‘I’m too young to have been involved in the original investigation – as my DCI keeps reminding me – but I had to talk to him about another case a few years ago.’ He tapped his fingers against the neck of his beer bottle. They sat with their backs to the large window at the front of the restaurant, and a shard of autumn daylight fell across the shoulder of his shirt. ‘It was relating to a cold case, a woman who went missing in 1979 that we had always thought he was responsible for. It turned out she had links with an old East End gang, and suddenly it seemed possible that she’d gone missing for entirely different reasons, so I went in there to talk to him about it. This was back when I had just moved up to CID. It was a small, probably pointless job, so they gave it to the newest recruit.’ He smiled lopsidedly. ‘It was pointless. He barely said anything at all. But he did listen, he didn’t show off or shout. As these things are measured, that was almost a success in itself. So, the case moved on. But I didn’t forget Reave.’

‘He made an impression?’

‘I’d read all about him during my degree. It was quite the thing, to meet him face to face. A serial killer as strange and as singular as him. He’s a real outlier, as strange as Bundy was, really.’

He was warming up now, she realized, getting into the subject. She thought of the notebook in her bag, and with it came a pang of guilt. He was opening up to her, when she hadn’t been entirely honest with him – all those notes she’d been making were looking more and more like an article.

‘Bundy?’

‘Ted Bundy. They’re not similar, not really, but Bundy was remarkable in the way he was able to shut himself off from what he’d done. Like he was two different people, living in the same body. Right up until the end, he was trying to explain it all away, as though he wasn’t responsible.’

‘And Reave is the same?’

‘Reave is very certain he’s not responsible.’ Parker smiled grimly. ‘But with him it’s the ritualization of what he did to the bodies, the care he took to lay them out. It’s hugely risky, what he did – spending so much time with them was only ever going to make it easier to find and convict him – but every victim we know of was arranged in these strange, I don’t know, displays. Tableaux. And there are so many other identifying marks of the Red Wolf. The flowers, often in the mouth. The item of clothing soaked with blood. And their hearts.’

‘Their hearts?’ Heather felt her hand tighten around her fork, and she forced herself to relax. ‘What do you mean?’