‘So why all this business about making sure the press are kept away?’

‘He’s not stupid,’ Thorne said. ‘He knows the press are going to get hold of it eventually. It’s more about enjoying the fact that he can get us to do what he wants. Yeah, he likes an audience, but not as much as he likes making people jump through hoops for him.’

Karim jabbed a dripping fork in Thorne’s direction. ‘Making you jump through hoops, you mean. That’s basically what he wants. At the end of the day, you’re the only audience he’s really bothered about.’

Thorne put down his knife and fork, picked up his glass. He’d had enough to eat anyway.

‘Got a bit of a thing, has he?’ Markham asked. She leaned towards him, curling strands of hair around her jaw with the backs of her fingers.

Thorne remembered the look on Nicklin’s face back in that darkening playground, triumphant somehow despite the blood and broken teeth. He remembered the look on his face earlier that day, when he’d turned from the urinal to tuck his cock away. His eyes, whenever Thorne had caught them in the rear-view, as though Nicklin had been staring at it, waiting.

Thorne drained his glass. ‘Yeah. A thing.’

When the waitress came to clear the table, nobody sounded interested in coffee, but Karim and Holland both seemed keen on at least one more drink before bed. Thorne pushed his chair back, announced that he was heading up. Wendy Markham finished what was left of her drink and said that she was ready to do the same.

Karim looked at his watch. ‘It’s not even ten.’

‘Listen, I’m not your dad,’ Thorne said. ‘But I will be seriously pissed off if either of you isn’t up to it in the morning, all right?’ He pointed at Holland, nodded at Karim. ‘He’s a nutcase, but you should know better, Dave.’

‘Just a quick half, honest,’ Holland said.

Karim nodded, solemn. ‘Maybe a couple of brandies.’

Thorne and Markham said, ‘Goodnight’ to Pritchard and his friends as they left the bar, then walked in silence past Reception and up the two flights of stairs to the floor where all four of them were staying.

Markham’s room was along the corridor to the left, while Thorne’s was half a dozen paces in the other direction. They stood together on the landing and exchanged a look. Just an awkward moment or two of politeness before separating, a second or two too long.

‘Right then…’

‘Fancy a nightcap in my room?’ Markham asked.

Thorne swayed, his weight shifting from one foot to the other. He could feel the colour flooding his face and saw that the same was happening to Markham’s. She was about to say something else when he managed to stammer, ‘I’m really knackered, Wendy. It was a ridiculously early start this morning. Well, for both of us…’

‘I know,’ she said, nodding. ‘Stupid idea.’

‘Stupid time, that’s all,’ he said.

They both looked elsewhere for as long as it took to let a breath out, then turned towards their rooms at the same time. They separated quickly, the floorboards groaning beneath the cheap carpet as they walked, as they fished for the oversized wooden fobs in their jacket pockets.

Casually, desperately.

Thorne pushed his key towards the lock, fumbled it and tried again.

He took care to keep his eye firmly fixed on the door that was no more than a few inches in front of his face, well aware that, fifteen feet to his left, Wendy Markham was doing exactly the same.

FOURTEEN

The writing was tiny and precise, but the way it was laid out, the words crushed against one another, meant that it took Kitson two or three attempts before she was able to read through any of the letters quickly.

It was impossible to tell if Nicklin had written them quickly. Had it all come out in a rush or had he taken his time? Were his descriptions and diatribes spontaneous or had he thought carefully through every phrase, perfected each image? She could not understand a need for haste, not from someone with so much time on his hands, but sometimes there was an unmistakable energy to the words. A strange urgency about them. Or was that simply down to the layout, the way the words had been crammed on to every page?

She sorted out the batches of rubber-band-wrapped envelopes before she started, laying them along the back seat of the car. She turned around to retrieve a fresh batch when she was ready and tossed the ones she had finished with back into the box, which was nestling in the footwell.

MUM,

Woken by a loud scream earlier on and found out that someone had been attacked stabbed on the wing. Try not to worry too much because I know how much you DO! These things happen – he was all right in the end anyway – everyone in a bit of a flap that’s all. ACTUALLY noise is the hardest thing to get used to in here – not having any silence I mean. Outside you get used to having those times when you can just sit and think and it’s hard when there is always a bloody racket – bangs and shouts and screams and crying or whatever. You just have to learn to tune it OUT until it’s just something in the background then you can concentrate a bit better. While I was doing just that earlier on I had a strange interesting thought. I was wondering if you keep the things that were written about me from the newspapers – you know my press cuttings HA HA HA – not that you would want to show them off to your friends NECESSARILY but just wondered. It’s not every mum whose son gets his name in the papers is it and certainly not in letters that BIG!

Kitson had done as Thorne had suggested and read the most recent letters first. The whole thing felt weird enough anyway, but it was never stranger than when she was beyond the point where Annie had stopped. When she was opening envelopes. Now she was the only reader, looking at words that she was the first to see, other than Nicklin himself of course. She lifted each off-white, rectangular envelope and opened it fast, the tearing of the paper masking the sound of her breath catching every time.

In here if you know what 2+2 is and you can write your name you might as well be a PROFESSOR. Other prisoners will ask you to read letters from home or for help with legal stuff. Just because I was a teacher I get a lot of requests like that and it’s fine because I quite enjoy helping out if I can – time passing keeping busy etc etc. But I also get very DIFFERENT reactions because of what I did why I’m in here – something like respect or even fear which was strange to begin with but can be quite useful if I’m honest. Some people found out about what happened in BELMARSH with the infamous spoon and a reputation like that can do you favours – it can keep you safe in a place like this so that’s one more reason for you not to worry about me. OK? Turns out I’m the one to come to if you need a form filling in or a letter from your lawyer checking over BUT I’m also the scary one who you should avoid looking at when you’re queuing up for your dinner. I’m the MAD professor! Made me think though – did I ever scare YOU??

The odd one had been opened and read by prison officers before it had been sent out. Kitson knew they did that. They would have checked all his incoming mail of course, but only dipped randomly into the letters that were going the other way. She had no idea who he might have been writing to other than Annie and his ex-wife. Did he correspond with his ‘fans’, of whom there were plenty? Did he reply to the marriage proposals from the crackpot bitches all desperate to snag themselves a killer as a husband? The desperate souls convinced that Mr Right would be someone with at least a couple of killings to his name.