After we’ve finished our food we head back to the hallway. Jason goes to pick up the largest of the three packed suitcases. He groans as he picks it up.

‘You sure you can manage that?’ I ask, genuinely concerned for him.

‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice sounding strained. ‘One side of me is good, at least.’

I grab the other two cases and Jason opens the door. I look around the empty space of my apartment one more time. Then I walk out.

We make our way along the corridor towards the lift.

‘Steven Grant was released from hospital this morning,’ Jason says.

‘How do you know that?’ I ask.

‘Baxter told me. They’re going to charge him with murder. The CPS think he was close enough to the crimes to be considered a direct accomplice.’

I say nothing to that. Grant has never admitted to knowing about Mary and Ethan’s crimes. I don’t know what the truth is, but I’ll watch keenly to see what plays out at trial.

I feel little pride in having brought an end to Mary Grant’s reign of terror. Just sadness and frustration that we may never know the full truth about who she killed. Grace Agnew? Jessica Bradford? The evidence found in the warehouse suggests they were likely her last victims, together with Paul Reeve and Natalya, whose lives were taken by Ethan’s less experienced hands. But how many came before them?

More importantly, why?

Perhaps she was a natural-born killer. It was in her DNA. Steven Grant himself might have explained that to be the case. The same for his own son. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, after all, although there is no doubt in my mind that Ethan was nothing like the monster that his mother was. To Ethan Grant, killing was a game. He taunted me with those notes, and in trying to make me take the fall for his mistakes. I don’t think he ever understood the seriousness of what he was involved in, perhaps because he’d been brainwashed at such a young age, and violence and killing was normalised for him. Mary Grant on the other hand… was she the epitome of true evil? To her, killing was a way of life. A source of power and satisfaction, despite the fact that no one knew of her existence as a killer until her son began to draw attention.

What about Annie Grant? She’s just a teenage girl, and a good kid from what I hear. She’s currently under the care of Grant’s sister and her husband who live not far from Birmingham. I wonder, and in many ways, fear what will become of her. Even if she is ‘normal’, how can her life ever recover from what has happened?

I know one thing for sure, I’ll be keeping a close eye on her fate.