She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but had gone to considerable lengths to appear older. She wore a dark grey trouser suit a couple of sizes too big, as if she’d been playing in her father’s clothes chest. Her shoes would’ve made Freud weep.

‘Come with me, please,’ she instructed, shutting my inspection down.

I followed her into a small room that smelt of handwash and leather.

‘Let me take your coat, Donal,’ she said, pronouncing it Donald but with a silent ‘d’ on the end. ‘Please, get comfortable.’

She sat down opposite me, staring hard at her notes.

Finally, she took a deep breath and spoke: ‘Okay, so Gabby told me the basics. What I’d like you to do today is run through your entire sleep history, from as far back as you can remember.’

I started, a little reluctantly. Then – like one of my dad’s middle-of-the-night pisses – it just went on and on. The knowledge that this woman hadn’t the authority to prescribe either drugs or indefinite incarceration seemed to liberate me.

I explained how, as a child, I used to wake in the dark, wide-eyed, unable to move, already choking on an ‘I’m going to die’ level of terror. The slinky black figure would soundlessly appear five or six feet from the end of my bed. Suddenly he’d be on my chest, strangling me. I’d have to fight against the swirling black liquid of his evil eyes. Then, he’d snap off, vanish … just like that.

I’d be out of bed, gasping for breath, scared for my life. And that would be it for another night: too scared to go back to sleep, too tired to do anything but loll on the sofa. Most times, I’d find Mum already there.

As far back as I could remember, Mum’s eyes looked dead, as if fixed upon some distant regret. Her criss-crossed skin hung loose on sharp cheekbones, like whittled oak. She was forty-seven now; you would have guessed closer to seventy-four. A life spent almost always awake was killing her. That, and all the medication they kept prescribing.

She made light of my ‘attacks’, telling me it was St Giles, patron saint of bad dreams, protecting me from nightmares. Quite why this messenger of God felt the need to throttle me, we never fully explored.

The lack of sleep made me constantly ill. Dad told me not to tell the doctor about my phantom tormentor. I’m sure his primary concern was how it might sound to the local GP, a man he played golf with. Back then, men in black lying on top of defenceless little boys in the middle of the night was the sole preserve of the Holy Orders. He didn’t want Dr Harnett thinking he was some sort of pervert.

I’d sometimes catch my dad looking at me with an expression that I could read, even back then, as contempt.

‘What the hell is wrong with that child?’ I’d hear him ask my mother. I grew up with the unshakeable certainty that, somehow, I’d ruined his life.

When I turned twelve, the visions stopped, just like that.

‘But now it’s started again?’

I took her through the fancy dress party and Meehan’s attack – right up to my bloodcurdling encounters with Marion Ryan outside Gabby’s flat.

Lilian scribbled feverishly. She interrupted me once more, to declare that our time was up.

‘I’d love to go on but the room’s been booked.’

‘I don’t think I could, Lilian, I’m spent,’ I said, getting to my feet, wobbling a little from a light head.

‘Are you okay, Donal(d)?’

‘I feel a bit … giddy. It’s like how I used to feel coming out of confession as a kid. That was cathartic, I suppose. Thank you.’

‘I should be thanking you,’ she said, ‘for opening up like that. I get the feeling you’ve not done that before?’

I shrugged.

‘I’m looking for a case study, Donal, and your condition is fascinating,’ she said, tucking her notes under her arm and standing.

‘Thanks,’ I said, wondering why I felt flattered, ‘but I’m not sure what else I can tell you. That’s it, really.’

She smiled: ‘You’ve no idea how interesting all this is to someone like me. I have a thousand questions.’

I felt myself giggling coquettishly and wondered if I had self-esteem issues.

‘You said yourself you found it cathartic. Maybe we can help each other?’

My guard shot up.

‘I’m not sure, Lilian, I mean I really have told you everything.’

‘I need something new and original for my dissertation. Your case would be perfect.’

‘How long does a dissertation take? I’m pretty busy.’

‘What if I only ask you to keep seeing me for as long as you feel you’re getting something out of it?’

She’d reduced me to one last excuse.

‘The thing is, Lilian, I can’t have people knowing about this condition, not in my job. If any of this came out, it’d be the end of my career.’

‘I don’t need to use your name. You can be anonymous, even in my support notes. That’s not a problem at all.’

Her giant eyes blinked into mine, pleadingly.

‘No mention of my real name, at all, anywhere near it?’

‘I promise, Donal,’ she almost cheeped in desperation.

‘Okay,’ I said and her stretched face crumpled with relief, ‘but I’m only committing to a few sessions, see how we go.’

‘You won’t regret it, Donal, honestly,’ she beamed. ‘Now I just need you to sign a couple of documents so that I can clear it with my tutor and apply for your medical records.’

She turned and picked up two documents from the table.

‘If you could sign here … and here,’ she said, her scarlet fingernails tapping at two tiny white squares amid a torrent of text. I scrawled, both impressed and alarmed by the fact she seemed to have pre-empted my agreement.

‘Great,’ she said, whipping the papers away, ‘Gabby was worried you wouldn’t take very kindly to being my guinea pig.’

‘Hey, less of the pig … quack,’ I said, strolling out and thinking: I was pretty cool there.

‘Oh, Donal!’ she called after me, ‘you’ve forgotten your coat.’

Chapter 11

Salcott Road, South London

Friday, July 12, 1991; 20:55

It had been twelve days since Marion Ryan’s murder; ten since her spirit unleashed its second assault upon me here outside Gabby’s.

DS Glenn’s team had still made no arrests or gone public linking Marion’s murder to any other crimes. As a result, the story had all but died in the media. A contact of Fintan’s inside the investigation had said that they were focusing on a ‘Lone Wolf’ random killer. The same source said detectives had so little to go on that they were effectively waiting for this killer to strike again.

I didn’t buy their Lone Wolf theory. I couldn’t believe Marion had let a deranged stranger into her home, or that a maniac had somehow forced his way in. Yet Glenn’s team must have looked into all potential suspects known to Marion and Peter, and ruled them out. They seemed certain that this had been no ‘domestic’.

So who did it? As mad as it seemed, I felt certain that Marion had appeared to me on both those occasions to help me catch her killer. I’d just been too thick to interpret her clues. Maybe I needed to reconnect with her ghost or spirit by returning to the scene of the crime – but I’d no means of getting inside 21 Salcott Road.

I felt glumly helpless and thwarted, a lowly plod forever doomed to remain lukewarm-on-the-trail of long-fled shoe muggers and evasive obsessive stalkers.

Earlier today, Gabby had left a message at work saying she was returning to her flat at about nine p.m. to pick up some clothes. She didn’t ask me to meet her there. Perhaps she realised she didn’t need to.

I parked up outside her place, in civvies to avoid attracting attention. A gust of wind slapped a lazy belt of rain against the windscreen: wet enough, surely, to douse the ardour of even the most fervent stalker. She’d taken my advice and was travelling each night to her parents’ home outside London. She’d also acted on my recommendation to buy a can of mace and a rape alarm.