Pathetic slaps rang in the air. Elspeth’s hands, Meggy realised, grabbing uselessly at the cord around her neck.

‘Please … Daddy,’ Fergus said.

‘Okay, okay, please, Daddy,’ Meggy cried.

‘Please, Daddy, even though I don’t deserve it.’

Meggy let out a howl. ‘Please, Daddy, even though I don’t deserve it!’ she screamed.

There was silence, a whisper of plastic on plastic, then the whoosh of air and a gasping, choking gobble of oxygen.

‘Elspeth,’ Meggy sobbed, rushing forward, hands reaching out to the source of the sound, throwing herself to the floor at the woman’s side and burying her head into her chest. ‘Please don’t die, please don’t.’

‘Say, thank you, Daddy,’ Fergus hissed into her ear.

Meggy paused. She was beaten. They all were.

‘Thank you, Daddy,’ she whispered in return.

Elspeth was gasping air into her lungs, her hands clutching her throat for support. Fergus gently took each of Meggy’s hands and drew them behind her back, finding another use for the cable, connecting wrists and ankles as he looped and knotted.

‘I haven’t forgotten you, Xavier,’ he called up. ‘I think it’s nearly time. This body won’t last much longer, and we still have things to do. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Let me see to my girls first. I can forgive Elspeth. She’s suffered enough, or she’s going to. Families make sacrifices for one another. It’ll all be worthwhile in the end.’

Chapter Thirty-Three

‘What do you mean, they won’t accept my profile?’ Connie demanded.

Baarda sat on the edge of a desk in the incident room and glared at the few other police officers until they decided it would be politic to leave.

‘The superintendent had to run the profile past some other people. One of them is a psychiatrist who regularly works with the police. He apparently did some research of his own and found that Cotard’s syndrome is something of a fallacy, because it doesn’t appear in the International Classification of Diseases register as maintained by the World Health Organization.’

‘That doesn’t mean it’s not documented elsewhere.’

‘It’s also not mentioned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the reference point for many pharmaceutical companies and legislature. The feeling was that if a court wouldn’t accept the existence of such a disorder, then it was a waste of time to base a profile on it when resources are so short.’

‘So they think this is some sort of Wild West quackery from the crazy American?’

‘No one doubts your experience or your qualifications, Connie, but we’re trying to present them with a disorder that goes by the alternative name walking corpse syndrome. They’re struggling with the science, not you,’ Baarda said.