The Black Sheep

  Perry snorts. ‘Like father, like son. Sodding fantasist.’

  Still confused, I take a step away from them.

  ‘I’m going to get Ruby and Harry,’ I say. My best chance now is to bluff my way out. ‘You need to let us go before the police get here. They’re on their way, they’ll be here any second.’

  ‘The police?’ Perry clutches wildly at his forehead. He doesn’t sound like the head of anything, let alone a bunch of religious terrorists. ‘The police?’

  ‘No, er, actually I didn’t call them,’ Lucy says softly.

  I glare at her. What is wrong with her? Can’t she see I’m trying to trick Perry? Lucy’s lips tremble as she clocks my expression. In the midst of my frustration I feel a surge of guilt. I must remember that Dex has terrorised her, that she’s a victim here too. Dex might not have taken her life, but he has ruined it.

  ‘Of course Lucy didn’t call the police. And you can’t either.’ Uncle Perry grabs my arm. I try to shake him off but he’s stronger than I expect.

  ‘Get off me!’ I growl.

  ‘Please, Francesca.’ Lucy’s voice wavers. ‘We’ll get in so much trouble if we talk to the police.’

  ‘I’m not having my reputation shot down in flames over this,’ Perry snaps. He tightens his hold on my arm. ‘Have you told anyone about . . . about what you found in my basement?’

  Does he mean the porn? Is he talking about the fact that he’s gay? I can’t believe it. In fact it would be funny if it wasn’t so horrific.

  ‘Are you seriously still worried about people knowing you’re gay after all the terrible, terrible things you’ve done?’ I demand. ‘Don’t you think them finding out you’re a murdering terrorist might slightly overshadow your sexual preferences? Anyway, nobody these days cares about people being gay.’

  I twist and turn, desperate to get out of Perry’s grasp, but he holds me fast, that look of confusion back on his face. I glance towards the attic again. Ruby and Harry will be worried sick by now, wondering where I am. I need to let them out and get away and go to the police.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by terrible things or . . . or murder and terrorism.’ Perry sounds positively injured. ‘I’m a victim in all this.’

  Unbelievable. Is that really how he sees himself?

  ‘Okay, let’s start at the beginning,’ I snap. ‘When Mum died, instead of covering it up, you should have stood up to Dex. You should have protected Lucy. You were stronger than her, you should have led the way, not done what Dex said.’

  ‘What Dex said?’ Uncle Perry shakes his head, still gripping my arm. He seems genuinely bewildered. For the first time I hesitate. Have I misunderstood what Lucy told me about Mum’s death?

  What about PAAUL? Is Perry really behind all the murders?

  Suspicion creeps through my mind.

  Could Lucy have got that wrong?

  Might she even have lied?

  ‘Francesca, please, calm down,’ Lucy pleads. She’s on my other side now, hands clasped, eyes glistening with emotion.

  At the sight of her tears I glare at Perry. Rage overwhelms my suspicions. Of course Lucy hasn’t lied. Perry might call himself a victim, but Lucy truly is one.

  ‘See what you’ve done by letting Dex blackmail you all those years ago? You’ve allowed him to carry on intimidating Lucy. You’ve—’

  ‘My dear Francesca,’ Perry cuts in, as scathing as I’ve ever heard him. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘Uncle Perry!’ Lucy’s voice is like ice. Her head is high, the tears gone from her eyes.

  My suspicions rear up again. I doubt everything.

  And in that instant I know what Perry is going to say. He lets go of my arm with an exasperated shake of the head.

  ‘It wasn’t Dex who blackmailed me,’ Uncle Perry snaps. ‘It was your sister.’

  LUCY

  I cross myself. Too often I do this on auto pilot but now I am calling on the saints to protect me; and to Mary, who blessed me with my mission, to give me the words that will show my sister my motives are – and have always been – pure. She’s staring at me now as if she’s never seen me before.

  ‘You blackmailed Uncle Perry?’ Francesca’s eyes are wide. ‘You, Lucy? About Mum’s death?’

  ‘Indeed she did,’ Uncle Perry blusters. ‘Called me at my club in hysterics, forced me to do the fake blood test and make up conversations about diabetic faints and lie about the cause of death to you and Jayson and the police so that we could avoid a post mortem. It was a nightmare.’

  ‘Why?’ Francesca asks me. ‘Why would you do that?’

  I say nothing. How can I explain? My heart feels like lead. How can I possibly expect my faithless sister to understand?

  ‘I was trying to find a way to bring light out of the darkness of my sins,’ I venture at last. ‘To make a life lived in love.’

  ‘What?’ Francesca’s forehead is screwed into a series of frown lines. ‘What the fuck does that mean? Dex abused you, killed our mother . . . and for some warped reason you feel you have to protect him?’

  ‘It’s not a warped reason,’ I protest. Oh, Dex, how I wish I could explain about you in words Francesca will understand: what you have meant to me, the Godliness of turning the singular evil of your lust-fuelled sin into the greatest of humane and merciful loves.

  ‘Never mind this nonsense,’ Uncle Perry snaps. ‘I want the film.’

  ‘What film?’ Francesca demands.

  ‘That day when I saw Dex and Mummy through the kitchen door I had my phone in my hand . . . and I started filming them,’ I explain, blushing to remember it. ‘I thought . . . I know it was naïve, but I thought maybe I could use it to show Mummy later, to make her see how pathetic she was being, how morally confused she was. But then Dex pushed her and she fell down the stairs. And of course I put my phone away at the time, but afterwards I realised I had a record of her actual murder and it felt like God had engineered the whole thing to give me a way of persuading Dex to carry out my mission.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Francesca breathes.

  ‘Whatever,’ Uncle Perry snaps. ‘If that film comes out then I’ll face a lot of very awkward questions about why I pretended your mother died from a diabetic faint when Dex quite clearly killed her.’ He turns to me, glaring. ‘I want the film. Now.’

  Francesca is wide-eyed. She glances towards the attic and I know she is thinking of Ruby.

  ‘What about Dex?’ she asks. ‘You’re saying he really had nothing to do with blackmailing Uncle Perry?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Dex was long gone when I arrived,’ Perry says with a contemptuous sniff. ‘He left it all up to Lucy here.’

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ I tell them, eager to explain. ‘I told Dex to go straight home, that I’d look after him.’ I pause, remembering your beautiful face on that day: wild with terror as you clutched at your hair, panic radiating from every pore. ‘His watch that he’d just got from Uncle Graham broke when he hit Mummy, then he got blood on it when he touched her head. He was freaking out about it so I told him I’d get rid of it but I didn’t. I just called Uncle Perry and while I waited for him I said the Hail Mary over Mummy’s body. And I pledged that I’d make something good come out of all the bad, a sacrifice for all our sins.’ I close my eyes. I’d been calm then. Serene. Knowing, in the epiphany of that moment, that I had found my purpose . . . a way to bring light from all the darkness. ‘And I did.’ I open my eyes. ‘I made everything right.’

  ‘How?’ Francesca asks. Her voice is hollow. ‘How did you make everything right? Please tell me, because I’m imagining . . . just, please, tell me what you did.’

  I shake my head. She looks so appalled, has she forgotten where all this started?

  ‘Dex raped me when I was fifteen,’ I remind her.

  ‘I know.’ A look of deep sorrow passes across my sister’s face. ‘But—’

  ‘Rape?’ Perry looks appalled. ‘Dex raped you?’

  I sigh, wishing Uncl
e Perry wasn’t here. It’s Francesca whose understanding I need.

  ‘And when he raped me he made me pregnant,’ I go on, my eyes on hers.

  ‘Okay, but—’ Francesca starts.

  ‘That was Dex’s baby you aborted?’ Uncle Perry’s eyes widen.

  ‘Yes.’ I draw myself up. ‘It was his fault I got pregnant and his fault I got pushed into that abortion and his responsibility to make amends.’ I hesitate, thinking how I’ve carried the pain of your sin ever since . . . your first murder, the slaughter of my innocence in that rape, then your second: the killing of my baby. ‘Do you understand? When I saw him kill Mum it was the third murder, the third denial of life and hope. But as I stood there I . . . I realised how I could get him to make up for what he’d done to me, how together we could bring light out of the darkness of our sins.’

  Francesca stares at me, still clearly confused. I wait to see the soft glow of understanding dawn on her face. Our future depends on it. Surely, even without a faith, knowing everything as she now does, she will at least see the logic and the beauty of my mission.

  But instead, her eyes fill with horror.

  FRAN

  ‘That year’s . . .’ I remember what she said just now about organising the murders to coincide with the September anniversary of when her baby would have been born.

  I face Lucy, feeling like my legs are about to buckle.

  The silence between us is the blackest of my life.

  ‘It was you,’ I gasp, the terrible truth finally settling inside me. ‘You were behind Caspian’s death . . . and all the other doctors’. Not PAAUL. Not Perry. You.’

  The second-floor landing, the most humdrum place on earth, spins like a vision of hell around me.

  ‘You got Dex to carry out all those murders.’ Bile rises into my throat. All along I’ve been seeing conspiracies and organised campaigns. The whole time Harry and I were searching for links with PAAUL and, in the end, PAAUL had nothing to do with it.

  It was just Lucy.

  I glance up at the attic. For the first time since she went missing I am glad Ruby isn’t by my side. I never want her to know any of this.

  ‘I was twenty-two weeks pregnant when I had the abortion. Dex and I . . . we murdered my baby.’ Lucy’s voice is high and anxious, her fingers twist around each other just like earlier, but I’m no longer buying her victim act. She is a monster, as bad in her way as Dex. Worse, maybe. ‘But I was barely more than a baby myself. If the doctors had refused . . . if the law had been different.’ She looks at me, her eyes sorrowful. ‘If I’d had a sister who knew right from wrong.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy.’ A tight band is around my heart: fear and pain, squeezing, constricting me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I can see Perry leaning against the doorframe of the office. The look of shock on his face tells me he didn’t know any of this.

  ‘So it was revenge?’ I ask, my voice shaking with emotion.

  ‘Justice, not revenge. Every September since Mummy passed, on the anniversary of when the baby should have been born.’

  ‘What?’ I can’t believe what she’s saying. ‘That’s . . . Caspian was my husband and . . . and you love me, you adore my children. How could you take away their father like that?’

  ‘Caspian’s influence prevented you from seeing that you’d made a terrible mistake over my abortion,’ Lucy snaps. ‘It was hard for me to take him out of our lives, but it was a necessary sacrifice, better for you in the long run.’

  ‘No.’ I’m lost, unable to take in what she’s saying. ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘I originally chose a different doctor, but Caspian’s name kept coming up in my prayers, so it was God’s choice in the end. Caspian had to be that year’s sacrifice.’

  ‘That year’s . . .’ I remember what she said just now about organising the murders to coincide with the September anniversary of when her baby would have been born.

  ‘What about Simon Pinner? He was killed this month. And Harry isn’t even a doctor.’

  ‘Simon put himself in the picture by turning up at Caspian’s memorial,’ Lucy says coolly. ‘And Harry got too involved, too curious. As soon as I realised who he really was, I knew he would have to go. I got Dex to follow him, waiting for the right moment, but once we realised he was heading for the storage locker that was it. I ordered Dex to kill him and retrieve the watch. Don’t you see, Fran? It’s a just war. And killing is justified in a just war.’

  ‘What I see is an insanely twisted belief that you are entitled to murder any doctor who carries out an abortion and any journalist who tries to investigate their death – and all because you had a termination fifteen years ago.’ My voice sounds flat to my ears.

  ‘I was abused into murdering my own baby,’ Lucy says, her voice rising. ‘Abused by everyone involved.’

  Including you are the words she leaves unspoken.

  We stare at each other. ‘You said the termination was what you wanted.’ My breath hitches in my throat. ‘I would have supported whatever you chose.’

  Lucy shakes her head. ‘There shouldn’t have been a choice.’

  Uncle Perry crosses himself. I have no idea why. And I’m filled with a new fury. This is Catholicism’s fault. If it wasn’t for the stupid religion . . .

  Except . . . I think of Dad and all his work for the prison rehabilitation charity and Jacqueline and all the positive causes she supports and meek Auntie Sheila with her devotion to mass and her own charity work. Even weak, vain Uncle Perry has surely done good things through his faith.

  ‘So Perry didn’t have anything to do with killing Caspian?’ I breathe. ‘You made all that stuff up about him running PAAUL? Killing the abortion doctors?’

  ‘Lucy?’ Perry finally releases his grip on my arm. ‘What is Fran talking about?’

  Ignoring him, my sister nods. ‘I made it up,’ she says. ‘I had to.’

  ‘And . . . and . . . those cipher papers with the names, that you claimed you found in Perry’s safe? They were yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, they were how I told Dex who was next . . . who needed to be sacrificed,’ Lucy says. She sounds unbelievably matter-of-fact. ‘I put the names in code so Dex would have to physically handle the papers. I wanted his fingerprints all over them, that’s why I kept them. Of course they’re ruined now. All smudged with your fingerprints.’

  My jaw drops. It’s all so . . . so calculated.

  ‘You did all this? You killed people?’ Perry asks, looking as shocked as I feel. ‘And you pinned it all on me?’

  ‘And on PAAUL,’ Lucy explains. ‘Everyone seemed to think that if the deaths of the abortion doctors were connected to each other, then some sort of organisation must be behind it. I just played along. I did everything I could to make my mission a success.’

  ‘This is all really just you?’ I still can’t believe it. ‘What about the internet rumours about Dad and Uncle Perry and Lanagh?’

  ‘They were just rumours,’ Lucy explains, as if it’s obvious. ‘They started because Dad got Uncle Perry to organise those reports on PAAUL and when he sent undercover investigators into PAAUL some people thought he was infiltrating it, intending to take over, using Lanagh as a base. The rumours built from there. It’s ironic really. I helped Uncle Perry file all the paperwork at Lanagh, which is how I got to read the reports he and Dad made on how PAAUL operated in the US.’

  She glances at our uncle. Ashen-faced, he gives a nod.

  ‘Reading those reports,’ Lucy goes on, ‘made me realise that if I didn’t want to be caught I needed to operate in a completely different way: a variety of weapons, of locations . . .’

  I gawp at her. She sounds so calm and collected, like she’s talking about how she organised a successful church fete rather than a series of cold-blooded murders.

  ‘Did Uncle Graham know any of this?’ I asked. ‘He was so insistent Dad was involved.’

  ‘I’m sure he was,’ Uncle Perry says bitterly. ‘Any chance to stick the knife
in.’

  ‘Or Auntie Sheila?’ I go on. ‘She was so very adamant that Dad wasn’t involved.’

  ‘All Uncle Graham knew was what you’d told Auntie Sheila,’ Lucy explains. ‘Sheila confided in him like she always does, because she was upset. Daddy inspires strong feelings in people. Sheila adores him. Graham hates him. That’s why he wanted you to think all those lies about Daddy on the internet were true. Honestly, Francesca. None of them knew anything about my mission. Not Daddy or Jacqueline or Graham or Sheila.’

  ‘Or me,’ Perry adds.

  ‘Just you.’ The words are almost too brutal to say but I say them anyway. ‘You and Dex.’

  Lucy makes a disdainful face. ‘Dex is such an idiot. He made a terrible fuss about working for me, in spite of everything he’d done to me and to poor Mummy.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t want to kill all those doctors? He didn’t want to kill Caspian?’ I ask. Somehow this makes the whole thing even worse.

  ‘Of course not. And he was freaking out over killing Harry too, so soon after Simon Pinner . . . he said it was too much; he was delaying, prevaricating.’ She curls her lip. ‘Dex is so weak. He’s never understood what I was trying to do at all,’ Lucy says. ‘But I told him today, like I’ve told him many times before, that if he didn’t carry out my mission, I’d show everyone the proof that he killed Mummy. Sometimes you have to be tough with people, like when I sent you those texts . . . I needed you to believe Ruby and Rufus were in danger, to stop you running to the police and ruining everything.’

  ‘It was you texting?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lucy admits proudly. ‘And I put a bug in your phone as well. That’s how I could hear everything you were saying in the café.’

  I shake my head. I can’t believe how conniving, how manipulative she is. My supposedly fragile sister . . . quick-thinking and ruthless as a shark.

  ‘Talking of the proof,’ Perry snaps, ‘it’s time to hand it over. I’ve waited long enough. I want the film and the watch. Both of them link Dex to your mother’s murder, which incriminates me.’