The conversation had gone as far as Thorne cared for it to go. He turned to Holland. ‘You thought about holidays yet, Dave?’

‘Not anywhere specific,’ Holland said.

‘Somewhere hot?’

‘Oh yeah, and it’ll have to be somewhere with a kids’ club for the Pushy Princess. Or at least plenty of other kids around she can play with.’

Nicklin leaned forward again. ‘How old’s your daughter, sergeant?’

Holland turned around to look at him, but said nothing. This conversation had ended too.

They drove for another forty minutes in silence, maintaining steady progress in heavy motorway traffic. Drizzle had begun to spatter the windscreen. Just after they had passed a sign for the Telford turn-off, Nicklin turned to Fletcher.

‘I reckon we’re about due to stop for a bit. There’s services in three miles.’

Fletcher leaned towards Thorne. ‘You hear that?’

‘We should push on,’ Thorne said.

‘We’re entitled to a comfort break,’ Nicklin said. ‘We’ve also got a right to a minimum of one hour’s exercise every day, isn’t that so, Mr Fletcher?’

Fletcher caught Thorne’s eye in the rear-view and nodded.

‘One hour,’ Nicklin said. ‘And I’m only talking about stopping for ten minutes for a quick piss and a fag. Chance to stretch our legs.’

Galling though it was, Thorne remembered what Colquhoun had said and knew it meant granting the prisoners the same basic privileges that they would have back at Long Lartin. Thinking ahead, he did not want any trial based on what they might find to be jeopardised by a failure to follow the correct and lawful procedure now. As things stood, Nicklin seemed happy enough to co-operate, but it would be just like him to become awkward down the line, and complain that his human rights had been denied.

‘Yeah, fair enough,’ Thorne said.

Five minutes later, the two cars were pulling up and parking next to one another outside the Telford services. Leaving Markham on her own, Karim walked across to Thorne’s vehicle and waited. It had already been decided that they would work on a ratio of three to one and that each prisoner would be taken inside one at a time. There was no good reason they should not kick things off with the headline act. So, while Holland waited with Batchelor and Jenks in the car, Thorne, Fletcher and Karim walked Nicklin into the services.

‘Do you prefer Jeff or Jeffrey?’ Holland asked. He waited, then turned back to face front. ‘Suit yourself.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Batchelor said. ‘Either.’

They were the first words Batchelor had spoken since they’d left Long Lartin.

Holland turned back to him, nodded. ‘So, enjoying yourself then?’

Batchelor shrugged. ‘Better than sitting in a cell, I suppose.’

Holland studied the man in the handcuffs. He was tall and skinny, long-limbed. His light-brown hair was thin and wispy, and behind delicate glasses with thin metal frames his eyes closed tightly when he blinked, as though he was surprised each time it happened.

Delicate. He looked delicate. He looked, Holland decided, like a history lecturer at a sixth-form college, which is exactly what he was.

What he had been.

‘So, why are you here, Jeff?’ Holland asked. ‘Or, why do you think you’re here?’ He gave it a few seconds. He glanced at Jenks, but the prison officer was sitting with his head back and his eyes closed, appearing to be thoroughly uninterested. ‘I mean, I presume it wasn’t your idea.’

‘Nicklin doesn’t think he’s well liked,’ Batchelor said.

Holland laughed. ‘Oh, you reckon?’

‘Liked now, I mean. By police officers. I gather an officer died when he was arrested.’

‘Her name was Sarah McEvoy,’ Holland said. ‘She was a good officer.’

The truth was that Sarah McEvoy had been a very troubled young woman, with a serious drug dependency that had made her anything but a good officer. It was the reason she had been in that playground to begin with. The weapon Stuart Nicklin had used against her.

And she and Dave Holland had been lovers.

‘So, what then? He just wants someone along as a witness, does he?’

Batchelor blinked, eyes shut tight. ‘I suppose so.’

‘And you were the lucky winner. Or did you get the short straw?’

‘Like I said, better than sitting in a cell.’

They said nothing for a while. The rain grew a little heavier outside, noisy suddenly against the glass. Holland wondered if Jenks might actually be asleep.

‘Listen,’ Holland said. ‘I’ve got a daughter, you probably heard me say that. Not as old as yours was. Not as old as… Jodi was.’ Batchelor was staring back at him now, unblinking. ‘I just wanted to say that I understand what you did. I don’t condone it, not for a second, course I don’t. But I understand why you did it.’

SEVEN

There had been some debate about when and where to remove the handcuffs and in the end they had decided to do so in the car. To allow Nicklin to walk in and out of the service station without them. The intention was still to avoid unwanted scrutiny wherever possible and though this was one of Nicklin’s ‘conditions’, it suited Thorne well enough. He did not want media attention any more than Nicklin did.

Blurry pictures and speculation. Manufactured outrage.

All of them were probably worrying unduly. Chances were that leaving the cuffs on as Nicklin walked in would not have caused any major problems. Thorne could not see too many people open-mouthed and scrabbling for their phones to alert the red-tops. There might be some rubbernecking, why wouldn’t there be, but nobody would guess what, or more importantly who, they were seeing. Watching him, as he was shepherded towards the Gents, Thorne doubted that even those who had followed the case closely, back when he was on every front page in the country, would recognise Stuart Nicklin now.

Five years ago, when Thorne had last been into Long Lartin to see him, the change had been drastic enough. Now, Nicklin looked even less like the man whose face, in one endlessly reproduced photograph, had once been so familiar. The expression of contentment that had come to be seen as defiance, eyes wide but most often described as ‘blazing’. A simple holiday snap, contextualised below a thousand prurient headlines and a name that was still a convenient byword for evil.

A ‘monster’, who was finally beginning to look genuinely monstrous.

Five years ago, Thorne had been shocked at Nicklin’s appearance, flabby and jaundiced. Now, it looked as though he had gained a lot more weight, lost even more colour, so that in places his skin appeared more blue than white; almost translucent. His eyes had sunk further into his face. His nose and the corners of his mouth were dotted with whiteheads and his teeth – many of them false, thanks to Thorne – were discoloured in places and had begun to look too big for his mouth. He was wearing a black beanie hat, but Thorne knew that beneath it, his head was bald and pitted. Thorne remembered a series of irregular, purplish lesions, like wine stains on the scalp.

As they approached the entrance to the toilets, Nicklin stopped, and turned. ‘It’s only a slash, lads,’ he announced. ‘So I won’t be keeping you too long. You should be thankful it wasn’t the chicken curry for dinner last night.’

Nicklin’s physical appearance was easily explained of course. Poor diet, far too many cigarettes, a lack of exercise; a life spent without fresh air. Thorne could not shake the idea though that these changes were in some strange way deliberate. He had radically altered his appearance before when it had suited him and now it felt somehow as though he were revelling in his ability to do so again. Displaying his refusal to be the man or the monster that anyone expected.

Fletcher and Karim waited outside with Nicklin, while Thorne gave the toilets the once-over. He ignored the looks from those going about their business as he checked unlocked cubicles and banged on the doors of those that were occupied. Once the facilities were empty, Fletcher brought Nicklin in. Karim waited outside, flashing his warrant card to prevent anyone else entering.