‘Help you? My best friend … stabbed like a piece of meat. Left to bleed out, a war hero …’

‘Yes, he was, Richard. So you will see that your actions have consequences. You should also know that inaction has consequences for you now. The first thing you can do is drop that knife.’ He gestured towards Richard’s left hand now, his knuckles just as white, his grip just as tight. Richard hesitated, but only for a moment. The knife fell with a muted thud onto the carpeted floor of his own living room. The man had taken one of Richard’s T-shirts from a drawer upstairs. He wrapped the knife in it now. It was a chef’s knife, the handle heavy with a fake pearl effect that matched the rest in Glenn Morris’s kitchen.

‘I cleaned the blade after. I used the sink at your friend’s house but it was just a rinse. You can’t get all traces of blood off without a strong bleach. The police will find Glenn Morris’s blood on this. Now they’ll find your fingerprints and fibres from your clothing too. You and Glenn were friends but you argued and it got out of hand; you stabbed him to death. That’s not a very hard sell, Richard, not when they see the way you despatched Danny Evans. Or you can assist me with another good deed, one that benefits the entire world, and the police will never know of any of it.’

‘Good deed? What good deed?’

He stepped forward, the gun still gripped firmly by his side. He had been battling his emotion, the rage that wouldn’t go away, like it was now a permanent layer just under the skin. But it wasn’t for Richard, at least it was never supposed to be. He managed to swallow it back down so he could speak.

‘Danny Evans was just the start. Tomorrow morning we wipe the rest of that poisonous family from the face of the earth.’

Chapter 51

‘It’s OK, you don’t need to talk.’ But Callie was trying, between sips of water and gulps of air. Nurse Maggie Watkins had been at Callie’s bedside when Sharon and Jamie had arrived, her face lighting up the moment they had come into sight. All Maggie had got back was a terse grimace from them both. The nurses might have seen something similar before with families arriving in this situation, barely able to believe that it was true, that they might be able to speak to their loved one again after so much time with nothing but hope. The truth for Sharon and her son was so much more.