It smelled like exactly what Con needed. He watched it for a moment, then took it. ‘It’s fine, they’ll find Eliza,’ he said, taking a sip. ‘We’ll get answers. We’ll save the girls. That’s all that matters.’

Outside, Sarge kept barking.

CHAPTER 49

ELIZA

Leaving Con and Murphy in the kitchen, Eliza headed towards the upstairs bathroom and locked the door behind her. Her rough new haircut tickled the back of her neck.

She put her glasses back on and allowed her bloody reflection a brief smile.

Next she took down the first-aid kit, dabbing cream on her cuts and then covering them with plastic plasters. She wiped the remaining blood from her face and applied some of Monica’s gold lipstick, gold eyeshadow. Then she put in some big gold hoop earrings.

Tom’s car key was already safely stowed in her dress pocket: she’d taken it off the hook when she’d vomited. It was time to go for a drive. She had time to go over what happened, and to plan her next steps. Permission to do whatever it takes.

Finally, she’d had some good luck.

She hadn’t expected to find Butch at her house that morning, although of course she was on his side – she had never believed Jasmine’s lies about him raping Sara. Jasmine was a two-faced, double-crossing, murderous bitch.

Butch had been begging for help, but he’d been so drunk he hadn’t even remembered the letter from Sara, even though he was the one who’d told Eliza about it, years ago. When she offered to retrieve it from his house, since he was obviously too drunk to drive, he took her up on the offer immediately.

And so she’d driven to Butch’s house. She’d killed one of their cats, the fat black-and-white one, and spread its blood and guts all over Butch’s bed. Then she’d written the message on the wall – 3 down, 1 to go – and cut up some of Jasmine’s clothes, ending it all with her tribute to Denni: one of her Hungry Man warding statues. She had several of them hidden in the spare tyre compartment of her car.

When she got back to her house, it was easy to trick the drunken Butch into lying down on her bed, handcuff him with Gabriella’s handcuffs, tie up his feet and gag him, cut all his clothes off, and then hit him a few times with the cricket bat for effect.

Her hope was that Murphy would burst through the door and, in shock and unable to regulate the overwhelming emotion, kill Butch. With Butch out of the picture, unable to defend himself, it’d be all the easier for the cops to suspect him of taking the girls.

If it came to the worst, she’d thought she could probably kill both brothers – make it look like a murder–suicide.