‘It’s Vernon’s journal,’ he said. ‘This is what his grandfather found when he started to get worried about Vernon’s behaviour and searched the house. You don’t need to read much of it to realize why the old man reacted the way he did. He was witnessing the destruction of everything he’d built up. Not only the business, but his family, too. And the cause of it was the one thing that he thought he had left – his grandson.’

‘A journal? You mean like a diary?’

‘Take a look,’ said Cooper. ‘Read it.’

Fry accepted the journal with the expression of someone who’d just been handed a ticking bomb. She opened it near the back, as if she hoped to avoid the worst.

MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE SIX

On the day I was born, my bones were soft. So soft that you’d hardly have heard them break. Perhaps, if you’d listened carefully, you might have caught the gentle crunch of a forearm as it fractured, or the crack of my thigh bone splintering. But they’d hardly have been audible, I’m sure. Not above the sound of my screams.

Now, my bones are older and stronger. If I live long enough, they might twist and become brittle, until they won’t support my body any more. But deep down, the marks of my childhood would still be there – the tracks of fracture lines, the signs of incomplete healing. They’re invisible now, except to an X-ray machine. Invisible, except in the jagged lines of pain etched in my memory. My bones will never forget, until the day I die.

There’s magic in our bones. They produce our red blood cells, trillions of them surging through our bodies. I think the magic must lie in the marrow, that pale, mysterious jelly. If only I could suck out enough of it, my blood might be stronger, and my bones might heal.

Yet every time I think about blood or pain, I get a sensation along the nerves in the backs of my calves, an involuntary cringing, a sudden discomfort like the blood withdrawing from my veins, like shallow water dragging over sharp stones. What kind of direct connection is there between my brain and the muscles in my legs? It’s one of those peculiarities of the body, a secret that no pathologist will ever bring to light with his knife.

But soon he’ll be gone, the man who made me like this. When the last shreds of his flesh are stripped away, his grip on my life will be broken. Finally, his spirit will separate from his body, prised away like a dead snail sucked from its shell, like sewage pumped from a septic tank. His voice will fall silent in my head, the pain of his presence will stop, and the nightmares will be over. No more of those endless memories of beatings, the feel of his neck in my hands, a neck soaked with sweat as he lies helpless and bleeding – but I can’t, can’t bring myself to kill him.