He says: ‘Because I know who did.’

‘You know who killed her?’

He looks at the table, patting down his hair again.

You start writing: ‘Who?’

He is patting down his hair, blinking at the plastic table.

‘Michael, if it wasn’t you, who was it?’

He is patting down his hair. He is blinking. Smiling.

‘Who?’

Smiling and blinking and patting down his hair and -

‘Who?’

Michael Myshkin looks up at you.

He says: ‘The Wolf.’

You put down your pen: ‘The Wolf?’

Myshkin, in his grey overalls and his grey shirt with his enormous body and oversized head, is nodding -

Nodding and laughing -

Really, really laughing -

The guards too.

Laughing and nodding and blinking and patting down his hair, the spittle on his chin -

Michael John Myshkin, murderer of children, is laughing -

Spittle on his chin, tears on his cheeks.

Outside in your car, you switch on the engine and the radio news and light a cigarette:

‘Thatcher names defence as nation’s priority; ten Greenham women arrested as council bailiffs move in; boy aged fifteen to appear before Northampton magistrates charged with murdering three-year-old boy; Hazel day three, the search continues; Nilsen charged with four more murders: Kenneth Ockendon in December 1979, Martyn Duffey in May 1980, William Sutherland in September 1980, Malcolm Barlow in…’

You switch the radio off and light another cigarette and listen to the rain fall on the roof of the car, eyes closed:

Fitzwilliam, three days ago. You waited in the same piss for your Pete to show. He didn’t so you went inside and cremated your mother. Stood alone at the front and bit the inside of your cheek until the blood wouldn’t stop and the tears finally came.

Mrs Myshkin was there, Mrs Ashworth and a couple of the others -

But not your Pete.