Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #2: Books 5-8 (A Dead Cold Box Set) by Blake Banner (types of ebook readers txt) 📕

his God, you concealed it under layers of hypocrisy, but you were both playing the same game. The game of divine superiority.”

Mary was glaring at me. “I think she has had enough, Detective Stone!”

I shook my head. “Not quite.” I paused and shook my head a second time. I felt sick, deep down sick. “Not quite. That was only the beginning of the story.”

The captain looked from me to Dehan. “What? Only the beginning?”

I nodded. “It has long been a mystery to me why celibacy is supposed to be a good thing and sex is synonymous with evil.” I shrugged and spread my hands. I looked at Paul. “I’d ask you to explain it—why an act that brings so much pleasure and actually creates life, should be equated with evil—but I fear you might try to explain. The thing is, Simon was a staunch believer that pleasure is a bad thing and suffering and self-denial are proper emotions. They had brought one child into the world, called her Mary, and as far as he was concerned, he had done his job in that department. Am I right, Sylvie?”

She nodded. “Once, on our wedding night, and the recriminations never stopped.” She spat the words out, “I committed the ultimate sin of enjoying our love-making! He never looked at me again! I was a harlot!”

“But you loved your daughter. Aside from the natural love you felt, I am guessing she was the only source of affection in your life; a life that had, literally, become barren. It’s only a hunch, but I am pretty sure I am not wrong when I say that you longed for another child.”

She nodded. “You’re not wrong, detective.”

“And into that barren life, ironically, as a direct result of Simon’s religious fervor, walked Reverend Paul Truelove. I don’t know if you realize it, Paul, but Sylvie was trying very hard to get pregnant with your child. I don’t know how you planned to explain your pregnancy to your husband, Sylvie. Maybe you planned to tell him it was an immaculate conception. He’d probably have believed you. Maybe you’d reached the point where you just didn’t give a damn. I’d like to think so.”

I paused. The silence in the room was a palpable presence.

“What you didn’t want, what you prayed would not happen, was to get pregnant from your rapist, Ahmed.”

I heard the hiss from Dehan. “Shit!”

Sylvie’s lip trembled and she gripped onto her daughter. Mary clung to her in turn and they both started sobbing.

“You made yourself believe that Jacob was Paul’s, but as the years went by, you could see it in his face. And who knows whether it was genetics or a self-fulfilling prophecy, but eventually you began to see it in his character, too. And so did Ahmed. He told me himself, he ran into you in the street. I’m guessing he went out of his way, literally, to meet you in the street, and he began, over time, to recognize his own son. And maybe on some level, his son recognized him. The fact is they connected.” I shrugged. “Ahmed could be a very charming, likeable guy, as I discovered myself the first time I met him. He could turn on the charm, and I bet Jacob grew to like him very quickly. They gelled. And slowly, you watched as he reeled him in. Did you try to dissuade him? I can imagine that every word you said to him against hanging out with Ahmed was another incentive to see him more often. And the deeper Ahmed and the Mullah drew him into their mosque and Islam, the more he began to see you and your church as weak and hateful. I am willing to bet that they poisoned not just his mind, but his soul.”

I stopped and watched her, watched them both. They were clinging to each other, sobbing, rocking gently back and forth. I could only imagine—no, I could not begin to imagine—the pain they were both feeling. But in particular the pain that Sylvie was feeling.

The captain was staring at me, agog. But Dehan was staring at Sylvie with an expression of the deepest compassion. She spoke softly.

“So it was true. You began to draw Jacob back. What happened? Was it an intervention?” She turned to Paul, who had one hand over his eyes and was sobbing silently. “Your family, your church, united and persuaded him to come back. Of course, the penalty for that in sharia law is death. He murdered his own son…”

I shook my head. “No. That wasn’t what happened. Jacob converted to Islam, but he never converted back. I am guessing, here, Sylvie, but I am pretty certain I am right. Ahmed had filled Jacob’s heart with hatred, but you didn’t want to see it. Maybe you just couldn’t see it. Who can see something that ugly in their own children? How long did it go on for? A year? Two…?”

Mary looked up at me, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Four years.”

“And you, like your mother, were too ashamed to speak out. What is this sickness in the human mind that makes us take on the shame of our attackers?” I looked down at Sylvie and felt incapable of judging her. I only hoped her jury would feel the same. “It was the day of the fête. Mary was sick in bed, and Jacob refused to go. You were in a rush, having to do everything by yourself, without help. You finally got over to your stall, and realized that you had forgotten the brownies. Those damned brownies, but you were too busy to come back for them.

“It was eleven before you managed to get somebody to stand in for you. Then you hurried back. It must have been like a nightmare, coming in to the house and hearing the noises from upstairs.