I managed it before, when I was thirty-four years old. I’m not fancying my chances now, though. Especially after last night’s abduction. I’ve taken a battering, and my bones ache. I’ve certainly no strength in my muscles to dig. Not like before, when adrenaline gave a helping hand.

This killing is different. There’s no emotional connection.

It feels good, in a way, to have my family here with me. We’re all together. Me and my boys.

I didn’t think I’d ever have this opportunity again.

Shame it took another man’s death to get it.

Chapter One Hundred and Three

Amber

Families who kill together, stay together.

Not a phrase I’ve ever heard before, but one that springs to mind now as we stand in the kitchen after cleaning ourselves up. The exhaustion, the enormity of what we’ve done, is imprinted on our faces, evident in our fatigued bodies; the slouched postures outward signs of the task we’ve just carried out.

‘Thank you for going along with it, Tim,’ Barb says. ‘Patrick wouldn’t have even thought twice if he’d known it was me who ended Bern. We gave him a chance, this way, didn’t we? He could’ve agreed not to go to the police, to have kept the secret, for your sake. I thought he was about to.’

‘So did I at one point,’ Tim says. ‘But, he had a bee in his bonnet, and he wasn’t leaving this house, or Stockwood, until he’d got what he came for.’

‘Justice?’ I ask.

‘He believed something more happened to Bern than I’d ever let on; he felt he had a score to settle – so yes, I suppose he was after some form of justice for the man. And I think he needed to be seen to have admitted his guilt for the part he played. For running away from it all. I guess he thought then his sins would be forgiven, and he’d have a chance at going to heaven,’ Barb says. ‘Or some such twaddle.’

I’m guessing Barb doesn’t want to think about what will happen when she dies – doesn’t want to believe her actions will mean she doesn’t get to go on to a better place. She needs to protect herself from those beliefs given she took a man’s life. We’ve all now had a hand in another person’s death, though. Reconciliating that with my own belief system will be difficult, but I’ll have to try.

‘It’s a huge risk, burying him here, too,’ Nick says. ‘We don’t have a clue who he told about his visit. When he doesn’t return, someone might come looking for him.’