I bring the glasses and the bottle to the coffee table. My hands are trembling slightly, making the ice rattle. It occurs to me that if she’s drinking, she expects to be here at least a couple of hours. She wouldn’t drive drunk, and neither of us can afford a cab.

Thistle pours us each a generous helping and clinks her glass against mine. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers,’ I say. I take only the tiniest sip, but it still burns my throat.

‘So,’ she says, ‘let’s say Shannon is a thrill killer.’

‘Let’s,’ I say. The sofa is small. The proximity to her feels dangerous, but there’s nowhere else to sit. I sink into the cushions, wanting to be closer and further away at the same time. Like she’s a fire. I want her warmth, but I’m afraid of getting burned.

‘Let’s also assume that he escalates, like most criminals,’ Thistle says. ‘He starts out by raping Hope. After successfully blackmailing her, he uses his new position as a TA to do the same thing to a bunch of other people. He now has some power at the college and several young women under his control.’

‘The blackmail angle shouldn’t work,’ I say. ‘He committed crimes, and these women know about it. They should be threatening him, not the other way around.’

‘It shouldn’t work, but it does,’ Thistle says. ‘Remember, the victims probably aren’t aware of each other. And we know from Hope and Abbey that he targets vulnerable, isolated women. If they speak out, they have no support network, and no proof that the sex wasn’t consensual. None of them wants to get dragged into a public he said/ she said, especially if nude photos and videos are likely to be leaked as part of it. And the guy looks like Superman. A lot of people would say the women wanted it.’

I nod slowly. ‘As long as he doesn’t push them over the edge by demanding too much when he’s blackmailing them …’

‘They keep doing it,’ Thistle says. ‘Right. And the longer they play along, the harder it gets to tell anybody.’ She sips her drink. ‘So then he escalates. He starts killing people. Single men who won’t be missed. He kidnaps Abbey so he can swap videos with another killer, Fred.’

‘Hold up,’ I say. ‘What if Fred is the killer? Shannon likes videos of murder, Fred likes videos of rape and imprisonment. So Shannon rapes, Fred kills, and they swap videos.’ Thistle takes a sip of her drink. ‘Seems far-fetched. But maybe.’

Some would say a cannibal working for the FBI is far-fetched. I’m reluctant to discard the theory.

‘So who’s the blonde?’ I say.

‘She could be one of the people Shannon is blackmailing,’ Thistle says. ‘Maybe he makes her pick up victims for him. Or for Fred—whichever one does the killing.’