He sits down on the bottom step and pulls his wig off. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a handkerchief. He coughs into it and when he pulls it away from his mouth, there are spots of blood staining it.

‘So you’ve got cancer? And I presume that’s why you’ve done all this? Some sense of justice against the world?’ I goad him.

A flash of anger crosses his face but when he speaks again, his voice is considered.

‘Not at all,’ he replies. ‘When I got my terminal diagnosis, I felt neither anger or panic, I felt nothing. I knew it was coming, accepted it and thought I’d just fade away. But then I got reading about legacies and spent a lot of time thinking about mine. What am I going to leave to the world when I go?’

With some effort, he hauls himself up from the step and rubs the barrel of the gun against his bald head. It looks rehearsed and feels insincere, like he is playing a character he has written.

‘I concluded that all I would be leaving behind were my stories. And that’s when I began to form the idea for my killing spree. You see, even though my novels are well known, the bastardised film version of Blood Ice is much more famous. And that’s what I will forever be remembered for; sub-standard films.’

He begins to pace.

‘So I thought by killing the people involved in them; Anna, Jay, Reuben and finally myself, the limelight would fall back on me and my books. People will hate me but everyone will want to know why I did it. That’s the brilliance of the human mind; we are fascinated by what we can’t understand. So, when the fourth book in the Threat series, a crime book with an autobiographical slant, is released, posthumously, it’ll fly off the shelves and my infamy will be confirmed.’

The speech sounds prepared and is delivered with more than a hint of theatrical nuance. He walks towards me, his gun still trained on my head.

‘Throw in a couple of dead cops and we have ourselves the perfect finale. I’ll be remembered forever.’

‘Why dress as a homeless man?’ I ask, in an attempt to buy some time.

He barks a laugh that echoes around the room.

‘Ah, my finest idea. You see, when I first came up with the idea, I only planned on the one death. It was always going to be the one on the rink, but I never thought it would be Anna. That was just a stroke of fortune. I thought leaving the page at the scene would lead the police to me, and if it didn’t, I was going to admit to the death via a social media post scheduled for when I’d died. But then I got a taste for it, it became a bit of a game, seeing how far I could go. Manchester is, sadly, full of homeless people and I thought that if I could fade into the group, my identity could remain hidden for long enough to get us to this point.’