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that soon he would join them. If the person lived alone, he would have liked to reassure them that soon they would have company.
    Jack regretted that these relationships, however meaningful, had to be short. He called the unwitting residents Hosts, preferring to think of himself not as a guest or cuckoo in the nest but as belonging.
    Only those with minds like his own knew a person can be randomly chosen by another and such a mind is alert for that eventuality. Like the man sipping coffee in the window of a café, or the man wired to an MP3 player on a Tube escalator who did not acknowledge Jack when he made room for him, or the fussy middle-aged man on the towpath. When certain inhabitants of London slotted their security chains into place before going to bed, they were unaware they had a visitor.
    People were oblivious. How often solitary dog walkers, children playing, joggers – those types who strayed off paths and were out at odd times – reported nearly missing a body, assuming it to be a pile of clothes or rubbish. Sometimes, even in a city, the dead lie undiscovered – buried in snow, on wastelands, in alleyways – for weeks.
    The presence of water does untold damage to a crime scene.
    For those killers intending the corpse as a gift, like a cat with a bird, he presumed this was a disappointment. For professionals with a mind like his own, those who did not crave cheap adulation, measured time mattered only briefly: every second was good because vital clues were eroded and destroyed. Jack understood how valuable was the currency used to buy or kill time.
    He was disappointed how few had minds like his own and was meticulous in eliminating each one.
    He slipped a roll-up out of a slim silver case and in the shelter of his coat lit it. He palmed it and, hiding the glowing tip, stepped from behind the hedge on to the pavement. At Rose Gardens North he checked but the Toyota Yaris was still missing, the house in darkness. He continued into St Peter’s Square. Restless and alert though the old lady was, she must be asleep by now.
    Jack’s choice of Host was not always random.

4
    January 1985
    A tufty man called a Head Master squeezed his shoulder, bunching his blazer and pinching his skin, before pushing him into a steamy room of staring faces. Jonathan did not like to be touched and squirmed out of his grip. The faces fuzzed and zoomed before him, until a round pudgy one came into focus and Jonathan landed in a chair beside him. A woman’s voice called this boy Simon. Later he found out that the boy’s other name was ‘Stumpy’, the same as the brother of Pigling Bland who was taken off in a wheelbarrow. The voice whispered that Simon knew the ropes and would look after him. He did not need rope and waited for his daddy to say so.
    The chair had rough edges which scratched the backs of his legs. He was told to sit right up to the table. He looked to see where Daddy was sitting.
    He had gone.
    Jonathan tried to get up but the Simon boy was in the way. The name ‘Justin’ was on the blackboard and the voice, which he saw belonged to an old woman, told the boys to greet the new boy:
    ‘He-llo, Just-in,’ they chanted in straggling unison.
    Jonathan said nothing because he was not Justin. This mistake made him hopeful he was in the wrong place and that soon his daddy would come for him. Anyway, the boy who was Justin would want his chair back. He tentatively raised his hand to explain this but the Simon boy grabbed his wrist with nails as sharp as Brunel’s claws and left four marks like smiles on his skin. Surreptitiously – or the boy might see – he licked them. They tasted of pocket money, which was no comfort. If he tried to leave again the Simon boy would make more smiles.
    The teacher said she was Miss Thoroughgood. Jonathan imagined the name as a great nodding daisy with splaying petals. He associated names of things and people with colours, creating disparate groups according to their hue. After