‘It’s about your husband’s relationship with Stuart Nicklin.’

Sonia narrowed her eyes. ‘Relationship?’

‘You do know who Stuart Nicklin is?’ Kitson asked.

Sonia nodded quickly. ‘Yes, well, I bet there wasn’t any problem selling his house, was there? I mean, there’s always sickos and ghouls willing to splash out on properties with those kind of associations, aren’t there? Way over the asking price sometimes, if the body count’s high enough. Mind you, the council knock them down more often than not, don’t they? Or is that only if the killings actually happened at the house? You know, the “house of horror” kind of thing. Like Nilsen or whoever. Actually, I always get the Nilsens mixed up, Donald and Dennis. I know the surnames are spelled differently and that one was the Black Panther and the other one killed young men and cut them up and only got caught because his drains started to smell.’ She blinked slowly, let out a sigh. Said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Sonia, shut up.’ She looked at Kitson. ‘Sorry, I can’t stop talking…’

‘Why don’t I go and make us some tea?’ Kitson said.

Sonia showed Kitson where the kitchen was, then stepped into the back garden and smoked, signalling through the window to let Kitson know where the teabags were, that she didn’t take sugar.

Back in the sitting room a few minutes later, she said ‘sorry’ again. The cigarette seemed to have calmed her down. Kitson gave her another minute, drank her tea and looked around. There were family pictures in polished frames arranged on top of a large pine trunk beneath the window.

The usual.

Mum and dad and two smiling kids. Assorted combinations of the four. In the park with a dog, pulling stupid faces at the dinner table, on a boat somewhere.

Jeffrey Batchelor and his elder daughter, Jodi.

Sonia saw Kitson looking and said, ‘Sometimes… even now, it’s like it didn’t really happen. Like it was just a bad dream. If the phone goes in the evening, I’ll think it’s her ringing from the station. I’ll still be expecting Jeff to go and collect her, stomping out into the hall and moaning about being nothing but a bloody taxi service.’ She almost laughed. ‘You got kids?’

Kitson nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I know exactly what that’s like.’

They both looked at the photograph for a few seconds more. Jodi’s hair was a little darker than in the only picture Kitson had seen previously. The one in the file.

Just a bad dream.

The November before last, Jodi Batchelor, aged seventeen, had hanged herself in her bedroom after being dumped by her boyfriend via text message. Her father had found her body. The following day, Jeffrey Batchelor had confronted his daughter’s boyfriend – nineteen year-old Nathan Wilson – at a bus stop near his house and, following a heated exchange, had attacked him in front of several onlookers. In what those witnesses had described as a ‘frenzied assault’, Batchelor had kicked and punched Wilson, giving him no opportunity to defend himself. He had repeatedly smashed the boy’s head against a kerbstone, and, according to the witnesses, had continued to do so long after the boy was dead.

‘Stuart Nicklin is currently under police escort,’ Kitson said. ‘He’s being taken to a location in Wales, where he claims to have buried a body twenty-five years ago. And he’s taken Jeff with him.’

Sonia stared for a few seconds. ‘I don’t understand. I only saw Jeff last week. He would have said.’

‘He wouldn’t have known it was happening,’ Kitson said. ‘Not exactly when, anyway. That’s not allowed for security reasons.’

‘Still, he would have said something, surely.’

‘He would have been told not to.’

‘By Nicklin?’

‘Possibly,’ Kitson said. ‘But certainly by the prison authorities.’

Sonia sat back, shaking her head as though trying to make sense of what she had been told. ‘So, what is it that you want?’

‘We want to know what you think about their relationship. Nicklin and your husband.’

‘What are you implying?’

‘I’m not implying anything.’ Kitson leaned forward. ‘Listen, Sonia, we have no bloody idea why your husband is currently keeping Stuart Nicklin company, but we do know that Mr Nicklin does nothing without a very good reason. So, right now we’re scrabbling around trying to find anything that might help us. You knew that the two of them had become close?’

Sonia nodded.

‘How did you feel about that?’

She grunted. ‘Well, obviously I wasn’t thrilled. My husband’s a good man, despite what happened. He’s a man with faith.’ She held Kitson’s eyes for a few moments, as though keen for what she had said to sink in. ‘I’m not a believer, none of the rest of the family are, but he is. He’s not a nutcase about it, nothing like that… doesn’t force it on anybody else, but he’s kind and compassionate and he’s got a conscience. He’s everything Stuart Nicklin isn’t. So, I felt sick, if you want to know the truth. But the fact remains that Nicklin… helped Jeff in there.’ She leaned forward to pick up a mug of tea, which was probably no more than lukewarm by now. ‘Jeff was finding it really hard. A few weeks after he first went in, he had some sort of… breakdown. They had him on suicide watch for a couple of days. He was in a real state, to be honest…’

Kitson had read the file. She knew that Batchelor had handed himself in to the police immediately after the attack on Nathan Wilson. He had pleaded guilty to murder and continually refused to allow any consideration of diminished responsibility. He had accepted his punishment. There was no doubt that prison would have come as a shock to a man like Jeffrey Batchelor, but now his wife was hinting that something serious had happened, over and above the necessary adjustment.

‘Was he attacked?’ Kitson asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Maybe he was threatened.’

‘I really don’t know,’ Sonia said. She clicked her fingers. ‘But suddenly everything had changed and when I went to see him he wasn’t the same person he had been the week before. There was just a blackness. There was this… despair I couldn’t shake him out of.’

‘But Nicklin could?’

Sonia shook her head. ‘Trust me, I know how ridiculous it sounds. I spoke to one of the chaplains in there a bit later, someone Jeff had been talking to a lot ever since he’d been inside. He couldn’t explain it either, but he’d certainly noticed the difference. Jeff and Nicklin started spending time together and things changed. Next time I went in, he was calmer. More like his old self. He was talking about the future, courses he wanted to do in prison, that sort of thing.’ She took a mouthful of tea, pulled a face. ‘I’ve no idea how he did it, let alone why, but somehow Nicklin managed to talk my husband round. Thank God he did…’

Kitson looked across at the photographs again. ‘That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question though, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Why. Why would Nicklin want to take Jeff under his wing like that.’

Sonia put her mug down. She sat back and folded her arms. ‘Listen, I’ve got no bloody idea what’s in this for Nicklin,’ she said. ‘But I think I know what Jeff gets out of it. I think Nicklin makes him realise that what he did wasn’t so terrible.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, yes it was terrible, course it was and nothing’s going to bring Nathan back or make his parents feel any better. I just mean… compared to what Nicklin did. Someone like Nicklin helps Jeff remember that he’s just a good man who snapped, that’s all. An ordinary man, who’s nothing like the Nicklins of this world.’ She looked away for a few seconds, grimacing as though she were about to cry out or spit. When she turned her eyes back to Kitson, she said, ‘Maybe you’ve got this the wrong way round and it was all Jeff’s idea to go.’

‘You really think so?’ Kitson asked.

‘I think my husband needs Stuart Nicklin there to remind him who he is.’