Sean heard a noise at the top of the stairs. He froze. Someone else was here. He tried not to look around. Didn’t want to do anything that might warn the murdering bastard, but instinctively he turned his head and stared straight up into his mother’s white-eyed terror. A strangled whimper escaped his throat. The man turned and also looked up.

His mother tore down the stairs and Sean knew this might be his only chance. Ignoring his oozing wound, he charged out of the seat toward the altar. Unbalanced with his hands bound, he stumbled and fell.

Rather than loosening his grip on the rope, the man tightened it. Jason’s eyes bulged as he began to strangle.

Scrambling to his feet, Sean aimed his shoulder at the man’s midriff. He met with taut muscles and an arm locked around his neck, securing him. He heard his mother thundering down the aisle, screaming, running toward him until she came to a stop a metre away.

Lottie halted her run. The bastard had Sean. She fought for control.

If she made any sudden movement, her actions could be fatal. Her heart thumped and banged in her chest, so loud she could hear it pulsing furiously in her ears.

Professional. She had to be professional or God knows what might happen to her son. A knot wrenched in her ribcage, squeezing like a vice-grip. Goosebumps threatened to tear her skin to shreds. A violent fear erupted within her and she prayed to a God she no longer believed in. She prayed to Adam. She prayed, and then she spoke.

‘Let the boys go,’ she said, ‘Brian.’

She inched forward as Mike O’Brien recoiled at the mention of his birth name. Still, he held on to Sean and tugged the rope, tearing the last remnants of life from Jason. The boy’s head slumped sideways. The rope held fast.

Locking eyes with her son, Lottie silently vowed, A few more minutes, son.

‘Very clever, Inspector. I have unfinished business here. Do you wish to watch?’ O’Brien’s voice rose and fell in a singsong.

Lottie fought against the war battling within. She must be calm and logical. Glanced at Kirby. He had drawn his semi-automatic pistol. Too dangerous to use it with the boys captive. She scowled at him. He slipped the gun back into his side holster. Stemming a lurch of nausea as O’Brien’s arm tightened around Sean’s neck, she wanted to rush forward, to drag her son away from the madness.

Dredging up all her training she calculated her distance from O’Brien. No visible weapon, though she knew the long robe could conceal just about anything. She willed a resolute calmness into her voice.

‘You don’t have to do this, you know,’ she said. ‘You are Brian. I know what happened to you in here. It was wrong, but you can make it right. Release them. It’s not going to solve anything if you hurt them further.’

She edged closer.

‘Inspector, it will make me feel better if I do what I intend to do. You cannot stop me,’ O’Brien said, his voice high and strained, white knuckles visibly tightening around Sean.

He’s strong and fit, Lottie reminded herself. She laboured to stem the urge to rush him, to grab his steely grey hair and yank it from his head.

‘How can it make you feel better? You’re a grown man, these are two helpless children,’ she pleaded.

From the corner of her eye she saw Kirby circling slowly to the right.

‘I was a helpless, abandoned child and no one helped me,’ O’Brien snarled.

‘I’ll get you help. It’s not too late. Let them go.’

He laughed. Lottie flinched as the cruel sound reverberated throughout the acoustically designed chapel. Kirby was almost level with O’Brien on the steps.

The laughing continued, uncontrollable, demonic strains to her ears. She needed to silence it. Her son, his face red, eyes streaming. Then she saw the blood, seeping from his abdomen.

Distraught with anguish for Sean, Lottie recalled what Patrick O’Malley had told her about Brian. Had he really killed a defenceless baby? Had he been instrumental in the death of Fitzy? Why had he killed Sullivan and Brown? What madness lurked, yet to be awakened, within his soul? She couldn’t find any answers as terror prowled through her veins. She desperately fused her thoughts back to the scene she was witnessing.

‘Let them go?’ O’Brien questioned, his voice high and hysterical. ‘Perhaps I will let one go and allow you to watch as I destroy the other. Who will you choose, Lottie Parker? Who is the diamond and who is the carbon? Will you save your son and let this other boy die before your eyes? What do you say to that, Madam Inspector?’

‘I say you’re totally insane!’

Lottie lost her last thread of control. She stepped forward. O’Brien edged backwards, still clutching Sean around the neck. The swish of his cloak fanned the candles lining the altar steps. A small flame caught the bottom of Jason’s jeans and began to smoulder.

‘You can’t kill both of them,’ she said. Jason could already be dead. He was so still, his face purple, tongue protruding. ‘Let them go. I promise, I’ll help you afterwards.’

Struggling for the appearance of outward calm, she called up her years of experience into this one moment.

‘You know nothing of the torment I’ve suffered,’ O’Brien screamed. ‘Don’t even try to imagine it.’

Keep him talking, divert his attention away from Kirby.

‘Why Susan and James? Why did you kill them?’ Another step forward.

‘You think I killed them? Why would I?’

His shrill voice filled her ears. She stole a glance at Kirby. He was five metres from O’Brien, level with him on the wide step.

O’Brien inched backwards, grabbed something from the altar, his cloak flapping open, displaying nakedness beneath, a crisscross of old scars on his chest. The steel of a knife glinted in his hand. Lottie caught a glimpse of the tattoo on his leg. Deep and dark.

‘They had that tattoo also. What was it for?’ She had to stall him. Kirby was getting closer.

‘God-almighty-Cornelius-Mohan told us we were tarnished with the blood of the devil and he had to mark us for life. To keep the demons away. Hah!’ A piercing cry went up from him. Lottie recoiled as his hold tightened around Sean’s neck.

‘He invested evil spirits into our souls; it was his way of owning us. He was the devil incarnate.’ The voice was a high-pitched, unnatural whine.

He pulled Sean upright by the neck. Lottie could see the whites of her son’s eyes rolling in his head.

She jumped forward, Kirby moving at the same moment. She grabbed for the knife, but O’Brien’s hand swooped down and the blade sliced through the padding of her jacket, cutting into her upper arm. Ignoring the pain, adrenaline strengthening her resolve, she continued her assault. Raised her other arm, elbowed the man’s throat, pushing firmly until he released her son. The boy collapsed. Kirby raised his large booted foot and kicked O’Brien square in the chest.

O’Brien fell backwards and a whoosh of flame swept up behind him. Quickly she grabbed Sean. Kirby picked up the knife, cut through the rope and pulled Jason from the noose.

Lottie lashed out with her foot as O’Brien rose from the fire and connected with his torso. He fell into the candles, his burning cape igniting further as he outstretched his arms, flailing against the blaze. His flesh crackled. Screaming, raw and inhuman sounds, O’Brien batted wildly, fanning the flames. He dragged himself to a kneeling position, stood up in a wave of orange and yellow light, tearing at his burning robe, his hands on fire. His skin was already sizzling, oozing, slipping down his body. He fell back into the inferno.

On her knees, consumed with the smell of fried human skin, Lottie dragged Sean along the ground, crawling away from the blaze.

‘I didn’t kill James and Susan, or Angelotti, I didn’t,’ the voice from hell screeched as O’Brien twisted and turned, trying to quench his burning flesh. ‘Cornelius Mohan, yes I did that bastard in.’ He screamed in agony and was engulfed in smoke and fire.

Kirby had his phone in one hand, shouting frenzied commands, while hauling a lifeless Jason to his shoulder. Lottie hugged her son to her breast and undid the rope binding him. Kirby slapped wildly, quenching the fire on Jason’s jeans. She only moved when Kirby steered them towards the stairs.

‘We can’t leave him there, like that,’ she said, glancing back at the man dancing around like a wound-up ballerina in a jewellery box of fire. Kirby tightened his grip on her hand.

‘Shoot him,’ she shouted.

‘He’s not worth the waste of a bullet. Come on,’ he said. ‘Now!’

Lottie followed Kirby, Jason secure across his wide shoulders, and she clutched Sean around the waist, dragging him up the staircase with her. On the top step she allowed herself a backward glance. The man was ablaze, his skin a melting slime. He sank downwards, his screams dying as the inferno swelled out towards the wooden kneelers. Thick black smoke choked the air.

Her son was safe. That’s all Lottie could think of in that instant. Her son was safe.

She didn’t look back again.

She heaved Sean along the corridor, down the stairs, through the hall and outside. She dropped to her knees on the frozen steps, her son in her arms. She welcomed the cold air, coughing up smoke from her lungs, and remained there, statuesque, until the wail of sirens stole the silence of the night.

31st January 1976

Sally kept her eyes open all night long; the night of the Black Moon, Patrick called it.

She listened to the night-time sounds, to the soft breathing of the other girls in her room, to the scratching in the skirting boards and the ceiling. She imagined grotesque shapes dancing in the moonlight, belts and candles swaying toward her and away from her, like some obscene ballet. She heard babies crying in the nursery but no footsteps hurried to soothe them. They were alone. She was alone. And the night seemed to go on forever.

She didn’t know what had happened to her baby; she didn’t know why Fitzy had died; but she vowed there and then, that one day, however long it took, the truth would be revealed. She would remember for the rest of her life.

She lay awake as the first light of dawn broke through the window with the moon just a shadow in the sky.