Detective Sergeant Anna Gwynne stared out through the windscreen of her car at the massive grey wall of Whitmarsh Prison, with its odd cylindrical crown, smooth and bulbous and, accordingly, impossible to climb. She shifted in her seat and flexed and extended her neck, easing out the stiffness induced by the long journey from Bristol. Her eyes looked back at her in the rear-view mirror. Hazel eyes, the bunched-up muscles beneath them always making it look as though she was smiling when she wasn’t; an attribute that men found engaging, but got her into trouble with stern teachers as a child. She lifted her chin in a quick inspection: minimal make-up; blonde hair stroked behind her ears in need of a touch-up on the roots; lips dry from the car journey. She reached into her bag for some balm.

The visitors’ car park was half-full on this bleak Monday morning, but Anna’s gaze settled on the heavy-set man hunched in a green raincoat and puffing on a cigarette some twenty yards away. He had his back to her, pretending to find the pay-and-display instructions meaningful, while he succumbed to his nicotine habit like the tobacco junkie he was. He turned, caught her looking at him, then took one final, defiant drag, stubbed the cigarette out under his comfortable shoe, and hurried towards the car. A bitter November wind picked up the thinning grey fringe of his hair and styled it instantly into a sparrow’s wing. The passenger door opened and Detective Chief Inspector Ted Shipwright eased his ample frame into the seat.

‘Right, Sergeant. Now that you’ve made me suffer for my sins, let’s get on with this.’

‘I’d never force you to have a cigarette, sir. Outside. In the bitter wind. And sub-zero temperatures.’ Anna kept her face straight.

‘We both know you bloody well did. Those recriminating glances are like porcupine quills. It’s a look you and Mrs Shipwright uncannily share.’

This time Anna allowed herself a smile as she reached for the laptop in the space behind the passenger seat. The unspoken rule during their many car journeys together was that they’d take her car and she would drive. There were several reasons for this, the chief among them being the fact that she was a good driver and he could nap when he needed to, but also because his car smelled like the mobile ashtray it largely was. And, since one of his daughters from his first marriage was almost Anna’s age, and flatly refused to get into the car because of the smell, Shipwright assumed – rightly but without even asking – that Anna would feel the same way.

On screen, Anna now brought up the video she wanted him to see.

‘Hector Shaw, sir. From ten years ago.’

Shipwright grunted. He smoothed down his hair with a shovel-sized hand, his strong features set and suddenly serious.

The screen flickered into snow and then cleared as the clumsy edit settled. A room came into focus: low, scuffed cream chairs of tubular steel with padded arms of sweat-stained hessian, coffee-coloured walls and a brown needlecord carpet in need of cleaning. An officer was seated in one corner, arms folded, dressed in a prison-service uniform. The view focused on a man in prison-issue fatigues, seated at a table.

Hector Shaw had a pear-shaped face, heavy-lidded eyes behind myopic glasses and, at thirty-nine, when the video had been made, a prematurely receding hairline. He stared across the table at the interviewer who, out of shot, spoke first.

‘Can we talk about your wife?’

Shaw tilted his head. ‘How is she?’ His accent was northern. The slow enunciation and the overemphasised vowels defining it as originating in Lancashire, more specifically, Mancunian.

There was a pause. ‘She’s dead. You killed her.’

‘So, when you ask if we can talk about my wife, what you’re really asking is how do I feel about killing my wife?’ Shaw’s gaze remained steady. When he blinked, he did so slowly. There was a suggestion of something crocodilian about it.

Off camera were the noises of shuffling papers and a throat being cleared. A pause and then, ‘Do you think that your two years at Rampton prior to your transfer here have helped you?’

‘Helped when it comes to talking about my wife, do you mean?’

‘Have you been able to try and imagine what it might have been like for your wife when you killed her?’

Shaw sat back and folded his arms. Anna, watching the video for the umpteenth time, sensed that this, this single movement, was the giveaway. The moment Shaw decided that the interviewer was a complete imbecile.

‘Are we talking about empathy or imagination? I have no conception of what it actually feels like to have a knife thrust into my liver, or to then have it slice my windpipe. I suspect very few people have.’

‘You used the word empathy—’

‘Because it’s what you were trying to imply I don’t have, isn’t it?’

Some more clearing of the throat off screen. ‘Erm, why don’t you try now? Imagine you’re a thirty-six-year-old woman at home alone. You hear a noise behind you. You stop and pivot. There’s a man there. A man who grabs you and drags you into your kitchen, where he ties you to a chair and then uses your own kitchen knives to stab you and cut your throat. And what are you thinking, do you suppose, in that moment of supreme terror when you realise someone is trying to do you real harm?’

‘If it was me, I’d want to get away. Definitely be somewhere else.’

‘But you’d tied her up?’

‘Yes.’

‘Emotionally, what would she have felt?’

Still Shaw’s expression was inscrutable. ‘Terror. Sick maybe, but mainly terror. But we are talking about my ex-wife here, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then most of her feelings would have been blunted by the bottle of Smirnoff she’d been sucking on since ten o’clock that morning. The same as she did every day. Plus, she knew me, so I would not have been such a big surprise to her. Unwelcome, maybe, surprise, no. We hadn’t surprised one another for years.’

‘Afterwards, what about her parents? How would they have reacted?’

Shaw uncrossed his legs. ‘I think they would have been quite happy to see me dead. They’d made that clear enough for some time.’

‘Is that how you would feel if someone attacked your daughter?’

Another pause. This time Shaw moved forward, elbows on the table, eyes on the ball of his left thumb as he massaged it with the thumb of his right hand.

‘I don’t have a daughter.’

‘But if you did?’

Shaw looked up. ‘I’d want to see the bastard dead. But we don’t have a death penalty, do we?’

‘But you killed your wife because you felt she was responsible for your daughter’s death?’

‘Partly.’

More rustling of papers. ‘Even though she, your daughter, umm, Amy—’

Another slow, crocodile blink from Shaw. ‘Abbie. Her name was Abbie.’

‘Sorry, Abbie, threw herself under a train?’

Shaw seemed to hesitate, his eyelids flickering momentarily as if he were calculating something. But he continued smoothly when he spoke. ‘My ex-wife was drunk on the sofa when that happened.’

‘Do you consider yourself to be judge and jury?’

‘I consider her not to have been a capable parent.’

‘Would you do it again?’

‘Like a shot.’

A long beat of silence followed.

‘You do understand that this interview forms a part of your continuing assessment for rehabilitation? You applied for certain privileges to be considered.’

Shaw’s mouth split into an enormous grin. ‘I wanted to test the waters. I guess it won’t be happening this time.’

‘No.’

Shaw smiled. ‘Then we’ve both fucked up, haven’t we? You need to be better prepared. Looking up notes during an interview is very rude. So is mentioning my daughter. Worse is getting her name wrong. And you need to ensure I don’t put anyone else in the hospital wing, right?’

‘You haven’t.’

Shaw was still smiling. ‘Not yet.’

The scene on the video erupted with the noise of scraping furniture and screaming as Shaw lunged across the desk out of shot before the watching guard could react. A blur of violent movement followed as Shaw pulled the interviewer across and buried his face into the exposed part of the back of the man’s neck, before the screen froze and went blank.

‘Who’s interviewing?’ Shipwright asked after several seconds of loaded silence.

‘His name was Conrad. The consultant who normally attended was lecturing at a conference and thought it would be good practice for his junior colleague. Conrad needed twenty stitches and a skin graft. I think he retrained as a GP after this. I got a copy of the interview from a lecture I once attended.’

‘What was the lecture called – “How to wind up a five-star psycho without really trying”?’

‘Almost. The lecturer used it to illustrate how easy it is to get things very wrong. So, what do you think?’

‘I think anyone who kills six people and puts another four in hospital during his prison term is a card-carrying nutter.’ Anna nodded, but Shipwright saw that she was pensive. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

‘It’s just that there was never an element of paraphilia in Shaw’s crimes. No sexual motive at all. It started out as revenge for his daughter and spiralled up from there. He got a taste for it, literally.’

Shipwright shook his head. ‘DNA doesn’t lie, Anna.’

‘I know.’

‘When’s Shaw due out?’

‘His is a whole life sentence.’

DCI Shipwright smiled. It lifted the craggy jowls an inch and transformed the grizzly into a teddy bear. ‘You meet the nicest people in this job. Shall we?’

---

They’d redecorated the interview room. This time there were drab grey walls, black plastic chairs and a metal-legged table with a Formica top. All in all an improvement on the brown, but despite liberal use of a sickly floral air freshener plugged into a socket at floor level, the room stank of old sweat and urine. Shaw looked thinner, harder, his face sunken, skin sallow from a prison tan. Blue bristles ran in a crown above his ears and around the back of his head from where he’d shaved off his remaining hair. He sat slumped and unsmiling, his arms folded, dressed in standard grey prison joggers and sweatshirt. His gaze flitted between Anna and Shipwright. Yet, despite his posture, his eyes brightened as they sat down, calculating and sharp behind his thick glasses.

The room was equipped with recording facilities and the interview would be videoed. Shaw had declined the presence of a solicitor. Anna did the necessary for the recording.

‘Interview at Whitmarsh Prison of Hector Shaw, under caution. Present are Detective Chief Inspector Edward Shipwright and Detective Sergeant Anna Gwynne. For the digital interview recording, the interviewee has declined the offer of legal representation.

‘Mr Shaw,’ Anna continued, ‘thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. You understand that you do not have to answer my questions. If you choose not to answer my questions, but this matter is raised in court and you answer the same questions, then the court will ask you to explain why you did not answer here today. The tapes of this interview can be played in court, so that the court will be able to hear what has been said. Please indicate that you understand.’

‘Yes, I understand,’ Shaw said. ‘What’s this about? And who the fuck are you, anyway?’

Shipwright leaned forward on the desk, fingers steepled. ‘We, Mr Shaw, are part of a major crimes review task force. What we do is take a fresh look at cases that have gone cold on our patch. The southwest, to be specific. I say, “our patch”, though we end up all over the place interviewing witnesses. And suspects, like you. Amazing what things come to light when they’re looked at from a new perspective. Especially in this high-tech world we now live in.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’

‘Good question. Remember the evening of 15th June 2002?’

Shaw snorted and shook his head. ‘Yeah. Like it was yesterday.’

‘Well, you should. Because that was the evening a fifteen-year-old girl by the name of Tanya Cromer was raped.’

Shaw continued to smile, but his jaw clenched, the muscles clearly working.

‘Tanya fought,’ Anna said. ‘And there was blood. A few spattered smudges on her clothes and under her nails.’

Shipwright added, ‘She’d fallen out with her boyfriend and everyone thought it was him. But he had an alibi tighter than a duck’s arse and the case went cold.’ He leaned a bit closer. ‘It had rained. The DNA samples were mixed. Pretty hopeless then, but now…’ Shipwright let his eyebrows crawl up towards his hairline.

‘Riveting,’ said Shaw. ‘Where’s this going?’

‘What the chief inspector means,’ said Anna, ‘is that we’ve made significant advances in terms of lab technology, mathematical models and bio-statistical software since then. These days our forensic scientists can successfully separate contributors in mixed samples.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better, Sergeant,’ Shipwright said. ‘And guess what? One of those separated samples matches your DNA, Mr Shaw.’

Shaw looked like he wanted to say something, but his mouth stayed shut.

Anna watched for one of the slow blinks that had marked his aggression in the tape they had viewed. So far it hadn’t happened. ‘So where were you on the evening of 15th June 2002, Mr Shaw?’ she asked.

Shaw still said nothing.

‘For the DIR, the interviewee refuses to answer.’

Shipwright pressed on. ‘Three months after Tanya reported the attack to the police she went missing.’

Three seconds of silence followed. So far it was a draw in the staring contest.

‘If you want to say something, now is the time, sonny,’ Shipwright said.

Anna pressed him further. ‘If you know where she is, tell us. Give this poor girl’s family a way out of purgatory.’

Still Shaw remained silent. His eyes looked back at them, his corneas reflecting the harsh ceiling lights, his irises the colour of oil spill on a grey sea. Anna waited and then said, ‘For the record, the interviewee has refused to respond.’ She looked at Shipwright. He shrugged in response.

‘I have to inform you, Hector Shaw, that there is a positive match between your DNA and that found at the scene,’ Shipwright said. ‘Following a conversation with the senior prosecutor, I have the authority to charge you with the rape of Tanya Cromer contrary to the Sexual Offences Act, 1956. Do you understand this charge against you?’

Shaw glared.

‘We need an answer.’

Another long beat of seething silence followed, until Shaw’s eyes narrowed and his lips pursed like he’d thought of the world’s best joke and he said, ‘How about I volunteer for an identity parade?’

‘Going to be difficult without the victim. But then you know that well enough. You’re in for life, so I suspect there’s no point us appealing to your sense of closure,’ Shipwright said.

Shaw shifted in his chair. He sat up and unfolded his arms, hands on his lap, his gaze dropping to them for a moment before coming back up again. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I know all about closure.’

Shipwright sat back. ‘Right, we’ll be in touch. You might want to have a solicitor with you next time.’

‘Time is now eleven twenty a.m. and we are terminating the interview.’ Anna pressed the button to end the recording. Shaw blinked slowly. Anna caught it and felt her pulse canter.

‘What about the rest of the sample?’ Shaw asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘You said the DNA came from a mixed sample. Whose was the other sample?’

‘We don’t know,’ Anna said.

‘And it doesn’t matter. We have yours,’ Shipwright said, pushing away from the desk.

Shaw kept his gaze fixed on Anna. ‘And what is your interpretation of that, Sergeant?’

Anna barely paused before replying. ‘Who else was there?’

Shaw nodded and offered up a wintry smile. ‘Do I look like someone who’d gang-rape a girl to you?’

He was challenging her, but all his question achieved was to trigger an instant unvoiced thought. I don’t know what monsters are meant to look like, Mr Shaw, but you’ll do.

When she didn’t answer immediately, Shaw went on, ‘I’ll let you work that out, OK? You up for that, Anna?’

His words contained no menace but they hung in her ears like the ringing of a great bell.

The moment was broken by Shipwright, pragmatic as ever. ‘Of course, it would save a great deal of time and effort if you told us, since you were clearly there.’

Shaw turned his face towards the chief inspector and nodded. ‘Let me think about that, Mr Shipwright.’

Shipwright snorted and stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

They’d got halfway across the room when Shaw spoke again. ‘Did they tell you I had a daughter once, Anna? I expect you came across it in your research, didn’t you?’

It made her pause. Beside her, Shipwright shook his head. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered, but she’d already hesitated. The minuscule delay gave Shaw the opening he’d been waiting for. ‘She’d be about your age, Anna. Remember that.’

Shipwright took Anna’s arm and ushered her out.

Shaw had seen something, or sensed something about her, Anna was convinced of it.

That was unusual, she thought.

Anna’s sister, Kate, often commented on how she’d developed her professional ‘death stare’ to perfection, though there was nothing calculated about it. It was simply the way the muscles of her face arranged themselves when her mind was mining deeply for information. This happened most often in situations where the conversation was less than demanding. But sometimes, too, when she was concentrating hard. Most people interpreted it as inscrutability, or, less generously, arrogance, when it was nothing of the kind. Few, if any, saw it for what it truly was. Shaw seemed to be emotionally intelligent enough to pick up on it even in the brief time she’d been in his presence. He’d caught it and thrown it back at her with his question.

And what is your interpretation of that, Sergeant?

His words stayed with her all the way to the car. She’d seen photographs of his daughter. Small for her age, but pretty, with her mother’s smile and her father’s big, short-sighted eyes. The photograph showed Abbie with grey eyeshadow, and pink and black hair hanging low over her brow. The sweatshirt she’d worn had ‘My Chemical Romance’ in Gothic letters across the chest.

Yet, even worse than recalling Abbie and her untimely death, was remembering the way Shaw had spoken her own name. Slowly, emphatically.

You up for that, Anna?

The words echoed inside her head as she gunned the engine in the car park, and each time they did it made her scalp crawl.