Heather straightened up, lifting her chin a touch. Her head was thumping steadily, but she had spent a good half an hour in the shower that morning, trying to wash away her tiredness and the lingering anxieties of the night before.

‘Let’s do it.’

The interview room was still small, oppressive, yellow. Michael Reave was still a larger than life presence, hulking in his seat, yet there was no mistaking the brief expression of pleasure that passed over his face as Heather entered the room.

‘You came back.’

‘How are you …’ Heather steeled herself, internally apologizing to a score of lost women ‘… Michael?’

He smiled, and he looked briefly younger.

‘As well as I can be, lass. What’s the weather like out there?’

It was such an oddly polite question, so wildly out of place, that for a brief moment it was all Heather could do just to sit down and gather her wits.

‘It’s cool, getting colder. Really starting to feel like autumn. There’s that freshness, you know.’

‘Fresh air is good. It’s good for the soul. I wish I got more of it, but …’ He shrugged, a rueful expression on his face. ‘I’ll never get as much as I need.’

There was no sign of the anger he’d displayed in their last meeting.

‘Do you get outside?’ she asked, thinking of the strip of green she’d seen outside the prison. She had no envelope of images today.

‘He gets to spend time in the yard,’ said DI Parker.

‘And is there grass? Can you see trees, or anything?’

‘It’s not much more than a concrete hole,’ said Reave, dryly. He glanced at the guards. ‘I can see the sky, though, which isn’t nothing. And I’m glad of anything I can get.’

‘It’s important to you, isn’t it? The natural world, the countryside.’

‘Where I grew up …’ He paused, as though he was going to say something else, then changed his mind. ‘When I was a kid, that’s all there was. We lived in a remote place – I spent my days in ditches and fields, caked in mud. There’s a peace to it, you know, especially when you don’t have anything else.’ He looked up, his face briefly alight with anger. ‘We’re connected to the land, all of us. It’s not natural to be apart from it.’

‘The women they say you killed.’ Heather heard Parker clear his throat, uncomfortable with the turn in conversation. ‘They were found in the middle of green places, weren’t they? With flowers and trees and plants. Green things. Were they disconnected from the land? Were you trying to put them back?’

Heather sat very still. She was expecting an outburst, or at least for Reave to demand to be taken back to his cell. But instead he sat quietly, his gaze rooted to the table.