‘Peck is going to get life for Mallory’s murder,’ I said. ‘And his prints were everywhere in his parents’ house.’

‘I heard.’

‘But they were not at the murder scenes of Hugo Buck, Adam Jones and Guy Philips, the other murders he confessed to. No prints there. Not even a partial. Not even a glove print.’

‘Yes,’ said Sergeant Caine. ‘I heard that, too.’

‘But why would he lie?’ I said. ‘Why would Ian Peck confess to murders that he didn’t commit?’

‘Because he’s nobody,’ said the keeper of the Black Museum. ‘And he wants to be somebody. They’re all the same. Serial killers – you think they’re criminal masterminds? They’re not Hannibal Lecter, Max! They’re all just grubby little men. They’re all psychopathic losers. Who are they? Albert DeSalvo, Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Peck. They’re germs, they’re insects. But their crimes make them the Boston Strangler, the Yorkshire Ripper and Bob the Butcher. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bob the Butcher is standing up for murders that he didn’t do. It’s what Albert DeSalvo did. He wasn’t even in jail for killing those thirteen women in Boston. He was in jail for rape. That’s the kind of vicious little woman-hating creep we’re talking about. But then he becomes the Boston Strangler and suddenly you’ve got Tony Curtis playing you in a movie.’

I was still staring at Harry Jackson’s thumbprint.

‘No prints,’ I said. ‘Who has no prints, John?’

Sergeant John Caine of the Black Museum reached out and straightened the frame on his neglected Harry Jackson display.

‘Only a man with no hands, Max,’ he said.

Chapter 36

36

MIDNIGHT ON THE school playing fields, the black silhouette of Potter’s Field behind me, a jumble of towers and spires and architecture from the last five centuries.

Blink your eye and a hundred years go by.

It felt like the world was dead.

I checked my phone one last time – no new calls, although I had left urgent messages for Whitestone, Gane and Wren on my drive out here – and then began across the playing fields.

The wind whistled through the trees in the distant woods and I shuddered, as if the eyes of Anya Bauer were watching me. Soon you will be at rest, I thought. Soon you will be at peace at last.

There were no lights on in the little stone cottage as I felt in my pocket for the Head Master’s keys, the large set that looked like they were from a fairy tale, holding the key to every lock in every door in Potter’s Field.

There were two locks on the front door of the cottage. A standard Yale lock and a flush bolt. Nothing complicated. But I still had to try a dozen keys before the door swung silently open and I stepped inside.