‘Your mother knew. She knew about how important the real world was,’ he said eventually.

‘What else did my mother know, Michael?’

When he didn’t say anything, she continued.

‘You can read a lot about your case online. I mean, you have to go a bit beyond Wikipedia, but it’s there, if you look. God knows how much of it is accurate, though … It was the last victim that got you convicted. Your van was seen in the area where her body was found, and a few strands of her hair were found on a blanket in the back. Not all that much to connect you to the previous victims apart from the similarity of the way they were killed and the bodies were staged. It must have been a lot of work, and you were very careful.’

She paused. From somewhere down the hall she could hear a phone ringing and ringing, no one answering. Reave had gone very still. One hand rested against the edge of the table, and one thick, callused thumb pressed against it, turning the flesh white. His eyes, which would still not meet hers, looked haunted.

‘When I saw you the other day, we talked about this being a chance to tell your story. Was there someone helping you, Michael? Someone who helped you grab the women, and get them in the van?’

‘My story.’ He smiled tightly. ‘I told you, lass, no one cares about my story.’

‘I do.’ She managed to say it this time, and with enough feeling behind the words that he looked up, his eyebrows raised. ‘If it’s my mum’s story too, then I want to know about it. You think no one cares, but they would, Michael, if your story helps to stop someone from hurting more women. I care, if it means I can understand a bit more about my mum’s pain, and what made her do that to herself.’

She stopped, and for a long moment there was silence in the room. Heather reached for her bag, and after a slight hesitation, she pulled her mother’s suicide note from inside her notebook. She smoothed it down with her fingers, trying to ignore the crushing feeling of guilt – What are you doing? Why would you show this, this painfully private thing, to a killer like Reave? – and then she passed it over to him. Reave took it carefully, as though he was handling a baby bird.

‘This is the note she left behind. It’s … I wondered if you could make anything of it.’

She watched his face carefully as he read it, hoping for something obvious – shock, anger, sadness, even amusement. Instead he looked at it steadily, his big hands making the note look like a tiny scrap of paper. He swallowed once, and then he passed it back to her, nodding slightly as though she had done him a big favour by letting him read it.