Chris Hardcastle is a year younger than I am. A former pupil at Edenbridge Academy. There is a chance we met once or twice, if he played rugby or competed in athletics. I imagine he did both. But he is not who I expected him to be. I had assumed that I would dig into his past and find a horror show, an abusive family, a life marred by tragedy and loss, childhood trauma, something at least. Anything that would give a hint as to why he might turn out to be a psychopath. But there is nothing.

Christopher Aimo Jeremiah Hardcastle was born on the second of November 1980. A Sunday. And the child that is born on the Sabbath day, is bonny and blithe, and good and gay. Chris certainly was bonny. Six feet tall with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, blond hair with a slight curl, piercing blue eyes, and the square jawline of a Ken doll. He had that casual demeanor of a man who has always been attractive: throughout his childhood, through adolescence, and into adulthood. A man who is used to all eyes in a room turning to him, used to the constant flirting of the women who crossed his path. As for blithe? Once upon a time it meant happy and carefree, but now it implies a level of callousness. Fitting for a man accused of such heinous crimes, who has professed his innocence with little regard for the reality that protestation implies. After all, if he is innocent, if it is really Leah who is dead—and at the hand of Megan—then his lover is dead, and his own wife has framed him for murder.

What did he do to Megan to make her do this to him?

Pushing open the door to the interview room, I find Chris sitting exactly as I had left him.

“So, will you do it?” he asks.

“Take your case?”

“Yep.”

I sit back in my seat and watch him closely. He still has the outward air of someone totally relaxed. But there is a twitch in the corner of his mouth, and he can’t seem to stop his eyes from darting between my left and right as if he can’t focus on either. The first week I was in practice, one of my mentors taught me to always watch the eyes. The dilation of the pupil is often a giveaway, but more so is the flickering. It shows that he is nervous. Actually, scratch that. He’s fucking shitting his pants. If I don’t believe him, or if I choose not to take the case, he will go down for a long time. And prison is not a nice place for a man accused of murder and kidnapping, especially as he is accused of beating Leah. Strangely moral lot, most prisoners, and quite adept at taking punishment into their own hands if they think the state hasn’t been quite severe enough. Someone will make him their hostage and thrash him to within an inch of his life.