‘Xavier is still here recovering from the smoke inhalation and some other minor injuries. He’s going to be fine. Elspeth … was very badly hurt. Her brain was without oxygen for a long time. They were lucky the coffin wasn’t properly sealed and that there was still a little air in the cracks in the earth. Must have bought them half an hour.’

‘Coffin?’ he groaned.

‘You know what? This isn’t the right time …’

‘Tell me.’

Connie sighed and sat back down on the edge of his bed. ‘He buried them, together, in one coffin. I persuaded him to dig them up again. Meggy crawled on her hands and knees to the road while he was distracted. She’s a tough one. By then other units had got concerned about us not responding. They’d found Farzana, knew that was a red herring and were wondering where we were. They tracked us using the GPS unit in the police car we drove to the cemetery.’

Baarda raised his eyebrows.

‘Farzana was fine. Had a boyfriend she knew her father would hate, so she thought it would be easier to pretend to be kidnapped than just leave. Threw her phone out of the window so she couldn’t be traced. Police caught up with them at Glasgow Airport.’

‘Elspeth,’ he insisted.

‘Is alive. Not in great shape. It’ll be a while before they know what brain damage she suffered. There’s still a feasible level of function. She’s being kept in a medical coma to allow her time to recover.’

‘Well done,’ he said, pulling her closer to him.

‘Thank you. Also, I told your wife what I think of her. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘You what?’

‘Hey, I stopped a serial killer and rescued two females who’d been buried alive, so could you give me a pass? Best intentions, isn’t that what the British say?’

He frowned, then laughed.

‘Forgiven,’ he said. ‘Fuck her.’

‘Wow. When you talk like that, it’s hard for me to think about leaving.’

Baarda stopped smiling.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Yup. I’ve been asked to present a series of seminars about Cotard’s syndrome in Washington. The FBI are interested. I saw Harris Povey’s old brain scans. Electroconvulsive therapy is supposed to induce small seizures. That’s how it works. It closes down certain impulses. In his case, the treatment prescribed for depression created a larger lesion, possibly because not enough anaesthesia was given and he went into an uncontrollable fit. That lesion may have been the cause of the delusions. He went in as a teenager with some minor problems and came out a killer. Makes my experience of psychiatric treatment seem kind of tame.’

‘Really? Even now you’re making this about you?’ A voice oozed disdain from the doorway. ‘I would say don’t stand up, but it’s obvious neither of you are going to.’