Their Lost Daughters (DI Jackman & DS Evans #2)(86)

Jackman lifted a finger to his lips. ‘It’s Groves, okay? And yes, we’d be grateful for your opinion. I’ll just ask you to keep quiet and observe, that’s all.’

*

Philip Groves — Marie still found it hard to think of him as Mulberry — sat across the table from them. He looked hollow, as if all the life had been drained out of him.

Jackman told him what they knew of his past, and about his brother Toby’s death.

Finally he said, ‘You are right, I didn’t kill the girls. I found their bodies and took them to a place of safety.’ His voice was soft, gentle, and terribly tired. ‘That’s all I ever did. I took them from a world of hurt, where people didn’t treat them right. I looked after them.’

‘They had families, Philip, people who loved and missed them.’ Marie spoke softly.

‘No they didn’t, Sergeant.’ He spoke calmly. ‘If they had cared so much, their children would not have run away or been left so vulnerable that some man could take them, defile them and kill them. I was their real family. I loved them, and in the end, I was all they needed.’

‘How did you find them, Philip?’ Jackman asked. ‘You don’t just find dead bodies.’

‘Whoever killed them left them in the old ruin on the marsh. In the small cellar room that leads to my tunnel.’

‘Who was it? You must have seen him leave the bodies. And he must have known what you were doing, mustn’t he? He dumps a dead body, then when he returns a few months later with the next one, lo and behold, it’s gone!’

Philip shook his head. ‘I never saw him, and I have no idea what he thought about the girls disappearing, if indeed he even realised. You saw that derelict building, Sergeant. As far as I could tell, he just opened the door and pushed them through into the darkness.’

‘I’m sorry, Philip, but I suggest that you did know who it was. You may not have seen him, but from the things he did to those girls, you knew.’

Philip stared down at the table.

‘Come on. You are an educated man, Philip. You and your brothers and sisters suffered terrible, terrible hurt at the hands of your parents. You knew that one of your brothers was so damaged that he had the capacity to kill. Didn’t you?’

‘You were just cleaning up after him, weren’t you? Protecting him, like you and Benedict have always done,’ Marie added.

‘I didn’t know who killed my lovely girls, and I didn’t want to know. I simply took them home and gave them back their dignity.’

‘And is that what you did to Fleur? You took her home?’

Philip’s eyes flew wide open and his head came up sharply.

After a moment he said, ‘I saw him. I saw our father digging the hole in the family graveyard. He was digging it where we used to bury the animals.’

‘You saw him bury your sister?’

Groves nodded. ‘As soon as he had finished filling in the grave, I promised Fleur that I would take her home one day. I told her that she’d sleep in soft sheets, in a proper bed, with sweet-smelling flowers at her side. She would never spend another night on the cold floor of a stinking cage.’

Jackman glanced at Marie. She was forcing back tears.

Why would you dig up a body? Gary had asked. Now he knew.

‘And you did go back for her, when you knew that Alderfield was about to be bulldozed?’

‘I went back as soon as Benedict acquired Windrush. I was going to do it earlier, but I had nowhere to take her that was safe and permanent.’

‘You did it alone?’

Philip mumbled, ‘Yes, alone. I never told the others about her grave.’

‘Why not? You were all so close, surely they would have understood,’ said Marie.

‘I couldn’t add to their distress. How could I give them even more heartbreak to bear? They had been told she was ill and had died. That was enough, especially for the little ones. Only I knew that she had died at our father’s hand. It was one burden I had to carry alone.’ Philip looked at Marie. ‘We have secrets, Sergeant. Each one of us is troubled. We are different from other people and always will be. That is why we needed to have a place of our own. A place where no matter what we did, we would not be judged. The world would be safe from us, and we would be safe from a world that could never understand what our parents had turned us into. Windrush was to be that sanctuary.’

There were things Jackman did not understand. ‘But, Philip, you went through university! You are a veterinary surgeon. That takes a lot of doing, many years of study. You are a professional, intelligent, full of compassion and . . .’ He ran out of words.

‘I’m not an evil man, Inspector, but I grew up in a house of evil. I am a freak.’

‘If you didn’t kill those girls, what about the name tags over the beds? How did you know their names and their dates of birth? How did you know they were all born on a Wednesday?’ Marie spoke so coldly that even Jackman was taken aback.

Philip swallowed. ‘I . . .’

‘I’ll fill in the gaps, shall I?’ Marie leaned forward. ‘You are the mender, aren’t you? You are the healer. You know everything there is to know about your brothers. You knew exactly which one of them had lost control, and you knew why. But this time you couldn’t fix him. As he grew up, he became more and more dangerous, didn’t he?’ Marie’s eyes bored into Philip’s. ‘And he was fixated by girls, little ones and older ones, as long as they were born on a Wednesday, like him and his sister. Fleur.’