“It’s not so many,” I said.

“How many?” said Dave.

“About thirty.”

“About thirty?”

“Thirty-two. No, ’three.”

“Thirty-three would be the taxi driver I ran past earlier in the quiet street round the corner, I’ll bet.”

“You should have seen how much he wanted to charge us for the fare.”

“I’m not judging you,” said Dave. “I’m your friend. Your bestest friend. The fact that you are a serial killer does not affect our friendship.”

“Nor should it,” I said. “It has nothing to do with our friendship. Have I ever condemned you for being a thief?”

Dave shook his head. “You killed Captain Runstone, didn’t you?” said he.

“I did.” I sighed. “He was the very first – no, second, actually. He caught me in the restricted section of the Memorial Library. He was drunk and he tried to interfere with me.”

“Self-defence,” said Dave. “You’d have got away with that one.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind him interfering with me,” I said. “I quite liked it. But his breath smelt rotten.”

“You’d have gone down,” said Dave. “You were wise to keep quiet. But what about all the rest?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was just here and there. People upset me. They make me angry. I hit them. I don’t mean to. Something just comes over me, or into me, or something, and I’m not myself, I just do it. There was the labourer, once, on a building site, where Mother Demdike’s hut used to be. He was a homophobe. Something came over me. I lost my temper. Stuff like that.”

“Well, I’m your bestest friend and I would never grass you up, as you know. It’s your thing. It’s the way you are.”

“It’s my daddy’s fault,” I said. “I’ve read a lot about this sort of thing. An abused child becomes an abusing adult. It’s in the programming.”

“Yeah, right,” said Dave. “But I’m not judging you. All I’m saying, and this is the whole point of this conversation, you love Sandra and so you should put Sandra first. And if that means sacrificing a few young, nubile, attractive women to acquire their bodies as replacements, then you should consider it. You would be doing it for your Sandra. The benefits for yourself would of course be secondary.”

“Yes,” I said and I nodded thoughtfully. “You have a good point there.”

“Of course I do,” said Dave. “And I took the liberty of placing the dead cabbie in the boot of his cab and helping myself to the keys. So, if you wish to acquire the nubile young woman later, I’ll be more than pleased to give you a hand.”

“You’re a real friend, Dave,” I said, putting out my hand for a shake. “I’ve wanted to talk to people about the bad things I do, but I know they’d only freak out and tell the police and then I’d have to go to prison and I don’t want to go to prison. I’m really glad we could talk about it. It’s good to have a friend like you.”

“Of course it is,” said Dave, shaking my hand. “I’m your bestest friend.”

And so we drank some more champagne.

And we chatted about the good old days and we buddied up once again and I thought to myself what a wonderful thing real friendship is and how you can’t put a price on it. Which is probably why the rich and famous, for all the money they have to squander, never have any real friends.

Dave nicked another bottle of champagne and we took to drinking that too.

And, of course, when you drink a lot of champagne and you’re in the company of your bestest friend you do tend to talk too much.

“I talk to the dead every night,” I said to Dave.

“Now, why doesn’t that surprise me at all?” Dave said in reply. “You’ve finally taken to drugs, then, have you?”

“No, it’s not drugs. I really do talk to the dead. On the telephone.”

“Yeah, right,” said Dave.

“No, really.” And I told Dave all about FLATLINE. All about FLATLINE.

“Bowls of bleeding bile!” said Dave when at last I was done with my telling. “And this is true?”

“All true,” I said. “All of it.”

“And you haven’t got caught?”

“Barry and I have it sewn up.”

Dave shook his head and he shook it violently. “You are in big trouble,” he said. “And I mean the biggest.”

“Eh?” said I. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” said Dave, “that I’ve heard about this. In the nick. I met an old boy in there – he’d been in for years – who told me about the FLATLINE thing and I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. But if you’ve actually spoken with the dead, then it must be true.”

“Who is this old boy?” I asked.

“His name is Terence Trubshaw.”

“I’ve heard the name,” I said. “He was a bulbsman. Mr Holland told me about him. He took a day off. It was wartime. They banged him up for forty years.”

“He didn’t take a day off. He found out about the program. It wasn’t called FLATLINE then. It had a secret operations name. Operation Orpheus. He was a Greek mythical bloke who went into the underworld.”

“I knew that,” I said.

“Well, it was part of the war effort. They had all kinds of weird secret operations back then. Because the Nazis had contacted aliens from outer space who were supplying them with advanced technology so they could win the war. Be a puppet world power run by the aliens.”

“Get real,” I said.

“It’s true,” said Dave. “Well, according to Mr Trubshaw, it is. The allies had to produce something pretty special, so some bright spark came up with the idea of contacting the dead by scientific means. The theory was to interrogate German officers who had been killed in the war. German officers who knew stuff, like secret information that the allies needed. They had this bloke who could impersonate Hitler’s voice. They managed to tune into the dead by using certain radio frequencies and mathematical calculations and the impersonator interrogated the dead officers and got all their information and that’s how the allies really won the war.”

“And Mr Trubshaw told you that?”

“He found out. Memos that he shouldn’t have seen got put on his desk by mistake and he read them.”

“Oh,” I said. “And how did he get found out about the memos?”

“He said that the entire telephone exchange is bugged. There’s secret cameras and microphones everywhere. Well, there would be, wouldn’t there, if it was a secret operations HQ in the war? And apparently all this stuff still goes on secretly. And the British government goes on pulling the same scam. When someone politically important overseas dies, or is assassinated, they call them up on this FLATLINE hot line, impersonating their Prime Minister, or King, or suchlike, and get secret information out of them, which is why Britannia still rules the waves.”

“But it doesn’t rule the waves,” I said. “There is no British Empire any more.”

“Oh yes, there is,” said Dave. “England is really the ultimate world power, because we alone have the FLATLINE technology. England might not seem to be the power controlling the world, but it is. It’s all a big conspiracy. It’s the biggest secret.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for sharing that with me.”

“Gary,” said Dave. “Gary, my bestest friend. Don’t mess around with this stuff any more. Leave it alone or you are going to turn up missing. This is a big deal here and you could be in really big trouble.”

“Yes,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“Run,” said Dave. “Run now. Tonight. Don’t go back.”

“Where can I run to?” I asked. “I don’t have any money. Where would I go? And anyway, just hold on here, I’ve been doing this for months and I haven’t got caught yet. Maybe they don’t have all the bugs and cameras any more. After all, they are a bit free and easy with the technology. Letting their operatives call up their dead grannies and suchlike.”

“They’ve all signed the Official Secrets Act. They know what the penalties are.”

“Yeah, but …”

“Get out,” said Dave. “Run. This is big. It doesn’t come any bigger.”