She had been preparing herself for him to seem pathetic, smaller in real life and somehow pitiable – or at least, she had been hoping for such. But in the flesh he seemed even more vital and threatening. He was tall and broad across the shoulders, his black hair dusted with salt but still thick, and although he was pale he looked healthy enough. He was wearing a simple white T-shirt and a pair of black tracksuit bottoms – socks but no shoes – and there was a pair of handcuffs around his wrists.

‘Michael, we’ve brought you a visitor.’

Reave had been looking at the table, and as he lifted his head, Heather had the strangest sense that he was bracing himself for something. And indeed, as they made eye contact, an emotion flitted across his unshaven face that she couldn’t identify. She watched him blink several times as she sat herself down opposite him. DI Parker stood nearby, his arms crossed over his chest. There was a small black box on the table which she took to be a recording device of some sort.

‘Mr Reave, thank you for speaking to me today.’

She had an envelope with copies of the letters, which she placed on the table.

‘You’re Colleen’s girl.’ It wasn’t a question. He spoke with a soft northern accent that ordinarily she would have found appealing. ‘She had a little girl.’

‘She did. I’m Heather, Mr Reave, and my mum …’

He twitched, as though she had struck him. ‘Michael. It’s Michael, to you.’

For reasons she couldn’t name, the hair stood up on the back of her neck, and she found herself looking at his hands – large, powerful hands, scarred across the knuckles. Despite all her bravado and her certainty that she was going to ace this like some big-time journalist, the idea of being on first-name terms with a serial killer had turned her blood to ice, and she couldn’t think of anything to say at all. Bizarrely, it was Michael Reave that saved her.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ he said. ‘I mean, I was sorry to hear about your mum.’

Heather nodded, contemplating the strangeness of being offered condolences by a serial killer. It all seemed too outlandish to be true: her mother’s body crushed against rocks, decades of correspondence with a convicted murderer. This small, yellow room and the man who sat in it. She cleared her throat and shifted in the chair, trying to ignore the compulsion to shiver.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I hadn’t seen much of her over the last few years, but it’s been a bit of a shock.’ She knew that DI Parker hadn’t told Reave how she had died – his idea was that hearing it from Heather might provoke some sort of reaction. ‘She took her own life.’