My shoes are new and stick to the tiled floor, where I peeled the label off this morning, as I walk down the aisle. It smells of furniture polish. It has been nearly twelve years since I was inside a church for any occasion other than a funeral. It was over twenty years since I came to an ordinary church service.

The church bells ring once. I run my fingers over the wooden grate, and notice that the knuckles on my right hand are still slightly swollen. The bells ring for a second time. I glance behind me to the arched doorway at the far end of the aisle. I take a deep breath. And I open the door. The bells stop echoing, and I close the wooden door behind me and sit down. The smell of furniture polish is even stronger in here.

The building is silent. And then I hear the harsh sound of footsteps against tiles. I stare at the elaborate wooden panel on the door in front of me. A door opens and closes. A wooden bench creaks slightly under someone’s weight. I can feel someone next to me. Subtle tones of lily, jasmine, and rose drift through the curtain-covered grate that separates us.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Her voice is soft and slightly husky.

“Why did you agree to meet me?”

“Curiosity.”

“In that case, don’t you want to see what I look like? How I act, how I speak?”

“I already have.”

“And what’s your verdict?”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“What do you think of me? Do you think I’m up to the job?”

“If I did, I would be in a minority.”

She speaks slowly and evenly, her pronunciation exact, and her accent faintly exotic.

“You’ve been researching me, finding out about me?”

“Naturally.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that you asked to meet me.”

“I asked to meet you, because I thought it would help me to stop you.”

“If that was true, then I would not have come.”

“Why not? Because you don’t want to be stopped?”

“You cannot stop me.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You are wasting your time.”

“I won’t give up, not until I stop you.”

“I do not doubt it.”

“So where exactly does that leave us?”

“I will continue, until I stop. Then I will vanish.”

“What, just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“When will you stop? Are you trying to achieve something? Is this something that can be
finished?”

“I will stop when I am ready.”

“You’ll stop when you’re ready? These are human lives we’re talking about. The lives of
ordinary, living, breathing people.”

“And that matters to you.”

“It doesn’t matter to you?”

“No.”

“It doesn’t matter to you that you ended the life of a nineteen year-old law student, an only child whose parents had just booked a summer holiday for the three of them; or that you killed a fifty three year-old woman, who worked in a bank, whose mother was in a nursing home, and who had a twelve year-old Labrador? You don’t care about the forty seven year-old, married man, who worked in a high school and was building a conservatory; or about the twenty five year-old dad of twin girls?”

“No.”

“So what does matter to you?”

“You care about lots of people. You care about your colleagues; Sofia whose marriage is breaking down, Joe who has not been able to sleep since the resolution of his last case, and Omar whose father has been diagnosed with cancer. You care about the victims of your cases, and their friends and families. You care about people you do not even know, like the woman who you saw in the supermarket yesterday with bruises hidden under long sleeves, and the man who you passed in the street last night, fighting back tears. And you care about Jack, and Alice and Samuel, more than you have ever cared about anyone since Laura.”

“But none of that matters to me,” she says.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you killing these people, people you don’t even know or care about, people who had lives before you snatched them away? What are you getting out of it?”

“It is a twist in my sobriety.”