Anna left Ryegrove, but instead of heading back across the river, she turned right, yet again, along the winding lanes towards the crime scene at the railway line. She parked and signed in but was disappointed not to see Keaton’s car in its usual spot. The Tyvek tents were still up and there were people working inside them. But it was not the graves that interested her.

She walked across the uneven stones. Some of them moved with her weight and she took it carefully. It would be easy to twist an ankle here. The wind howled in but, for the moment, the rain held off. She got to the spot where Keaton had marked out a safe path across the scrubland to Ryegrove’s fence. The wooden boards across the worst of the mud at the bottom of the ditch shook and shuddered as she crossed and walked up towards the fence. The site was deserted, and she stood alone a few yards from the perimeter, staring at the excavated tunnel. Beyond, in the grounds of Ryegrove, more police tape cordoned off the area where the tunnel emerged. Behind that, some temporary fencing had been arranged to prevent any of Ryegrove’s inmates taking an unscheduled awayday afforded by Keaton’s spadework.

The day was fast slipping away, and the February light was bleeding out. Anna stood and turned to look back at the railway, imagining herself as one of the three people Norcott depicted in his sketch, wondering what they could see, what they were waiting for. Everything she’d come across in the case brought her back to this point. Krastev’s work on the perimeter fence. The burial sites within view, one of them by Krastev’s own admission a Black Squid victim. Norcott, a patient at Ryegrove, who’d drawn an image of this very spot. The second victim, Alison Johnson, the nurse who treated Norcott.

So, what was this place’s secret?

The wind buffeted her. The polar plumes had retreated back east, and it was the Atlantic’s turn to show its strength on a south-westerly gale. The chill gusts that suddenly caught the lapel of her coat were reminder enough that a storm was coming. It made her turn her head suddenly, and for a moment she thought she saw movement behind her in the grounds. She swivelled, peering into the deepening gloom, but there was no one there.

Her phone, when it rang, was a welcome jolt of reality.

‘Ma’am.’ Khosa’s voice on the line. ‘The doctors say Dr King is well enough to talk.’

‘Right. I’m on my way.’

Anna didn’t look round as she negotiated the path back to her car. On an afternoon like this there were too many shadows to be certain of anything and she didn’t trust her imagination in as godforsaken a place as this.

---

King was in Southmead – the nearest hospital to Severn Beach. Still shiny and new from a 2014 revamp, the A and E now took everything the old Frenchay Hospital used to handle, complete with helipad. But it was to the Emergency Department Observation Unit that Anna and Khosa went. They’d done scans on King and were waiting for results, wanting to ensure there was no fracture under the swelling haematoma on his left temple.

He was sitting up, bandages on his arms, butterfly stitches over cuts on his forehead and a sterile dressing taped over the left side of his face.

‘Dr King,’ Anna said, ‘how are you?’

‘I’ve been better.’ King’s voice was hoarse.

Anna dragged up a chair and sat. She didn’t want King constantly looking up. Better to be on the same level. It made interviewees much more relaxed. ‘Can you tell us what happened?’

King’s hands fluttered up off the covers and then back down again. ‘Difficult to know where to start.’

Anna waited.

King sighed and continued, ‘After we spoke at Ryegrove, Beth talked to me. She wanted to know if you’d asked me the same questions. She was curious about Norcott. She’s young and at the time I thought she was simply being anxious when she told me that Norcott still had an effect on her. What happened to him, his strange behaviour, his fixations. I said my door was open if she ever needed to talk. I had no idea…’ He shook his head as his words dried up.

‘No idea about what?’

‘She said that sometimes she still believed she saw his golems, his paper dolls. She thought she’d even seen one last week.’

‘Where?’

‘In the lane outside her house. But she wasn’t sure. She even laughed about it.’ King’s lips were trembling. ‘It played on my mind. I made some calls and found out Norcott had left Bristol and gone back to Wales. I rang Beth. I wanted to reassure her. But she didn’t sound reassured. She said she felt like someone was following her. Watching her. She thought she’d seen someone in the wasteland opposite her house. I suggested she rang you, but she said it was just being alone in the house that was doing it. I said I’d go around.’

Anna watched King’s face, looking for the subtext. If there was any, he was good at hiding it.

‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking. I’m a middle-aged divorcee and Beth Farlow is a young, attractive, impressionable girl. I have a daughter of my own, Inspector. I’ve fielded phone calls like this before and I know things are always better face to face over a cup of tea. So, I went. I drove out there. I had no idea she lived in such an out-of-the-way place. It may only be a mile from a train station, but it might as well be on the other side of the moon.’

Khosa had her phone out, recording everything. ‘What time was this, exactly?’

‘Yesterday evening at around eight fifteen.’ King reached for some water with a shaky hand, took a sip and returned the plastic beaker to the bedside table. ‘I knew there was something wrong when she opened the door. She looked terrified, really terrified. She had every right to be because Norcott was waiting behind that same door. She tried to warn me, mouthing words, but then he emerged with a knife at her throat and dragged her in. Threatened to kill her if I didn’t come in too. What choice did I have?’

‘He spoke to you?’

‘Oh, yes, he spoke. At least he uttered words, though not many of them were coherent.’

Khosa said, ‘I thought he didn’t speak.’

‘His choice while he was in Ryegrove until the last few months. Even then he didn’t speak much. But he was speaking last night. The better word would perhaps be babbling.’ King looked from Khosa to Anna. ‘He kept saying he wanted his sister back.’

‘Jesus,’ Khosa said. She’d read the case files too.

‘What happened in the house?’ Anna said.

‘I tried to talk to him but he was clearly delusional. I doubt he’d taken any medication for weeks if not months. He wasn’t listening, probably couldn’t hear what I was saying, not properly. Beth was terrified. At one stage he let her sit down and began pacing, still holding the knife. Some of the things he said made a strange kind of sense. He’d been camping out in the woods, watching Beth for several days if not weeks. He told us that much. But the rest of it… I couldn’t see any good way out of the situation. Foolishly, I tried to overpower him.’

‘Is that when you were struck?’

King nodded. ‘He had the knife. I tried to use a cushion to deflect it, but he caught my arm. I must have stumbled and then he hit me with something.’ King’s fingers strayed to his temple. ‘I must have lost consciousness. I have no idea how long for.’

‘Have you any idea where he’s taken her?’ Khosa asked.

King, his face suddenly miserable, shook his head. ‘If I had to guess, I’d say the woods opposite. Where Beth thought she’d seen him.’

Anna turned to Khosa. ‘I know it’s late, but let’s get things moving.’

‘The storm is coming in, ma’am. They say there’s a big risk of flooding due to the high tides—’

‘All the more reason to get people out there now.’ Anna held Khosa’s gaze.

They both knew that in an unlit and wild area like the wasteland on Shaft Road, night-time searches were useless. They’d get a POLSA, a specialist Police Search Advisory team, in at first light, yet that was hours away.

‘What about a chopper, ma’am?’

‘Worth a try. Speak to Sergeant Dawes. He can get the super on it.’ A helicopter could deploy thermal imaging and its Nightsun if necessary. If they could get one up.

Khosa picked up her phone and left the room. Anna put hers on the bed to continue recording.

Something she’d read or heard about Norcott niggled. ‘Were you surprised to see Norcott? The way he was, I mean?’

King snorted. ‘You’re asking me if I thought we should have released him when we did? The answer is no. I was against it. But there were others who felt he’d responded to treatment and he seemed to do well in transition.’

‘But you were not convinced?’

‘The Trust puts the unit under a great deal of pressure, Inspector. We don’t have enough beds. It’s very tempting to take whatever positives we can in order to move patients through the system a little faster. Sometimes such pressure can be overwhelming and directives from pen-pushers asking us to reduce our average length of stay to some ridiculous number don’t help.’

‘So you had doubts.’

‘Let’s say I nursed a healthy scepticism. His mother didn’t want him back. But her death seemed to be a turning point for him, I’ll admit that.’

Anna picked up her phone, paused the recording, and pulled up the image Dawes had sent her of Norcott’s sketch on the barn wall at his mother’s smallholding. ‘We found this at Norcott’s home in Wales.’

King peered at it and then sent Anna a blank stare.

‘You don’t recognise it? The location?’

King shook his head.

Anna found another image, this time taken from inside the perimeter fence at Ryegrove. The shape of the background landscape and trees were very similar.

‘Ah,’ King said. ‘I see.’

‘Have you any idea why he’s drawn this?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve found evidence of an access way at this point. A tunnel under the fence and into the grounds.’

King frowned. ‘Really?’

‘It’s possible one of the construction workers might have built it in order to continue a relationship with a patient. Someone you might well have known. A Miranda Dorell.’

King nodded and uttered another acknowledging, ‘Ah.’

‘You remember her?’

‘Of course. How could I forget? We were pilloried for allowing her early release before she reoffended.’

‘You were involved in securing that early release, I understand?’

‘Not only me. There’s a process.’

‘I know, a tribunal.’

‘Exactly. It’s sometimes difficult for people outside mental health to understand the tribunal’s role is to assess the mental state of the patient at the time of the tribunal. Not at the time of offending, which, by definition, can be very different.’

King’s explanation had the tinge of a lecture about it.

‘What was she like, Miranda Dorell?’

‘Troubled, young and in denial. It was not her first episode but, as is so often the case, once we found the right combination of drugs, she responded well.’

‘Was there any family support?’

King thought for a moment. ‘Not from the parents. Her manic phases were too extreme. She attacked her mother, if I remember rightly. But apart from that she’d do outrageous things and sometimes, even though there’s a pathological cause, the fallout can be too great.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She stole and got into drugs. Got into pornography at an early age, too. Was a party animal. Too much for her middle-class parents, I fear. But she and her brother were close.’

‘Did you meet him?’

‘Briefly. He supported her during the tribunals, along with her solicitor, of course.’ King’s pale face frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’

Anna chose not to answer his question but continued with one of her own. ‘Did you ever see her near the fence? Did you ever see her talking to any of the construction workers?’

‘No. Not that I can recall.’ King sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, his fingers straying to the bandage on his head.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Pounding headache.’

‘Of course. We can talk about this when you’re feeling a little better.’

‘Sorry, Inspector.’

Anna moved her chair back but before turning away said, ‘Did Norcott give you any inkling of why he was stalking Beth Farlow?’

‘No. As I told you, he was not rational. I think I’m lucky to have got away with just a concussion.’

‘Does the term the Black Squid mean anything to you?’

King frowned. ‘Nothing more than what I’ve read in the paper. Something to do with a spate of teenage suicides, isn’t it?’

Anna nodded. ‘I don’t suppose you came across anyone involved with it at Ryegrove?’

‘Space Invaders and Candy Crush are all we allow, Inspector. And then only under supervision when patients are ready for release.’

Anna nodded. ‘One final thing. You said you parked outside Beth’s house?’

‘Yes.’ King frowned. ‘Is my car not there?’

‘No. Do you have your keys?’

King’s frown deepened. He shook his head. ‘I’d assumed you’d taken them.’

In the corridor outside, Khosa was still on the phone. She waved at Anna to wait. After some nods and yesses, she rang off. They walked out of the hospital together.

‘OK, that’s done. Sergeant Dawes is trying to get air support. What do you make of it, ma’am? King’s story, I mean.’

‘I want to go back to Beth Farlow’s house. Where are Justin and Phil?’

‘They say they’ve made some progress with tracking Norcott’s movements.’

‘Good. Tell them to meet us at Severn Beach. We also need to find King’s car.’