‘I assume you grew up in an abusive household? Given the way your father mutilated you and your siblings before he died,’ Jake said.

Kelly lifted his chin. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’

‘Your obsession with removing women’s fingernails comes from him, right?’

Kelly’s eyes bore into Jake’s, unblinking.

‘Didn’t it hurt your mother when he did that to her? Didn’t she scream?’

Kelly’s head moved down a fraction again.

‘If you could see how badly it hurt her, why would you turn around and do it to young girls?’

‘I tried doing it to Maria, but she threatened to leave.’

‘But why do it at all?’

‘They deserve it.’ Kelly shook Evelyn by the neck again, contempt playing across his face. ‘All of them. It was her fault.’

‘Your mother? How?’

‘If she’d just done what he told her to he wouldn’t have had to beat us.’

‘Is that what he said?’

‘Every time she didn’t keep the house the way he told her to, didn’t make dinner the way her told her to, he would belt one of us.’

‘How was that her fault?’

‘He would make us pick the strap he used …’ Kelly seemed lost in the past, though he didn’t loosen his grip on Evelyn’s neck. ‘If we chose the thinner belt it hurt more, but there were fewer strokes across our backs.’

‘Are you saying she told him to do it?’

Kelly sneered. ‘She didn’t tell him to do anything. She was weak. All she did was stand there crying and watch him belt us.’

‘Then why do you blame her?’

‘If she had just done what he told her to, he wouldn’t have hurt any of us!’

Evelyn managed a few gasps of air, her face blooming red.

Nothing Jake had said so far had provoked Kelly sufficiently to move from his position. Where should he try to take this?

‘That doesn’t explain why, as an adult, you chose to rip out the fingernails of innocent girls.’

The colour began to recede from Evelyn’s face again.

‘I told you, they deserved it.’

‘Why?’

‘Women let evil into the world.’

Jake was willing to believe religious dogma lay at the heart of the O’Briens’ sickening crimes, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with Kelly’s depravity.

‘That’s not it.’

Kelly’s face curled into a self-satisfied smile. ‘If you ever tried it, you’d understand.’

‘Explain it to me.’

‘It’s the resistance to the pliers, the pop when the nail pulls away from the bed, the blood that wells up then drips from their fingertips …’

Was every man in this town a sadistic arsehole?

‘And that’s the secret you were afraid Ava might reveal, wasn’t it?’

‘No.’