And some are not, Penrose thought. ‘Did Richard Hartley admit that he knew what Alex had done?’

‘No. He swore she’d never said a word to him, but he’d have said anything last night. He was begging for his life.’

A note of doubt had crept into his voice. ‘You could hardly bear to look at him this morning, when I asked you to photograph his body,’ Penrose said.

‘Of course I couldn’t. I thought it was a trap.’

‘There was more to it than that. You were worried that he’d been telling the truth, weren’t you? The more you thought about it, the more you began to suspect that Alex had fooled you into killing for her all over again.’ 274

‘No! Why would she tell me that Hartley knew if he didn’t?’

‘To stop you coming here. To protect herself. She’d been lying for years to do that, so why baulk at it now? Richard’s was a horrific death, Jack. You didn’t just kill him. You tormented and humiliated him – a good man, who had always tried to do his best. How could you let yourself be manipulated like that?’ Penrose heard the fury in his own voice and knew that he had overstepped the mark; Naylor’s devastation was obvious, and nothing he said could make the man’s remorse any more profound than it was already. In truth, it was himself that he was angry with, not Jack Naylor: they should all have asked more questions about what happened that Christmas, and he should have got to the truth eighteen years ago – not now, when it was far too late.

Naylor picked up the snowman from the table and looked at the bloodstained cotton. ‘I thought of myself differently after Alex told me the truth,’ he said. ‘Does that make sense? Until then, I’d killed but I wasn’t a killer. There was a reason for it, and I could always tell myself that it was for the best, no matter how terrible it seemed at the time. All that changed last week. I killed my mother, the person I loved most in all the world, who loved me. Nothing else mattered after that, or at least I thought it didn’t. By the time I got here, it was just the end.’

‘You didn’t kill Mrs Soper, though, did you?’ Penrose asked, and Naylor shook his head.

He got up and walked over to the Christmas tree that stood in the corner, and Penrose watched as he rubbed the pine needles between his finger and thumb and smelt their scent. ‘My mother loved Christmas, did I ever tell you that?’ 275

‘I don’t think so, but I remember the tree you had and how much love had gone into it. I remember the presents.’

‘We never opened them because of what we thought she’d done. She worked so hard to get them for us, and they were just thrown away. It’s funny, isn’t it, the things that haunt you. After Alex told me what had happened, all I could think about was how ungrateful that was, and how hurt Ma would have been if she’d known.’ He brushed a hand across his cheek and turned to Penrose. ‘Every year it comes back, you know. Every year, when the music starts and the lights go up, I can’t wait for Christmas to be over. It’s actually quite a comfort to know I’ll never see another one.’