There was a long sigh through the phone, then the sound of something tapping against a desk. ‘What happened last year. What’s happening now. Stephanie’s brother has made a statement…’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why, Mark? What did you do?’

Mark couldn’t make sense of what was being said. What he was being asked. Yet there was a sureness to DI Bennett’s tone. As if he was the one who was mistaken, who had forgotten something he’d actually done. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘Then come in and tell us the truth. What’s happened to Natasha, Mark? Is she safe?’

‘I don’t think so, but I had nothing to do with that. I’m trying to find her.’

‘You’ve made mistakes, but we can fix them together. I just need you to come back and sit down with us properly. Talk us through what’s happened.’

Mark made to answer then closed his mouth, realising what she was implying now. They thought he’d completely lost it. Admitted to murders he hadn’t committed because there was something else he’d done wrong. ‘It’s not like what you think,’ he said, after a few more seconds of silence. ‘I was just doing what I thought was best.’

‘This is not helping you, Mark,’ DI Bennett said, and now her voice was soft and motherly. ‘The only way to do that is to let me help you.’

It was Mark’s turn to sigh. He opened his eyes, his lids heavy with tiredness. Looked down at the laptop and its flashing red light. He paused as he lowered the lid on the dying laptop, something in the background image catching his eye. He realised there was more than one picture captured on it. It was actually a collage of different images.

Mark recognised some of them.

He traced a finger across the screen, seeing them all in turn.

‘Steven Hallet… Melissa Carmichael… Stacey Green,’ Mark whispered, as his finger shuffled across the screen, capturing each image in turn. ‘The building Joanna Carter lived in… the scrapyard where Emily was found.’

‘What’s that?’

Mark ignored DI Bennett’s voice, looking through the pictures on the laptop screen. They were all there in front of him.

And in the top right-hand corner… the outside of the garage where Holly Edwards had been waiting for Mark to arrive.

All of the places where the bodies had been found.

There was a moment when he couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. What was in front of him. Then, it all coalesced and came into focus.

The dates all those people had been killed. How close together they all were. Eight dead in less than a year – seemingly unrelated, only one death really unexplained. All the rest, dismissed as someone taking their own life.

The first, the aberration. The violence used. Impossible to hide.