“He . . . he did it to me once,” she whispered. Tennison leaned closer, but Moyra immediately sat back, coughed and stared at Havers. Tennison waited patiently while Moyra straightened her skirt yet again, twisted her hair. Then she released a deep sigh.

This time she didn’t whisper. She faced the wall. “He made this thing, with straps, for here.” She touched her arm. “He said it made . . . it made the vagina tight, you know, stretched out, but it hurt me. I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t do it.”

She hung her head, as if the horror was slowly seeping into her brain. She still couldn’t face Tennison; her head sank lower and lower until it was nearly resting on her knees.

“I didn’t know, I didn’t know . . . Oh, God forgive me, I didn’t know . . .”

Moyra buried her face in her arms and began to sob.

Amson, Muddyman and Shrapnel were all leaning against the wall of the corridor when Tennison’s face appeared in the glass panel. She opened the door.

“George Marlow was home by ten thirty that night, but he went out again at a quarter to eleven. She doesn’t know what time he returned.”

She stood very erect, head up, eyes blowing. “We’ve got him,” she said quietly.

George Marlow lay in his cell, staring at the ceiling. A uniformed officer outside kept a constant watch through the spyhole.

The key turned in the lock, and Marlow sat up, swinging his feet to the floor as his solicitor, Arnold Upcher, stepped in.

With a glance at his watch, Upcher said, “Five minutes!” to the officer, who remained in the open doorway, Upcher put his briefcase down on the bunk and faced Marlow.

“They are charging you on six counts of murder, George.”

Marlow shook his head, sighed, and looked up. “I don’t know what’s going on, Arnold. On my mother’s life, I haven’t done anything.”

Arc-lights had been brought into the King’s Cross lock-up to improve the illumination. White-suited Scenes of Crime men were moving in to start photographing and fingerprinting. The place was strangely quiet; only the constant rumble of the trains and the distant sound of a chained dog barking disturbed the silence.

The Rover had been surrounded by plastic sheeting. One man was kneeling on the plastic, leaning in through the open door, combing the fitted carpets with great care, passing anything he found to an assistant beside him.

DI Burkin and DC Jones were examining a row of old metal lockers.

“Oh, look at this!” exclaimed Burkin, holding up a hideous mask with cut-out eyeholes by his fingertips. He dropped it into a plastic bag.

In the next locker, Jones had found suits, shirts, ties, shoes, all covered in plastic dry-cleaner’s bags.

“Even his sneakers, look . . . Neat bastard.”