“Three,” he said. “Oh. Oh, this...this is more interesting. This person—not sure of the sex, going to say he—is very tense when he’s writing this, but it’s a curious sort of tension. I can’t tell if he’s afraid or exhilarated, but that’s in the moment, because what he mostly is—it comes through every word—is resentful. Boiling with it. He’s, oh, clenched up and furious and....you know, if he did something about it, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. This is, I don’t know, like a man turned down by a string of women, and if he’s married at all, he chose her as a poor second and despises her for saying yes to him. Or he’s been long overlooked for promotion—actually, that’s much more like it, there’s no sex drive here. Maybe even one of those church spinsters, if you know what I mean, someone who’s directed all their energy into an organisation or a protegee and isn’t getting the recognition they feel they deserve, and it’s acid on the soul.” He could really feel the personality now, the long-bridled, fermenting resentment. “This is a bitter, bitter person. I don’t know if you could tell it to talk to them, they’re all clenched up, but they’re absolutely seething inside.”

Fowler was watching him with those dark eyes. “Is this your pick?”

“It’s certainly someone who’s ripe for mischief, or rather spite, but I’d want to see the rest.”

Number four was a lacklustre read: perfectly pleasant and worried a lot. Joel couldn’t get anything more out of that. He made another round of tea before sitting back down to number five.

“Five. Hmph. This one’s got a problem. Gambling, maybe, or...drink, perhaps, but the writing doesn’t look shaky. Drugs? Might even be sex, I don’t know, but he’s not enjoying it much if it is. Again, I’m saying ‘he’ for convenience. He’s ashamed, but he would be, and there’s quite a lot of guilt and fear sloshing around, but I don’t think they’re new emotions to him at all. I’m honestly not getting much else outside the ruling compulsion. Mph. I wouldn’t look at this and say he’s definitely done something bad, but he’s a person in the grip of addiction, and that can lead people to do bad things and not really think about it that much because the habit comes first. Ugh. I wish I knew what sort of crime this was, because honestly, two, three, and five are all capable of something.”

Fowler wrote it all down. “Go on.”