The desk and chair seemed relatively new, but the old-looking two-drawer cabinet looked as though it had been salvaged from the city dump. It was covered in nicks and scratch marks. The good news was that the drawers had no locking mechanism, which made things a lot easier.

From his pocket, Garcia retrieved a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on before pulling open the cabinet’s top drawer. Inside it, he found several sheets of regular, white printer paper, nothing else. He removed the sheets from the drawer and quickly fanned through them.

They were all blank.

Just to be sure, he swapped hands and fanned through them again from the other side.

Yes, all blank.

He returned them to the drawer before closing it and moving on to the bottom one. It slid open a lot less smoothly than the first drawer, as if one of its runners had been severely damaged.

From the look of the cabinet, Garcia didn’t find that at all surprising.

The drawer came open only about halfway before jamming.

Garcia tried again.

Same result. It was certainly jammed.

He tried once more, giving it a firm pull this time, but it made no difference, the drawer got stuck at the exact same point. But the firm pull made something that was lying at the back of the drawer roll forward – a red, BIC Cristal, ballpoint pen.

A millisecond later, Garcia’s memory spat out images of the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey, and the one that had been slid under Hunter’s door. Both had been written on crisp white sheets of printer paper, and forensics had identified the pen used as a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.

Garcia reached for the pen inside the drawer and for a quick instant he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. On the body of the pen, in tiny white letters, he saw the BIC logo, followed by the words ‘Cristal 1.6 mm’.

In his hand, he was holding a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.

Garcia curbed his excitement and retrieved a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. He dropped the pen inside it, sealing the bag.

Squatting down, Garcia looked inside the jammed drawer. It seemed empty. He stuck his hand inside it and felt around. Nothing. He closed the drawer and reopened the top one. From the paper pile inside it he retrieved the topmost sheet, before lifting it up to the window to study it against the light.

He was looking for impressions that could’ve been left behind. Depending on the pressure a person applies to a pen when writing, if a second sheet of paper is used as a base for the one that is being written on, partial and sometimes even full indentations might be left behind.

The sheet of paper was completely clear. No impressions of any kind.

Garcia reached for the sheet at the bottom of the pile and repeated the process, just in case he had returned the pile to the drawer the wrong way around after fanning through them.

Nothing.

Still, together with the red BIC Cristal, they would all be taken back to the forensics lab for further analysis.

Garcia left the living room and entered the kitchen. It was even more barren than the living room. There was a fridge-freezer at one end of the short kitchen worktop, a sink at the center of it and a small stove at the other end. Just under the worktop, Garcia saw two drawers together with three cupboards. Three other cupboards were mounted on to the wall above the sink. The only item on the chrome-plated dish rack to the left of the sink was a sponge. An electric kettle was to the left of the stove. There was no dishwasher, no washing machine and no microwave oven. Just like the rest of the apartment, a faint smell of bleach and disinfectant with a hint of orange lingered in the kitchen.

Garcia started by checking the fridge. There was nothing inside it except two small and unopened bottles of water. The inside of the fridge was sparkling clean. The freezer was completely empty.

Next he checked the three cupboards on the wall.

First one on the left.

Empty.

Middle one.

Empty.

Last cupboard.

Garcia found a can of tomato soup, a jar of coffee and a small pack of sugar, nothing else.

He moved on to the cupboards under the sink.

First one on the left.

He found a bottle of bleach, one of washing-up liquid, one trigger spray bottle of Orange Plus, two large sponges and a pack of cleaning cloths.

Middle one.

There were two plates, two tumblers and one coffee mug, all of them plastic.

Last cupboard.

Empty.

Garcia closed them all and reached for the sponge and the dish rack. Both were completely dry. No one had used either in a while.

He placed the sponge back on the rack and opened the drawer by the fridge.

Empty.

He walked to the other end of the kitchen worktop and opened the final drawer. All he found was one fork, one knife and a teaspoon – again, all of them plastic – together with a plain black book of matches with no logo on the front or back cover. He picked it up and flipped it open. The matches were also black with a bright red head. Five of them were missing. The inside of the book of matches differed from the outside because it was white instead of black.

Garcia stared at it for a couple of seconds before he finally realized what he was looking at.

Goosebumps rose on the back of his neck again. ‘Fuck!’

Sixty-Six

With his back flat against the wall, Squirm sat alone in the darkness of his cell. His knees were pulled up against his chest and his arms hugged his legs so tightly they were starting to go pale. The tips of his toes were moving up and down robotically, as if tapping to the beat of a slow song only he could hear. Despite the darkness, the boy kept his one good eye open, staring at nothing at all. The pain in his left eye was still there but Squirm simply didn’t care anymore.

‘The Monster’ had left soon after he had told Squirm how much money he’d been paid by the boy’s father to take him away.

‘Do you know what your father said to me?’ the man had asked Squirm back in the kitchen. ‘He told me that once I had taken “that plague” away from his life, I could do with you whatever I wished – kill you in whichever manner pleasured me most – as long as your body was never found. Now, what sort of father says something like that about his own child?’

Squirm had trembled at those words. Not because of the threat of death – in his own way he had already accepted that that was what was going to happen to him – but because he then knew that the story ‘The Monster’ had told him was true. That was exactly what his father used to call him – ‘plague’.

Immediately, an avalanche of memories came crashing down inside the boy’s mind.

All of them bad.

You’re like a fucking disease, you hear? A goddamn plague that torments my life.

You are the reason your mother left, did you know that? You are a plague. No wonder you have no friends. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you.

Get the hell out of my face, you fucking plague, or I will tear you a new asshole.

‘I would’ve done it for nothing, you know?’ ‘The Monster’ had said, bringing the boy back to reality. His next words, though delivered in a chillingly cold voice, were overflowing with what could only be described as a morbid passion.

‘What can I say? I like killing people. I like looking into their eyes as life leaves them. I like to savor every drop of their fear. I like how they beg me for mercy . . . not God . . . me. I like how they cry. How they promise to do whatever I want. Yes, I like it all, Squirm, but most of all I like the way it makes me feel.’