Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 123, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 751 & 752, March/April 2004

Sunset City by Martin Edwards

Martin Edwards’s very first book in the lawyer Harry Devlin series, long in print in England, has finally been published in the U.S. by Five Star Press. The book is entitled All the Lonely People. Mr. Edwards has recently edited the British CWA’s Golden Jubilee anthology Mysterious Pleasures, and his own nonfiction book about crime investigation, Urge to Kill, has just come out in the U.S., from Writer’s Digest Books.

She must have known.

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Alix said. She opened her eyes very wide. It was a favourite trick. Simple, sure, but she never ceased to be surprised how often it worked.

In the distance, sea gulls were keening. The sun was still high, but there was a sharp edge to the breeze and Alix was glad she’d kept on her suede jacket. It wasn’t exactly beachwear, but she never trusted the British weather, least of all at the British seaside. If you could call this Britain? She didn’t know the island’s technical status; that sort of trivia held no appeal for her.

Jayne Ive folded her arms. She was standing on the step outside her bungalow, a compact middle-aged woman, neatly dressed in a lime-green trouser suit. Alix, a relentless optimist, thought it a good sign that Jayne hadn’t slammed the door in her face. Behind her, Alix could see a hallway with framed prints of moody sunsets on the wall. This could be Mrs. Anyone of Anywhere. But it wasn’t.

“You say that as though you’re doing me a favour.” Jayne’s voice was pleasingly husky, Alix decided. Firmness tinged with irony. This was no downtrodden woman, scarcely a natural victim. She would sound good on the box. “Taking my part when everyone else is against me.”

Alix smiled and said, “Well, it’s not so far off the truth, is it?”

“I have all the help I need, thanks. And, you might like to bear in mind, I have a good lawyer, too.”

The bungalow stood on the cliffs, looking out over the bay and beyond to the Irish Sea. Alix glanced at the sandstone buildings spreading out below, towards the ruined castle on St. Patrick’s Isle. The little island was linked to the larger by a short causeway. A pretty enough place, this, but hardly a centre of metropolitan sophistication.

“Really? The sole Manx specialist in the law on defamation of character?”

As soon as the words left her lips, she regretted them. She hadn’t liked the hint of legal action. Court proceedings, injunctions, they could snarl up any programming schedule; sometimes they killed a project stone-dead. But she knew better than to allow herself to be provoked and she’d intended no more than a flip aside. Yet it sounded as though she were mocking both Jayne Ive and her island home. A bad mistake. It would be crazy to antagonise the woman she’d travelled so far to see.

“He’s a partner in a big firm in Merseyside, actually,” Jayne said drily. “Don’t worry, I’m not entirely parochial. I did live in Liverpool for ten years, remember.”

Alix had been raised in Sydney and resident for the past eighteen months in Battersea. To her, Liverpool was parochial enough, but she didn’t push it. Jayne Ive came from a different world, a world Alix, too, would need to inhabit if this programme were ever to be made.

“After the trial, though, you came back to your roots. Back to the Isle of Man.”

“There’s a saying round these parts. A Manx girl who marries a man from the mainland will bring him back to the island one day. William and I spent all our wedded life in Liverpool.” Jayne unfolded her arms and brushed a lock of fading fair hair out of her eyes. “But I tell you this: One day, he’ll come back to join us, Rosie and me.”

There was a catch in her voice, making Alix wonder if at last she might be ready to crack. Time to be gentle. Tea and sympathy?

“Do you think — we could sit down, have a quiet chat?”

Jayne frowned. She was about to say no, Alix was sure of it, when her expression changed. She was looking over Alix’s shoulder and an anxious look came into her eyes.

Alix turned her head and saw a young woman approaching, her flat heels crunching the gravel of the unmade road. Tall, overweight, with a blotchy complexion. The loose grey top was fair enough, but the flowery leggings definitely a mistake. Her dark hair was inexpertly cropped, tufts of it sticking out at odd angles, as if she’d let an old mariner down by the harbour do his worst with a blunt knife.

“This is Rosie?”

She was guessing. The studio possessed no file pictures of William and Jayne Ive’s only child. But the age was about right. Nineteen, twenty? She bore no obvious resemblance to her mother, but her father, now, that was a different matter. The lumbering gait and the widely spaced blue eyes were spookily familiar from photographs and TV clips of William Ive attending court.

“Yes, it is,” Jayne said.

As she drew near, Rosie Ive focused her gaze on Alix. She glanced quizzically at her mother, as if to say, Why are you, you of all people, talking to a stranger?

“We can talk, if you like,” Jayne said hurriedly. “Just for a little while.”

Alix nodded. She always liked getting her own way, but she didn’t want to show how pleased she felt. “Fine.”

Jayne made no attempt to usher her guest inside or to effect introductions. Instead, she stood her ground and spoke to her daughter.

“I’m going out for a little while. We’re going to have a cup of tea down at the front. I won’t be more than an hour, promise.”

Rosie shrugged and said nothing. She walked straight past them into the house and pulled the door closed behind her.

“Come on, then,” Jayne said, waving in the direction of the sea-front.

“I do appreciate this, Mrs. Ive.” Alix concentrated on investing her tone with the maximum sincerity. “Or Jayne — if I may.”

“Call me what you like,” Jayne said with a shrug. “I mean what I say, mind. An hour, maximum.”

Alix inhaled the salty air. “Wonderful. This really is good of you.”

She fell into step beside the older woman as they moved down the hill. Jayne Ive kept up a brisk pace, as if anxious to get away from her home. Stretched out below was the beach. Children were playing on it with bats and balls, their parents sunbathing or eating ice creams. Fishing boats plied to and fro. Only the jagged remnants of the castle outlined against the sky testified to Peel’s violent past.

“This is a lovely place,” Alix said. It seemed the right thing to say and she had to admit to herself that the resort would photograph well. For her money, though, Mauritius was more like it as a holiday destination. Never mind the history, feel the heat.

“Beautiful,” Jayne said, almost whispering the word. “I love it very much.”

“I gather the wind blows pretty fiercely.”

The bloke who had sat next to her on the plane to Ronaldsway had told her this. His name was Rupert and he wasn’t a native, just a young city trader who was flying over to a branch office in Douglas to sort a few tax-efficient deals. By a happy coincidence, as he described it, they were staying at the same hotel, off the main road between Peel and Port Erin. He’d asked Alix to have dinner with him and she’d said yes. Why not?

“Man is a small island, it’s a healthy place.”

“Bracing, huh?” Alix said, just about resisting the temptation to say Surely no man is an island?

When they reached sea level, Jayne waved a hand at a cafeteria squashed between The Longboat Guest House and a tiny gift shop. Its signboard bore the name Maisie’s. “We can talk there. It’s quiet enough.”

Maisie, whoever she might be, was obviously a gingham fetishist, Alix decided as they settled down at a corner table. The place smelled of fish and chips. Apart from a noisy family of six by the door, the two of them were the only customers under seventy. As for the menu, it was very British seaside.

“I’ll have a pot of tea and a plate of bread and butter,” Alix said. Her tone was mildly satiric — she just couldn’t help it — but Jayne didn’t seem to notice.

“Me too.” Jayne waved at a fat waitress, inevitably clad in a gingham overall, and ordered for them.

“Thanks for sparing me your time,” Alix said.

“I don’t feel you left me with much choice.”

“Don’t worry. Look at me, I’m not taking notes, and I promise I’m not wired for sound. Like I said on the phone the other day, I just want to hear your side of the story.”

“I haven’t got a ‘side of the story.’ I never talked to the press, not once. You must have heard — I was offered money, big money, as it happens, but I turned them all down flat.”

Alix leaned across the table, her hands almost touching Jayne’s. “I respect your wish for privacy,” she said earnestly.

“Then why are you here? Why don’t you take the next flight back to London?”

“Jayne, you must understand, I’m not a tabloid journalist. I’m a serious documentary maker. There’s a world of difference.”

“Not to me. Wherever you come from, whatever your agenda is, you all have one thing in common. You want to reopen old wounds.”

“Please. It’s not like that. I want to present the public with a balanced picture about the case. Something they haven’t really had until now. It’s been pretty much one-way traffic, don’t you agree? The police have had a field day — that inspector with the squint and his blond P.R. lady. After the trial, the media hung on their every word. You kept your own counsel, from the best of motives, I’m sure. But time has passed and maybe you ought to start wondering whether silence was the best idea.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because tongues start wagging, that’s why.” Alix shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, Jayne, but there’s no point in beating about the bush. You need to get real. And the reality is that when people stop talking about your husband, they start talking about you.”

“About me?” Jayne Ive looked puzzled, as if the idea had never occurred to her. A bluff, surely? No one could be that unwise to the ways of the world.

“You’re married to a convicted serial killer, Jayne,” Alix murmured. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but it’s not a conventional situation. Besides, it goes further than that. You worked side by side with him, you lived together in the home where all the deaths occurred. Face it, you can’t be surprised that questions have been asked. Why didn’t you figure out what your husband was doing to the residents? Did you help in a cover-up? Maybe — I won’t spare you this, Jayne, we’re both adults — you knew what was going on all the time. Trust me, that’s what people were talking about.”

Jayne received the little speech in silence. She didn’t even blanch at the dread suggestion. She must have known. But then, she was bound to have gone through it all in her own head a thousand times.

The tea and bread and butter arrived. “Lovely,” Alix said, and the fat waitress positively simpered.

“I’m not even supposed to talk about the case,” Jayne said presently. “That’s on legal advice. William’s appealing against conviction, as you know.”

“Lawyers.” Alix raised her eyes to the heavens. “Don’t they see, an appeal against a miscarriage of justice needs the oxygen of publicity?”

“Besides, some of the relatives have threatened to sue me, to claim compensation. Even though there was never any suggestion of my being charged with anything. Even though I’ve suffered, too. I’ve lost a loved one, but they never think of that.”

“You owned the Sunny Hours Home.”

“William put it in my name. It was a tax thing, I don’t know the details. As for being sued, there’s a lot of emotion about. A little bit of money. It affects the way some people think.”

“But not you?”

Jayne’s lips formed into a thin line. “Alix, my husband was given four life sentences for crimes he didn’t commit. What do you think that I think?”

Alix tried her tea, but it scalded her tongue. The bread and butter didn’t look promising, either. The things that you do in the line of duty.

“Well, that’s what I’d like to discuss with you. You obviously remain convinced he was innocent.”

Jayne took a deep breath. “The first time we spoke on the telephone, I told you I had no intention of pouring my heart out to you. But I still say what I’ve always said. William didn’t kill those poor old people.”

“The evidence—”

“Don’t talk to me about the evidence! It wasn’t worth two ha’pennies. Those so-called expert pathologists, disagreeing among themselves. Even that jury, that stupid jury, had two members who realised it didn’t add up. It took the best part of a week to screw a majority verdict out of them. The judge should have called a halt long before.”

Jayne’s pale cheeks had reddened. It was the first time she had shown animation. Alix felt like hugging herself. The ice was well and truly broken. Jayne might say she didn’t want to talk, but it was only natural that she would seize the chance of challenging the received wisdom. Maybe, just maybe, she genuinely believed what she was saying. Or had made herself believe it.

Suddenly Alix understood something that had eluded her until now. “You expected him to get off, didn’t you? You really supposed the jury would acquit.”

“That was when I had faith in British justice.”

“But two of the deceased actually left legacies to you or your husband.”

“It happens, in residential care homes. We cared for people, night and day. They were full of gratitude. We didn’t encourage them to make us gifts. But some residents can be very persistent. They wanted to show how much they appreciated the way we looked after them, that’s all.”

“You have to admit the timing looked unfortunate. Both the wills were made in the fortnight before the deaths occurred. No wonder the families became suspicious.”

“Only one of them, the Devaneys. Pure greed. They were the people who alerted the police. If it hadn’t been for them, William would never even have been questioned, let alone convicted. In each case the doctors certified death as due to natural causes. As for the legacies, William and I were only ever going to get peanuts.”

She was in full flow, the legal advice on omerta well and truly forgotten. To encourage her, Alix assumed her most fascinated expression and said, “Really?”

“Yes! You must have researched this. Fifteen hundred or two thousand at most. Don’t forget, our residents weren’t rich people. Most of them had spent their lives doing manual work in inner-city Liverpool, or else on the dole. The council was paying their fees because its own homes were packed out. Why would my husband kill for so little reward?”

“Because he could?” Alix sampled the bread. It was dry, and a single mouthful was enough. “So easy, you see. Old folks, come to while away their twilight hours at this home. Frail, defenceless eighty-somethings. Easily smothered. At that age, if someone dies, who makes a song and dance? Hey, death is what happens to old people. He had a good innings, that’s what people say, isn’t it? It’s only to be expected. Maybe even to be welcomed. Passing away peacefully in bed, there are plenty of worse ways to go.”

Jayne drained her cup. “You don’t understand. It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like? Don’t you see, Jayne? This is your chance. You can tell your story for the first time. Explain to the world how it feels to be treated in this way.”

Jayne got to her feet. “Sorry, I just don’t want to carry on with this. Please go away from here. I’m not prepared to talk to you anymore.”

In the bar of the swanky four-star Seascape Manor, Alix finished her vodka and tonic and said, “She’s got something to hide, I’m sure of it. Maybe evidence that could wreck William’s appeal if it came to light. She only talked to me to find out whether I’d discovered a clue to whatever it is she’s trying to keep secret.”

Rupert thrust out his lower lip. It made him look about thirteen. “Maybe she helped her old man to do in the geriatrics. So what?”

She punched him lightly on the stomach and he pretended to double up in pain.

“You don’t understand. This is important to me. This could be such a great programme. What’s it like, being married to a serial killer? Does it come as a terrible shock, to find out the man you’ve been sleeping with has committed a string of murders? Or is it really confirming what, deep down, you already suspected? All those little things you turned a blind eye to, the nagging doubts at last bitterly confirmed.”

Rupert laughed and Alix felt his leg brushing against hers under the table. “This really turns you on, doesn’t it?”

Alix unclipped her hair from the ponytail, letting it fall onto her shoulders. This evening was going to end the way most such evenings ended. More than likely she’d just lie back and think of the BAFTAs. Yeah. Best Documentary, it definitely had a ring to it.

“This could make such great telly,” she said.

“Right,” Rupert said. She could tell from the way he was looking at her that he’d talked enough about murder. “So, Ms. Alix Lawry, what else turns you on?”

Next morning, Alix lingered in bed until it was after ten. She had a hangover and didn’t bother with breakfast. Peel was supposed to be famous for its kippers but the very thought of tucking into dead fish made her want to puke. Rupert left her early: He had meetings to attend and money to make. They’d have one more night together before he went home to his posh flat in Fulham and the accountant girlfriend who, he said not very convincingly, bored him rigid. Alix wouldn’t be sorry to see him go: He wasn’t the least selfish lover she’d ever encountered. Perhaps he might say the same about her. Whatever. They’d helped each other to wile away the time.

She wasn’t sure how long she would stay on the island. The booking was for a week, but more than likely she’d know sooner than that whether a programme about the Ive case was viable. The first time they’d spoken, she’d talked about a fee for cooperation, but Jayne had said at once she wasn’t interested in money. A lie, of course, for everyone was interested in money. All the same, she could understand why Jayne was sensitive. Refusing the tabloid offers to tell her story might have cost her, but it was a good move in terms of maintaining credibility. Once you sold your soul to the red-tops, you were fair game. What chance then of insisting on personal privacy? Jayne was wise to keep her options open. What Alix needed to do was to keep on at her. Everyone was persuadable. It was a question of making her understand that a serious, balanced, and fair examination of series killings from the perspective of the culprit’s (sorry, alleged culprit’s) wife would give her a right to answer everyone who said she must have known.

Alix scrambled out of bed and started getting dressed. She’d always realised it wouldn’t be easy to tempt Jayne into talking. Perhaps she ought to play dirty. It was never the first option; she had professional standards, after all, and before long she would have a reputation as a serious broadcaster to protect. But it wasn’t a last resort, either.

Before leaving London, she’d done her homework. Rosie, poor Rosie, her father’s final victim, had found herself a part-time job in a bookshop. Although Alix didn’t have the name of the place, how many bookshops could there be in somewhere the size of Peel?

Several, as it turned out, and it was a case of fourth-time-lucky when, around lunchtime, Alix arrived at an antiquarian dealer’s dusty place of business in a side street near the harbour. The front window was given over to a display of Hall Caine first editions. Whoever Hall Caine was. There were two big ground-floor rooms, crammed with books from floor to ceiling. The place reeked of mildew. In one of the rooms an old man with a flowing beard was talking to a doubtful customer about a volume of local history.

“It will tell you everything you’d like to know about that remarkable fellow Magnus Barefoot. How he built the first castle...”

Magnus Barefoot? For God’s sake, this place was like something out of Tolkien. Alix moved away. A scruffy sign on a piece of cardboard said Upstairs to Children’s, Reference, and Sport. She climbed the steps carefully, holding on to the wobbly banister. The rickety staircase was a deathtrap.

A young woman stood facing a set of shelves devoted to the likes of Enid Blyton and Captain W.E. Johns. Her ample backside wasn’t flattered by today’s choice of leggings, in hideous mauve. A mobile phone was clamped to her ear.

“Honest, Mum, I’m fine,” she murmured soothingly. “Now, I think I heard a customer coming up. I have to go.”

As Rosie switched the phone off, Alix gave a little cough. Rosie turned to look at her.

“Can I — oh, it’s you!”

The interrupted offer of help was expressed wearily enough; as soon as the girl recognised Alix, her hostility was undisguised. Her heavy frame seemed to stiffen, as if in self-defence. Alix felt a small stab of pity for the girl. She was unattractive and she was branded as her father’s daughter. But pity never got a television show on the screen.

“Hi. I was wondering if we could have a quick word.”

“My mother told you yesterday. We just want to be left alone.”

“I tried to explain to her, Rosie. This programme’s going to be made, whether you and your mum cooperate or not. What I’d like is to make sure you have your say, put forward your dad’s point of view. Tell the viewers how things really were in the Sunny Hours Home. After all, it was a family concern, wasn’t it? Your parents ran the place and you helped to look after the wrinklies. That was the title we were thinking of, by the way. A Family Concern.”

Rosie’s jaw was square and solid. Uncompromising. Loudly, she said, “No way. Why don’t you just go back home and pester someone else? Leave us in peace.”

From downstairs, the Magnus Barefoot fan called, “Is everything all right, Rosie?”

“In case you’re wondering,” Rosie hissed, “he’s a cousin of my mother’s. He was glad to give me a job. So don’t even think of threatening to tell him that I’m the daughter of William Ive. He already knows.”

An afternoon spent asking around convinced Alix that Jayne Ive had made a shrewd move, returning to her native island. No wonder she hadn’t needed to change her name, assume a false personality, and keep on the move, the usual fate of serial killers’ spouses. Plenty of people seemed to think that William Ive might be innocent. There were hints that the relatives of the dead were Scousers on the make, that the defence pathologists might have been right after all and the aged victims had indeed died natural deaths. In the dim and distant past, Jayne Ive’s long-dead parents had been well known on the island, and well regarded. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the trial, she and her daughter were widely regarded as luckless victims of one man’s personal catastrophe.

“One thing puzzles me,” she said to Rupert over dinner that evening. “Why bury herself away here when it’s so far to visit her husband in prison?”

“Well, if she’s among friends...”

“Sure, but she’s also supposed to be the devoted little woman. Yet she hardly ever goes to see him. As for Rosie, someone told me she doesn’t think the girl’s visited him once since the sentence was passed. Not what you’d expect from a devoted family.”

“Why worry?” he asked. “You’re a programme maker, not a detective.”

“I’m not sure this programme’s ever going to get made,” she said. “Too many bloody contradictions.”

“At least you got a nice holiday out of it,” he said. “A short break in Sunset City.”

“Sunset City?”

“Yeah, that’s what they call Peel, haven’t you read the brochure in your room?”

“I seem to remember I was otherwise engaged last night. Too occupied to leaf through the literature, let alone the Bible so kindly left by the Gideons.”

“Well, to you and me this may be a seaside resort, but the Manx see it differently. Something to do with the reddish hue of the sandstone everything’s built of, apparently. Hence ‘sunset.’ And there’s a ruined cathedral in the grounds of the castle. Hence a city.”

“Darling, you know everything,” Alix said teasingly.

“At least, after last night, I know what you like,” he said. And they spoke no more of the Ives that night.

When they drew the curtains the next morning, Alix was surprised that visibility was so poor. It wasn’t September yet.

“I never knew a place like this for fog,” Rupert said. He was an authority on the island’s imperfections. “I tell you, this is nothing. Later in the year...”

She kissed him goodbye when his taxi arrived and let him promise to get in touch when she was back in London. She didn’t think he’d bother. On too much of a good thing with the accountant girlfriend, probably. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

After a leisurely continental breakfast — she still didn’t fancy kippers — she caught the bus which took her back into Peel. The mist was clearing and, according to the forecast, the day was going to be bright, the temperature in the low seventies. Still not exactly Bondi, and the scarf she put on wasn’t intended simply as a fashion accessory. After making her way back up onto the cliffs, she pressed the bell beside Jayne Ive’s front door.

“I thought I told you not to come back.” Jayne had opened the door, but kept it on the latch. Treating her like an unwelcome intruder, someone who might be wanting to ransack the house.

“Jayne, we need—”

“Listen, all I need, all Rosie and I need, is that you leave us alone. She told me that you’d been to see her while she was working. It’s disgusting, the way you people harass children.”

“Jayne, she’s not a child, she’s a grown woman. You had her working for you.” A thought struck her. “Did she guess what was going on?”

The face in the crack darkened with rage. “Get away from here!”

At last, Alix thought, I’ve broken through her defences. No chance of cooperation now, though. So: May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. “What are you hiding, Jayne?”

“I’m not hiding anything! Now go and leave us alone, or I’ll call the police.”

She slammed the door fast and hard, before Alix had time to think up an ironic rejoinder. In frustration, Alix banged hard on the door, but all that happened was that she barked her knuckles and Jayne didn’t answer.

For a minute or so, Alix stood outside the bungalow, swearing quietly to herself. She’d messed up, there was no denying it. She hadn’t handled Jayne Ive well, and without her input, she didn’t have nearly enough material to persuade the powers that be to make a fifty-minute programme about what it’s like being married to a serial killer.

Could she put a different spin on her original idea? Her old boss back in Sydney had told her that was the secret of all the successful programme makers. As she trudged back along the unmade road, she juggled the possibilities in her mind.

The mist had vanished, leaving the skies bright and clear. Slowly, too, the fog in Alix’s head was beginning to disperse. What if Rupert had been half right? Maybe she helped her old man to do in the geriatrics — that was what he had said. What if William Ive had, indeed, been innocent? What if Jayne were responsible for all the crimes?

She quickened her pace. It made a kind of sense, if Jayne were the killer. The forensic evidence in the case hadn’t been up to much. The Devaneys had focused their attention on William Ive, since he had been named in their late mother’s will; maybe when the postmortems had revealed something untoward, the police had taken the easy option. For all anyone knew, William might even have connived in taking the heat off his wife. By all accounts, they were a devoted couple.

Maybe this programme would turn into a detective story. A quest for truth that ended up with the unmasking of an unexpected culprit. Terrific. But how to pin the crimes on a woman who had, as she’d already pointed out, never been charged with anything?

She could see people scrambling over the grassy mound inside the castle walls. The sun was bright on the sandstone of the little houses crammed between St. Patrick’s Isle and the quayside. Sunset City, yes, the nickname made a kind of sense.

Rosie. She was the weak link, Alix was sure of it. Time for another chat.

In the bookshop, the bearded man was extolling a book about Viking burial customs to a wizened little chap in a tweed jacket. No sign of Rosie Ive downstairs.

Alix went up to the first floor. Rosie was bending down to look at the crowded shelves, trying to see where she could squeeze in the scruffy hardbacks she held in each hand. Alix read the titles off the spines. Moominland Midwinter and Spitfire Parade.

“Sorry, it’s me again.”

Rosie straightened, put the books down on a stool. “What is it this time?”

“We never finished our conversation properly and now your mother won’t talk to me at all.”

“So why should I?”

“Because I want you to understand, the two of you can’t hide the truth forever.”

“What are you talking about?” Rosie demanded thickly.

“I’ve figured it out. The two of you were right, up to a point. Your father never killed those old people.”

Rosie’s cheeks had reddened. “What do you want from us?”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Alix was exultant. It was an effort to restrain herself from punching the air.

Rosie took a step towards her. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Just tell me the truth.”

Rosie reached out a muscular arm and seized Alix’s scarf, jerking it tighter around the neck. “I’m saying nothing. Hear me? Nothing!”

And then Alix saw the look in her eyes and knew that she’d got it wrong after all. Not Jayne — Rosie.

“So it wasn’t money,” she said. The scarf was uncomfortable. Rosie wasn’t strangling her, but she felt vulnerable and afraid. “A power thing? A cry for help? Munchausen’s by Proxy, something like that?”

Rosie’s head was very close to hers. The breath of a murderer warmed her cheeks.

“Rosie, you need help.”

“My mum gives me all the help I need. Now leave us alone!”

Rosie let go of the scarf and raised a beefy arm, as if to hit her. Alix stumbled backwards, felt her feet giving way beneath her. She was off the ground now, arms flailing as she grabbed in vain for the railings that guarded the staircase. As she plunged headfirst, she screamed and Rosie cried out something about a terrible accident.

Falling, falling, falling. Any moment now her neck would snap. But what filled her mind at the last was the memory of Jayne Ive’s angry, defiant face. Jayne, who had sacrificed the old folk, and sacrificed her husband, too.

She must have known.