‘That’s Michael’s car,’ Theo said as they drove into the car park outside the church, ‘and that one belongs to Jones.’ Tregalles swung into a space next to Mike’s car. He had just opened the door when another car swung in behind them and Paget got out.
‘Please stay where you are,’ Tregalles said to Fulbright as he got out of the car, but he might as well have saved his breath, because Theo was already scrambling out. There was no time to argue. Tregalles ran up the steps and pulled the door open. Molly darted past him and headed for the vestry, but a shout from Fulbright stopped her.
‘The tower!’ he called, pointing to a curtain pulled aside to reveal an open door. ‘They’ll be up there.’ He started running, but Paget, half a step behind him, grabbed his arm and swung him round. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘This is our job.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Fulbright protested hoarsely. ‘He’ll kill my son. I have to be there . . .’ But Paget was already moving up the steps, and Fulbright’s words were lost as the others crowded through. The climb was steep and the steps were worn, but when Molly glanced back, she saw Fulbright close behind her, panting hard but gamely coming on.
The door at the top was open. Paget stepped out cautiously, eyes searching for Jones and Fulbright, but the roof appeared to be empty. He heard a noise to his left and turned to see the two men standing with their backs to one of the openings in the crenellated parapet, and he caught his breath.
Mike Fulbright’s wrists were bound behind his back with cable ties. A short, thin rope led from his wrists to a noose around his neck, forcing him to hold his hands high against his shoulder blades to prevent the noose from choking him. If he so much as relaxed his arms, the noose would cut into his throat and strangle him. His ankles were tied together loosely so that, at best, he could only shuffle. Duct tape covered his mouth, and a white dressing on his forehead was held in place by another strip of duct tape. Standing beside him, Peter Jones had a firm grip on Mike’s collar.
Behind him, Paget heard Theo Fulbright suck in his breath.
‘Stay where you are!’ Jones called sharply. ‘One move towards me and he goes over.’
‘We’re not moving,’ Paget said quietly, ‘but I’d feel a lot happier if you would move away from the parapet, and loosen the rope around Mike’s neck.’
‘I’ll bet you would,’ said Jones. ‘And who the hell are you?’
‘Detective Chief Inspector Paget. I can understand—’
‘How I feel? Is that what you were going to say, Detective Chief Inspector Paget? You don’t understand anything about me.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Paget conceded, ‘but don’t you think there have been enough killings? Have any of them taken the pain away? I don’t think so,’ he continued, ‘and neither will killing one more.’
Peter Jones shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘You’re right about the pain,’ he conceded, ‘but you’re forgetting satisfaction, and killing every one of them has given me a great deal of satisfaction.’ His eyes flicked back and forth across the group. ‘I hadn’t anticipated an audience for this final act,’ he said. ‘This was to have been a quiet affair between Mike and me, but now you’re here, I want you to know the truth about the way my daughter died. Sixteen years old,’ he said softly, ‘and this pitiful specimen of manhood and his gang of followers set out to rape her. Up here on this very roof.’
Mike started to make choking noises, but Jones jerked the rope and said, ‘Keep your hands up! I haven’t finished with you yet.’
‘You can’t know that—’ Paget began, but Jones cut him off with a wave of his hand and said, ‘I wouldn’t have known it if it hadn’t been for Billy Travis sniping at Mike on the bus coming home from Chester the other week, then having an attack of conscience and spilling his guts out to Phillips. But Phillips had had a bit too much to drink, so he fell asleep and didn’t hear what Billy was saying. But I did. I was sitting in the seat behind them, and I heard enough to make me want to know the rest.’ He paused, and his eyes drifted for a moment as if he were looking at a scene from the past. ‘I was never satisfied with the coroner’s verdict,’ he continued. ‘I knew Angelica could never have killed herself, so when I heard Billy talking about what really happened, I wanted to know everything. That’s why Billy was the first, and he did tell me everything before he died. He told me how Mike boasted he’d have my little girl, and told Billy and the others to come and help hold her down, and then they could have her as well when he’d finished with her.’
Jones pulled savagely on the rope. A horrible gurgling sound tried to break through the duct tape, and Mike’s knees started to buckle, but Jones jerked him upright again.
‘I got them all,’ he continued. ‘Travis, Moreland, Whitelaw and Rice.’ The names rolled off his tongue like a judge pronouncing the death sentence.
‘But Rice?’ Paget said, looking desperately for a way to keep the man talking and a way to distract him. ‘Even if what you say is true, what did Connie Rice have to do with any of this?’
‘Oh, I’m so glad you asked that,’ Jones said quietly, ‘because I want Theo to hear this. Connie was the Judas goat. Mike, here, promised to have sex with her if she would get Angelica up here for him and the others. Billy said he even lied about that. He said Mike couldn’t stand the girl, but he could get her to do anything for him.’
His voice rose. ‘Take a good look, Theo,’ he shouted. ‘This is the son you were so proud of. This is the piece of shit who drove my daughter off this tower, just as I’m going to do to your son, Theo.’ Standing as he was, inches from an opening in the parapet wall, it was only Jones’s steadying hand that prevented Mike from going backwards over the edge.
Paget made to step forward, but Theodore Fulbright put out an arm to stop him. ‘You’re wrong, Peter,’ he called. ‘Mike didn’t do that. He wasn’t even here when Angelica went over. It was me. I did it. I didn’t mean to; it was an accident, but she wouldn’t stop screaming, and—’
‘Aha-a-a-a!’ The sound coming from Jones was like a long drawn-out sigh. It seemed to hang in the air between them. ‘I wondered if you would have the guts to admit that,’ he said softly. ‘Billy told me you came up and caught them and chased them all down. So what happened, Theo? Run in the family, does it? A taste for under-age girls?’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Theo said wearily. ‘I caught Connie as she came down the tower. I knew she was up to no good, so I made her tell me what was going on, and she said the boys were up there “having a bit of a game with Angelica”, as she put it.’ Theo closed his eyes as if trying to shut out the past. ‘I went up to stop it. I was trying to save your daughter. I sent the boys down, and I tried my best to calm Angelica down, but she was hysterical. She wouldn’t listen to me. She kept screaming that she was going to tell everyone about Michael. I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn’t listen. She would have destroyed Michael. We struggled . . . I hit her; hit her with this.’ He held up his prosthetic arm.
‘I knew I’d killed her,’ Fulbright continued. ‘There was no pulse. There was nothing I could do for her. But I couldn’t leave her there. There would be questions, an investigation, so . . .’
‘So you threw her over the wall,’ Jones finished for him. His voice hardened. ‘She was sixteen years old, Theo, and you threw her off this roof like a piece of garbage. Did you go to the inquest?’ he asked abruptly, then answered his own question. ‘No, you did not! But I did, and I remember your name being mentioned as the pastor of this church, and, according to the statement read into the record, you told the police you’d already gone home for the evening and had no idea that Angelica was still in the church when you left.
‘So you didn’t hear the two women who were in the graveyard at the time testify that they heard Angelica scream a second or two before she landed on the pavement below. She was alive, Theo. My daughter was alive when you threw her off this tower to save your son’s worthless skin. Angelica died screaming, Theo,’ he said softly, ‘just as your son will die screaming when he follows her.’
Jones tore the tape from Mike Fulbright’s mouth in one swift movement, then, almost casually, placed a hand on his face and pushed. It was over in seconds . . . the bone-chilling scream and then silence.
‘Now you can suffer as I have, Theo,’ said Jones, then he, too, was gone.