‘But I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Sally argued.
‘Of course you haven’t, but that won’t prevent people from believing you are guilty by association. The internet is a cruel, unforgiving place. And think of your mum. She fostered more than a hundred and fifty young people, but all her achievements will be forgotten because all people will remember is how she was complicit in trying to hide a boy who killed other children and even his own mother.’
‘No one was charged in the case of Callum Baird,’ said Addo. ‘Mightn’t it give his family some closure knowing who killed their son? What if we were in their shoes? Wouldn’t we want to know?’
‘Yes,’ Carolina conceded. ‘But if the police find that woman who helped to kill Damon, and she is charged, it could work in her favour if it becomes public that Damon made a deathbed confession that he was a multiple murderer. Will anyone believe his death is a loss to the world?’
Addo looked ahead at Helena’s house, specifically the window of the second bedroom. ‘And what about the families of those twowomen? Don’t they deserve an explanation for what happened to their daughters? Even Damon wanted the truth to come out.’
Carolina shook her head. ‘I don’t care what he wanted. Sally matters, not the conscience of a dead man.’ She paused before choosing her words carefully. ‘I say we give the police the video link to his death he emailed to Sally, and that is all. Tell them she saw him here once and gave him her email address to keep him updated about Helena. Then we drove here and found him and two other bodies. Let them do the rest.’
‘This doesn’t sit easy with me,’ Addo admitted.
‘Me neither,’ Carolina said, and returned her attention to Sally. ‘But you are the one that matters. This must be your decision, not ours. Presently, the only link between you and Damon is that he once, briefly, was cared for in this house by your mum. There’s no reason for anyone to ever think you and Damon are related.’
‘Then how will I explain why he sent that email?’
‘You met him once. You told him your mum was sick. So perhaps he confessed to you because he couldn’t tell her.’
The car filled with an uneasy silence as Sally considered the pros and cons of her aunt’s suggestion. Finally, she opened the email icon on her phone and deleted two of Damon’s messages before removing them permanently from the trashcan.
‘We need to find his phone and erase them from his email account too,’ Carolina added.
‘I’ll do it,’ Sally said.
‘No, I don’t want you going inside ...’
But Sally was already opening the car door and climbing out before Carolina could finish. Both her aunt and uncle hurried to follow her, their protests ignored.
‘I need to do this,’ Sally explained with such determination, Carolina and Addo knew they’d be unable to change her mind. They anxiously waited downstairs in the hallway for her to return.
Upstairs in the bathroom, Sally came face to face with her brother. He was lying on his back, on the floor, eyes shut tight, his wrists and ankles tied with plastic restraints. She scanned his body from top to toe. His skin was so white it was almost translucent, except for a dry line of vomit beginning at his lips and ending on the tiled floor. That struck her as peculiar. All her research into death had taught her that after more than twelve hours, his skin should be more of a purplish colour by now, more waxy in appearance.
She looked around the room until she found his phone propped up against a bottle of shampoo in a soap dish and partially obscured by a shower curtain. It was pointed at an angle Sally suspected captured the whole room. The dead battery meant it wasn’t recording her. She carried it with her back into the car, plugged it into a charger, waited a few minutes until there was enough power, then deleted two of the emails Damon had sent her. Then she deleted them from the cloud so they were gone for good. Finally, she turned the phone off and handed it to Carolina, who went back upstairs to replace it after both sets of fingerprints had been wiped off with Sally’s handkerchief. All that was left to do was for Addo to call for help and wait.
The police arrived soon after the paramedics, swarming across the area, shutting off parts of the street with blue-and-white tape as forensic tents were erected. Statements were taken by scenes-of-crime officers, with details of how Sally, her aunt and uncle could be contacted again to arrange formal statements. Detectives were told of the friendship between Helena and Damon, but the family didn’t admit to the biological link between the half-brother and sister. And, as Carolina had suggested, the police had no reason to search for one. Helena and Ralf had always kept their relationship under wraps.
Laura Murray – by a coincidence no one could explain – was a volunteer worker at Sally’s mum’s nursing home. She was tracked down through a combination of methods: screengrabbed images of their messages Damon had taken found on his phone; neighbours’ Ring doorbell footage of her leaving Helena’s house; an IP address given to them by the message board operators for the general area where Laura lived; cell tower triangulation recording her movements; and bank statements of the train and London Underground stations her Oyster card tapped in and out of on the day Damon died.
The deaths of Melissa and Adrienne were harder to pin on her. As Carolina had predicted, an internet frenzy began almost immediately, with amateur TikTok sleuths recording hundreds of videos broadcasting their theories as to how the ex-wife and girlfriend of a murder victim – and son of a convicted killer – had all ended up in the same house. Sally spent hours at a time scrolling from one clip to another, fascinated by the speculation.
Meanwhile, Laura had been charged with – and had of course denied – all three killings, despite the overwhelming video evidence against her for Damon’s death. During her trial, the defence tried to paint Laura as a mere fantasist, claiming she thought she was involved in a role-playing game gone awry, and that she hadn’t intended to kill him. When she realised he was dead, she’d given him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And when it failed, she panicked and fled without calling for help.
But Damon was far from innocent too, as it turned out. Police found footage on her phone of him killing a man who appeared to be attacking him in a car park, then dumping his body in a waste bin. Laura refused to explain where the clip came from or who the dead man was. He was later identified when investigators found his vehicle still in the car park. However, despite extensive searches of the Cambridge landfill site, Garry’s body was never recovered.
Damon was identified by the housekeeper of a Dr Fernandez-Jones, who had been attacked in his home office and left for dead. He’d spent eleven months in a coma before sepsis killed him. No records of his involvement with Damon were discovered. More fuel to add to the fires of conspiracy theorists.
Then, midway through the trial, Laura unexpectedly confessed to Damon’s manslaughter. However, she was adamant she had played no part in Melissa and Adrienne’s killings. The only evidence linking her to their deaths were her fingerprints on the plastic sheeting wrapped around both women’s heads, which had been partially opened to reveal their mouths. Additionally, faint traces of Laura’s saliva were discovered on both Melissa and Adrienne’s lips. She didn’t offer an explanation as to how it had got there. After three days of deliberation, a jury found her guilty of the two murders by a majority of ten to two.
Months later now, here in the cemetery, Sally becomes aware of the cold and pulls at the zip of her coat to keep the wind from her neck.
‘Here we are then,’ Carolina says as they reach their destination.
Sally takes in the three small, brown wooden crosses, each with a brass plaque attached containing a different name: Helena Obugachu, Ralf Lister, and Maisy Lister, Ralf’s mother.
They visit West Norwood Cemetery every so often. Helena and Ralf were never reunited in life, but they were in death when her ashes were buried next to his. It was Carolina who contacted Ralf’s mother and asked for permission to do that. Sally considered visiting her grandmother to explain who she was, but her aunt talked her out of it. She feared Sally might be put in a position where she would be asked to help prove her father’s innocence and outed as his daughter. Then, three months later, they read online her grandmother had succumbed to heart failure. With no known living relatives, Carolina and Sally organised the funeral and for herashes to be interred next to her son’s. Damon, however, was given a public-health funeral, one funded by the local council when no one else is willing or able to pay. Sally has no idea what, if anything, happened to his ashes.
Carolina uses her water bottle to fill three small vases, and Sally adds the flowers. She is arranging the second bunch when a figure catches her eye beyond the cemetery wall. A man with dark hair and an angular face is sitting midway back inside a bus. His head is turned towards her, his face expressionless. For a fraction of a second, she forgets Damon has died. He is there before her. Then the vehicle pulls away and he vanishes.
