'I need to talk to you again about Wayne Griffiths?'

Batchelor's mouth settled into a thin line.

'The man's in prison. Can you not leave him alone even now?'

'Please, Doctor, I'm one of the good guys. We have so few resources, why waste them on a man who has already been sentenced. I'm hoping by speaking with you to put a stop to all this.'

'Hmm.' Batchelor eyed him suspiciously. 'I'll give you five minutes. Cynthia, note the time and interrupt accordingly.'

Fenwick took a moment to judge his surroundings, as he hadn't seen the consulting room before. The carpet was of warm burgundy wool, the couch and doctor's chair a matching leather shade. All the walls had been painted a dark pinky-cream and were hung with abstract paintings of spirals and valves that looked as if they had been bought at a car boot sale. It was his desk though that convinced Fenwick he was dealing with an egocentric with pretensions of world salvation. The top was solid smoked gla.s.s, arranged on steel legs and cross-pieces that braced to give it strength. And it was completely empty. Even the dark red phone was on a side cabinet.

He kept his face blank but nodded appreciatively.

'Does the sense of re-entering the womb help your patients?'

'Perceptive, Chief Inspector, but it doesn't mean I'll talk to you.'

'I'm just curious to gain your a.s.sessment of Griffiths as a man, not as a criminal. His strengths, concerns, his character if you like.'

Batchelor said nothing for a long time. He had not invited Fenwick to sit but had positioned himself in his leather chair behind his desk, hands raised, fingers steepled against his lips.

'I will not give you my clinical a.s.sessment of him.'

'Of course.'

'However, I will answer specific questions if I feel they are of a sufficiently general nature.'

Fenwick hid his irritation at the man's powerplay in an acquiescing nod of his head.

'Very well. Is he intelligent?'

'Yes.'

'Is he artistic?'

'Oh yes.'

'That must help in terms of therapy.'

'No comment.'

'Does he have a good imagination?'

'Not particularly.'

'So when he draws he copies what he knows?'

'One could say that. I really don't see where this is leading?'

'But it is helpful, I a.s.sure you. So he would be good at copying or drawing from memory?'

'Yes.' There was exasperation in his tone now.

'Let me change the subject. Does he follow rules well?'

'Yes. He believes in rules. It is why he plays THE GAME so well and why he hasn't gone mad, despite his false imprisonment.'

'So you don't agree with the jury?'

'In my opinion it was a clear case of entrapment.'

'Despite the attack?'

'I accept that Griffiths has a few problems, not least his response to disappointment.'

'Is he making progress in therapy?'

'Excellent progress. If ever there were an appeal against the sentence I would have no qualms now about testifying in his favour.'

There was a tap at the door. Fenwick didn't wait to be dismissed.

'I'll see myself out. Thank you, Doctor,' he paused, 'you've been most helpful.' He could see Batchelor's disconcerted expression from the corner of his eye and allowed himself a silent chuckle.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

One of the few pa.s.sengers on the delayed late night service to Birmingham New Street was dozing when the ticket inspector shook him softly by the shoulder. The pa.s.senger woke with a start and his hand seized the inspector's wrist.

'Easy now! I just need to see your ticket.' The gentle Welsh voice was rea.s.suring and the dangerous light died in the pa.s.senger's eyes.

The inspector clipped the ticket and walked away without looking back but the s.p.a.ce between his shoulder blades itched. As soon as he left the compartment he hurried through the remaining empty carriages and tucked himself up securely inside the guard's van. He radioed the driver, just to hear a friendly voice, then moved slightly so that the heavy fire extinguisher was in easy reach. The guard, Eddie to his friends, had been a useful middleweight in his younger days. He hadn't felt this threatened since his final bout, when his opponent had beaten him to a pulp. Until tonight it had been the only time that he had seen murder in someone's eyes and known them capable of carrying it out. He shivered as he waited in the van, his eyes on the door handle, but the rest of the journey was uneventful.

He watched the pa.s.senger leave the train at the end of the line. Instead of going straight home for a pre-prepared meal, bottle of beer and bed, Eddie sat on a cold metal seat in the station and wrote down a description of the man. He was tall, around 6', blond hair, slightly wavy, strong features, wearing an expensive sports jacket and smart trousers. The rucksack had a logo on it that he didn't recognise so he drew it instead. He folded the piece of paper carefully and placed it in his pocket. If there was a violent crime that night he wouldn't have to rely on his dodgy memory. Past punches had made it unreliable and he was constantly writing notes to himself. His main problem was then remembering that he had done so.

The next morning the man with the rucksack stepped off a bus within miles of the Welsh border and breathed in the clean air. He was carrying supermarket bags, their weight a minor inconvenience as he walked three miles to the small development of holiday cottages. They were well spread out, providing privacy and a view of a lake in the distance. One cottage was set well back from the path. It was his bolt-hole when he needed to retire and take stock, usually after an 'event' like last weekend. He used it roughly twice a year but at no set season.

The cottage was really a bungalow with an extra bedroom in the roof. Over the years he had stripped out the old furniture. In its place he had installed a camp bed, simple prefabricated wardrobe, desk, chest of drawers, TV, and single armchair. Only the kitchen was unchanged. He wasn't in to plumbing and electrics so he put up with the old fashioned fittings and ignored the memories that lingered in corners.

He made himself tea and then found the stash he had left in the bread crock. The mouse-proof wrapping was intact and he rolled himself a joint. He took the mug and roll up into the sitting room and switched on the TV. There was a supply of violent p.o.r.n videos in a drawer. He chose one of his favourites and eased into an hour of fantasy, the fiction on the screen in front of him blending with the facts of recent memory.

He drifted into a contented sleep, waking at five in the morning. Breakfast was a mound of bacon and eggs from his new supplies. He felt invigorated but restless, eager to resume the previous pattern of his life but aware that it was impossible. It had been stupid of Griffiths to be caught and he was disappointed in him.

For years they had been able to operate in a loose partnership, becoming more confident as their skills grew and their imaginations developed. The ability to share their experiences and to talk openly, yet operate with complete independence had been addictive. He was the cleverer of the two, bolder and more original. Griffiths was too in awe to be a worthy partner but good enough to be accommodated. Subconsciously his hero worship was one of the things the man missed.

And now he had to find a way to extract Griffiths from prison. It was too tedious. The game of codes and books had amused him briefly but it was already beginning to pale and the police had failed to connect the death of the woman in London to the crimes of which Griffths had been convicted. He had taken a finger, throwing it into the Thames from a bridge later. Surely even the most stupid copper could work out a connection.

He was reluctant to send another letter. Only the previous week he'd watched an episode of Forensic Detectives on TV in which a man had been caught because of letters he'd sent, despite his care and he didn't want to take unnecessary risks. A phone call then? Maybe, but it struck him as clumsy and he preferred his methods to be elegant. Like his tormenting of the policewoman, except that when he had finally decided to finish her the flat had been empty. The bird had flown. Now he needed to search again from scratch, but he thought that she would be worth it. Normally he would have resented this need to plan, preferring to let inspiration guide him, as it had the previous weekend. The memory made him smile. He had enjoyed her for over twenty-four hours, until her friends had started to ring when she was late for a party, and then he had finished it.

Some of the restlessness within him arose from an unusual lack of direction and it needed to stop. He looked at his watch and was relieved to see that it was time for him to leave; he rarely spent very long in any one place. His motorbike was at the back of the cottage, covered by a tarpaulin. It was a discreet but powerful machine. He let out the clutch and drove carefully to the National Trust Car Park and his appointment.

She was waiting for him alone, her face drawn and anxious. His anger bubbled up as it always did when he saw her after a period of separation. She was useless. Look at her, dressed in smart but unfashionable clothes that did nothing for what remained of her figure. Her face was a dead giveaway, eyes nervous and darting, her lips chapped. He scorned the fear in her, yet it also made her his perfect companion.

He drew up at a distance from her car and climbed off his machine, his leathers creaking. His face was impa.s.sive but hers betrayed every thought as she scanned his expression, hopeful yet scared. She was trying to work out whether he was in a good mood or not. Well he'd keep her guessing.

It took him three long strides to reach her. With his left hand he grabbed a handful of her long blonde hair and twisted it so that she was forced to raise her face to his. He leant down and kissed her hard, pressing with his mouth until he could feel her teeth grate and taste the sweet saltiness of blood in her saliva. With his free hand he reached inside her jacket and squeezed her breast until she whimpered with pain mixed with pleasure.

The sound excited him and he pulled down her jeans, then opened his fly. He took her, quick and hard over the bonnet of the car. Later that night, the sight of her fresh bruises would excite him and he would have her again.

When he'd finished, he zipped up and stepped back to have a smoke, leaving her to pull up her jeans from the muddy gravel. Only when he'd stubbed out his cigarette did he speak to her.

'I'll stay at the flat tonight.'

'Have you seen Wayne?'

'What do you care?' He let the anger he felt at her interest harden his voice. 'He's nothing. I'm your only family, I always have been. You'd better remember that, Wendy.' He rarely used her name and it brought a smile to her face despite the harshness of his tone.

'Sorry, Dave.' She bowed her head submissively.

'Time to make a move.'

He followed her, keeping a few vehicles between them all the way back to Birmingham, confident that she would remain as biddable as he needed her to be.

Wendy was asleep and it was still dark outside when he woke up. He had been dreaming about Lucinda tied to her bed and was excited all over again. Without bothering to wake her, and with no foreplay of any kind, he rolled Wendy onto her side and took her. She cried out but the noises changed from pain to pleasure as he continued. As soon as he had finished he got out of bed. She reached out a hand to him but he ignored her.

The second bedroom in the flat was his domain. She wasn't allowed to dust or vacuum and he kept the door locked when he was away. He had the only key despite the fact that the computer was pa.s.sword protected. Even so, he paused at the threshold and checked that everything was as he had left it. He thought that the chair was slightly out of place but as everything else was exactly as it should be he dismissed the minor irregularity. Before he sat down he opened the window wide and wedged the door so that he couldn't be shut in.

His computer was a top of the range model, linked to the Internet through an ISDN line. He connected quickly and checked his mailbox. There were no messages from her and he cursed out loud. Since the trial he had been unable to entice her into playing THE GAME. He and Wayne had made a lot of money helping to develop it, and could still have been raking it in if they hadn't been asked to leave the company. That had been Griffiths' fault. He had this habit of becoming over-attached and the object of his attentions would eventually complain. Janie, the b.i.t.c.h, had made a formal complaint against them both. 'Hara.s.sment' was what they put in Wayne's letter of dismissal. f.u.c.king over-reaction he'd thought.

After they had been forced to leave, Wayne wanted to teach Janie a lesson but he had been able to persuade him against it. Instead they had gone after her sister at Sixth Form College. Wayne had raped her at a nature reserve and came back with virginal blood still on him, against the rules. Three weeks later they had followed Janie and a group of friends at a discreet distance as they enjoyed a Sat.u.r.day night out. One of the girls was particularly attractive and he'd followed her home himself to a bedsit on the outskirts of Birmingham. After watching the house for an hour he concluded that no one else was in. He had made himself a dog collar from folded white paper and knocked on the door holding a bundle of Big Issues that he bought from a seller at the end of the road, and that was that.

The following week the police had called without warning. Fortunately Wendy had been at home and had lied for him, as she should. He had remained calm, not least because he knew that he had left no trace evidence at the woman's flat. The Detective Sergeant interviewing him wouldn't say how they had come by his name but he guessed when they started asking questions about Wayne. Janie must have fingered them, it stood to reason As soon as the police had gone, he'd called Wayne on his mobile and told him to leg it and say nothing if they traced him. He had packed and left the same day, pausing only long enough to reward Wendy for her loyalty in the way she liked best. Since that experience he only returned to Birmingham to keep her sweet.

He clicked his way into the specialist sites that formed the core of his recreation. They catered for particular tastes. Some contained scenes of torture, others wartime atrocities, yet more showed injuries to children. He wasn't that interested in the latter, not that he had anything against them in principle, they simply didn't turn him on.

There was a tentative tap on the partially open door as the dark behind the curtains gave way to grey.

'I've put your tea out here.' Wendy wouldn't dare push the door wider.

Her knock had broken his reverie. He turned his mind to the problem of finding the policewoman. There was a way to track her through the web if he was lucky and if she went online. He could mail her a virus that would attach itself to everything in her computer and send it back to his own. It would be difficult to construct but he knew someone that still worked at the games company who was a genius developer. Iain would help him as he had a penchant for kiddy p.o.r.n, which he had once helped to supply.

Iain would not be in the office before eight so he had time to kill. He might as well go and be sociable with Wendy, just to remind her of what a good boy he could be when he wanted. She was drying her hair at the dressing table when he came up behind her and took the hairdryer from her hands. He brushed the thin blond hair until it shone. When he had finished he lay back and watched her dress, donning thick tights, cheap cotton striped dress, elastic belt and sensible shoes in ritualistic order. Her freshly laundered cap would already be in her bag. He had once thought her almost pretty, now she was merely convenient. That she loved him, he knew. That Griffiths loved her made him smile. That they both feared him made him laugh.

He had made Wayne lend her the apartment in the heady days of the technology boom. It tied her to them and it was convenient. When he was feeling generous he rebated some of the low rent she paid him. Neither he nor Griffiths had given her any of their money, so she had to exist on her nurse's pay. He had invested most of his wealth with a private bank on the Isle of Man. The rest was in a bank account he shared with Wendy. In theory, she could have plundered the money and run away but he knew that she would never dare.

She bent over to kiss him and he turned his face away so that her lips brushed his ear. Then he reached out, snakelike, and grabbed her by the back of the neck, forcing her down into the bed so that he could kiss her mouth hard, smearing the red lipstick like a gash across her cheek.

'Don't be late back,' he instructed.

'You'll be here?' He saw hope in her eyes and enjoyed the flash of power.

'Maybe.'

He kissed her again and felt the pa.s.sion of her response. She liked it rough, to a point. He always made sure he went beyond that point, so that he could see the l.u.s.t turn to fear in her eyes. One day he would go all the way. That would be so good. Something of his desire must have shown in his face. Wendy pressed her hand against him, inviting, but he didn't want her again so soon or so easily.

'Get going. And see if I have any mail at the drop.'

When he called Iain's office they said that he would be in late so he left the flat for some breakfast.

Wendy waited around the corner until she saw Dave's back disappear towards town. She wasn't expected at the hospital for another two hours but he didn't know that. As soon as she was sure that he had really gone she ran back to the flat. Her heart was thudding painfully against her ribs and her hands shook as she took a copy of the bedroom key from the hiding place in her Tampax box. If he found out that she had made it she was certain that he would kill her.

She was making small whimpering sounds as she switched on the PC, appalled at the risk she was prepared to take, but she had to know. Ever since Wayne had been arrested she had been tortured by doubts. Could Dave have been involved? It was impossible to think of Wayne acting on his own initiative but it was equally difficult to accept that Dave might be implicated. When Wayne was sent down and Dave went travelling, she had found the key in its hiding place and had a copy made. It had lain unused in her bathroom cupboard ever since, until that poor girl was killed at the weekend.

Lucinda Hamilton. Dave had been in London the weekend she died. The way he'd had made love to her in the car park the day before had been so reminiscent of the times he'd returned from his jaunts with Wayne that she'd resolved then to act on her fears. She wasn't sure why she was doing this whilst he was in the city but she couldn't face another night without sleep or day with no appet.i.te. Breaking through Dave's security would be a desperate attempt to remove her suspicions once and for all. While she waited for the PC to warm up she remembered that she had bought rubber gloves and went to find them.

After a bacon sandwich he bought a paper to read over a decent coffee in a cafe he thought did the best in Birmingham. A pretty student, no more than nineteen, came into the crowded shop and asked if she could share his table. She had long legs, good skin and eyes as brown as coffee beans. From time to time she would flick them up to him, then look away quickly. It was fairly typical behaviour. Women found him attractive.

He toyed with the idea of picking her up and taking her away to a place where he could enjoy her properly but she was bound to live in Halls she looked like a Fresher to his trained eye. Besides, he no longer indulged his interests so close to home since the police attention that had almost hooked him. As his coffee cooled, the idea of taking her became more attractive and he indulged his fantasy while he read the paper. When she saw him smiling at her she smiled back and he began to have second thoughts. She almost seemed to be inviting him to take her, and she would be a good one he could sense it. She would struggle. And he needed to act again quickly, otherwise there was a danger the police would think Lucinda an isolated attack, which would delay Griffiths' appeal. Perhaps he could risk it just this once. He leant towards her.

'Beverly! There you are. I've been looking all over.' A plump girl with wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and frizzy hair flounced up to their table.

'I said I'd be here.' The young beauty opposite him suddenly looked sulky and the idea of biting down hard on that plump lower lip was delicious.

'You said Starbucks, not here. Just as well I remembered this was your favourite. Come on we'll be late.'

Beverly looked at him with a disappointed smile, and he raised his eyebrows in an invitation to stay. She hesitated a moment but her dumpy friend dragged her away. He watched them go, vaguely disappointed. It was time to call Iain again anyway and that was best done from the flat. He cleared his drinking debris away like a regular citizen and started the short walk home.

Wendy searched the desk in the hope of finding Dave's pa.s.sword. She unearthed some dope, p.o.r.nographic magazines and details of an account in the Isle of Man that she didn't know he had, but no trace of what she really needed. Now that she was actually sitting at his desk she felt as if she had already taken the most difficult decision. The problem was that she had already tried twice to log on and the system had rejected her. If she tried again and was still wrong, the PC might lock her out. That was what happened at the hospital and then the pa.s.sword would need resetting. She could not risk that Dave would know next time he went online and then her life would not be worth living.

A small voice told her to stop. If she took much longer she might be late for work and then the hospital would call and her deception would be discovered. Her palms were as wet as her cheeks.

'I have to do this!' She told herself, knowing that she would never be able to find the courage again.

She stared at the letters she had written down from watching through the crack of the door. His right hand had been visible and she had seen: _ O U _ I _ I quite clearly. In the weeks since she had spied on him she had done her research. There were only two words in her dictionary that fitted those letters and she had tried both without success. Now she was faced with the choice of using her last idea and risking a lock out and discovery, or abandoning her search. Wendy looked at the sweat-dampened paper in her hand and offered up a silent prayer before typing in the missing letters: H, D, N. Her finger hovered over the enter key, then with an audible sob she hit it.

HOUDINI, the great escape artist. His face appeared in the screen and smiled at her. She was in. She opened Internet Explorer and found his favourite sites. Dave had no idea that she knew how to do this, that she had paid for the cla.s.s at night school with cash saved from her housekeeping. She manoeuvred the mouse until she found the address he had used most recently. It too was pa.s.sword protected and when HOUDINI would not work she selected the next one. On the fifth attempt she was given access. The site featured pictures of sado-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic s.e.x and she browsed through it unmoved. What she saw was tame compared with the realities of her life.

Time was running out. She opened the next destination on the web and watched in horror as close-up photographs of train wrecks and natural disasters filled the screen, each with explicit images of human carnage. A severed foot lay next to red mess that looked like pulped tomatoes with white beans floating in it. When she recognised the white lumps as remnants of a shattered jawbone she had to rush to the bathroom. She cleared her vomit away scrupulously and sprayed perfume in the air to disguise the smell.

It was hard to return to the screen. There was little reason to look further, and she had no desire to see what pictures lay behind pa.s.sword protection. They would be worse and the thought sickened her. The necessity to log off and disguise her intrusion occupied her mind, forcing all other thoughts to the far reaches but they kept intruding nevertheless. Dave liked this stuff, he had searched the net and found it. What more did he like? Could she openly admit that he was a s.a.d.i.s.t, turned on by pain and violence? She already knew the answer but whilst horrified, she was also relieved. Nothing she had discovered suggested that he was capable of murder.