She stretched and contemplated getting another coffee. But she was fully aware that, really, she was avoiding one task she’d put off all day. The unopened letter sat on her desk and stared back at her. She reached across to pick it up and tore open the seal.

Broadmoor Rehabilitation Home

Autumn 2018

Hello Kelly,

She stopped reading. Her stomach churned. The familiarity was revolting. Visions of women, maimed and terrified, came into her head and her hands shook. It had been a shitty week: the young woman at Castlerigg who’d disappeared into thin air, the murder of Mary Hales, and now this. She got up from her desk and closed her door. It was a thing that she rarely did, but she did it in an attempt to protect her team from the vileness that was about to spill out of the letter into the clean air of her office: she didn’t want to infect them.

Hello Kelly,

I have been following the local news up there in Cumbria and you’ve become quite the superstar, haven’t you? I’m allowed an iPad now because I’m so well behaved – only you will appreciate the irony of this.

She stopped again. She shook her head and the corners of her mouth turned up into a half-smile, half-snarl at The Teacher’s arrogance. She noticed that her pulse was racing and, fleetingly, it reminded her of the initial emergency assessment of Carla Rigg at Castlerigg: her pulse was normal, despite her being in a state of trauma.

I meant it when I said that you and I have much in common. Your mind thinks like mine. They’re very rare, you know, minds like ours. They have a long name here for all of my qualities, and I’m sure you’ve heard each one. I’m assigned so many head doctors that they lose track of one another, and I have to start all over again. It’s super fun.

Kelly was taken back to a time when she was in The Teacher’s car, being driven through the dark streets of Penrith. She remembered the smell, the lurch of her stomach when certain words and phrases jolted her back to her reality, and the way the killer always referred to the two of them as kindred spirits. It made her shiver. That night she knew that if she didn’t find Nikki, then she’d be dead by the morning. She’d acted as Amy Richmond’s friend, or at least confidante, so she could save her sister. But Nikki never knew that.