‘I broke into his office, it’s not important. What matters is that she’s following a pattern: it’s not malevolent, it’s not because she enjoys it, it’s because this is what she believes she has to do.’

‘You broke. . .? ’ Logan glanced up and down the corridor. No one there. But he lowered his voice to a whisper anyway. ‘Are you insane? Anything you get from those files is inadmissible. Put them back!’

‘I don’t see how: you’ve got a warrant, haven’t you? And who’s going to know? ’

‘Put – them – back.’

‘She won’t be moving about, she’ll have a single base of operations, somewhere she feels safe. Somewhere she can paint protective circles.’

Like the ones on her bedroom roof and in her cupboard under the stairs.

‘She has a romanticized notion of decay, it appeals to the entropy she feels inside, so she’ll want to stay somewhere that’s been empty for a while. Run-down, abandoned, maybe derelict. Assuming the dominant personality lets her have any say in it.’

And that explained the half-dozen dead roses.

‘Anything else? ’

‘Yes: tread carefully. Agnes Garfield is a deeply damaged individual, and the world is a terrifying place for her right now. She’s the only one standing between us and the powers of evil. In her mind she’s a hero. Don’t break her.’

Not a monster, just doing monstrous things.

‘Thanks, Dave.’ Logan hung up and headed back to the cell block. Stopped outside number eight and peered through the hatch again.

Dr Marks hadn’t moved.

‘Last chance, Doctor. You stood up to us, we got a warrant, you got arrested. You did everything you could, no one can say you didn’t.’

Marks just stared at the far wall.

‘OK, well, you think about it.’ Logan marched over to cell seven and banged on the door, then did the same to number six. The swearing and shouting kicked off again. ‘Enjoy.’

Rennie slouched in and collapsed into Logan’s visitor’s chair. ‘Urrgh. . .’

Logan glanced up from his door-to-door forms. ‘Well? ’

Rennie’s suit looked as if he’d slept in it, then taken it off and battered it to death with a cricket bat. ‘I quit. Sod this for a game of soldiers.’

‘What did Ding-Dong say? ’

He wrapped his arms around his head and let it fall backwards, knees clenched together. ‘How come Chalmers got the morning off, eh? She wasn’t even there all night. I was there all night, but do I get the morning off? Of course not, because every bicycle-seat-sniffing tosspot—’

‘My heart bleeds for you.’