Chapter 102 Sally
Sally
From: Damon.Lister@
Dear Sally,
Firstly, and most importantly, please accept my heartfelt apologies for everything I am about to tell you.
And I mean everything, for I am aware this will be a lot for one person to shoulder.
But I have no one else to explain it all to.
So I am very sorry for the pain I will be putting you through and for what I will ask of you.
I hope that one day, you can forgive me.
I’m your mum’s friend, Damon, and I believe you and I have something in common.
Someone in common. I think we share Ralf Lister as our father.
I recently learned that long before I came into Helena’s life, she and my dad were in a relationship.
And they were very serious by all accounts.
When I recently turned up at your mum’s house and you and I met, I later found a discarded provisional driver’s licence application in the fireplace with your name, date of birth and email address on it.
I realised you were born shortly after Dad went to prison for fifteen years of our lives.
I think you were conceived not long before he introduced me to your mum.
Please know, Dad was an innocent man. He took the fall for something I did.
He is no longer with us and that is my fault. But more of that later.
Sally’s mouth was agape as she sat in the bedroom of her aunt’s house, her hands gripping her phone tightly as she continued to pore over the message.
Damon went on to explain what he’d done as a child which had led to him staying with Helena; his ECT treatment; how he’d gradually learned more about himself each time he died and the lives he’d taken since.
He added that when she received this email – scheduled to arrive twelve hours after his death – he himself would be the last of his victims, thanks to the assistance of a woman he’d met online.
He also expressed regret that all of this was to occur under her and Helena’s roof.
By the time this email reaches you, I will be somewhere I can’t return from.
Somewhere better, I hope. I realised once I started scratching that itch, I couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Now I have all the answers I’ve been seeking.
Your mum was right, finding the truth has done me no favours.
And I know that if I don’t leave now, I will kill more people. It’s the way I am.
This is the first of three emails you should have received by now.
The second contains a live link to camera footage that was recording my death, the location of the hard drive it was saved on and the cloud it was automatically sent to for backup.
There are also screen grabs of the conversations I had with the woman who ended my life, and all I know about her.
The third email goes into much more detail about what I now know about myself. There are names of my victims, dates, times and locations. You can forward this to the police too. It is your decision as to whether you read it first or not.
All there is left to do is apologise once again for this burden.
I like to think that I’d have enjoyed having a half-sister (if it turns out my hunch is correct) but the reality is I probably would have hurt you like I hurt everyone else.
I hope you go on to have the incredible life that our dad and Helena wanted for me.
With love and regret,
Damon Lister.
Sally remembers running downstairs to find her aunt and Uncle Addo in the kitchen and thrusting her phone at them.
‘Is it true?’ she asked Carolina. ‘Do I have a brother called Damon?’
A bewildered Carolina read the email, her brow furrowing. She showed it to her husband before replying to her niece with a reluctant nod and a quiet ‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t Mum tell me?’
‘It was such a complicated situation,’ Carolina apologised. ‘She didn’t want you to be hurt by it.’
Sally pointed to the email on the phone. ‘And do you think Damon has done all the things he says he has here?’
‘Some I know to be true, because your mum told me, when she was pregnant and struggling with her separation from Ralf. But I really hope the rest are not. Perhaps the boy is having some sort of breakdown?’
‘There’s more,’ Sally added. And after then reading Damon’s full, unabridged third email containing a more detailed confession, they all watched in horror from the beginning, a link he’d provided to the video of his own death at the hands of a woman he identified in the accompanying notes.
It ended when his phone’s battery ran out of power.
Sally, Carolina and Addo drove through London’s early morning rush-hour traffic to reach Helena’s house.
Sally spent much of it in silence, scrolling through her phone, reading newspaper stories about her father written around the time of his court case.
The man she had spent her whole life wondering about had allowed the world to believe he was a child killer.
She hated him for it yet reluctantly respected the lengths he’d gone to, to protect his own child.
Her aunt and uncle made her wait in the car as they entered Helena’s house, returning quickly from upstairs, confirming Damon was dead inside and there were two other bodies laid out in a spare room.
Addo removed his phone from the central console and prepared to dial 999.
Carolina placed her hand over his keypad.
‘I don’t think we should,’ she said. ‘We need to think this through and the damage it could cause Sally.’
She turned to her niece in the back seat.
‘If we hand the police Damon’s email confession, it will put you in the spotlight,’ Carolina began.
‘There will be investigations and huge media interest, and social media will blow this up in a way we can’t control.
Your name and image will be everywhere .
. . being the half-sister of a serial killer will be a terrible burden to carry.
Much more than finding three bodies in your house.
It will bring you the wrong attention at university, and will follow you for the rest of your life. ’
‘But I’ve done nothing wrong,’ Sally argued.
‘Of course you haven’t, but that won’t prevent people from believing you are guilty by association.
The internet is a cruel, unforgiving place.
And think of your mum. She fostered more than a hundred and fifty young people, but all her achievements will be forgotten because all people will remember is how she was complicit in trying to hide a boy who killed other children and even his own mother. ’
‘No one was charged in the case of Callum Baird,’ said Addo. ‘Mightn’t it give his family some closure knowing who killed their son? What if we were in their shoes? Wouldn’t we want to know?’
‘Yes,’ Carolina conceded. ‘But if the police find that woman who helped to kill Damon, and she is charged, it could work in her favour if it becomes public that Damon made a deathbed confession that he was a multiple murderer. Will anyone believe his death is a loss to the world?’
Addo looked ahead at Helena’s house, specifically the window of the second bedroom. ‘And what about the families of those two women? Don’t they deserve an explanation for what happened to their daughters? Even Damon wanted the truth to come out.’
Carolina shook her head. ‘I don’t care what he wanted.
Sally matters, not the conscience of a dead man.
’ She paused before choosing her words carefully.
‘I say we give the police the video link to his death he emailed to Sally, and that is all. Tell them she saw him here once and gave him her email address to keep him updated about Helena. Then we drove here and found him and two other bodies. Let them do the rest.’
‘This doesn’t sit easy with me,’ Addo admitted.
‘Me neither,’ Carolina said, and returned her attention to Sally.
‘But you are the one that matters. This must be your decision, not ours. Presently, the only link between you and Damon is that he once, briefly, was cared for in this house by your mum. There’s no reason for anyone to ever think you and Damon are related. ’
‘Then how will I explain why he sent that email?’
‘You met him once. You told him your mum was sick. So perhaps he confessed to you because he couldn’t tell her.’
The car filled with an uneasy silence as Sally considered the pros and cons of her aunt’s suggestion. Finally, she opened the email icon on her phone and deleted two of Damon’s messages before removing them permanently from the trashcan.
‘We need to find his phone and erase them from his email account too,’ Carolina added.
‘I’ll do it,’ Sally said.
‘No, I don’t want you going inside . . .’
But Sally was already opening the car door and climbing out before Carolina could finish. Both her aunt and uncle hurried to follow her, their protests ignored.
‘I need to do this,’ Sally explained with such determination, Carolina and Addo knew they’d be unable to change her mind. They anxiously waited downstairs in the hallway for her to return.
Upstairs in the bathroom, Sally came face to face with her brother.
He was lying on his back, on the floor, eyes shut tight, his wrists and ankles tied with plastic restraints.
She scanned his body from top to toe. His skin was so white it was almost translucent, except for a dry line of vomit beginning at his lips and ending on the tiled floor.
That struck her as peculiar. All her research into death had taught her that after more than twelve hours, his skin should be more of a purplish colour by now, more waxy in appearance.