TOM PRESSES THE GUN INTO Lily’s back, marching her along the corridor. He kicks open the door to her bedroom and, keeping the gun trained on her, ushers her in. He takes the key out of the keyhole and pockets it.
‘What now?’ Lily asks.
Tom grabs her desk chair and places it in the middle of the room, away from anything she could grab. ‘Sit down and face me. Keep your hands in your lap.’
Lily places her hand on her legs, her thumbs pressed against her tummy for reassurance, for both her and Bean. Bean flips, as if to reassure Lily, too.
‘Presumably you’re going to keep me here till tomorrow, then get me to find the last key, and kill me.’
‘I really don’t want to kill you,’ Tom says.
‘But I’d have solved all the clues,’ Lily replies.
Tom comes a few paces towards her. He places the gun in his coat pocket. ‘We get along, don’t we?’
‘I thought we did.’
‘I wasn’t joking before – we could run the place together. And if we get our stories straight, the police will place it all on Sara and Gray. The batteries I took from the cars are in Sara’s wardrobe, along with the carving knife she used to kill Philippa. Gray’s fingerprints are on the chainsaw he used to cut down the tree and the branch. I also made him pick up the weapon I used to kill Ronnie, and then him. We could say he threatened us with it, and Sara felt she had to kill him to make him stop.’
‘Gray doesn’t deserve any of that,’ Lily says.
Tom shrugs. ‘Gray’s dead.’
‘Because you killed him.’
Tom sighs. ‘You’re an intelligent girl. There wasn’t anything else I could do.’
Lily’s fingers form into a claw at the word ‘girl’. She bets that when she replays their conversations – as she hopes she’ll get to one day – he’ll always be full of these kind of micro-manipulations. Mrs Castle was right, she is a terrible judge of character.
‘He was going to tell you everything,’ Tom continues. ‘Sara didn’t have him under control anymore.’
‘She’d lost her usefulness.’
‘I knew I was going to have to kill her when she attacked you. She was acting on emotion.’
‘So you came in here to stop her attacking me.’
‘Wasn’t me,’ Tom replies. ‘Must have been Gray. He had a soft spot for you. In his head. At least he has now.’ He laughs. Lily can’t believe that she ever loved how it sounded. Now it feels like a scraper on an iced windscreen. ‘His eyes really did grey over, you know, when he died. I’m not religious, but I watched him leave. Another ghost for Endgame.’
‘Didn’t you love Sara at all?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. She had no discretion, you saw her, kept pawing at me in the nursery. She was a weak link. She’d never have stood up to police questioning.’
‘And I will?’ Lily asks.
‘You are the most contained, locked-in person I’ve ever met. You teem with emotion but don’t show it. Under investigation you’d be cool, restrained and clipped. You’d be an English murder queen.’ Tom kneels down in front of her in a display of openness, trust and worship. His hand, though, is still on the gun.
‘And what do I get for going along with it?’
‘Half a house?’ Tom says, laughing. ‘The chance to get out of London and back where you belong? To let your little girl have a place to run around and play in? Or is that not enough?’
‘I want to know one more thing,’ Lily says. ‘Did you kill Liliana?’
Tom shakes his head sadly. ‘That was all Sara. She got Aunt Lil into a state by telling her what we were going to do to her family, then she took away her inhaler. Her own mother; I mean, that’s colder than the ice house. Simple. Effective. Hard to prove anything other than an accident. We didn’t have to bribe any coroner. Oh, yes, I saw what you were hiding from me the night I stayed in your room.’
‘I know Sara hated how Liliana treated her, but why would she want her dead?’
‘She wanted the house, or more importantly, she didn’t want anyone else getting it. She thought she could prevent the Christmas Game by killing Aunt Lil. Turns out she was wrong, Aunt Lil had put things into place already but I’m glad she did, because thanks to you I’ve recently come to suspect that—’
‘Liliana killed your parents. The “accidental” slicing of brakes. Mum’s yellow ribbon left in your mum and dad’s car.’
‘Told you that you were brilliant,’ Tom replies.
‘You know why she killed them, then, if you saw the coroner’s report?’
‘Dad killed Mariana. But then I’ve always kinda known that.’
‘What?’ Lily says. She feels as cold as if she were in the ice house.
‘I found Dad making fake blood on that Christmas Eve. He said he was going to do a magic show, but then he woke me up when he came into the adjoining room at 2 a.m., Boxing Day morning. When he’d gone to sleep, I went into our bathroom. I found fake blood running down the sink, and a bloody razor on the side of the bath. The next morning, they’d gone, and I found out about Aunt Mariana. You’re not the only genius in the family. Maybe with all that talent I’ll win the Christmas Game tomorrow.’
‘We’ll win, you mean,’ Lily says.
‘Exactly,’ Tom says. He stands up and removes a piece of fluff from his knees. ‘Now, you are going to get some sleep. I need that brain of yours firing for the last clue. I’ll lock you in, of course, keep you safe. Might even sleep outside your room to be sure.’ He leans forward and kisses her on the cheek, while the gun points at her belly.
There’s no way he’s going to let her, or her Bean, live.
The door closes behind him, the key turns.