He walked to the cell and knocked. He kicked the clean bedpan through the hinged flap. A moment later, the empty plate and cup appeared at the bottom of the door. He knocked again, opened the slot and the prisoner stood again and turned. He stared into the tiny cell, and opened the door.

Every day, it was the only interaction he allowed himself with the prisoner. Distance was important.

He walked the girl out into the room, where she picked up the tin of boot polish from the table and a rag and knelt at his feet. She started to polish his boots as he stared down at her.

‘That is good, Abigail. You are behaving well today.’

‘I hope you’re pleased with me,’ she said. ‘I try to please you.’

He pulled back and looked down at his boots. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now stand. I need to inspect your cell.’

Abby moved away as he leaned into her cell and checked the door hinges and the mattress.

‘I recognized your cologne. I’ve smelled it before. I just can’t think where.’

‘I’ve been close to you a number of times, Abigail. I came close to taking you but each time something got in the way.’

The memories suddenly clicked.

‘The man in the dark. You pushed into me.’ She felt a shiver of fear, then anger, a fury that she couldn’t control. She picked up a brick started towards him.

He heard the movement behind him and turned. The girl was running towards him. He was shocked for a moment. A brick hit him hard on the side of the head. He stumbled backwards into the cell, his hand grabbing on to the door frame. She smashed the brick down on his hand and he let go, tumbling backwards. She pushed the door shut on him, but he wasn’t unconscious. His boots, bright black and shining, kicked the door open. The girl was hit but did not give up; she approached again with the brick.

He stood up, a trickle of blood over one eye, cradling his left hand. She stared, panting, the brick raised.

‘It’s wrong, what you’re doing. It’s sick and it’s wrong and I want to go home,’ she shouted. ‘I won’t stay here. I won’t!’

He moved towards her. ‘You betrayed the trust I put in you, Abigail.’

‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll smash your filthy head in.’ ‘Will you?’ he said, and closed in on her. The girl raised the brick, but he was expecting that. His arm came across to bat it away, but the brick didn’t move; her body shifted and her left leg rose high in a karate kick and the side of her foot hit his chin. He reeled backwards.

‘Don’t come near me,’ she shouted. Then she stepped towards the door. ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Help!’

‘You will be punished for this, you realize. And I will make your father aware of every moment of your suffering.’ He stepped towards her, his face angry now.

‘Get away from me. You find suffering a turn-on, do you, you sick bastard?’

He moved quickly. She threw the brick at his head; it glanced off his shoulder. She twisted, punched and kicked. But he came too fast and his bulk pushed her back and pressed her against the wall. He held her there, his mouth close to hers.

‘They will find you dead, Abigail. A naked corpse on your father’s doorstep — half-eaten by dogs. But I want to find out how close to death you can go. How slowly I can kill you.’

She was shivering. His hand tightened around her neck. He leaned back and smashed his forehead against her nose. ‘You will not be beautiful any more.’

He gritted his teeth. He shoved her hard into the chair, took out a knife and started to chop away at her hair as she wept and screamed. She stared into the shard of a mirror leaning against the wall. The girl she knew, the girl everyone knew, was disappearing. All around her, her long brown hair lay discarded on the floor.

‘We will not call you Abby any more.’

‘What?’

‘You are an experiment now, not a person. We will call you 144002.’

‘Fuck you,’ she spat.

He breathed, his hand so tight around her arm that he could feel the bone.

‘We will call you 144002.’

‘No.’

He pushed her head back violently and she stopped speaking for a moment, but she needed to know. To know why.

‘What are you doing this for?’

‘144002 must be quiet. 144002 speaks again and I will cut out 144002’s tongue.’

The girl stared across. Her eyes fixed on the red and black insignia on his arm. He smiled. ‘You can’t believe it, can you? But it is real. It is very real. This is not a dream. You will not wake up. You will never wake up from this.’

Eastern Hardware Store, Maywood

March 8, 1.50 p.m.

Harper and Kasper headed out of town. They pulled up at a hardware store off the Interstate. It was a vast warehouse structure, a rectangle of steel and plastic thrown up in what looked like a matter of days. The whole complex was a sprawling mass of similar buildings, all with their own large, bright signs.

Kasper parked close to the entrance. Harper was speaking on the phone to base, but no one had anything. Harper looked around. ‘Big.’

‘Sure is,’ said Eddie. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’

They met the manager of the store, and followed him up a long, wide aisle of fencing, rails, pipes and tubes until they got to the barbed wire. It was sitting on huge wooden pallets, three different grades, and three different types: razor wire, barbed wire and galvanized barbed wire.

‘This the only place someone can get barbed wire in the store?’

‘Sure is.’

Harper looked up and down the aisle. ‘Okay. I want this aisle taped off and dusted for prints.’

‘I’m not closing an aisle. It’s a big sales day for us.’

‘I’m trying to stop a killer, Sunday or not. I could close the whole store if you’d prefer.’

The manager shook his head.

‘Eddie,’ said Harper, ‘I want this whole area dusted, then the cash register area. We know he’s been here.’

‘So have thousands of people,’ said Eddie.

‘We might get lucky.’

Eddie’s eyebrows rose slow and high. He took out his phone. ‘I’ll get Crime Scene across here.’

They spent an hour with the manager going through the sales data and receipts, picking out every sale of barbed wire. ‘We’ve got hundreds,’ said the manager. ‘No telling which one bought your roll.’

‘We’ll take all the names, and follow them all up.’

The manager handed a printout to Harper. ‘Impossible to tell which one. The digital readings are our own — they only have the product, price and date. No import number, no license. But the batch you’re after — it only came out of the back store nine days ago.’

‘Let’s try CCTV,’ said Harper. ‘You keep it?’

He nodded his head. ‘We keep one week of tape. If it was within the week, we might see someone.’

‘Eddie, try to find him.’

‘Will do.’

Within the hour, eight CSU detectives arrived. Their supervisor, Detective Ingleman, moved straight across to Harper. ‘What are we looking for?’ he asked.

‘Someone was in here in the last nine days buying a roll of barbed wire,’ said Harper. ‘I’ve got a guy here from the cleaning company, and he’s going to tell you where they wipe down. We know whoever bought it was over in the barbed-wire area, by the cash register, and at the door. We think the door and checkout counter get wiped. I just wonder if you guys can find a needle in a haystack.’

‘You’re kidding? You want us to dust a whole store?’

‘Not the whole store. The barbed-wire aisle to start with.’

Ingleman followed Harper to the aisle. He walked up to the pallet. ‘What’s he going to touch, apart from the roll he’s buying?’

Harper shrugged. ‘It’s a long shot. He may have touched other rolls, the price tags, I don’t know, but this killer is going to kill again. We’ve got to do something.’

The supervisor walked off, shaking his head. He had a team of top detectives and he was going to ask them to dust a store. He went outside to the vans and organized his teams, shaking his head so much that his jowls wobbled.