“It was driving me crazy,” Tabitha said. “Everybody hated Stuart except for me but nobody apart from me could have done it. And now there’s you. You were his passenger that morning. You got off the bus at Okeham, the way you often did, bought cigarettes in the village shop, went back behind the bus and anyone seeing it on CCTV would automatically assume it was you driving away. The bus hid the sight of you walking in the direction of Stuart’s house.”
Sam didn’t speak. He was smoking steadily and gazing out toward the distant sea.
“You killed Stuart,” said Tabitha. She waited and he didn’t react. “You planned it in advance. You made arrangements with your friend to drive the bus that day. You called up Laura a few days before and made an appointment for a viewing, just so you knew she wouldn’t be there. After the bus left, you must have holed up somewhere out of sight and watched the house. There are several places round there, in the trees by the cliff. You waited till Laura had left and then the deliveryman arrived and you waited till he went as well. You went to the house and you killed him and you wrapped him in the plastic and put him in the boot of his car and drove away with him. But of course the tree had come down and you realized you were stuck. What is it? Sod’s law? Murphy’s law? If anything can go wrong, it will.”
Still nothing from Sam.
“So you came back and dumped him in my house.”
“I didn’t know anyone was there. It looked a wreck. I didn’t mean for it to fall on you.”
For a moment Tabitha could barely speak. “You didn’t do much about it when it did fall on me, did you? I guess your plan was to drive Stuart’s car somewhere, dump the body and leave the car somewhere else. You had to think of a plan B. All you had to do was hide out and then do what you did in reverse. When the bus came back in the afternoon, you just walked behind it, out of sight of the camera again, and stepped aboard.”
Sam looked around warily, dropped the glowing end of the cigarette onto the earth and carefully ground it out. “Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why’s it you’re here, not the police?”
“I knew before the trial ended,” said Tabitha. “I realized after the deliveryman’s evidence.”
“So why?” he asked again.
“When you were talking about seeing Dr. Mallon running, you said something about how he was probably going along the coastal path. But the coastal path is closed off round Okeham. Years ago part of the cliff collapsed and they had to divert it inland. But when you knew it, when you were a boy, the path was still there.”
McBride gave a faint smile.
“So I knew it was you,” Tabitha continued. “But I didn’t know why. I think I do know now. The thing is, I was puzzled by Joe Simons. All right, I can imagine him giving you a lift in the coach and covering for you. But once he heard about the murder, why wouldn’t he go to the police? What was in it for him? Unless he was a real friend and you had a good reason and you told him the reason.”
She looked him full in the face. A spasm of pain, or maybe it was more like a recoil, gripped his features. There was something feral about him, she thought, and then she remembered the court drawing in which she had looked so savage: was she like him, then?
“He did it to you as well, didn’t he?” she persevered.
There was a long silence. Sam sat leaning forward on the chair, looking at his hands that were folded loosely on his knees.
“Yeah,” he said at last.
“Was he your teacher?”
“Sports club.”
“How old were you?” she asked.
“Nine.”
“Jesus.”
“The first time,” he said. It was obviously an effort for him to talk; the words came in small spurts. “It went on.”
“You never told anyone?”
“I lived with my nan and then with foster parents. Who would I tell? Who did you tell? You’re the first person I’ve said it to.” He thought for a moment. “The second, after Joe.”
“So you came back to the area to kill him.”
“At first I thought I’d just give him a fright.”
He said he’d seen a ghost, Laura had told her. Everyone had thought it was Tabitha he was fearful of, but it had been Sam: one thing to have sex with a fifteen-year-old girl, quite another to rape a nine-year-old boy. The respectable Mr. Rees, pillar of the community, churchgoer, member of the parish council, finger in every pie.
“He put the house on the market. He was going to get away with it all over again. I had to do it before the school holiday, see, while he was still there and I still drove the bus into the village every day.”
Tabitha nodded. “Can I have a cigarette?” she asked.
He rolled her one and then lit it, lifting his hand to shield the flame. The acrid taste filled her mouth and she coughed violently.
“I thought I’d feel better somehow, once I’d killed him,” said Sam.
“But you didn’t?”
“I don’t feel guilty, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was wicked. What he did to me—” He stopped, unable to find the words. “I was never right after,” he said instead. “So he got what he wanted in the end.”
“What did he want?”
“I don’t know. Turn me into rubbish. I used to be sick sometimes; he liked that.”
Tabitha stared at the smoke curling between her fingers.
“That day, when he opened the door,” Sam continued in a low, flat voice, “and saw me, he seemed, like, almost relieved.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like he’d been waiting for me. Like he didn’t mind.”
What was it Stuart had said to the vicar? He said he was damned for what he
