He’d waited for her outside the school library. She spent an hour there each day after lessons finished, presumably doing her homework before her mother picked her up. The mother hadn’t been the normal type, either. Several years younger than he’d anticipated and a bit showy – that’s what his grandmother would have called her. All tight leggings and false eyelashes. Her car had been easy to doctor that afternoon. Left out on the road a few doors down from their house, he’d sprung the bonnet and loosened the spark plugs. The mother never set off in good time to pick Meggy up, and the girl was regularly left stranded in the car park waiting for her ride.

He’d first seen Meggy back in May, during one of Angela’s regular trips to Inch Park. The girl had watched Angela play with her children then shyly gone over to say hello. That was when he’d begun the process of watching Meggy as well – she was to be his gift to his new wife – before the whole Angela disaster. By then he’d done too much work. He couldn’t waste months of studying Meggy’s every move.

He’d been careful to keep himself hidden at her school. Parents were horribly suspicious and ‘stranger aware’, so he’d had to avoid the playground itself and kept to the tree-lined area across the road, turning up when the bulk of parents and buses had left, to establish the identity of the kids who stayed late. Meggy always went to the library first and got picked up late. He’d just had to follow the car home one day to figure out where she lived and what the home set-up was. The rest had been uncomplicated. Until he’d approached Meggy in the car park.

These days, he was having to take fewer precautions. When he’d begun his regime of stalking his future family, he’d had to be careful not to stand out. Now, though, with death’s hand around his throat, all that mattered was taking what he wanted as quickly as possible. What did an arrest matter when he was looking at a much more permanent fate?

‘Hi!’ He’d waved happily to her as she’d exited the small grey-bricked block and walked to where her mum usually pulled up. ‘It’s Meggy, right? Sorry about this, but your mum’s car broke down. She asked me to come and get you.’

Meggy had stared at him, not in a friendly way.

‘My mum?’ Meggy had asked.

‘Aye, pretty lady, sporty-looking, goes by the name of Carmen Russell. You remember her?’ he’d joked.

‘My mum?’ Meggy said again.

The look she was giving him could have lanced boils.

‘Yes,’ Fergus said, his voice losing its former jollity.

Meggy had her backpack clutched in her arms like a shield.

‘How do you know her then?’ she’d asked.