PROLOGUE
AFFIRMATIONS AND ACCUSATIONS
Breathing to calm my nerves, I went over my affirmations:you are safe, you are loved, you have nothing to hide. Well, safe except for the fact I was being accused of committing the brutal murders of ten of my family members in cold blood. Sure, there may have been times I’d daydreamed about sticking Tristan’s netherrod in a chappy chopper or flailing the twins alive while they cried for mercy, but how anyone could thinkImight actually have gone through with those things I’ll never know.
Detective Chief Inspector Randolf clicked the button to begin the formal interview. I cleared my throat and attempted to swallow, my tongue unwieldy and coarse inside my mouth. Reaching for the glass of water, I failed miserably at keeping my hands from shaking. I kept my eyes fixed on the detective, determined to prove my innocence.
‘This interview is being tape-recorded and may be given in evidence if your case is brought to trial. We are in an interview room at Shrewsbury Police Station. The date is the second of January, 2026. The time by my watch is two thirty-four p.m. I am Detective Chief Inspector Lakeith Randolf and with me is Detective Sergeant Helen Birch. We will now continue with the interview.’
I nodded, smiling enthusiastically so that Randolf and Birch could see how helpful and how veryclearlyinnocent I was. But the mask was threatening to slip. Six hours into this interview and I was seriously beginning to flag. My mothy-smelling solicitor shifted in the seat next to me, readjusting his crotch. I wrung my fingers in my lap, desperate not to let my irritation show.
‘Go through with us again, if you will, your movements the morning of the fifteenth December, 2025. Describe for me where you and the members of the family were and what you were doing the morning that George Weiss fell from the roof.’
I shifted in my seat. ‘As I’ve said before, Detective Inspector, it was around ten or eleven in the morning, I can’t exactly remember. I had gotten up early that day, I like to get in a swim in before seven, you see… Anyway, after I’d finished showering, I headed to the kitchen and had granola and a banana. Everyone else was still in bed—’ I racked my brains. Everything was such a muddle. So much had happened… so many deaths. I could hardly keep track of one day to the next. Which murder was he asking about again?
‘What about the time of the murder? Where were you?’
‘I don’t know, we were all in the house, all of us, and then I heard shouting. So, I suppose I was in the kitchen, yes, that’s right, the kitchen. He had fallen. It just looked like an accident,’ I protested.
‘You were in the kitchen of Weiss Manor?’
‘Yes… no.’ I rubbed my fingers into my temples. This was impossible. I must be in deep shock or denial because I couldn’t remember.
‘You were alone?’
‘Yes. No one was around. I don’t know where they were. But then I heard a funny sort of buzzing. Then, the lights went bright for a moment and they all shorted– everything just cut off suddenly. Then I heard… I heard a commotion outside.’
Randolf leaned forward, his tired dark eyes surveying me intently. ‘And what exactly did you hear?’
‘Yelling. Someone yelling to come quick. At first, I thought perhaps a car had hit something in the street.’
‘And then?’
‘I rushed out of the kitchen and into the foyer. Half the house was already there when I opened the front door.’ There was no hiding my trembling hand this time as I reached for my glass and drained the lot.
‘The sun had fully risen by then.’ I heard my voice saying the words, but I sounded very far away. ‘I remember that because steam was rising… It was cold, you see. It took me a moment to realise who was lying there. His hair was standing up,’ I raised my hands over my head to demonstrate. ‘Smoke rising off him, and a– a… sizzling sound. Then I noticed his leg at a very funny angle, and the smell of burning…’ My voice cracked with emotion. ‘Sorry.’
‘Is going over this again really necessary?’ the moth-man chimed in. ‘My client is fatigued.’
Randolf sighed and gave Birch a pointed look. Without a word, she rose to her feet and left the room. ‘Let the tape show that Detective Sergeant Birch has left the interview room,’ Randolf continued. ‘As I’m sure you are aware, you have been unable to provide us with one solid alibi. Not one person who can corroborate your whereabouts at the time of death of not one, not two, not three, but ten of your family members.’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ I replied a tad snippily as I rubbed the grit from my eyes. As if I wasn’t aware of the things that had happened merely a week ago. There was no need for him to lay it on so thick.
The door opened and Birch scurried back in, clutching what looked like some sort of transparent, zip-lockedsandwichbag.
‘Let the record show that Detective Sergeant Birch has reentered the room, and has submitted evidence lot 279, collected on the first oft January. The evidence bag contains a small black notebook.’ Randolph nodded to Birch in thanks as she sat down. He held up the sandwich bag. ‘Do you recognise this?’
I squinted hard. I’d seen many little black books in my life, so it was hard to say.
‘No– I mean yes, I’ve seen notebooks like that, but I don’t currently own one myself.’
He let out a frustrated sigh at my non-committal answers. He produced a thin brown folder and slid out of it two pieces of paper, which he held up for me to see.
‘For the benefit of the tape, I am now holding up photocopies taken of the contents of the notebook, of what appear to be diary entries dated between the twelfth of December 2025 and the twenty-fourth of December 2025.’ He tapped the greyish photocopies with a long finger. ‘Do you recognise this handwriting?’
‘Umm,’ I said, my composure threatening to break.
‘Not at all?’ He procured my witness statement and put the papers side by side. The handwriting was uncannily similar, blocky capitals scrawled with blue pen. The tail on theywas different on some of the lettering in the diary– a slight curve to it when mine always pointed straight down.
