‘I don’t believe you. You’re a liar. Everything has been a lie, hasn’t it, Dad?’
Behind Charles, Holly had sunk to her haunches. She was staring into space, into the past.
‘You did,’ Holly said. ‘You killed Jimmy. He did see you, didn’t he? After I’d left, he would have seen you and Morag together. What happened? Did he confront you? Threaten you?’
‘As if I could be threatened by a boy like that. He was—’
He shut his mouth. It was too late. I saw it play out, a re-enactment. Charles being confronted by Jimmy, knowing the boy would tell everyone what he’d seen. Chasing him to the caves…
No, that couldn’t be right. Morag would have seen. She would never keep quiet if she’d known Charles murdered her brother. Maybe there hadn’t been a confrontation. Perhaps Charles had seen Jimmy watching them, driven Morag home then come back. Did he talk to Jimmy, offer him something to keep quiet? In the re-enactment in my head, they were in thecaves. Jimmy said he couldn’t be bought. And that was when Charles realized he needed to act. When he pushed him over that ledge, before driving home to his family. To his dying wife.
Miranda didn’t seem to care about Jimmy, though. ‘Did Mum know what you did? Did she know you got a girl pregnant?’
‘Of course not,’ he snapped at her. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her. I loved her.’
‘Ha!’
It was his turn to jab a finger towards her. ‘Don’t you ever doubt my love for your mother. She was everything to me. She was my soulmate. If I could have swapped with her, if I could have been the one with cancer so she could live, I would have done it without hesitation.’ He screwed up his face and pressed his fingers against his forehead. He did look genuinely agonized. ‘I was in a lot of pain. My head full of demons, telling me how unfair it was, not just on your mother but on me. I was young. I was rich. I was powerful. The world should have been mine, but it wasn’t, and I suppose, well, that I needed comfort. Something pure and uncomplicated.’
Down on the floor, Holly made an incredulous noise.
‘A shag with a seventeen-year-old in a derelict building.’ Miranda clapped her hands. ‘Bravo, Dad. Bravo.’
‘You judge me,’ Charles went on, ‘but I did the honourable thing. As soon as I found out about the pregnancy, I made an arrangement with Morag and Brenda and I have kept to that agreement ever since.’
I spoke up. ‘But you made Lewis pretend the baby was his.’
He narrowed his eyes at me. ‘We knew there would be rumours. Speculation about who the father was. It seemed obvious to let people believe it was Lewis.’
‘And he went along with it?’
‘I doubt he had any choice,’ said Holly.
Charles was getting angry again now. ‘You’re all so holier than thou. Don’t you get it? I had to be pragmatic. I couldn’t allow the world to find out about this… this moment of weakness. I was the face of Gravitas. Our reputation, in the face of all the competition from huge corporations, the thing that won us contracts and helped build customer loyalty, was that we were different to those tech giants. We were a family business. The plucky little guy. I knew if what I’d done got out, all those hypocrites and moral crusaders would have had a field day. The company would be mortally wounded. I did it for us. For our family. And Lewis understood that.’
The room fell quiet. Charles, Holly, Miranda, Avril, me. We all looked at each other. Zack’s body lay on the floor, blood congealing on the front of his shirt. In the silence, I heard scratching and whimpering and realized it was Watson, who was shut in the kitchen.
‘How do you think you’re going to get out of this?’ I asked Charles. ‘Your plan was to kill Avril and, I assume, kill me, too, put the gun in my hands, make it look like I’d done it, the same way Zack tried to make it look like I killed Morag. Then hope Holly and Miranda stayed quiet, right?’
He looked tired. Old. All the supplements he took, all the working out– none of that was enough to combat the stress he was under right now.
I could see him thinking, trying to work out a plan. Here was the man who had solved thousands of business problems, the man who had navigated his company through stormy seas for forty years. Tangled up in a mess of his own making, with all these secrets to protect. I couldn’t see any way out that didn’t involve more bloodshed. More death.
The sound of the dog scratching at the kitchen door wasgrowing more intense now. And then a new wave of fireworks went up, crackling and banging, and that made him start barking. A loud, relentless volley.
Miranda moved towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ Charles demanded.
‘I need to let Watson out of the kitchen.’
‘Stay here.’
She ignored him, striding to the door and opening it. But Charles went after her, grabbing her arm with his free hand, hauling her back.
‘Get your hands off me.’
‘Do as you’re told.’ He tugged her away from the door, his grip strong, and as he pulled away he lost his balance and fell on to his knees, dropping the rifle. Holly tried to snatch it up, but Charles– down on his knees– threw himself at it, getting hold of it and yanking it from Holly’s grasp.
