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“On the best days, he’d rape her. Even as a kid, I could tell what was going on. That rhythmic thud, her stifled cries. But if he was too drunk, if he couldn’t get it up? That’s when it got really bad.” He runs his finger along his forearm, as if seeing the scars for the first time. “He would tell me to hide. And then he’d count. Down, from twenty. Looking for me around the house. A simple child’s game. ‘Coming, ready or not.’ There was one rule: the longer I managed to stay hidden, the lesser the punishment. Do you know how well I did, that night, DCI Bishop?” he asks. “Can you guess?”
Adam feels saliva flood his mouth. He swallows. “Not long,” he replies.
Elijah nods slowly. “Not long at all. Dad got to seventeen before he found me. Seventeen. Seventeen times he sat there, in his favorite armchair, smoking those fags down to the butt. Seventeen times he stubbed them out on my arm. Can you guess how long that takes? All night. All fucking night. Hours of darkness, of hearing my mother cry. Begging him to leave me alone.” He shakes his head. “But that wasn’t the worst. He was creative. Experimental. Fifteen hours locked in a cupboard. Until my legs and my back cramped and throbbed with pain. Another time, the first, nine lashes with his belt. And the last.” He looks to the table. “I made it to two. Two—when he found me. And do you know what he said he would do? Take two parts of my body. An ear, an eye. A finger.” He splays his hands out on the surface, fingers spread, and for the first time Adam notices the tip of his pinkie is missing. “I thought it would be quick. It wasn’t.” He pauses, lost in the pain of the memory. Then he looks up. “But my father made one big mistake. He told my mother to fetch a better knife. A bigger one. To take out my eye. She did, and she killed him.”
He looks up, suddenly roused from the memories. “That’s the DNA in my blood, Adam. The DNA in Maggie Clarke. The DNA in your wife. That will be the DNA in your children.”
All while Cole has been talking, Adam has felt his breathing get faster, shallower. The panic. Everything he’s wondered about Romilly for so long. But he can’t let this man get into his head—he can’t. Everything that Cole is, that happened to him. It’s not Romilly. It’s not the woman he loves.
He’s got the answers he came for. The final names of his victims. He knows Elijah will never be released. He’ll die in here. Rot, alone, for the rest of his life.
He pulls his shaking legs into a stand. Adam doesn’t need to hear any more. He steps backward, away from the chair, from the table, putting distance between him and Cole. The repulsion is strong now, the desire to get away.
He hears the door being opened and walks quickly toward it. But in the doorway he stops, turning back to Cole.
“You didn’t do it,” Adam says.
Cole swivels in his seat, fixing his eyes on him. “Do what?”
“Get to twenty. Kill twenty. We stopped you, and Maggie. You weren’t even close.”
Cole laughs, sudden and sharp. “Do the math, DCI Bishop. Time will tell. You’ll see.”
Adam doesn’t wait. He strides away down the corridor, barely breathing until he’s out of the prison. He hears the slam of the heavy doors behind him as he collects his phone and his belongings; he takes deep lungfuls of cold, clear air once he’s outside.
He stands next to his car, rests his hands on the freezing metal of the bonnet, and takes slow breaths in. He’ll never go back there again.
He gets in his car and pulls a scrap of paper out of the glovebox. With shaking hands, he writes down names and places, including the wasteland, ten days ago. Counting down from twenty.
20 to 17. The four women in the outhouse.
16 to 12. The victims at the wasteland.
Wayne Oxford—11
Woman at the park—10
He can barely manage to write the next few names.
Pippa—9
His three patients—down to 6
Ellie—5
Marsh—4
Three. There were three left. Three away from his goal of twenty. Three people he, or Maggie, would never kill.
Adam starts the engine and drives away. He puts the radio on. He swaps to music and turns it up loud. But he can still hear Elijah Cole in his head. His laugh. His mocking tone.
“Time will tell,” he had said.
“You’ll see.”
METAL AGAINST METAL, doors slamming shut. Voices shouting: angry, slurred swear words from the cell next door.
I’ve been moved to a women’s jail. Out of custody at the police station—to here. A home from home. By myself. Quiet.
