Page 65 of Worse Than Murder (DCI Matilda Darke Thriller #13)

I t’s less than a five-minute walk from Alison’s cottage to the farm where Iain and Lynne live.

Me and Alison walk side by side in silence, the atmosphere surrounding us is fully charged.

I have no idea of the questions I’m going to put to him or the response I’m going to get.

Literally anything could happen in the course of the next half an hour, and I don’t mind admitting I’m scared.

I’m scared that I’m going to find out exactly what I’m capable of.

There’s a smell of smoke in the air. As we turn the corner, I look back.

I can just make out black smoke on the horizon, rising from the destruction of Nature’s Diner.

This has been a horror of a night. I shouldn’t be here.

I should phone Gill myself and get her to take over.

I’m not a detective right now. I’m a woman.

I’m a fucking angry woman, and that makes me incredibly dangerous.

We reach the house and I’m about to knock when Alison pulls out a set of keys from her pocket. She unlocks the door, pushes it open and steps inside. I follow. There’s no turning back now.

‘Lynne?’ Iain asks, coming out of the kitchen. He stops, mid-stride, when he sees who his visitors are. ‘Oh. Where’s Lynne? Have you seen Lynne?’

‘Where do you expect her to be?’ I ask.

‘She should… I don’t know. I woke up and she wasn’t there. I came downstairs and she’s nowhere to be found. I thought…’

‘What? What did you think?’

‘She might have gone out for a walk.’

‘Have you tried looking for her?’

I look him up and down, take in the jeans, the walking boots and his jumper. I’ve no idea what time it is, but it’s pitch-dark outside, and I know we should all be tucked up in bed and fast asleep right now.

‘I was about to,’ he says. ‘I was getting worried.’

‘I think we need to talk,’ I say. I walk into the kitchen, pushing past him. Alison follows.

I’m worried about Alison. Her face is expressionless. She’s withdrawn. She’s a volcano and, any moment, she could erupt. I need to keep an eye on her.

I pull out a chair at the table and sit Alison down. I whisper to her to keep calm and let me take charge. I instruct Iain to take a seat while I remain standing.

‘You want to know where Lynne is?’ I ask. He nods. ‘She’s currently in Alison’s house being looked after by Tania Pritchard. Alison found her walking in the middle of the road in a daze after setting fire to Nature’s Diner.’

‘What?’ he asks, incredulously. ‘Why would you say that? Alison, don’t listen to a word this woman tells you. She’s deranged.’

‘Claire called Alison and told her a body had been found in the cellar. Alison told you and Lynne, and you knew that Jack had finally been unearthed after thirty years. Because that’s where you put him after you killed him: in the cellar of a derelict building.’

‘I killed him?’

‘You did.’

‘He’s my brother. Why would I kill my own brother?’

‘Because you hated him. He was living your life. He was married to the woman you loved, and he had the children you couldn’t have.

You hated him because he couldn’t see how good his life was.

His depression clouded all that. He struggled with his mental health, and you couldn’t understand why, when he had a wife and three loving kids. ’

‘This is quite the fiction you’re painting,’ he says, a smile on his thin lips.

‘Then Travis comes along. Young, fit, good-looking Travis who all the women in the village drool over. Suddenly, your status as the Don Juan of High Chapel has been usurped. And all this time, the cogs have been turning inside your mind, cooking up something dark and evil to hurt your brother and to get revenge on Lynne for throwing you over.’

‘Surely this is slander. You’re not telling me you believe all this?’ Iain says, looking to Alison.

Alison stares back at him with steely darkness in her eyes. She sits still, but she’s seething.

‘Travis has nothing to do with any of this. He was a shy young man who couldn’t understand all the attention he was getting. Something else you hated. You wanted the attention, and it had waned. So you put together a plan so dark, so evil, that could get you everything you wanted.’

‘I think you should stop right there, Matilda. I’m starting to feel embarrassed for you.’

‘A few days before the twins went missing, you stole Travis’s car.

You hid it somewhere out of sight. Then, on that day, you popped into the hardware shop to buy something you probably didn’t need, but it got you seen by the villagers.

You took the twins and drove them away, but you didn’t kill them right away.

You went back to the cottage, and you forced Lynne to go to bed with you. ’

‘Forced her?’ he says, almost laughing. ‘You’re adding rape into this now, are you? Anything else? How about terrorism, or perhaps regicide?’

‘Lynne is your alibi. Later, when everyone is out looking for the twins, you slip away, you murder them, and you drive Travis’s car into the lake.’

‘I was very busy that day, wasn’t I?’ he says.

‘You killed them,’ Alison says. She wipes a tear away quickly. She doesn’t want Iain to see her crying. ‘You killed my sisters.’

‘Of course I didn’t kill them, Alison. She’s making it up. She’s deluded. She’s full of grief and hormones, and it’s affecting her brain. I’d feel sorry for you, if it wasn’t for the fact you’re accusing me of double murder.’

‘I’m accusing you of a lot more than that,’ I say, folding my arms across my chest.

I’m now surer of myself than I’ve been in a long time.

Iain’s attempts to discredit me are laughable.

I didn’t want Alison to come with me, but I’m glad she’s here.

Had we been alone, I think I would be lying on the floor right now in a pool of my own blood.

He’d have killed me, hidden my body and said I was crazy with grief and had run away, probably to kill myself.

But Alison is my witness. He can’t kill us both.

‘A couple of months go by,’ I continue. ‘Jack, naturally, is struggling. But Lynne, resourceful, dependable Lynne, is adapting. She’s even thinking of going back to work.

You can’t have that, can you? So you come up with another despicable plan.

You tell Lynne you’ve seen Jack reading a magazine featuring child pornography and that he admitted to abusing the twins and killing them.

You put on a wonderful act. She believed you.

I believed you when you repeated it to me the other day, but looking back, it was just a little too perfect.

Your anger was spot on. It’s a speech you’d rehearsed so many times, to sound believable to Lynne, that it was too good.

‘So, you tell Lynne that Jack is a paedophile and a murderer and there’s still little Alison alive who Jack might turn his attentions to next.

You need to get rid of him. You kill him.

You make Lynne an accessory and you bury him in the cellar of a derelict building.

And as for Travis: well, Travis was an insurance policy just in case questions were asked of you. ’

‘Are you going to say I killed him as well?’

‘I am, yes. I’m guessing you’re not going to tell me where you buried him.’

‘I can’t. I didn’t kill him. Bloody hell, Matilda, I think you should see someone. Your grief has turned you loopy,’ he scoffs.

‘Did you drug me?’ Alison asks.

We both turn to look at her.

‘On the night of the storm, did you drug me so I wouldn’t remember?’

‘No, Alison, of course I didn’t drug you. Can’t you see what she’s trying to do? She’s failed as a detective. She failed to save her own family, so she’s trying to atone by coming up with this elaborate non-murder she can try and solve.’

I clear my throat. I hope Alison still believes me and doesn’t start falling for her stepfather’s lies. She needs to keep picturing her mother and the blank look of fear in her eyes.

‘You’ve been posing as Jack all these years,’ I say.

‘The various sightings. It’s been you all along.

Any time Lynne has expressed a sign of independence, you’ve shown up as Jack to taunt her that he might not be dead after all or that’s he’s haunting her.

You even showed up as Jack on Alison’s birthdays and on the day she started in the force, to add to the authenticity of a loving father still out there, watching in the wings.

It was you who called in with the new sighting the other day, wasn’t it?

A random member of the public called John.

John, a variation of Jack. You’ve been laughing at everyone all these years. ’

‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he says, standing up. ‘I want you to leave, now. What you’re saying is wrong. It’s all lies and it’s destructive.’

‘Alison has been asking questions all these years. She’s wanted to know the truth, and every time she’s asked something you fear could muddy the waters, up pops Jack to mess with her head and turn her focus to her father being the killer, ashamed of what he’s done.’

‘Out! Now!’ He grabs me by the shoulders and forcibly drags me into the hallway.

‘Alison said she could smell horses on your clothes when you picked her up out of the car, all those years ago. I could smell horses on your clothes when you broke into Nature’s Diner. I called out Jack’s name, thinking it was him. You stopped. I bet you loved that.’

‘You’re a sick woman, Matilda. You need help.’

I’m not sure exactly what happens next. There’s a bang. Iain’s grip on me slackens and I fall against the wall. Iain drops to the floor. I turn and there’s Alison with the toaster in her hands.

Iain is dazed. He tries to sit up and puts a hand to his head where Alison hit him.

‘You bastard!’ she spits. ‘You complete and utter bastard!’

‘Alison, don’t believe her lies,’ he says as he struggles to lift himself up from the floor.