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“Couldn’t you just take her back?” shouted Reilly. “All you’d done was stolen a car.”
“And do time?”
“First offence, son. You’d have gotten away with it.”
“I didn’t know that, did I?”
“So, what happened?” Rydell reminded him. “Tell me what happened to my sister.”
“We finished up at Holme Wood. Took the bend far too fast, rolled the car down an embankment. The car flipped, I don’t know how many times. All the windows were smashed. None of us wore a seat belt. I think we were all thrown clear.”
“You mean you don’t know?” Rydell asked.
“No. When I woke up, I found Samantha–”
“Found?” shouted Rydell, now using the wall for support, having inched a little further forward. “Alive?”
It was some time before Summerby answered. “No.”
Rydell was in tears.
“I panicked. I wandered around for half an hour, wondering what to do.”
“So come on, don’t stop there. What did you do? She hasn’t been seen since.”
Summerby stared at each of them in turn. “I came across a disused mineshaft. It seemed like the only answer to the problem.”
The impact of that statement silenced everyone.
“You didn’t?” whispered Sally.
“I didn’t know what else to do, Sal. I was fourteen. What was I supposed to have done? I’d killed two people.”
“You were supposed to have owned up. I thought you were a born-again Christian.”
“Not then.”
“Whatever you were, you were not supposed to dump an innocent girl’s body down a mineshaft and leave her family distraught for the rest of their lives. What kind of a monster are you?”
“Carry on, son,” said Reilly. “What did you do next?
“After I’d disposed of the body, I set fire to the car.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Reilly, turning to face the wall. “It started out simple, probably a bet. ‘I dare you to pinch a car’.” He faced Summerby. “If you’d taken it back, all of this could have been avoided. Instead, it ends in sheer carnage.”
“How have you managed to live with that on your conscience, Mr Summerby?” asked Gardener.
“I don’t know,” he cried. “But it was the one thing that made me stop and think about my life. I finally ended up in a confessional at the local church. That life-changing moment made me realize I was on the road to nowhere, and that if I didn’t change, there would be nothing but problems ahead.”
“I’ve got news for you, son, there still is.”
Chris Rydell suddenly made the most awful keening sound that Gardener had ever heard. He dropped to his knees and suddenly vomited blood – lots of it. The red liquid splashed all over the carpet, up the wall, even on the curtains.
Summerby pushed the chair out of his way and raced forward to help him. He cradled Rydell in his arms and screamed how sorry he was, begging forgiveness. Sally Summerby picked up both mobile phones and gave them to Gardener.
“For God’s sake, call an ambulance. He’s going to die.”
Reilly knelt down in front of her, Rydell, and Summerby. “Get yourself out of the way, son. I think you’ve done enough damage.”
