SEVEN DEADLY THINGS (Henry & Sparrow Book 3), A FOX [good books to read for adults .TXT] 📗

about leaving her in the bunker. It was just a joke… but it was a horrible joke. We did that. We left her stuck in there. For a laugh. What kind of people would do that?’

Kate shrugged. ‘Immature people. Idiots. Kids.’

‘And now look what’s happened,’ said Nikki, shaking with repressed sobs. ‘Kate… I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

It was a relief when they were taken off to hospital to join Talia. Kate was running out of things to say to make her friend feel better.

33

‘He was perfectly placed to plan it all,’ DS Stuart told her the following day, switching off the tape in the interview room. Kate had given a basic statement the day before but she’d been shocked and exhausted so her fully detailed account of the whole Buntin’s experience had been commuted to this morning. She outlined everything she could think of, simultaneously trying to remember to keep her elbow off the table. It stung painfully whenever she rested it without thinking. Other grazes and cuts were stinging all over her too, but she knew she was lucky to be alive.

‘He used the security camera system to track you all,’ went on Stuart. Her tone had shifted to informal, and Kate realised she and Upton were sharing off-the-record information… as a professional courtesy. They seemed to have forgiven her for going somewhat rogue on them.

‘So he knew when Julie was alone — Bill and Talia, too,’ Stuart went on. ‘You’re supposed to be able to control the cameras from the chalets, for privacy. They get switched on at the chalet end when parents go off to party and leave their kids under surveillance by the Sleep Tight team.’

DS Upton rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus — after Madeleine McCann you’d think people wouldn’t be so trusting. Imagine if he’d been a paedophile.’

‘I think being a psychopathic murderer was quite bad, too,’ said Stuart, wryly.

‘Well, he got what was coming to him,’ said Upton.

Kate said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ Stuart went on, ‘He hacked the system so he could take control of those cameras as and when he wanted. Not long after killing Bill he sent a text to Talia from Bill’s phone, asking her to meet him alone at her chalet, saying he’d come back and needed to talk about Nikki. He obviously knew all about Bill and Nikki together in the night, too.’

‘Bloody hell,’ murmured Kate, shivering as she realised they must all have been spied on.

‘Take a look at these,’ said Upton, sliding some large colour prints in front of Kate. They were shots taken inside Mike’s staff chalet. One wall was plastered with images of his sister and the others were dedicated to the seven Bluecoats he held responsible for her death — with assorted photos from social media and even some press cuttings about Kate’s recent adventures in Wiltshire.

‘He clearly had you all in his sights as soon as he learned you were coming back for your reunion,’ said Stuart. ‘Seems as if that was his trigger, so soon after the death of his sister. And he knew all the tricks, like setting off the alarm to get everyone away from the beach where he’d planned his finale. Somewhere on the CCTV tapes there’ll be footage of him taking all those sacks of sand and bits of guttering down through the site, heading for the beach. There’s film of him buying frogs from a pond and aquatics centre in Ipswich. We’re still picking through it all, but it looks like he planned it down to the smallest detail.’

‘I think it was all he had left,’ said Kate. ‘Once his sister was dead, he was just running on revenge. I don’t think he cared about being caught at the end of it, as long as he got all seven of us. It was all for Tessa.’

‘Well, start to finish, it’s looking like one of the fastest serial killer cases we’ve had,’ said Stuart with a sad smile. ‘There are even photos of the murder scenes on his phone and his laptop. Pretty safe to say there was nobody else involved.’

Kate nodded. The perpetrator was dead. The evidence was clear. It would be tied up relatively swiftly in the coroner’s court. She wondered how much of the background to these murders would come out in the press reports. She had no doubt the grisly details of the murders would sell a lot of papers and drive an absolute frenzy of clickbait… but would the full story of what had happened seven years ago ever make it out into the media? None of the Magnificent Seven had committed a crime… but they had all been complicit, to some degree, in driving one woman to starve herself to death and her brother to commit multiple homicide.

‘You won’t have to repeat everything you’ve told us today at the inquest,’ said Stuart, surprising her with a glance that held quite a bit of insight. ‘The families of Bill Lassiter, Martin Riley and Julie Everall… it’s going to be hard enough for them already. Put simply, the guy had a grudge against you all because he wasn’t part of your crowd.’

Kate nodded. None of them spoke further about Mike’s motivation for what he had done. She guessed she could make the decision later about how much she wanted to say.

Of course, Talia, Craig and Nikki might speak about their part in it all, too… but she doubted it. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t feel it; they just weren’t the types to go for the whole mea culpa line in public. They were… it was hard to say it even to herself, but it was true… more than a bit shallow. The way they had all regressed to their catty laughter and thoughtless piss-taking that weekend told her that seven years hadn’t matured them much.

So if anyone spoke up for Mike and Tessa, it would be her. Maybe. Maybe not. Guilt was a terrible thing to carry but perhaps, for the sake of grieving