‘Jesus,’ murmured Priest. ‘It was Karl Jones all along. He engineered the whole thing, right down to soliciting Simeon into The Real Byte’s case.’ And those initials were in the messages between Jones and Simeon on the burner, SNE, HNE, SNE. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. I should have seen that at the time.

‘What the fuck is this all about, Priest?’ Rowlinson demanded, turning to him.

‘Revenge. The whole thing’s about revenge. Dominique is Elinor’s real father, but Alexia wasn’t her mother. Dominique said her real mother had delivered her to them. I think he meant she just turned up one day. I guess that’s how they managed to hide her; no one knew they even had a kid. Dominique confessed to abusing her. He made her dress up as a doll. Alexia helped, although Dominique was the primary abuser. They were both sick perverts. Nobody even knew Elinor existed; she was locked in the cellar that’s now flooded at the house in Tome. But she escaped. When Karl met her, he became infatuated with her, stalked her. Somehow he must have found out about what happened to her as a child and he’s taking revenge on her behalf.’

Rowlinson rubbed his face with his hand. ‘Jesus wept.’

Priest continued to search the room, looking for anything that might give them a clue as to Karl’s next move. Under the desk, he found a dog-eared red folder. Flipping through it, he saw it contained more diary entries, written in the same strange detached way as the one Solly had extracted from Simeon’s phone. There were other documents, too. Medical records, letters from psychiatrists. He didn’t recognise the names of the addressee but Elinor was the subject. A few words leapt out at him: suppressed memories. Reaction to extreme trauma. Amnesia.

So, that’s how he knew.

‘But, if you’re right,’ urged Rowlinson, ‘then everyone’s dead. Simeon, Alexia, Dominique. The job’s done, isn’t it? Who else is there to take revenge out on?’

Priest stopped and stared at the wall of photographs. Who indeed? They had all been disposed of. The man who betrayed Karl in his quest to expose Alexia as a fraud. Alexia herself, who endorsed her husband’s abuse and of course Dominique himself. Unless . . .

He picked out another photograph. It was the same one they had salvaged from Simeon’s secret room, of Julian Greenwood plastered into the foreground of a picture of the Elias house in Tome, near Devil’s Point, where Elinor had supposedly jumped.

‘Oh, no.’ Alarm overcame him as the realisation hit home. ‘Tiff, call Missing Persons. Find out if anyone has reported Julian missing.’

Chapter 58

Chapter 58

Helena Greenwood’s world had collapsed around her.