“And Reave is the same?”

“Reave is very certain he’s not responsible.” Parker smiled grimly. “But with him it’s the ritualization of what he did to the bodies, the care he took to lay them out. It’s hugely risky, what he did—spending so much time with them was only ever going to make it easier to find and convict him—but every victim we know of was arranged in these strange, I don’t know, displays. Tableaus. And there are so many other identifying marks of the Red Wolf. The flowers, often in the mouth. The item of clothing soaked with blood. And their hearts.”

“Their hearts?” Heather felt her hand tighten around her fork, and she forced herself to relax. “What do you mean?”

“None of them were ever found. He took them out, hid them somewhere or bloody ate them, I don’t know.” He stopped, glancing down at the remains of her lunch. “Sorry. Christ, sorry, this really isn’t appropriate lunch conversation is it?”

Heather shrugged and took a sip of her drink. Hearts. Perhaps the article could examine the overall mythology of the Red Wolf. She could already see how it would hang together; pieces on his sketchy background, his time in the commune at Fiddler’s Mill, and sections on the details of the murders—people loved that stuff. And interspersed throughout, her own impressions of the man himself, drawn from the interviews. Her mother wouldn’t even need to come into it. And it could wait—the papers would still be interested once this new killer was safely caught and behind bars. Even more so, perhaps. She could reach out to Diane, let her see some of her notes. For the first time in weeks she felt a little sliver of hope; a brightness in a long period of dark. She’d forgotten how much she had enjoyed her job.

“It doesn’t bother me, honestly. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, would you? I know that’s a daft thing to think, but to be able to do something like that, you picture someone completely unhinged.”

“You want to try talking to him again?”

Heather blinked, surprised he had offered it so readily. “I want to help. And I think he knows more about my mum than he’s letting on.”

On their way out, she pressed her hand to his sleeve; the arm underneath her fingers was firm and warm, and she fought against the urge to squeeze it.

“Hey. Thanks for the lunch. It’s a grim subject but the company is good.”

They paused in the doorway, and for a moment they stood close together. She looked at the collar of his shirt and the patch of tanned skin just above it, wondering what would happen next, when his phone made a shrill noise. Turning away slightly, he thumbed the screen.

“I’d better get back,” he said. “But if you can make it tomorrow, we can try again with Michael Reave?”

Heather nodded, faintly disappointed. “I’ll be there.”

By the time Heather was back at her mother’s house it was full dark, and the terracotta pot by the doorstep was almost completely lost in shadows. Trotting up the path, Heather was half convinced she had imagined the whole thing, but as she reached it, kneeling down in the dark to pick it up, her fingers brushed over the scratched surface and a tingle moved up her arms and across her back: the heart.