‘No,’ says Cox, again, stepping forward into the muddy earth with a squelch. ‘No, he told me—’
‘I don’t know how quickly your mind is working here, Griffin, but in a moment you’re going to see it all very clearly. I’ve taken more lives than you have. Defreitas was the first, my baptism, if you like, and it was many years before there was another. I suppose it was frustration that pushed me into it – frustration at seeing good people in pain. Men like you, they’re all about power. About control. About causing maximum suffering and pain. And all those years I worked with the missing persons charity, I couldn’t get past the idea that those who know where a body is buried should be made to give up that knowledge. That somebody should do something.’
‘And that somebody is you?’ asks Cox, and there is scorn in his eyes. ‘You became a prison officer just to get close to people like me?’
‘No, you were just the most difficult to get to. By the time I realized that you were guilty of all the crimes you’re linked to, I’d already put plenty of recently released cons where they belonged. Opened their throats, usually.’
She stares at him, her voice amplified by the low brick ceiling of the chamber. Watches him form the pieces into a coherent shape.
‘You wanted me to come to Holderness? You wanted me there so you could help me escape.’
She nods: a teacher pleased with a student. ‘Go on.’
‘But you needed me to feel I was in control. I was the one manipulating you …’
‘The families deserve to know what happened to these children. I needed you to lead us to them.’
Cox chews his cheek. ‘And now?’
Annabeth shrugs. ‘You’re not going off to your new life, Griffin. We’re going to have to leave you here.’
The killer looks at her with something like admiration. ‘You keep saying “we”,’ mutters Cox. He looks around slowly. The water only reaches his ankles, but further down the chamber slopes and deepens and opens out into the body of the lake. But there is no way in from the water itself. The sluice gates are down and have been for decades. There is no way in save for the twisty passageway that winds down from the boathouse. The effort of bringing his prizes here has half killed him before now. The climb is exhausting, even without the encumbrance of a struggling adolescent across his shoulders. Annabeth must be tired. Afraid. But is she alone? If he were to rush her, there might be somebody more physically able standing at her side. He is so close to his goal. Has looked upon the fruition of his work and can almost taste the full-bodied Amarone that will be spilling down his chin within days. He can’t permit her to stop him. Can’t let it end here.
Annabeth watches as he weighs his options. In the silence, she hears a sudden vibration: the soft trill of a phone buzzing upon damp rock.
‘You should get it,’ she says, not unkindly. ‘He’ll want to know you’re OK. You can tell him the truth, or let him live in ignorance.’
Cox reaches out. Picks up the phone. Listens to the breathy voice of the man who tried to stop him becoming the thing that he is.
‘Magister …’
Annabeth listens. Lets him talk to the man who raised him: who saw the dark thing within him and tried to help him control it; the man who didn’t even turn on him when he found the bodies beneath the lake and decided to help conceal his crimes rather than ensure he face justice for them. He owed the boy’s mother that, didn’t he? What is love if not doing that which seems unpalatable for the good of somebody else?
He looks at Annabeth. Realizes he has never really seen her before. For an instant, there is a connection, as if staring into his own eyes in a mirror. And then he takes his chance. Lunges forward, stepping into the shallows, sprinting through the tangle of weeds and dark water, as Annabeth raises the boathook like a spear, and launches it straight at Cox’s heart.
THIRTY-NINE
The sudden tug; the sensation of being punched in the chest; the burning, searing pain, and he is falling backwards, turning, reaching out to grab for purchase and feeling his hand claw into the waxy, ruined flesh of the dancing nymph he created with the body of Bronwen Roberts.
He falls. Reaches out. Coughs blood, and slithers down into the water. He pulls himself up; the shaft of the boathook sticking from his gut; warm blood pumping onto his belly, and then he is looking at a new shape; a new apparition. He is looking at a teenage boy; fresh-faced, smooth-skinned – something very like madness in his eyes.
And then Ethan Harris is grabbing the shaft of the makeshift spear, and pushing it further into his guts.
Cox’s vision becomes a mosaic; a mandala of random pieces and parts. He sees the water. Black coffee and quicksilver. His head jerks back as he feels a sudden urgency. He lurches forward, and then he is slithering down and into the water. The cold is agony. He cannot tell whether his eyes are open or closed. He takes a desperate gulp and chokes as water floods inside him. It feels as though there are hands dragging at the tails of his coat, at his floundering feet, pulling
