The stairs from here to the top floor stretch upwards around the dilapidated grandeur of the stairwell. On the next floor up the reception area is dusty and bare, the bar smells of sour booze and stale cigarette smoke and the empty dining room is redolent of dampness and decay. The kitchen is cold and hollow and echoing. There is one old domestic stove, powered by bottled gas, and one sink. There's an apron hanging on a nail.

You take the apron and put it on.

The next two floors hold bedrooms. There is dampness here too, and in some of the rooms the ceiling has fallen in, the plaster and lath lying draped over the heavy, old-fashioned furniture like some clumsy travesty of a dust-sheet. The rain is hitting the windows harder now, and the wind is getting up, whistling through cracks in the panes and the window-frames.

The top floor feels a little less damp, a little more warm, though the wind and rain still sound loud outside and above.

At one end of the dark corridor, past the wedged-open fire door, a door lies ajar. The living room inside is lit by the remains of a log fire, collapsing now into ashes. A couple of logs lie on the hearth, drying, and the air smells of their pine scent and cigarette smoke. An old coal scuttle to the side of the fireplace holds a can of paraffin, almost full.

In the corner of the room the dumb waiter contains a selection of logs of various sizes, most of them still damp. You take the biggest of the logs, which is about the size of a man's arm, and walk softly across the room to the bedroom door. You go through and stand listening to the rain and the wind, and — just audible — the noise of a man breathing slowly and rhythmically in the bed. You hold the log out in front of you as you walk towards the bed.

He moves in the darkness, something you hear more than see. You stop and stand still. Then the man in the bed starts to snore.

Rain drums on the window. You smell whisky and old tobacco smoke.

You get to the bedside and raise the log over your head.

You hold it there.

This is different, somehow. This is somebody you know. But you can't think about that because that isn't the point; although you know it does matter, you can't allow it to matter, you can't let something like that stop you. You bring the log down with all your might. It hits his head and you don't hear the noise it makes because you cry out at the same time, as though it's you in the bed, you being attacked, you being killed. There's a terrible, sucking, bubbling noise from the figure in the bed. You raise the log and bring it down again, calling out once more. The man in the bed doesn't move or make a sound.

You turn on the torch. There is a lot of blood; it looks red where it seeps into the white sheets, black where it quietly pools. You take the apron off and cover his shoulders and head with it. Then you go downstairs to get the gas bottle out of the old stove in the kitchen.

The twice-soaked bed linen lights quickly, paraffin overcoming blood. You leave the gas bottle on the floor at the foot of the bed and walk quickly away along the shorter length of corridor and step through the emergency exit out into the loud darkness of the night. You run down the metal fire escape on the gable end of the building.

You stop at the top of the road and look back, to see the flames just starting to become visible over the edge of the hotel roof, dancing orange into the night.

Maybe you hear the gas bottle explode a couple of minutes and a couple of miles later, when you're on the loch-side road heading away, but it's blowing quite hard by then and you're not sure.

It's been three days now I'm not sure though I could be wrong because I haven't slept very well I have nightmares of a man and they think it's me but it isn't, is it? Is it? I'm starting to wonder. He has a gorilla mask on and he talks with the voice of a baby and he has a huge syringe and I'm tied to the seat screaming. I can't take it. They keep questioning me, always asking where I was what I did why I did it, did all of them where I was who I was with who am I trying to kid why don't I just admit I did it well if I didn't do all these things, who did? I'm in London I'm in the nick I'm in fucking Paddington Green for Christ's sake, the high-security station they use for the Proves and they think I'm so dangerous so much a security risk they've got me here and even holding me under the Prevention of Terrorism Act Jesus God because some of them still aren't convinced they aren't dealing with some unholy alliance of the IRA, Welsh Nationalists and uppity jocks. They brought me down that day from Edinburgh, bundled me into a transit van with seats but no windows, handcuffed to a big quiet London lad who wouldn't talk to me at all and didn't even say much to the other two cops in the back of the transit just sat staring ahead and we seemed to drive all night just stopping once at some service station on the Ml, took a while to arrange everything, then they came in with a selection of cans of soft drinks and sandwiches and pasties and pork pies and chocolate and we all sat there munching then they asked me did I need the toilet and I said yes and they opened the door and it was straight over the grass into the gents" toilets, two cops guarding the door and some men, looked like truckers, standing watching me, waiting for their turn after I'd had my private visit; only wanted a pee but I couldn't do it even though the big lad wasn't actually watching just having him standing there handcuffed to me was enough so they checked the stalls and then took the cuffs off me and I had to leave the door open a crack while I went, then back out and I see the other cop cars Christ a Range Rover and a Senator too I'm a fucking VIP, then it's into the van and on with the journey to London where the questioning starts; they're concentrating on Sir Rufus's murder, for now, because they found a card a fucking business card in the woods near the burned cottage; not mine that would have been too obvious but a card from a guy I know on Jane's Defence Weekly with some scribbled notes on the back:

Ctrl + Alt 0 = PoV chnge

Shft + Alt = Chn of Cmnd zoom (bounces)

Milk Cheez Bred Shavng Foam

They ask me, Is that your writing? and it is of course it is those are Despot control codes from when the computer's mouse was misbehaving and that's the way I always spell when I do a shopping list. I vaguely recall writing down the codes months ago and losing whatever it was I wrote them on. I stare at the muddied, warped little card sealed in a deal-sized plastic bag, recognising my own writing and feeling my mouth go even drier than it already is and I can only gibber something about, Well, it looks like my writing but, I mean, and anyway, somebody, anybody could have taken that, I mean… but they just look quietly pleased and the questions go on.

And all I can think is Don't confess, don't confess, don't confess. There are detectives and DCIs and Chief Supers and Commanders every fucking where; more tecs and CID guys and Anti-Terrorism Squad chaps and regional guys than you can shake a nightstick at, all asking questions, all asking the same fucking questions and me trying to give the same fucking answers; seeing DI McDunn, sucking saliva through his teeth and letting me share his B&Hs, is like meeting an old pal even though he's got all his questions too. It's a relief when the Terrorist Squad boys seem to lose interest but that still leaves all the rest and I can't think I can't think straight I can't sleep.

It's bad enough at first but then it gets worse even as they keep me because they found more, they found two more and that was while I was here for Christ's sake while they held me while things were still happening more stuff came in while they were questioning me and they looked at me with disbelief horror disgust and I was going What? What is it? Now what? What am I supposed to have done now? And they told me about Azul, in Jersey, and before that I think it was before that they showed me the forensic photographs of all of them: Bissett skewered on the railings, grotesque and spread and limp; the blood-smeared vibrator used on the retired judge, Jamieson; the drained shapeless white body of Persimmon, tied to his grid above a pool of blood, then nothing when there should have been something; then what was left of Sir Rufus Carter, blackened bones, distorted and bent, the black skull's jaw hinged down in a blind scream but the flesh all gone very much a dental-records job and it was all black, the nails, the wood and the bones too but it's their mouths their jaws I remember, their silent screams, hanging slack or jammed open and it gets worse because they show me the fucking video they show me the video they think I made or that I think they think I made but I didn't; they make me watch it and it's horrific; there's a man and he's dressed in black or dark blue and he has a gorilla mask on and he keeps sucking on this little bottle he's carrying which must be helium because it gives him that baby voice disguising his own voice and he has this fat little guy strapped to a chrome seat, his mouth taped, one arm tied down onto the arm of the chair, shirt rolled up and the little guy's shrieking as hard as he can but it sounds quiet because the noise is having to come down his nose while the man in the gorilla mask looks from the camera to the guy in the seat and holds up this huge fucking syringe like something from a nightmare from an old movie from a horror film and I can feel my heart beating wildly because that's what this is. This is a horror movie a fucking horror movie this lunatic is making his own horror film and you can't even tell yourself Hell it's only a story aren't the special effects good it isn't real because that's exactly what it is and the gorilla man is explaining in that hideous high-pitched baby's voice what he has in this bottle and in this syringe and I throw up halfway through but they pause the video for me.