Page 90 of The Chapel of Bones

Jon stared at him as though he’d hit a nerve. And the truth was painful. ‘I thought she felt the same, but when I tried to . . . kiss her, she said I was sick. She told me I needed help.’

‘So love turned to hate and you plotted her death.’

He didn’t answer.

‘You killed her because she’d let you down. Rejected you. I can imagine how much that hurt. Your own flesh and blood. The object of your obsession.’

The suspect’s cool shell began to crack. ‘We should have been united for ever, but she pushed me away. Called me a freak.’

‘So you trapped her in the tiger’s cage.’

‘That was Tina’s fault. She killed Carla’s precious dog. Carla left a note saying so.’

‘A note that you forged. And Tina didn’t kill the dog. It was terminally ill and she took it to the vet to be put to sleep. You killed Carla.’

‘I didn’t kill her. That was Rajah.’

‘What about your stepmother? She’d seen what was going on. Did Carla confide in her? Were they becoming close? That must have felt like a double betrayal. Your beloved going over to the enemy’s side.’

‘That bitch whispered poison in Carla’s ear and turned her against me. It was her who gave Carla the idea that there was something wrong, something dirty about how I felt. But there wasn’t.’

‘Tina only acted because she was worried about your obsession with Carla,’ Wesley pointed out calmly.

‘You’re wrong. She was evil. Cruel.’

‘A lanzani? A cruel beast who attacks any animal not of its own kind?’ Wesley said softly. ‘Is that what you thought of her?’

An unexpected look of gratitude appeared in the suspect’s eyes, as though he was pleased that somebody understood at last. ‘That describes her perfectly. She didn’t belong in our family. She was like a witch who turned my Carla’s heart to ice.’

‘So you killed her and made it look as though she’d left your father. You buried her in the grounds of St Julian’s. The patron saint of murderers.Yourpatron saint.’

Jon bowed his head. ‘She said she knew what I’d done to Carla and that I should hand myself in. She said that if I didn’t, she’d contact the police. She said she’d told my father to do it, but he’d refused. She would have ruined everything. I couldn’t let her live, could I?’

‘So you were planning to kill her all along?’

‘My father called me and said Tina was going away for a while because the business with Carla had upset her and she wanted some space. I rang her and said I’d decided to seek help. I said I’d like to see her before she left, but I made her promise not to tell Dad. She said she’d stop on the way to wherever she was going, and when she arrived, I killed her. I put her car in the old garage. Put Donnal’s in there too. It’s well hidden, so nobody knows it’s there. I thought about torching the place, but I never got round to it. Besides, it would have drawn attention to it.’ He smirked. ‘Then I forged a letter in her writing saying she was leaving Dad and taking the ferry to France because she wanted to start a new life. I posted it from Plymouth, where the ferry sails from. Job done. I’m rather good at forgery. One of my many talents.’ He sat back with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

‘And you buried her body in the grounds.’

Jon clapped his hands together slowly, his face twisted with bitter sarcasm. ‘Bravo. You’ve worked it out. Very clever.’

Wesley ignored the comment. ‘What about your tutor, Dr Donnal?’ he asked. ‘Why did you kill him?’

‘He asked me if something was troubling me. He said I could go to the student counselling service. I told him there was nothing wrong with me. I didn’t need counselling. I was fine. People should mind their own business.’ He clenched his fist and banged it on the table, making the solicitor jump.

Gerry leaned forward. ‘But why kill him? What had he ever done to you?’

‘It turned out that he knew my landlord, who’d told him about some old stone carvings in the grounds. I’d seen them myself, but I’d never have told Donnal about them. We didn’t have that sort of relationship. Anyway, he turned up at the house one day.’ There was a long silence before he spoke again. ‘The thing is, he turned up at the same time as I had another visitor.’

‘You mean Tina?’

Jon nodded. ‘I didn’t realise the front door was open. Donnal walked in and found . . . Tina was lying there at my feet. Dead. When he saw her, he asked me what was going on, and I couldn’t think of an answer. Then I had this rush of energy. Self-preservation, you could call it. We were in the kitchen and I grabbed a knife. He turned round to leave and . . . I couldn’t let him betray me, could I?’

Gerry took the blue notebook from Donnal’s abandoned car out of its plastic evidence bag and slapped it down in front of the suspect like a conjuror delivering some particularly clever trick. ‘It’s all in there. How Bingley told him about the carvings and how he planned to go to St Julian’s and examine them. But he never got round to that, did he? Being polite, he decided to call at the house first. That was his big mistake.’

‘What happened then?’ Wesley asked.

‘There was an alcove in a room we never used. The two weirdos had gone off to a festival, so there was nobody in apart from Jim, and he was off his head on acid. I went to the DIY shop and bought some plasterboard.’ Jon’s lips formed a cold smile.‘I’d always done odd jobs around the zoo, so I was quite handy even in those days. I put his body in the alcove and sealed it up. Then I went out later and bought some plaster to make it look good if anyone came nosing around.’