“Could I—” Robin began, gesturing toward the paper Tucker was still holding flat to the table, but he ignored her.

“So it was just me and Jerry for years,” said Tucker. “Jerry Wolfson, Kara’s brother. You know who that is?” he shot at Robin.

“Yes, the nightclub hostess—”

“Nightclub hostess, hooker on the side, and a drug habit as well. Jerry had no illusions about her, he wasn’t naive, but it was still his sister. She raised him, after their mother left. Kara was all the family he had.

“February 1973, three months after my Lou, Kara disappeared as well. Left her club in Soho in the early hours of the morning. Another girl left at exactly the same time. It wasn’t far from here, as a matter of fact,” said Tucker, pointing out of the door. “The two girls go different ways up the street. The friend looks back and sees Kara bending down and talking to a van driver at the end of the road. The friend assumed that Kara knew the driver. She walks off. Kara’s never seen again.

“Jerry spoke to all Kara’s friends at the club, after, but nobody knew anything. There was a rumor going round, after Kara disappeared, that she’d been a police informer. That club was run by a couple of gangland figures. Suited them, to say she was an informer, see? Scare the other girls into keeping shtum about anything they’d seen or heard in the club.

“But Jerry never believed Kara was a snitch. He thought it was the Essex Butcher from the start—the van was the giveaway. So we joined forces.

“He tried to get permission to visit Creed, same as me, but the authorities wouldn’t let us. Jerry gave up, in the end. Drank himself to death. Something like this happens to someone you love, it marks you. You can’t get out from under it. The weight of it crushes some people.

“My marriage broke up. My other two daughters didn’t speak to me for years. Wanted me to stop going on about Lou, stop talking about Creed, pretend it never—”

“That’s not fair, Grandad,” said Lauren, sternly.

“Yeah, all right,” mumbled Tucker. “All right, I grant you, Lauren’s mum, she’s come round lately. I said to Liz, ‘Think of all the time I should’ve spent with Lou, like I’ve spent with you and Lisa. Add it all up. Family meals and holidays. Helping her with her homework. Telling her to clean her room. Arguing with her—’ My God, she could be bolshie. Watching her graduate, I expect, because she was clever, Lou, even if she did get in trouble at school with all the bunking off. I said to Liz, ‘I never got to walk her up the aisle, did I? Never got to visit her in hospital when her kids were born. Add up all the time I would’ve given her if she’d lived—’”

Tucker faltered. Lauren put a plump hand over her grandfather’s, which had swollen, purple joints.

“—add all that time together,” Tucker croaked, his eyes filmy with tears, “and that’s what I owe her, to find out what happened to her. That’s all I’m doing. Giving her her due.”

Robin felt tears prickle behind her own eyelids.

“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, well,” said Tucker, wiping his eyes and nose roughly on the sleeve of his windcheater. He now took the top sheet of writing and thrust it at Robin. “There you are. That shows you what we’re up against.”

Robin took the paper, on which was written two short paragraphs in clear, slanting writing, every letter separate and distinct, and began to read.

She attempts to control through words and sometimes with flattery. Tells me how clever I am, then talks about “treatment.” The strategy is laughably transparent. Her “qualifications” and her “training” are, compared to my self-knowledge, my self-awareness, the flicker of a damp match beside the light of the sun.

She promises a diagnosis of madness will mean gentler treatment for me. This she tells me between screams, as I whip her face and breasts. Bleeding, she begs me to see that she could be of use to me. Would testify for me. Her arrogance and her thirst for dominance have been fanned by the societal approval she gained from the position of “doctor.” Even chained, she believes herself superior. This belief will be corrected.

“You see?” said Tucker in a fierce whisper. “He had Margot Bam­borough chained in his basement. He’s enjoying writing about it, reliving it. But the psychiatrists didn’t think it was an admis­sion, they reckoned Creed was just churning out these bits of writing to try and draw more attention to himself. They said it was all a game to try and get more interviews, because he liked pitting his wits against the police, and reading about himself in the press, seeing himself on the news. They said that was just a bit of fantasy, and that taking it serious would give Creed what he wanted, because talking about it would turn him on.”

“Gross,” said Lauren, under her breath.

“But my warder mate said—because you know, there was three women they thought Creed had done whose bodies were never found: my Lou, Kara Wolfson and Margot Bamborough—and my warder mate said, it was the doctor he really liked being asked about. Creed likes high-status people, see. He thinks he could’ve been the boss of some multinational, or some professor or something, if he hadn’t of turned to killing. My mate told me all this. He said, Creed sees himself on that sort of level, you know, just in a different field.”

Robin said nothing. The impact of what she’d just read wasn’t easily dispelled. Margot Bamborough had become real to Robin, and she’d just been forced to imagine her, brutalized and bleeding, attempting to persuade a psychopath to spare her life.

“Creed got transferred to Belmarsh in ’83,” Tucker continued, patting the papers still laid in front of him, and Robin forced herself to concentrate, “and they started drugging him so he couldn’t get a—you know, couldn’t maintain…

“And that’s when I got permission to write to him, and have him write back to me. Ever since he was convicted, I’d been lobbying the authorities to let me question him directly, and let him write back. I wore them down in the end. I had to swear I’d never publicize what he wrote me, or give the letter to the press, but I’m the only member of a victim’s family he’s ever been allowed direct contact with… and there,” he said, turning the next two sheets of paper toward Robin. “That’s what I got back.”

The letter was written on prison writing paper. There was no “Dear Mr. Tucker.”

Your letter reached me three weeks ago, but I was placed in solitary confinement shortly afterward and deprived of writing materials, so have been unable to answer. Ordinarily I’m not permitted to respond to inquiries like yours, but I gather your persistence has worn the authorities down. Unlikely as it may seem, I admire you for this, Mr. Tucker. Resilience in the face of adversity is one of my own defining characteristics.

During my three weeks of enforced solitude, I’ve wondered how I could possibly explain to you what not one man in ten thousand might hope to understand. Although you think I must be able to recall the names, faces and personalities of my various “victims,” my memory shows me only the many-limbed, many-breasted monster with whom I cavorted, a foul-smelling thing that gave tongue to pain and misery. Ultimately, my monster was never much of a companion, though there was fascination in its contortions. Given sufficient stimulus, it could be raised to an ecstasy of pain, and then it knew it lived, and stood tremulously on the edge of the abyss, begging, screaming, pleading for mercy.