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up off the sofa with a grunt, then stood for a few seconds as he fought to steady his breath. ‘Have to be careful when I get up,’ he said. ‘I get dizzy. I’ve fallen over a few times and I’m lucky not to have broken a hip. You don’t want to go breaking a hip, lads, not with the way the NHS is these days. You have to wait a year to see a surgeon and then they give you that E. coli bug and kill you. Nurses don’t even wash their hands.’ He reached for his walking stick and hobbled over to an old wooden sideboard.
    He propped the stick against the sideboard and used both his hands to fumble open a drawer. He reached inside and pulled out a bulky photograph album that was bound in what looked like green leather. He shuffled slowly back to the sofa and sat down carefully. He placed the album on the coffee table and gently caressed the cover with both hands.
    ‘I never screwed them, the women. It wasn’t about sex. It was never about sex. It was about power. And control.’ He sighed and then arched his back and shuddered as the memories flooded back. He looked back at the album, opened it and flicked through the pages. Dobbsy could see that it was full of cuttings from newspapers and magazines. As the old man flicked through the pages, words jumped out at Dobbsy. MURDER. KILLER. VICTIM.
    ‘I started off disorganised,’ said Duns. ‘Even now I don’t know why I killed Caitlin. I think it was always in me, because nothing she said or did set me off. I just looked at her and knew that I wanted to kill her and so I did.’ He held up his arthritic hands. ‘With these.’ He chuckled. ‘It was only when she was dead that I realised I’d have to get rid of the body. I mean, I had a dead hooker in my car. What was I supposed to do with her? How stupid was that? I was so bloody lucky that the cops didn’t catch me. I didn’t worry about forensics or fingerprints or anything, I just drove to a railway line and tipped her over. I didn’t even take a souvenir.’
    He flicked back through the album and tapped a page, a cutting from the News of the World . ‘That’s her picture. She was pretty plain, it has to be said. She was a big girl, too. With a thick neck. It took all my strength to kill her. And it took her three minutes to die, maybe four.’ He flexed his fingers as if reliving the experience. ‘But I learned a lot from Caitlin. I guess you always learn a lot from your first.’
    He smiled. ‘I spent the week after I killed her in a state of terror. I was sure the cops were going to find me. Every time the doorbell went or the phone rang I thought it was them. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think about anything other than being banged up for life. Then bit by bit I began to realise that they hadn’t a clue. Literally. It was the randomness of it, you see. In ninety per cent of murders, the victim knows the killer. All the cops do is to look for a relative, a colleague or a neighbour. It’s box-ticking, and there’s nothing the cops like better than ticking boxes. But if the killer is a total stranger then they have to work and they don’t like that. If it’s random and if there are no witnesses and no forensic evidence then it’s almost impossible for them to find the killer.’
    He grinned slyly. ‘Once I’d realised that, I knew what I had to do. I had to keep moving. Because if you keep moving and choose your victims at random there’s almost no way they can catch you.’ He swallowed and rubbed his throat. ‘I’m parched. All this talking. You know, you two are the first people I’ve spoken to in weeks. No one wants to talk to you when you’re old, you know that? Even in the post office. You talk to them but they look right through you as if you’re not there. I was a good-looking sod when I was your age, I was fighting birds off with a stick. I could pick and choose.’ He grimaced. ‘Now it’s like I don’t exist. It’s like I’m not a human being any more.