Page 62 of Her Last Breath

‘My God,’ she whispered, as she read the details.

Feeling as though she had just been run over, Jane clicked to turn the pages of Phil’s file from the police investigation. What she found were dozens of pictures, explicit images, that Phil had taken of his victims. How had this happened? Her uncle? She remembered an affable, sophisticated man, he and Melody always so upbeat compared to her more dour parents. Life and soul of the party. And this? Who was this monster?

Jane stopped herself. Who was she kidding? She’d come across these people in her work, she knew how they managed to go unpunished and remained hidden, those closest to them always the last to know. Is that what was happening to her now? Childhood memories of this man struggling to match up to the reality she was now facing.

Bracing herself, Jane started to click through the images the police had found. Polaroid shots all of them. Of course. She remembered Phil’s polaroid camera, had thought it was magic as he took pictures of her and Ed. She didn’t want to think of this man ever hugging her or being in their world.

The images he had taken were all without faces. Just pictures of torsos and pictures of genitalia, naked shots, compromised shots. She was stock-still, staring, only her finger clicking the mouse to look at the next picture, the next picture.

How in a small community like Burnley had this not become common knowledge? She didn’t understand why Father Walsh had kept this secret. Unless … no, she didn’t want to think that, he was a kind man. Again, she chided herself for being so naïve. Jane checked back to Phil’s summary file, seeing his last-known address was in Norwich. So, he had moved away from Burnley, and his suicide meant he had never been convicted, no trial to expose him.

Jane went back to the images, dread filling her. Click. Click. Click. Her fingers started to tremble as she scrolled through one particular set of pictures. Double- and triple-checking this group of pictures, just to make sure; hoping she was mistaken, devastated to know she wasn’t. She rubbed her eyes, surprised that they were wet with tears. Her throat was full of emotion, stifling the raw sound that had trapped itself there. Click. Click. Click.

If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t see it. They were just pictures of torsos. But Jane recognised them immediately. She had seen that appendix scar that was in the images up close so many times. He used to scare her with it when the stitches were in, used it to tease her when she annoyed him after it had healed. Ed. Her Ed.

‘Please God, no,’ she whispered.

Nauseated, she scrolled with increasing despondency through the pictures she knew were of her brother.

‘Oh, Ed. I’m so sorry, my love.’

Jane let the tears flow now. She understood, thirty-two years later, why her hero brother, her beloved brother, was in so much pain that he’d wanted to kill himself. The darkness that he was suffocating under, so overwhelming that living with it had become too much for him. Her darling Ed had been one of Phil’s victims.

Frantically wiping her face in case anybody saw, Jane stared at the image. She traced the scar with her fingers, as though comforting her brother. She remembered his school pictures, the shocking realisation of how much shorter and thinner he was than his classmates. Easy to overpower, easy for a predator like Phil to take advantage of. She started to sob, covering her face with her arm, the guttural sound of her grief loud in her small office.

Everything was falling into place. The answers she didn’t know she needed so badly had come to her. But now she wished she could push them away; she was better off not knowing. How could she ever get past this? Her brother in such a dark place, so broken, and still stepping up to look after her. No wonder his grades had suffered and he was getting into fights. It was a cry for help that nobody had heard. Not even her, who thought she was the closest person to him.

Jane stared at the picture in front of her, wishing she could protect him. She started to see details, a couch he was stood in front of. She tried to match it to the sofas in her aunt’s house but couldn’t. Then she gasped, and shock flooding her system.

To the naked eye it looked like an ornament in a glass cabinet behind Ed. Only it wasn’t. Jane knew what it really was. It was a reflection in the glass, not an object behind it.

Jane stared hard at it in utter disbelief, her despair and grief turning to rage. It was impossible, but she knew instantly that it was true: Uncle Phil had not committed his crimes alone.

Chapter 39

It was dark by the time Jane parked up outside the familiar home. The woman inside wasn’t expecting her, so wasn’t prepared. From the composed, caring eighties socialite, Jane was instead confronted with a different Melody altogether. This version was slurring her words, tipsy on alcohol, her make-up smudged. She had missed her lip line and drawn huge circles of rouge on her cheeks.

‘Why are you here?’ Melody asked, less welcoming than last time.

Standing in the chintzy living room, Jane’s feelings were vastly different from the last time she was there. The homely comfort of her aunt was replaced by an overwhelming sense of betrayal and deceit. This woman had put on a good show for thirty years, the loving aunt. Jane saw she was wearing a man’s shirt. Phil’s shirt?

‘I mean, can I get you something. Dinner?’

‘Tell me about Phil,’ Jane said coldly.

‘Phil? Why? I don’t understand. Sit down, you’re scaring me.’

‘You said he left you? That he’s living with another woman?’

‘Yes, that’s right. He left me …’

‘Don’t lie to me. I know he’s dead. He died in prison, hanging himself because he was too cowardly to face up to what he did.

To face the fact that he got caught and was about to be exposed for the sick bastard he was.’

‘Don’t you swear at him, he’s my husband. Show some respect.’

‘He’s a fucking paedophile!’