, ‘If you don’t believe my words, at least believe your eyes. Drew captured your brother’s death on her phone. She filmed it from start to finish. It’s a hard watch, but you need to see it, because it’ll show you that everything I just told you was the truth.’
FIFTY-EIGHT
It was his last card. And now he’s played it.
Gabriel turns, studies him with those end-of-days eyes. He drops the rope and approaches, slow as a stalking tiger. The cadence of his breathing has changed.
‘The phone’s in my back pocket. Code is sixteen-thirty.’
Gabriel halts in front of his chair.
That strange resonance Joseph felt earlier is back, humming in his chest, buzzing in his fingertips, vibrating through his bones to the chair, and through its wooden legs to the turf.
Gabriel slides his fingers into Joseph’s pocket and removes the phone. When its screen wakes, he keys in the code.