She felt a cold finger on the back of her neck. He was stroking her hair now.

‘Why are you grey? How old are you? Late thirties? Very young to go grey. I hope you don’t mind me asking you, but I’ve always been curious about that.’

Kate felt acid bile rise up her oesophagus and eat into the back of her throat. She tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

‘You see, I feel I have some connection with you. You being grey and me not having any skin pigment. You know that, in the wild, albino animals rarely survive because they lack the pigments that provide a kind of camouflage, a disguise, for them? So I guess I’ve been lucky to get this far.’

His hands moved around from the back of Kate’s head to her neck. She watched as his thumb moved down her throat to her clavicle and back to the side of her neck.

‘I can feel your pulse,’ he said. ‘It’s quite fast. I can help you slow it down a little if you like.’

He pressed his thumb into her skin, gently at first, as he began to massage the muscles of her neck.

‘You seem stressed,’ he said. ‘You should try to relax more. Imagine yourself in a stress-free environment. A beach, say. Listen to the waves crash on the shore.’

A vision of the dead baby flashed into her head.

‘Can you hear them? The waves?’

He started to press harder now, with both hands, around her neck.

Kate remembered that Gleason had killed some of his victims by asphyxiation.

‘Do you want to go to that other place?’ he asked gently. You are ready, aren’t you?’

Suddenly Kate couldn’t breath. She heard herself choking. She tried to free her hands, but the more she struggled the more the rope bit into her skin. She tried to open her mouth to scream, but it was no use.

She realised she was going to die.

‘You know, it’s not me doing this. I really can’t take credit for it. It’s him. And, by the way, what you said about him in that interview with the Times, that really wasn’t very nice, was it? Did nobody tell you one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead?’

As he turned his head to look at the images of Gleason on the far wall, the door to the room smashed open. Kate turned her head to see a man framed in the doorway. He had a gun.

The albino threw himself down to the floor, but he wasn’t quick enough. One bullet tore into his right shoulder, another into his right hand, sending a fine spray of blood onto Kate’s face and into her eyes.

More armed men stormed into the room. They clustered around the ghost of a man on the floor, who was now whimpering in pain. One officer stood over the albino with a gun aimed at his head as another checked him for weapons.

‘He’s clean,’ said the cop.

‘Okay, cuff him.’ She recognised the voice. She blinked, but her vision was blurred.

She felt something pull at her hands. Suddenly they were free. She looked up. There was Josh.

‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ he shouted.

She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes, and tried to speak, her words muffled by the tape around her mouth. He couldn’t hear her, but it might have sounded like sorry.

36

Kate stared through the one-way mirror at the albino. The bandages that swathed his shoulder and hand only added to his whiteness, his ghostliness.

Josh and another officer were in the interrogation room with him. His every word, every movement, was being recorded. As Kate watched, her eyes flitted between the action in the room and the bank of monitors that were ranged all around her. The vision of him multiplied across several screens was like some kind of technological haunting.

‘So let’s get this straight, Mr Walsh,’ said Josh, getting up from his chair. ‘You say you never even met Bobby Gleason?’

‘Gleason. The name is Gleason.’ There was something snake-like about the way he pronounced it. ‘If you want me to answer your questions you’re going to have to use my proper name.’

‘Okay,’ said Josh. ‘Let’s start again. Mr Gleason – you’re telling me that you never knew the late Bobby Gleason?’

‘That’s right, officer. Never even met him, but often wished I had.’

‘So you didn’t work with him as his accomplice?’

‘That theory of Bill Collins? A load of bull. Gleason was man enough to do what he had to do alone. Didn’t need the help of anyone. It would have been an honour to work with him, but sadly no, it never happened.’

‘So you are saying categorically that you didn’t help Gleason commit those crimes, those rapes and murders? You didn’t’ help with transport, and you were not involved in the kidnapping?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Did you on any occasion meet with or communicate with Teresa Collins, Frances Silla, Elizabeth Ventura, Tracey Newton or Jane Gardener?’

‘I know who they are, of course. And, in a way, I almost feel like I know them. But no, I’m afraid to say I never met or talked to any of them.’

‘So tell me about Gleason,’ said Josh, in the good cop voice he hated so much. ‘What’s the deal? Why do you dig him so?’

‘He was just – how I can put it? He knew what he wanted and he took it. No messing about. No worrying. No anxiety or procrastination about the rights and wrongs. He was a genius, master of his universe.’

‘So you admire him, is that right?’

‘Jesus, I love the guy. If I was forced to, he’s the one guy I would have turned queer for,’ he said, laughing.

‘You wanted to be him. That’s why you changed your name.’

‘That’s a fair assessment, I guess.’

‘And tell me about Dr Kate Cramer, Cassie Veringer, Jordan Weislander, Dale Hoban. How do you feel about them?’

‘Scum,’ he said, spitting out the word. His pale skin was covered in pink blotches now, marks of anger. ‘Fucking vermin. They deserved everything - and more. Wish I could have carried out the rest of the plan.’

‘Which was what?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me.’