‘I pretended to be a girl and that was enough. Sarah couldn’t meet me quick enough. It was disgusting. She was so eager to flaunt her new toy, her newly embraced sexuality. She believed me when I told her I’d developed feelings for her while she was at the clinic.’ She shook her head. ‘As if. It’s disgusting and foul. We tried to help her and the failure was totally down to her, just like Jamie and Liam, who both fell for the same trick. It’s pathetic and they all deserved to die.’
‘How the hell can failing at something warrant someone’s death?’ Kim asked, even though they hadn’t failed at anything. In Jessica’s skewed moral judgement they had.
‘You’re not getting it, are you?’ Jessica asked, barely perturbed at having been caught. It was almost as though she expected Kim to jump on board with her logic any second.
‘Explain.’
‘The clinic is everything. It always has been. It’s my mother’s life work. We live it both inside and outside of work. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.’
‘It’s what binds you as a family?’ Kim asked.
‘Of course it does. We all agree that these relationships are toxic. They damage people. They are obsessive, exclusive, harmful, damaging. We do everything we can to save people, help them towards a better life, and this is how they repay us.’
She shot a look of pure hatred at Stephanie, who looked away, but Kim could tell that she was listening to every word Jessica said.
‘That’s your mother speaking, not you,’ Kim said, watching the knife. She’d heard almost the exact same words come out of Celia’s mouth hours ago.
‘It’s all of us. All our lives we’ve been told how important it is, the good work we do, the lives we’ve changed. My mother is a visionary. She turned the place into a sanctuary, a place where—’
‘You shock people,’ Kim interrupted. ‘You beat them and starve them and rape them. You don’t heal people, Jessica, you break them, you scar them. That’s not a sanctuary, that’s worse than a prison camp.’
Jessica frowned and looked genuinely saddened.
Kim had a sudden realisation. ‘Oh my god, if you can’t beat them, join them,’ she said, playing for time. Every second counted towards Bryant finding them. She had to keep Jessica’s attention without inciting her to use the knife. ‘You’ve competed against the clinic your whole life. It’s always received more attention than you. Your mother’s mission to cure gay people was her firstborn, her passion, and you’ve had to get on board to get any attention at all.’
‘N…no…no, that’s not it at all. You’re twisting everything.’
‘You’re a photo bomber,’ Kim said, finally understanding. ‘You’re the person who jumps in front of the camera when someone is looking at the landscape. It’s the only way you can be seen.’
Jessica’s face was beginning to harden.
‘You’re doing this for attention, for approval. Painting a picture or writing a good story probably never got more than a passing glance. I’ll bet she never attended one of your sports days. She was always busy at the clinic. You want your mother to notice you and—’
‘Rubbish, Inspector,’ she said, straightening, and tightening her grip on the knife. ‘That’s not why we do it.’
Kim realised that there was one word there that she had forgotten to consider. And from the smile growing on Jessica’s face, that mistake was about to cost her very dear.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Kim caught the plural a nanosecond too late as she felt a foot in her back and she fell to the ground. In the same instant, Jessica moved the knife to the base of Stephanie’s throat.
A small cry escaped from her lips as she seemed to realise that the danger was real.
Kim looked up into the eyes of Eric, and finally everything became clear. They were a tag team depending on the gender of the person they were trying to trap. And it had always made more sense that two people were involved in the murder of Jamie Mills, as it would have been hard for one person to pull his dead weight up to the branch.
Eric must have been waiting in the car for Jessica to come back with Stephanie so they could somehow stage her murder to look like suicide.
The car. Bryant.
‘Where’s my—?’
‘Keep still,’ Eric said, placing his foot in the small of her back. The pain shot down through both of her legs.
‘Don’t worry about your partner. He’s not coming and neither is anyone else.’
What the hell had he done to Bryant?
‘I’m warning you…’