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Downstairs, the house is silent. Joseph makes coffee and carries it to the breakfast bar. There he sits and drinks. He doesn’t have long to decide his course. He’s conscious that these quiet minutes of contemplation might also be his last moments of liberty.
The options he considered last night are the only ones left on the table: either he hands in his son or himself. Each prospect is uniquely terrifying.
He can’t break his promise to Claire – that he’ll protect Max from harm and ensure he reaches his potential, because that vow is sacrosanct. But if he does persuade everyone that he committed these acts he’ll be in prison, unable to monitor Max’s behaviour, unable to mentor him, unable to intervene should something like this threaten to happen again.
Compounding his indecision is his inability, even now, to accept that his son is capable of such barbarity.
Joseph looks around the kitchen. This house, in truth, has never felt like the home he once built with Claire – perhaps because back then home had been a place of safety, inviolable – but he’d hoped, for Max’s sake, that he’d created something close. Now, examining his surroundings more critically, he realizes that virtually nothing from his old kitchen has made it into this one.
The stools at the breakfast bar are new, as is the sofa near the bifold doors, the coffee table in front of it, the table and chairs beneath the pendant lights. There’s different crockeryin the cupboards, different cutlery in the drawers. Different art hangs on the walls, and different vases and pots crowd the sills. Even the smaller, everyday items are different: the coasters, the placemats, the chopping boards, the kettle, the toaster, the loaded fruit bowl.
Wandering through the house, Joseph sees that it’s the same in the living room, the dining room and the hall: everything is new – a celebration of the now; a denial of the past. The framed photographs on the mantelpiece and side tables, and the collection of monochrome images that marches up the stairs, are all of him and Erin, him and Max, Erin and Tilly, Max and Tilly – or all four of them together.
Why are there no pictures of Claire? Did he put them away because looking at them was too hard? He doesn’t even know where they are.
Overwhelmed by an urge to escape, he grabs his keys and locks the front door behind him. Across the street he sees Ralph Erikson’s house – and the doorbell cam pointed this way.
Joseph climbs into his car and drives without a destination in mind. Twenty minutes later he finds himself on Hocombe Hill for the second time in twenty-four hours. When he rolls past Thornecroft, Angus Roth’s mock Tudor mansion, he sees a police patrol car in the driveway. Two police officers are talking to a scared-looking woman on the covered porch.
They’re coming for you. They know something’s happened.
With the aircon on full-blast, Joseph accelerates away. He knows where he’s going, now. Ten minutes later, he pulls up a short distance from Crompton’s police station.
TWENTY-ONE
It’s a two-storey building clad in grey concrete, designed by someone whose intention appears to have been the suffocation of all hope from those compelled to enter.
Staring at it, Joseph knows the last sand in his timer is running out. The police are already at Angus Roth’s house. Pretty soon, Enoch Cullen will report his daughter missing. Meanwhile, Max’s mental health seems like it’s falling apart.
His phone buzzes against his leg. When he checks the screen, he sees a message from Erin:
Afternoon meeting cancelled. Catching an early train. Can you please grab something for dinner?
Joseph sends a reply. Then he switches off the ignition and closes his eyes. Erin will be back in a few hours. Tilly is already home. He has a duty to protect them from not just physical harm, but the fallout from what’s already happened. He has a duty to ensure that Drew’s death is the last – and that no more families suffer. But he also has a duty to Claire. And, of course, to Max. Which one of those ranks highest? Truthfully, painfully, he can’t answer.
It was a kindness, what I did.
Joseph’s jaw claps shut so hard he catches his cheek in his teeth. He tastes blood, makes a decision. And then the passenger door opens and Max slides in next to him.
‘Dad,’ the boy says.
He looks ill, desperately so, his eyes red and rheumy and his skin grey, as if life is draining from him by the second and he’s only a few hours from death. Turning his attention to the police station, Max hunches forward in his seat. ‘Miserable-looking place, don’t you think?’
Joseph stares through the windscreen, his heart knocking against his ribs. A woman walks past, pushing a pram. An older man passes in the opposite direction, carrying shopping. Twenty yards away, a courier van bumps two wheels on to the pavement and the driver hops out.
This is how a hostage must feel, looking at the street from inside a bank, an embassy, or some other everyday place where horror has descended without warning. Suddenly, a single sheet of glass separates normality from nightmare. On one side life continues. On the other life is paused, suspended.
Max says, ‘I woke up and you weren’t there.’
‘I needed to get out of the house for a while.’
‘To Hocombe Hill?’
‘Among other places.’ Joseph purses his lips. ‘How did you know that? How did you find me?’
‘I was tracking you on the Life360 app. I figured you might end up in Crompton so that’s where I headed. I wasn’t expecting you to come here. Why did you?’
‘I don’t know.’