HE SITS QUIETLY UNDER THE amber glow of his desk lamp working on ink sketches of his next collection. Three cabinets: in one floats lovely Elaine, and in the second, exotic Chau. With a steady hand he guides the tip of the pen inside the third cabinet, drawing Megan, taking care not to exaggerate her curves.

The process does little to soothe his coiled nerves as he tries to not think about Hamilton’s article, but the talentless hack’s words are like a tumour in his brain growing bigger and stronger. He searches for peace in the sketch, but his hand presses hard on the fountain pen and tears open a wound on the ivory paper, slicing through the drawing of his muses floating in their cabinets.

He closes his eyes and tries to compose himself, but Hamilton’s words fly at him like bullets to his brain.

‘. . . a top-class loon . . .’

‘. . . an attention-seeking crackpot with a failed GCSE in Art.’

He massages his temples.

What does Hamilton know about art? What do any of those liberal social media trolls understand about high culture, about aesthetics, about beauty and taste? He feels a burning rage roar through every fibre of his being. The humiliation he has been subjected to over the last few days has been unforgivable. His life and soul, his art have been reduced to tabloid fodder, online vitriol and casual dinner-party chatter for Internet rubberneckers.

There is glory in disrepair, grandeur in dereliction and enchantment in the forsaken. None of them can see it.

His hands curl into fists and he wants to scream.

Hamilton is the loudest voice amongst them. Hamilton is the living embodiment of every philistine that dares question or ridicule his aesthetic.

He takes out his laptop, googles the tabloid journalist and opens up a recent photograph of him. He has an irritating face with a smug expression, a fat double chin and gammon-like skin. His fingers are pudgy. Oh, what he would like to do with those fingers. For a moment he indulges in an idle fantasy of paying Hamilton a visit one dark, quiet evening. He smiles to himself, his mood lifting like a cold morning mist.

His phone pings and he picks it up. There is no message. He notices the other phone has lit up; Detective Inspector Grace Archer’s phone. The one he swapped when he snatched it from her that morning. The one he easily hacked using a simple set of instructions from the Internet.

He has enjoyed the device’s content: her photographs, personal and professional, including some of his own artwork. He has listened to desperate voicemails from a cheating boyfriend and her ailing grandfather. But what amuses him most is the WhatsApp group set up to investigate him. Grace Archer is smart, there is much to admire, but her team are moronic. Particularly Hicks. They have all made it so easy.