‘Let’s just say I wanted to make them suffer the way they made Gleason suffer. They took away his freedom. Can you imagine what that must have been like for a man like Gleason?’

‘So you intended to kidnap them? Kill them?’

‘Yeah, but I would have had a bit of fun with them as well.’ As he smiled he bared his sinister pink gums. ‘You know what they say about all work and no play.’

Unable to control his anger any longer, Josh banged his fist down on the table. Shit. He was going to have to restrain himself if he was going to get through this. He took a couple of deep breaths and ran his hand over his face, beaded with perspiration.

‘Can you tell me what you were doing on the night of January 24 and the morning of the January 25?’

‘I can tell you exactly what I was doing. I was murdering a little girl by the name of Sara-Jane Gable. I didn’t realise how easy it would be. My, oh my, the carelessness of some parents. Of course it took me a while to narrow things down, you know, find single-storey houses that were easy to break into and that contained a baby. I had my top five, spread between Glendale, West Hollywood, Echo Park and Korea Town.

‘But that night – the night before – I was given a gift from God. I snuck up outside this one house in Los Feliz and stood outside the screen of a bedroom. The woman said she wanted to put the baby into the other room. It was only right, she said, considering. So I watched as they transferred the child into its cot across the hall. Little did they know that I had already loosened the fastening on the window. They did what they had to do and then when they fell asleep I climbed in through the window. I put my hand over the child’s mouth and took her in my car down to the sea just off the Pacific Coast Highway. I guess she must have died in the ocean.’

The casualness of the way he told his story made Kate want to gag.

‘Do you want me to tell you about the others? Oh, I had great fun with the fingertips – and the tongue, the tongue, that was something else –‘

‘I think we’re going to take a break,’ said Josh, clenching his fists and resisting the impulse to hit this sick fuck in the head. He stormed out of the room and punched the first wall he saw instead. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said. By the time he had reached Kate in the surveillance room tears of pain – and anger – had formed in his eyes.

‘I know, I just can’t believe it,’ said Kate, walking towards him. ‘The way he talked about murdering that child – so matter of factly, so coolly.’

‘I had to get out of there,’ said Josh. ‘I thought I’d fucking kill him.’

‘So what happens now?’

‘What happens now is that I spend the next couple of days with this psycho listening to him tell me about how he killed that baby, how he sliced off the fingertips from a girl down in Baja and then proceeded to snuff out her life and then how he cut the tongue out of a drugged-up homeless man.’

‘Are you going to be alright?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be fine,’ he said, sighing. ‘All in a day’s work. But once this is over I might just take that vacation.’

They had always talked about going to this little island in the Caribbean together. Just twenty or so little chalets clustered around an archetypal desert island. She had first mentioned it to him when she wanted to get pregnant. Thought it would be the ideal stress-free environment in which to conceive. Of course, it had never happened. And now, well now he’d go with another woman, with Jules.

‘But if everything goes to plan it shouldn’t take too long,’ he said, collapsing on to a chair. ‘It all seems perfectly straightforward to me in a fucked-up kind of way. Guy idolizes dead serial killer. Takes on his identity to the extent that he even changes his fucking name. Then he sets about punishing the people who brought him to justice. We’ve got the motivation and the confession.’

‘What would have happened if we hadn’t found him? How far would he have gone?’

‘Well, after murdering two people – a child and a 19-year-old girl – I get the impression that this guy hasn’t got many scruples.’

‘I’m serious, Josh.’

He took a deep breath. ‘All the way, I guess. After playing his little game I think he would have tried to have finished you off, one by one.’

‘Do you think he’ll say as much?’

‘I’ve no doubt about it.’

‘And that’s bound to help the case against him.’

‘I don’t think we need to worry about the case. It’s as strong as hell. Jordan Weislander is not going to let this one fall by the wayside.’

He took a sip of water. ‘Hey, listen, I’d better get back in there. But I wouldn’t listen to too much more of this if I were you.’

‘Worried about my mental welfare?’ she said, half-joking.

‘Yeah, I kinda am, actually. Go home and get some rest. I’ll call you.’

He moved towards her and kissed her on the cheek. It was the kiss of a friend, not a lover.

‘And thanks for what you did. It was stupid, it was fucking crazy. But it worked.’

‘I know I should have told you, but – I don’t know –‘

‘You wanted to beat me to it? What, you after my job now?’

‘No,’ she said, laughing. But she had wanted to prove something to him. ‘I just felt I had to do something to end it all.’

He looked at one of the monitors. The albino was staring blankly ahead, almost straight into the camera. ‘Well, it’s certainly the end for this fucker. Come on, I’ll see you out.’

37

Kate’s right hand moved down to her stomach. She started to rub her bump in a circular motion, an action that had now become a regular habit. She did it as much for herself, she realised, as for the benefit of the baby inside her. Funny how something so simple could give her so much pleasure.

She smiled to herself as she looked down at her distended stomach. Ten years ago she would have been appalled to walk around LA looking like – what was that funny expression her mother always used? - a pregnant duck, but now she revelled in her new shape. She loved the way her breasts had filled out and the beautiful curve of her belly. She woke up each morning with an ever increasing sense of happiness. At times she felt ecstatic, almost high with joy, even though she endured backache, heartburn, itchy skin, leg cramps and the occasional shortness of breath. She knew, of course, that this newfound sense of ecstasy was probably temporary; her body, after all, was pumping out hormones at an ungodly rate. But it also had something to do with the fact that the man who had been terrorizing her – together with Cassie, Weislander and Hoban – was at last safely locked behind bars. Now nothing - besides the normal and the everyday – could hurt her child.