This question he’d anticipated.

‘I live on your street, Durward Grove, just a few doors down. I saw your mum having problems with her car and offered to help. She explained that you’d be stuck at school with no one to fetch you.’

A new emotion had flickered across Meggy’s face then, a ripple of self-doubt, he’d thought. ‘We met in our local park, remember?’

‘You were ill,’ Meggy said.

‘That’s nothing to worry about; it was just a cough. Sorry if I scared you. I went to the doctor and got some medicine. All better now.’ He gave another grin to show her just how fine he felt.

She flinched and he put away his yellowing teeth with their recent addition of a raw section of empty gum.

‘How long have you lived near us then?’ Meggy asked.

‘Couple of years. I see your mum at the local shops sometimes and we chat. She’s very proud of you. Always talking about how well you’re doing at school.’

A shutter came down. Whatever he’d said, Meggy was not just unconvinced, she was looking thunderous.

‘Liar,’ she said quietly. ‘You’d better go. I’m going to tell a teacher.’

There was a fraction of a second where he didn’t know what to do, but a lack of preparation was how Angela had ended up dead. It was the moment in which she’d whipped back her head and broken his nose. It was the stupidity of putting his hand over her mouth with nothing to protect his fingers from her teeth. Not this time. It couldn’t go wrong again.

Fergus leapt forward, punching as he went. His fist hit Meggy’s face full on in the nose. He knew from bitter personal experience how painful and debilitating that was. It did the trick perfectly. The girl went flat out backwards like a toppling domino. Her head hit grass rather than pavement. He was grateful for that. One unforeseen death was acceptable. More than that would be totally incompetent.

Slinging her backpack over his shoulder then sliding both arms beneath her, Fergus picked her up. The boot flipped open when he hit the switch on his key fob, and he deposited her flopping body inside. There wasn’t time to secure her, that was his only problem. In his head, she was going to be utterly convinced by him knowing her mother and her address. She was going to climb into the back seat of the car and sit there patiently as he drove her home. He’d engaged the child safety on the rear doors, locked the windows mechanism, and had the back windows tinted for privacy months earlier. But there was something he hadn’t anticipated – a wrong word. She’d known he was lying. He just had no idea how.