Page 133 of Psychopath

“Would you like to come into the house?” Quinn asked. “Actually, in it.”

“Yeah, sure, sorry,” Zane said, taking another step. He lowered his bags to the floor and turned around to close the door. Next, he slipped his shoes off and waited for Quinn to say something else.

“Tea? Coffee?”

“A coffee sounds great,” Zane said.

Quinn turned around and led the way into the kitchen. Mars had licked his dish clean and sat on his favourite kitchen chair. His eyes were fixed to Zane, and his tail swung wildly at his back.

“Ah. Mars.” Zane laughed softly. “The violent cat.”

“He hasn’t scratched me in months actually,” Quinn said, “But that doesn’t mean you should try to stroke him. He’ll definitely scratch you.”

Zane sat down at the table, and a silence fell over them as Quinn made Zane a coffee and himself a tea.

“Sugar, milk?”

“One, and yes please,” Zane replied.

Quinn nodded, then set Zane’s mug down on the table. He retreated, leaning against the counter with his own mug within reach on the side. The silence was stifling. Zane wrung his hands together on the table.

“So…you’re not a murderer then?” Quinn said to set the conversation in motion.

“You knew that,” Zane said softly. “I told you.”

“Danny and Jessica set you up.”

Zane winced. “That’s what the news and the papers are saying.” He lifted his head. “But you know there’s more to it than that.”

“Tell me,” Quinn said, finally picking up his mug and coming closer. Mars saw his approach and jumped onto the table. Zane jolted into his chair in surprise while Quinn took his seat opposite him at the table. Mars hopped down from the table onto Quinn’s lap and got comfortable.

Zane sighed. “I wasn’t as careful as I should’ve been when I was younger. My dad warned me to keep my private life private, but I didn’t listen. I was…adventurous, and the people I surrounded myself with weren’t friends. All they saw was this studly rich guy flaunting himself and his wealth, and at first, the news reports, the kiss-and-tells, the articles, they didn’t bother me.”

“They painted you in a light you liked.”

“The lover, the guy that knows how to party, who’s good at sex and satisfies his lovers.” He shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll admit, when I was younger, I was proud of those headlines, and the pictures, and I played up to the journalists following me, but when I didn’t want that anymore, when I wanted privacy, I couldn’t have it. That’s when I paid someone to stop an article being released about me. It was full of lies about me enjoying rape fantasies and she’d taken photographs of me too…”

“Photographs?”

“Snorting something I shouldn’t have been. I thought that would be the end of it, but more and more people came out of nowhere, trying to sell stories, conspiring, telling lies. It was a nightmare. I wasn’t the party animal anymore; I was turning into a villain, and villains sell more papers, villains generate more press. My dad, he tried to protect me. He encouraged me to get away for a while, but the press followed me everywhere. He said I should ride it out, carry on, be professional, but it was hard, so hard, then he died…”

Quinn dropped his gaze to the table.

“The one person who knew I wasn’t like what the papers were saying I was…he was gone. My rock. He always had people around him; you can’t run successful businesses without them, but they were his people, not mine. They sensed weakness, and the accusations being thrown my way started to be internal, from the company, from people I’d never met. We were losing money, not just the company I ran, but all of my dad’s companies, and it was because of me, because of this train of hate gathering momentum.”

“Where did Danny and Jessica come into this?”

“Danny was best friends with my dad. I liked him. And despite what I told you during our sessions, I’m not anti-relationships or anti-love. My dad never got over my mum, but Danny and Jessica loved each other, and I wanted that one day too. He was there for me when my dad died, when everyone was turning against me or looking the other way, Danny was there. But someone discovered he’d been fiddling with the accounts. He’d stolen hundreds of thousands from the company. He was arrested and bailed to await sentencing. I was so angry with him, so betrayed, and I told him so.”

“That day he went round to your house. A week before the murders?”

“Yes. He told me Jessica was ill; he’d stolen money for some experimental treatment, but it hadn’t worked. Her cancer was terminal, and he broke down in front of me. He was going to go to prison, and she was going to die alone. I didn’t want that, so we came up with a plan. We’d make it look like I’d killed them in a rage, and they could get away, enjoy the time they had left together, and when they were…ready…they could go to Switzerland…”

“Why would you even consider that?”

“Quinn…I was on the edge. I couldn’t see a way out, and I’d stopped leaving the house, filled with anxiety and dread. I was days away from ending it all.”

“Zane—”

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