Stupid or not, Kitson was suddenly desperate to know the answer, though Annie Nicklin’s expression made it clear that was not going to happen.

‘Course, they’re all desperate to ask the one big question,’ Annie said. ‘Not that they do, but you can see they’re thinking it.’

‘Which is?’

‘Did I do something to him?’

‘What would you tell them if they did ask?’

The old woman shrugged. ‘Well, I must have, mustn’t I?’

Kitson, with no idea how to respond, brushed crumbs from her lap.

‘You still haven’t said what you want…’

Kitson told her about the trip to look for Simon Milner’s remains and her son’s insistence on being escorted by the detective who had caught him ten years ago. She said, ‘We were wondering about Stuart’s letters.’

‘One every week,’ Annie said. She sounded almost proud. ‘Every single week since he’s been inside, regular as clockwork. But I stopped reading them a long time ago.’

Kitson nodded. Another wasted journey. She began to wonder if she could beat the rush hour back, what she had in the house for dinner.

‘They all used to say the same thing though. The letters from prison.’

‘What?’

‘That it wasn’t my fault. None of it.’ Her voice was a little less sure, suddenly, the tremor a little more pronounced. ‘That I mustn’t blame myself. It was the same as when I first went to see him after he was sent down. He told me not to come any more, simple as that. He said I shouldn’t have to go through it, that it wasn’t fair. Because what happened wasn’t my fault.’

Kitson stared at the smile that would not stay in place and suddenly understood exactly what Stuart Nicklin had done to his mother. What he had succeeded in doing over a prolonged period of time. He had systematically ground her down. Gradually, his real intention masked by fake concern for her well-being, he had worn away any resistance to the deep-seated conviction that she was actually to blame for everything he had done. That she had made him what he was. It was clear that Nicklin despised her and that making her suffer was every bit as important, as sustaining to him, as the suffering he had inflicted on his victims and their families.

Perhaps more so.

Annie Nicklin told everyone who she really was because she thought she deserved to be hated.

‘So, he killed another one, did he?’ Annie asked. ‘This boy on the island, you said.’

‘He claims he did.’

‘Well, he tends not to lie about that kind of thing.’

‘He’s left it a long time though, don’t you think?’

‘He’ll have his reasons.’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out,’ Kitson said. Later, Kitson would remember that at no point did it occur to Nicklin’s own mother that it might have been because he was sorry.

Annie was looking around, waving to attract the attention of one of the care workers, who came over and asked if everything was all right. Annie looked at Kitson. Said, ‘I get very tired, love. Have to sleep a lot during the day.’

‘It’s time for your tablets anyway,’ the care worker said.

Annie reached for her sticks. ‘It’s a wonder I don’t bleedin’ rattle when I walk.’

Kitson started to gather up her things. In the last look before the old woman turned away and began the slow walk back to her bedroom, Kitson saw a snapshot of someone for whom the pain of arthritis or whatever else she needed tablets for was negligible in comparison to what her own son had done to her. Was still doing to her.

Thin lips stretched across discoloured teeth. Light going in the eyes.

No, definitely not peace, Kitson thought.

After a trip to the toilet, Kitson was on her way to the front door when the care worker came hurrying towards her carrying a small box. ‘Annie wants you to have this.’

Kitson took the box and turned back one of the cardboard flaps. She saw the bundles of letters, batches of sealed and faded envelopes bound together with elastic bands. ‘Is she sure?’

‘That’s what I asked her,’ the woman said. ‘I mean, I know what’s in there. She told me that she’d heard some of her friends crying in the night.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sometimes a few of the residents can get distressed during the night. It’s quite common.’ The care worker took half a step away, nodded back at the box in Kitson’s arms. ‘Annie said getting these out of the building might stop them having nightmares.’

THIRTEEN

The owner/manager of the Black Horse in Abersoch was clearly thrilled at having four of his rooms occupied in the depths of the off-season. Seeing his reaction, Thorne tried to imagine how excited the man might have been with six rooms taken, but Fletcher and Jenks had booked themselves into a rival establishment at the other end of the village. Sitting in his cubby-hole at Reception, the manager had taken the news well. He had smiled as he shrugged and muttered, ‘More fool them.’

Welcoming the new arrivals like long-lost relatives, that smile had stayed plastered to Elwyn Pritchard’s round, red face as he gleefully handed over keys on oversized wooden fobs, scribbled down the Wi-Fi password and escorted each of his guests to their rooms in turn. The unalloyed joy was there in his voice as he ran through checkout times the following day, made sure they knew about regulated parking hours in the street outside and explained that the boiler was playing up, while assuring them that there should be plenty of hot water for everyone provided they ‘didn’t go mad’.

‘We’ll try not to,’ Thorne said.

Within a few minutes of shutting the hotel room door behind him, Thorne had taken his shower – unable, as it turned out, to go too mad beneath the lukewarm dribble – then crashed out on the lumpy bed for the best part of an hour and a half. When he woke, it was dark outside. He could not clearly recall what he had been dreaming about, but the thin sheets were clinging to him.

He turned the temperature of the shower right down and climbed back in.

He called Yvonne Kitson while he was getting dressed. She had not been back at home more than half an hour, she said, and was busy getting wine down her neck while she struggled to get her kids’ tea organised. She gave Thorne the highlights of her conversation with Sonia Batchelor.

‘So, you know… maybe Sonia’s right and it’s not all about Nicklin,’ Kitson said. ‘Sounds like Batchelor’s getting something out of being with him.’

Thorne sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘It was Nicklin that insisted on this.’ He turned the phone’s speaker on, tossed it on to the pillow, then lay back and pulled on his jeans. ‘It was one of his conditions.’

‘Just doing Batchelor a favour, maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Worried about leaving him on his own?’

‘Remember who we’re talking about here, Yvonne. It’s not like he’s the prison chaplain.’

Kitson laughed. Thorne heard another mouthful of wine going down.

‘What happened at the care home?’

She told him what Annie Nicklin had given her. At that moment the box was still sitting in the boot of her car.

‘I need you to have a look at them, Yvonne.’

‘Can I feed my kids first?’

‘Yeah, sorry.’ He sat up, walked across to collect the shirt he’d dragged from his overnight bag and draped across a chair. ‘Look, I know it’s a long shot, but he might have said something in one of those letters, given some hint as to what he’s up to. God knows, a letter to his mother might be the one time he’s honest with someone.’

‘Based on what she told me, I seriously doubt it,’ Kitson said.

‘Well just have a look,’ Thorne said. ‘Obviously we’re only really interested in the most recent ones. Unless you’ve got nothing better to do than sit and read all of them.’ He watched himself in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door as he buttoned up the shirt. When he was done, he tucked the shirt into his jeans. He ran a hand across his gut and pulled the shirt out again.