‘I’m going through the path,’ he said. Round there that was what everyone called it, the path.

‘That’ll do me.’ She sounded eager and pleading. ‘It’s a short cut to my place. Is it all right if I walk along with you?’

‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘One of them got killed down there. Doesn’t that bother you?’

She only shrugged. They began to walk along together up the yellow and white glazed street, not talking, at least a yard apart. It was a chilly damp night, and a gust of wind caught them as, past the shops, they entered the path. The wind blew out the long red silk scarf she wore and she tucked it back inside her coat. Barry never wore a scarf, though most people did at this time of the year. It amused him to notice just how many did, as if they had never taken in the fact that all those six had been strangled with their own scarves.

There were lamps in this part of the path, attached by iron brackets to the red wall and the brown. Her sharp-featured face looked greenish in the light, and gaunt and scared. Suddenly he wasn’t intimidated by her any more or afraid to talk to her.

‘Most people,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t walk down here at night for a million pounds.’

‘You do,’ she said. ‘You were coming down here alone.’

‘And no one gave me a million,’ he said cockily. ‘Look, that’s where the first one died, just round this corner.’

She glanced at the spot expressionlessly and walked on ahead of Barry. He caught up with her. If she hadn’t been wearing high heels she wouldn’t have been that much taller than he. He pulled himself up to his full height, stretching his spine, as if effort and desire could make him as tall as his cousin Ronnie.

‘I’m stronger than I look,’ he said. ‘A man’s always stronger than a woman. It’s the muscles.’

He might not have spoken for all the notice she took. The walls ended and gave place to low railings behind which the allotments, scrubby plots of cabbage stumps and waterlogged weeds, stretched away. Beyond them, but a long way off, rose the backs of tall houses hung with wooden balconies and iron staircases. A pale moon had come out and cast over this dismal prospect a thin cold radiance.

‘There’ll be someone killed here next,’ he said. ‘It’s just the place. No one to see. The killer could get away over the allotments.’

She stopped and faced him. ‘Don’t you ever think about anything but those murders?’

‘Crime interests me. I’d like to know why he does it.’ He spoke insinuatingly, his resentment of her driven away by the attention she was at last giving him. ‘Why d’you think he does it? It’s not for money or sex. What’s he got against them?’

‘Maybe he hates them.’ Her own words seemed to frighten her and, strangely, she pulled off the scarf which the wind had again been flapping, and thrust it into her coat pocket. ‘I can understand that.’ She looked at him with a mixture of dislike and fear. ‘I hate men, so I can understand it,’ she said, her voice trembling and shrill. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’