‘I wanted him to take it seriously,’ he said, quietly. ‘I was so frightened that something would happen to him. I mean, I was frightened for myself, too, but he was the one who was going to get recognised. He’d – he’d done some TV appearances and it looked like he might get to be a regular fitness adviser on a lifestyle show. It was all dangerous for him.’ He gave Jonah a long stare out of gleaming eyes. ‘I know it was an awful thing to do. And it didn’t even work. He was a lot tougher than I am, I guess. Or maybe he just knew he was capable of – of hurting people.’

Jonah nodded, and then said, ‘We’ll need to hold on to Alex’s car for a few days.’ When Issa said nothing, he went on, ‘We’d also like your help with a few dates from Alex’s diary. To make our search for the women whose hair he had easier.’

‘We have a shared diary on our phones. You can – can you see it on Alex’s?’

Jonah glanced at O’Malley, who said, ‘Yes, we should be able to. Thank you.’

There was another silence, and then Issa said, ‘Do you think he … hurt … any of them?’

Jonah knew he was asking whether Alex might have killed anyone, a question Jonah badly wanted an answer to as well. All he could say in reply was, ‘We’ll find out.’

Hanson felt flat. Flatter than she had felt at the close of any case.

She had been wrong about Alex. Really, truly wrong. He wasn’t a kind, supportive person. He was a bloody monster. A man who had stalked and abused women out of, what, a warped revenge on his mother? And then had kept trophies of them in his car. Memories of his victories.

Their job now, hers and Lightman’s, was to find them. To find the women he had attacked before. And that was depressing, too. Scanning case after case to find women who might have been Alex’s victims rather than anyone else’s.

It hadn’t taken her long to find one that seemed to fit. Just over a year ago, a student named Gianetta Jilani had been left huddled in a heap in Portsmouth with almost no memory of an assault that had left her bleeding. The one thing she remembered was a knife.

That attack had happened on Step’s birthday, six days after Alex had sent a photograph to the WhatsApp group. Six days after he’d talked about the knife as a Polish beauty.

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