‘I thought those things were a joke,’ I said. ‘What do you think I am, crazy?’

Sykes sighed, put the card down and picked up another. ‘Let’s try it again, Mr Beche. Let’s just concentrate on the task at hand.’

I glanced at the ink blotches. ‘Murdered corpse,’ I said, with confidence.

Sykes exchanged a look with the other man, who shrugged almost imperceptibly. Sykes lifted another card.

‘My parents fucking,’ I said immediately.

‘You’re not taking this seriously, Mr Beche.’ He held up another card.

‘My pet cat Mitzy after I cut out her entrails because they wouldn’t let me have any cake on my birthday,’ I snarled.

Sykes gave me a baleful look, then dropped the cards back in his briefcase with a sigh.

‘I don’t need a psychological test, dammit!’ I said. ‘We were alone for ten years. Ten years, thinking everyone else was dead. I had to go foraging through streets filled with corpses.’

‘You said “we”.’

‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Me and my wife, Alice. You’ve got her here somewhere, right?’

Sykes licked his lips and glanced at my chained wrist. ‘Mr Beche . . . you must know she died along with everyone else, from the EVE virus.’

‘Bullshit,’ I said thickly. ‘You caught her and brought her here.’ I leaned towards him as far as the chain would let me, and felt a small rush of pleasure when he ducked his head back slightly. ‘I want you to know something. She had nothing to do with . . . with what I did to Nussbaum, and Keene. That was all me, do you understand?’

‘That doesn’t quite fit with what you wrote in your diaries,’ said Sykes.

I looked at him, baffled. He opened his briefcase again and lifted out something I recognized immediately. I stiffened, outraged to see something so precious in his vile, criminal hands.

‘Where did you get that?’ I demanded.

‘From the place you made your home the past several years,’ he said. ‘It’s your diary, isn’t it? One of them, at any rate.’

I stared back at him, mute. He licked his lips and turned back to some of the earliest pages.

‘Alice is the reason I’m here to talk to you,’ he explained, passing the diary over to me. He tapped at the top of one page, where an entry began. I stared down at the words, then back up at him.

‘Read it, please, Jerry.’

‘I . . .’

The words I had been about to say caught in my throat, and my vision blurred with tears. I didn’t need to read it; I knew the entry off by heart.

This morning I dug the grave, out back in the garden where Alice liked to sit on sunny days. I talked to her for a while before I put her in the hole, about the things I was going to do, and about how I’d come and visit . . .

I pushed the diary away.