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Would he do it again?

In a heartbeat.

‘Don’t answer, Poe,’ Reid said. ‘I already know why. You’ve been wondering lately if you’re a sociopath. You’re not. Your nightmares prove you have empathy. You tell people you hate bullies but that only scratches the surface. What you hate is injustice. It’s why it had to be you.’

‘I’m not following,’ Poe said. His head was spinning. The revelation of his mother, and the need to admit his role in the torture and death of Peyton Williams, had combined to throw him. Reid was now reading him completely. No secrets were hidden to him. He wondered if it had always been the case.

‘Why do you think I made you jump through so many hoops, Poe?’ he asked. ‘The body in the graveyard, the instruction to leave the bishop alone that I knew you’d ignore. Why did I not just leave you a note somewhere? Why didn’t I just kill them all, tell you everything I knew, then quietly disappear?’

Reid might be the sanest insane man he’d ever met, but by anyone’s definition he was mad.

‘I needed to make sure you were still the same person, Poe. That living at your croft hadn’t softened you. This is the culmination of my life’s work, and if you weren’t prepared to challenge the clergy or disturb a grave, you wouldn’t be able to do what I need you to do next.’

‘You’ve been testing me? What for?’

‘You’re going to tell my story, Poe.’

‘So all this,’ Poe replied, ‘is just so I can be your fucking biographer?’ He was struggling to keep up. He had sensory overload. He needed to sit in a dark room for a week. He needed to speak to his dad.

Reid remained silent.

‘Anyone could have done that for you,’ Poe continued. ‘People with more credibility and technical expertise than me. Hell, why not just put everything on the internet? Let the conspiracy nuts do the work for you.’

Reid shrugged. ‘There are supporting documents I don’t have. The bank statement you found. The party invitation. The thing with the Breitling. Things that corroborate their video confessions.’

He was right. They both held two halves of the same puzzle. Without Poe’s evidence, the confessions were just frightened men saying whatever their torturer wanted them to say; without the confessions, the evidence was circumstantial at best. He understood now. It had to be him. He wasn’t just the only one who could, he was also the only one who would.

‘He’d held these parties before you know,’ Reid said.

‘Carmichael?’

‘Yes. I don’t know if they had the same level of depravity as ours, but you can be sure nothing good happened at them. I know that some of the people who’d attended his earlier parties are very powerful no

w. The establishment will try to protect itself. You must realise this.’

Van Zyl had already told him that people in Westminster wanted it finished quietly and sensitively. He could imagine them whispering in the ears of Cumbria’s chief constable: Everyone involved is now dead. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. No need to look beyond the actions of a mad man. And by the way, how’s your application for the Met coming along? You must let me know if I can help. See if I can call in a few favours. No way would the full truth get out. The men and women who controlled the media, the CPS, the courts and the police would do their masters’ bidding. Sure, a few of the more liberal papers might suspect a cover-up, but without Poe’s assistance there’d be nothing for them to find.

Reid spoke carefully. ‘You’ve always claimed you’ll follow the evidence wherever it takes you, but I’m asking you, if I give you the evidence, will you make sure it gets out? Will you tell the world our story, Poe? My friends deserve nothing less.’

‘I’ll make sure it gets out, Kylian. All of it.’

‘Thank you, Poe.’

He looked up when Reid said, ‘I told you not to tell anyone.’

A vehicle was threading its way along the road to the farm. The headlights could be seen through the fog.

‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ Poe replied. He turned to Reid but he’d disappeared. When he returned, he wasn’t alone. A semiconscious Hilary Swift was with him. They were now handcuffed together. He was holding a Zippo.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

The light from the approaching vehicle was illuminating Poe’s car.

‘Who’s that?’

‘No bloody idea,’ Poe replied. ‘But I promise you I told no one. If I had, they’d have been here before now.’

He figured that whoever it was, they were still ten minutes away. The distance wasn’t far, but because of the sharp incline there were another seven or eight hairpin turns for the vehicle to navigate. As the crow flew, it had two hundred yards to travel, but by road it still had at least a mile. They both knew the vehicle was coming to them. Black Hollow Farm was the end of the road.