‘This interview is being recorded both visually and audibly. Investigating officers are Detective Inspector Patrick Hicks and Detective Sergeant Victoria Lee. Suspect still refuses to give us his name.’

The same spiel as earlier. He continued to stare at the table, trying to quieten the other side of him. The voices straining to be noticed in his head. Feeling his grip on reality start to slip.

‘We would like to talk about the woman you were found with,’ Hicks said, his voice steady and strong.

He thought that inside, Hicks would be anything but steady and strong. He could almost smell the revulsion the detective was feeling for him. ‘And I said she wasn’t important. Not yet.’

‘We want to talk about her,’ Hicks said, more forcefully now. ‘Why were you there with her?’

‘Why are we anywhere? I had something to do. She was there, too.’

‘What’s her name?’

He shrugged his shoulders and then enjoyed the silence that followed. The seconds slipping by, closer and closer to the end.

‘How did you end up there? What contact did you have with the victim previously?’

He almost laughed at that. Victim. As if that’s all she was. ‘That was the plan. She would be there and I would be, too. That’s how the story goes. I was just playing my part in it.’

‘Just another victim to you,’ Hicks said, barely containing his anger towards him now. He could feel it coming off him like heat from an open flame.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

Beside him, the solicitor coughed, but at least he’d stopped trying to interrupt him. Probably just wanted to get out of there. Back to his wife and kids, away from all of this madness.

‘Okay, if you like, we can go one by one. Would that be better?’

He didn’t respond, looking at the bare walls around him instead. The seconds continued to tick by.

‘Stacey Green, twenty-two years of age,’ Hicks said finally, reading from his notes. ‘Worked in the local cinema. Youngest of three children. Single, lived with her doting parents. Your second victim.’

He didn’t say anything, waiting for a question to appear. He knew this was just a technique, humanising the dead, trying to provoke an emotional response.

He couldn’t give them that.

‘How did you get in contact with her? How did you two cross paths?’

‘How does anyone meet these days? All that matters is that I killed them. All of them. One by one. So, why don’t we stop messing around with all these stupid little details and charge me? I mean, we both know that’s what’s going to happen, so let’s get it over and done with. Stop wasting my time with these questions.’

‘We need to go over the details first…’