“The king pushed the servant into the pit?” Heather completed it for him.

Reave stopped. A slow smile spread across his face. His hands were now lying loosely on the table, palms facing the ceiling.

“There you go, lass.”

Heather swallowed hard. She was beginning to think like him. When the silence between them had spooled into something less than comfortable, she leaned forward on the table. She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Was there someone else, Michael, someone you trusted to know how to handle everything? Do you know the person who is murdering these women now? Who was he to you?”

Reave shook his head. “I’m telling you my story, Heather, over and over. But I don’t think you’re listening.”

Michael Reave would say nothing more. However, when the two guards moved forward to escort him from the room, his head snapped up, life returning to his face.

“There will be a funeral? For Colleen? Or have you already …?”

“It’s on Wednesday,” said Heather.

“Are you putting her in the ground?”

It was almost too easy to relax around Reave, to believe he was no longer dangerous, but the eagerness with which he asked the question caused the hair to stand up on the back of Heather’s neck. She picked up the note from the table and slipped it back into her pocket.

“No, it’s a cremation. She asked for it in her will.”

He looked down, hiding his face, his big shoulders heaving as he struggled with something. The hand still resting on the table opened and closed convulsively.

“And her ashes?”

DI Parker stepped forward and pressed Heather’s shoulder, briefly, and she found herself ridiculously grateful for it.

“You know very well that’s none of your business, Reave.”

The big man looked away from them. Heather was shocked to realize that he was genuinely upset, his strong features constricted with grief. “She would want to be somewhere out in the open, lass. Just remember that.”

Later, in the murky little prison canteen, Parker sat opposite Heather, frowning and fiddling with paperwork again. Both their beakers of tea stood untouched.

“I’m not sure what good this is doing us. While it’s true that this is the most he’s ever said to anyone, including his array of shrinks, I’m not sure what the world’s creepiest episode of Jackanory is achieving.”

“Have you thought about it? The possibility that he wasn’t the one actually doing the killings all those years ago?”

He sighed.

“He’s not the best example of a serial killer, you do realize that?” When Heather looked at him blankly, Parker continued. “The vast majority of them are nasty idiots who got lucky for a while. Inadequate men with low IQs and messed up sexual appetites. Sad little men who feel nothing unless they are dominating someone. A case like Michael Reave is extremely rare, and I don’t want you to be taken in by it.”

“You mean, he’s unusual for a serial killer.”

Parker shrugged one shoulder, picked up his tea, and put it down again. “He’s articulate. Even charming. You can have a conversation with him and not feel your brain cells dying, which believe me, is unusual for that group. He doesn’t look like a monster. But,” he cleared his throat, “aside from the van and the evidence in it, he was living an itinerant lifestyle at the time, travelling around a lot, and he has no real alibis for any of the murders. His mother disappeared when he was a kid, did you know that?”