Beswick shrugged. ‘What can I say? They had everything and I had nothing. It was pure jealousy. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
I hadn’t requested the full murder files; I hadn’t wanted to. I remembered nothing from that time, nothing of the murders and nothing of what happened afterwards. I’d been questioned at length as a five year old, and I hadn’t been able to offer up anything useful. Eyewitnesses were notoriously unreliable but I didn’t even have false memories of that time. However, I’d read what my uncle had kept as well as the old newspaper reports, and I knew all the basic details of Samuel Beswick’s crime off by heart. All the same, I wanted to hear them from his own mouth.
‘You lived in the same village,’ I stated.
He grinned, baring his stained, crooked teeth. ‘Barchapel. The very definition of Middle England.’ His voice had an oddly manic edge. ‘More of a prison than prison itself. They call Kent the Garden of England. That might be true of some places in the county, but not of Barchapel. It’s more like a cesspit than a rose-filled garden.’
I hadn’t been to Barchapel since the day my parents died, but I doubted Beswick’s description. I’d seen photos of the place: it was small and quaint, not without its faults, but hardly a sewer. Probably the worst thing you could say about it was that it was dull. Apart from the occasional double murder, of course.
‘You knew my parents before you murdered them?’
‘I saw them around the place. In the pub sometimes, out walking. I spoke to your mum once when she was selling cakes at the local fête.’
I leaned forward. I couldn’t help myself. ‘What did she say?’
‘That it was beautiful weather. That she liked my T-shirt. That she was excited about the prize she’d won at the tombola.’ He raised his thin eyebrows. ‘You were there, too. You didn’t speak so much as babble. Something to do with creepy-crawlies at the bottom of your garden, if I remember.’
I’d been barely five years old; it was hardly any wonder that I’d not engaged him in a deep philosophical conversation. ‘So she was nice to you,’ I bit out. ‘But you still killed her.’
Beswick shrugged and looked away. ‘It wasn’t personal, not really. I saw two people who had a better life than I did and I wanted to punish them. I could have picked on anyone. It’s merely unfortunate for you that I picked on your parents. I’d been in London and caught the bus home. I got into Barchapel just after half-ten at night and didn’t feel like going to bed. I went for a walk and saw the lights on in your cottage. Your parents were in there with you.’ He offered me a benign smile. ‘If it helps, they died quickly. They didn’t suffer.’
A hard knot was forming in my chest. ‘That’s not what the coroner’s report said.’ My uncle had kept a copy of the report and I’d read it several times over the last week. It didn’t get any easier to stomach, no matter how familiar the details became.
Beswick looked down at the table. ‘All I can tell you is that it didn’t take long,’ he said quietly. ‘I was there. Not the coroner.’ He paused. ‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I was in a bad place back then. Your parents didn’t deserve what happened to them. Neither did you.’
‘You killed them,’ I pressed. ‘Why didn’t you kill me too?’
His shoulders jerked. ‘I wouldn’t have done that. You were a kid – it wouldn’t have been fair.’
Fair? Fair? The numbness which had served me so well deserted me in a rush, and a red-veiled mist descended. ‘You broke into our house. You stabbed my father. You slit my mother’s throat. You left me in the kitchen with their bodies. You left me sitting in their blood.’
Beswick winced. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did all that.’
‘Tell me what’s fucking fair about any of that.’ I gripped the arms of the chair, my knuckles turning white. ‘Tell me!’
He didn’t answer.
I almost spat at him, ‘You pleaded not guilty at your trial. You’ve always claimed innocence.’
He shifted in his chair again. ‘I didn’t want to go to prison.’
My chest constricted; it was becoming difficult to breathe. In that moment, I knew with sudden clarity that I couldn’t do this. I had thought that I could sit across from this man and calmly question him, that I was strong enough to deal with whatever he said, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I couldn’t even bear to breathe the same air as him. If I stayed here, I would break through the screen that separated us and kill him. I’d do it with my own bare hands, long before the prison officer outside managed to open the door again and stop me.
I should never have been allowed to speak to Beswick alone. No matter what the prison authorities thought about my situation and their own precautions, I was very aware that I possessed the supernatural strength and the human will to murder the man opposite me. I was so much more than another victim.
‘I have to get out of here,’ I muttered. I sprang to my feet, walked to the door and hammered on it. ‘Let me out!’ I yelled. ‘Let me out of here!’
Beswick didn’t move. He watched me from his chair, those blue eyes burning a proverbial hole into my back. I thumped harder. Where the fuck was that prison officer?
The heavy steel door swung open. ‘Is everything alright?’
I gulped in air. ‘I need to leave.’
The man’s eyes snapped to Beswick behind me, narrowing in accusation, but I was the one he needed to be wary of. I closed my hands into tight fists and repeated my words more calmly. ‘I just need to leave.’
He nodded. ‘Very well.’
I scarpered out of the prison without
