Reuben Amaro’s murder sometime between Thursday the sixth of December and Sunday the ninth of December.

An even wider smile this time.

Finally, the abduction and attempted murder of Thomas Calder and the attempted murder of myself, Erika Piper.

When I finish talking, he laughs.

‘Do you understand what I’ve just said to you?’ I ask.

He looks at me like I have just read him the menu for tomorrow’s meals.

‘Perfectly,’ he smiles.

‘The end of The Blood Ice Killer,’ says DCI Bob.

Ed barks a hollow laugh.

‘The fucking irony is hilarious. The fact I was doing all of this to take the attention away from the film and bring it back to the books, and that’s the title they give me. I was hoping for something like The Threat. Sounds a bit like a superhero, doesn’t it?’

I can see DCI Bob shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. I ignore Ed’s attempt at joviality and instead pull my notebook out of my pocket.

‘Since we’re here, would you mind clearing up a few things?’ I say, to which he inclines his head.

‘Why did you try to frame Rory?’

He laughs. ‘That was my insurance policy. By then, I’d got a taste for killing. I thought that if he went down for the deaths, I could carry on for a while before you lot realised your mistake. It was also a massive slice of luck that he made such a scene whilst we were recording the podcast! It would’ve felt amateur not to play with him.’

‘When you were crying at the premiere, were you acting for my benefit?’

‘Believe it or not, no,’ he says, becoming slightly sombre. ‘I still have a heart, and seeing what I’d done, I felt something close to remorse. But then, he had butchered the film adaptations of my books, so in the end, it felt justified.’

Bob walks around the bed and loiters near the door.

‘Son,’ he says, ‘isn’t the legacy you are leaving behind worse than a few naff films?’

‘Let me put it this way,’ Ed replies. ‘Imagine you aren’t a policeman, you’re just a member of the public. You’ve never heard of me. Someone tells you they watched a shit film and that is based on a book. Are you going to read the book?’

DCI Bob shakes his head.

‘Now imagine someone tells you that this set of books was written by a terminally ill man who became a serial killer. Would you read them then?’

‘I’d certainly be more inclined to,’ he admits.

‘And that is my point. People are fascinated by death. We slow down when we drive past car crashes to assess the damage, to try and get a little glimpse of death, to revel in someone’s worst, possibly final, moment. We love death because we do not understand it. And when I am gone, which will be reasonably soon, the book sales will soar. And that’s my legacy. For good or for bad, at least they’ll remember me.’