Page 62 of Killing Mind

‘Myles told me you had some kind of understanding, but if I need to educate you to this degree you’re going to have to buy me another drink.’

Forty-Nine

From the article and subsequent research Stacey learned two things. The girl, named at the inquest as Helen Deere, had spent seven months at Unity Farm and she had not fallen from the window of her parents’ town house. She had broken the window and jumped. A verdict of suicide had been recorded.

Stacey sat back and thought for a moment. Two murders and now a suicide all linked to Unity Farm. The inquest had confirmed that no one other than the girl’s mother had been present at the home at the time Helen Deere took her own life, so Stacey knew that her death was not connected to their murderer, but why the mention at all? Why was the place involved in the narrative of her suicide?

A couple of quick searches and she had a landline for the home of Helen Deere’s parents.

The phone was answered on the second ring.

‘Mrs Deere?’ Stacey asked.

‘Who’s calling?’

Check before committing. Stacey liked that.

Stacey introduced herself and her position.

The woman offered no response and simply waited for the purpose of the call.

‘Mrs Deere, may I ask you a couple of questions about your daughter, Helen?’

‘I know my daughter’s name, officer, and I assume you know she died, so how can I possibly help you?’

The woman’s tone hovered around unfriendly with the threat of outright hostility if Stacey said the wrong thing or took too long.

‘Unity Farm has come to our attention and I understand that your daughter spent some time there before her death.’

‘My daughter was a normal sixteen-year-old before she met those people, officer. They changed her. They brainwashed her until I didn’t even recognise my own child. The place is evil and destructive and they took my daughter from me,’ she spat.

‘You feel that Unity Farm was somehow related to your daughter’s suicide?’

There was a pause. ‘If you need to ask me that question you don’t know as much about the place as you should.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’

‘Never mind. You’re a police officer. If someone isn’t physically assaulting someone in front of your face you’re not interested. There are other types of crime.’

Stacey had no idea what she meant but she felt compelled to make her understand. ‘Mrs Deere, we’re just trying to find out more about the place.’

She snorted. ‘Good luck with that.’

Stacey wanted to assure her that they were committed to learning more. ‘We have visited Unity…’

‘Visit as many times as you want and you’ll see the facade but you’re never going to find out what truly goes on in that place,’ she said, before she hung up the phone.

Fifty

‘Right,’ Kane continued. ‘There are no secret drugs or potions involved in thought reform. There’s no violence and we’re all subjected to it in various forms every day through advertising and marketing, but there are other tactics involved that are employed by a cult.’

Kim opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand.

‘Please, Inspector, if you take nothing else away from this meeting then please accept that a cult does not look like a cult. It always appears as something else.’

‘Okay, please continue,’ she advised. In the absence of getting back in there to see what was going on she was going to have to get information from him. For now.

‘Language, not physical force, is the key to manipulating minds. The first thing a cult does is destabilise someone’s sense of themselves. They get someone to drastically reinterpret their life history and alter their view. Sammy was convinced that she had suffered psychologically as a child because her younger sister had been prone to health problems as a baby. Sophie became the favourite child and Sammy was loved less. Her parents had made her less of a person through their neglect of her needs.