‘I thought we should talk.’ Seraphine pushed the free chair at her table towards Bloom with one high-heeled shoe.

Bloom didn’t move. ‘About?’

‘About how you ruined my life … again.’

‘You are joking.’

Seraphine pushed the chair a little further. ‘Sit down, Augusta. You can give me five minutes.’

Reluctantly, Bloom walked towards Seraphine’s table and sat down. Why was she here?

‘I really should hate you, you know.’ Seraphine took a sip of espresso from the dainty coffee cup in front of her. ‘You ruined my career and threatened my liberty. Not that there’s much chance they’ll put me away. All they have is that recording and I’m sticking to my story. I was just messing with you.’

Within minutes of the players leaving that room under the arches, all traces of the game had disappeared. The psychopaths had gone to ground and covered their tracks.

‘Your little friend and his social media activities, on the other hand, have been impressive.’ DC Logan had uploaded a few splices of the recording and shared them widely. ‘He managed to select just the right vignettes to undermine our activities.’

‘Like the bit where you said that if you were going to convince the world that psychopaths were superior, you had to remove those who muddied the waters.’

Seraphine smiled. ‘Yes, that does seem to have alienated both your kind and mine.’

‘You said it. You only have yourself to blame. So why not disappear again? You’ve done it before.’

‘I may not be able to continue in my chosen profession, and there is a chance, albeit small, that I may spend some time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but thanks to you I am now the most famous psychopath on the planet … and I didn’t have to kill a single soul.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘That’s a first, don’t you see? I’m already changing perceptions. Psychopaths don’t have to be serial killers to be powerful or infamous any more.’

‘What about the poor girl you used to fake your own suicide?’

Seraphine shrugged. ‘Just one of the drug-addled homeless people I found in Leeds. There were a lot of young girls on the street at that time. It wasn’t hard to get one to do what I wanted when I promised her the hit of her life.’

The double meaning wasn’t lost on Bloom and she felt a fresh wave of disgust towards this woman. ‘What do you want, Seraphine?’

‘How’s Marcus?’

Bloom said nothing. She refused to discuss Marcus with Seraphine. And, of course, she didn’t really know.

‘He knows I wouldn’t really have hurt him, doesn’t he? I like Marcus. He was different to my other men. I think maybe—’

‘No. Absolutely not. No. Don’t even think about it. He hates you and he always will.’

Seraphine took another sip of her coffee.