‘If anyone can look after themselves, it’s him,’ Adrian said.

‘The people who hurt him made him that way. They burned him, cut him, electrocuted him and so many more things. How can anyone be right after going through that?’

Adrian didn’t want to admit she was right, so he changed the subject instead. His empathy for Parker had got him into trouble before. ‘So, you went back to university, in Bristol?’

‘That’s right. I went to study to become a vet.’

‘Was Robert Coley one of your teachers?’

‘He was, he taught genetics.’

‘When you were at Exeter, was Helen Lassiter your genetics teacher?’

‘Yes.’ She looked confused. ‘Why?’

‘We found her body this morning. She died of carbon monoxide poisoning.’

‘Did she die naturally? I mean, do you think it was murder?’

‘Any idea why he would target the genetics teachers?’ Adrian said, ignoring her question.

‘They must have been bad. Parker isn’t a bad person, he doesn’t just kill people.’

‘He does just kill people,’ Adrian corrected her.

‘You know what I mean.’

The scary thing was Adrian did know what she meant.

‘You can’t just take the law into your own hands like that. If everyone did that then everything would fall apart. Who gets to decide who deserves to die and who doesn’t?’

‘Everything is already falling apart, we just choose not to see it. Bad people get away with terrible things every single day.’

Abbey started to shift nervously in her seat. Considering how sweet she was, he found it hard to believe that she was OK with the things that Parker was doing and yet she seemed to believe it was completely justified. Was it just a case of love being blind? He didn’t think so.

‘What about Gillian Mitchell, have you ever heard that name before?’

‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t.’

Adrian thought for a second; what the hell should he do? What could he do?

‘I’m going to have to tell my boss about this.’

‘How? You’ll get in trouble if you admit what you did. Won’t you?’

She had a point. They had captured Parker before, but when Abbey had shown Adrian evidence of Parker’s abuse, it had made him question whether Parker deserved to be punished any more than he already had been. Adrian decided he had suffered enough. Adrian was a hypocrite; he had taken the law into his own hands and now Parker was free to commit more sadistic acts. No judge. No jury. He needed to speak to Imogen.

‘I’ll at least have to tell my colleague about it. I can’t just let him go around killing people – we need to find out why. If this is all retribution for something else, something bigger, we need to know.’

‘If I knew I would tell you. He must have found something out about Professor Coley.’

‘You didn’t notice your professor doing anything strange that might warrant him becoming a target?’

‘He was a strange man, he seemed to favour me in class. A few weeks in, he started to become overfamiliar with me. He didn’t know I was married and I wasn’t showing then.’ She gestured to her stomach. ‘People have a tendency to underestimate me.’ She said the last part rather ominously.