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‘And then,’ he says, looking up again but not quite meeting my eyes this time, ‘then I met your mother. It was as if an angel had answered my prayers.’
‘She made you seem normal,’ I say, my theories confirmed. ‘That’s why you wanted to be with us. A ready-made family was the perfect disguise.’
He gives a one-shouldered shrug.
‘I suppose it was an advantage.’
‘An advantage?’ I sound like a parrot. ‘You’re sick, you know that?’
He grins, clucks his tongue.
‘Aye, it’s what they tell me. But she was sick too. Every bit as much as me.’
She?
‘What are you talking about?’
His face changes again. The expression that looked like shame has disappeared, in its place eye-twinkling amusement.
‘The police think the murders started in ’81, but they’re years off.’
I wonder if the cancer is affecting his brain. He’s all over the place. I try to keep up with him, I came here for answers after all. And if there’s a chance I can get him to identify more victims. . .
‘So, when did you start killing?’
‘1977. The Charles. Pretty brunette with a charming little gap between her front teeth. You’d have been very young at the time. Just a wean. Your mother and I had reconnected. We’d tried to stay apart after she got pregnant, but this thing we had was intoxicating, electric. More powerful than both of us.’
He watches me for a reaction but I’m slow to catch on.
‘I don’t understand. You said she was the answer to your prayers. That she helped you suppress your. . . urges.’
The word sickens me, sticks in my gullet.
Matty’s smirk broadens, a flash of white enamel appearing between his lips.
‘What I said was, I was struggling to fight my urges and then I met your mother. . .’
The tone of his voice, the tilt of his chin. The drawn-out pause.
My stomach clenches, a wave of acid rides up my oesophagus.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, but I think I do.
‘I was convinced there was something wrong with me, that I was an alien, a species apart. And then I met Amelia-Rose. I thought I was dark, but my God, I was nothing compared to her. That ruthlessness, her contempt for everything that breathed.’
I slam my fist down on the ledge, hard enough to make the pane rattle.
‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare try to pretend—’
I’m shouting but he’s as calm as a summer’s day.
‘I’m not pretending anything, Sophie. Don’t tell me you fell for that holier than thou act of hers. You mustn’t judge anyone till you’ve walked in their shoes,’ he says, mimicking my mother. ‘That old chestnut was straight out of To Kill A Mockingbird. You studied it at school. Surely you recognised the line?’
My shoulders relax, my breath comes more easily.
‘So, she wasn’t particularly original. It’s hardly the crime of the century.’
‘No, but it speaks to character. Only those without morals have to hide behind the morality of others.’ He chuckles. ‘Your poor dad.’ He makes air quotes. “Dad”, and straight away my shoulders are back around my ears.
