A Winter Grave

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Addie’s face, even from behind the wash of soft warm light that came from the wood burner, was paler than he had ever seen it. Her eyes were wide. He could see the shock in them.

Her voice came in barely a whisper. ‘You murdered him.’

Brodie nodded, unable to maintain eye contact. He said, ‘You always blamed me for the death of your mother. And you were right. Just not in the way that you thought.’ He closed his eyes to focus on control of his breathing. ‘Yes, I killed the man. And if I had my time over, God help me, I’d probably do it again. But what I know now, that I didn’t know then, was that in taking his life, I effectively ended Mel’s, too. In sliding that blade between his ribs, I might just as well have used it to cut your mother’s wrists.’

If Addie had been shocked by his confession, it was possible that she was even more shocked now to see the tears that coursed down his face. Silent tears, a muted weeping that he choked back to swell in his throat and make his head pulse. Her eyes drifted down to the piece of paper that he had been turning over and over again in his fingers during the telling of his story.

‘What is that?’ she demanded, and he looked down to see how he had mangled the printout from Sita’s DNA reader. He crumpled it up in his hand, and held it tight in his fist.

‘Dr Roy had this new piece of kit,’ he said. ‘A portable DNA sampler capable of producing a reading at a crime scene.’ He hesitated, his heart full of dread. ‘I asked her to sample your DNA and mine.’

He felt her sudden fear reach out to him all the way across the room. ‘Why?’

‘I wanted to know if there was a familial match.’

‘You said Mum told you—’

He cut her off. ‘She did.’

‘And you didn’t believe her?’

‘I did.’ He paused. ‘Ninety-nine per cent of me did. Probably because it’s what I always wanted to believe.’

‘And the one per cent?’

‘Doubt. That tiny, shitty, niggling little grain of doubt that eats away at your soul until you just have to put it to bed. You just have to know.’

Her voice was very quiet. ‘And now you do.’

He nodded.

‘And?’

He pushed the crumpled piece of paper into his pocket and forced himself to look at her very directly. It was almost painful to see the dread in her eyes. He said, ‘Addie, I would never have told you about killing Jardine if I’d believed I was responsible for the death of both of your parents.’