Lying on the floor of the parlour, weak and sick, he nodded at her. Fighting back the words.

Then his mother picked him up in her arms tenderly and took him to his bed. He felt the coolness of the sheets that smelt of Lux soap flakes and then the red pain in his behind.

He saw her smile again.

‘You’re Mummy’s little soldier, what are you?’

The child watched her through tear-filled lashes and sighed, sending a shudder through his thin little body.

‘I’m Mummy’s little soldier.’

Then he was pulled up from the bed and held against her ample bosom while she rained kisses all over his face and neck.

George watched it all as if it was a film. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight. But his mother just would not go away.

She never went away.

It was Saturday and George was alone in the house. After carefully washing up the breakfast things and putting them away, he made himself a pot of tea. While it brewed on the kitchen table he walked down the garden to his shed and brought back his scrapbooks.

Sitting at the kitchen table, he settled himself down and opened the first book. He felt the anticipation course through his veins as he looked at the familiar pictures and smiled.

Soon he would have his own album of death with pictures of his victims instead of Peter Sutcliffe’s. He had already started it.

George took a sip of his tea and began to read, though he knew the words off by heart. After a while he glanced at his watch. It was nearly lunchtime. He had hours yet until Elaine came home from work. He decided to watch his video. He clenched his fists tightly with sheer elation at his good luck.

No Elaine. No noise. No company.

Putting the scrapbooks back in the shed, he locked up the house, closed the front-room curtains, unplugged the phone and put on his new film.

As the pictures flickered before him, George finally relaxed.

The girl on the video looked just like Geraldine O’Leary and the most violent of the men looked just like him.

This was what they wanted. This was what they all wanted. Walking around, covered in make-up and perfume. Even the very young girls. He knew all about them.

In his agitation George started to blink rapidly.

He had seen films of school girls. The real life ones were as bad. Learning to be sluts, every last one of them. Oh, he had watched them, walking to school. He began to nod his head. Bare-legged, some of them. With bouncing bosoms, emphasised by their school uniforms. Oh, he knew all about women. Dying for it, the majority of them. Just dying for it. Well, he would show a few of them before he was much older. Oh, yes. He would show them.

The girl on the television screen was dead.