“A couple of hours ago there was another one-an antique shop below a care home. The home Luciana’s grandmother lived in. They’re still bringing out the bodies. Luciana’s grandmother was one of the first pronounced dead.”

Kloster seemed to take in the information gradually. He stood preoccupied for a moment, as if he were having trouble reconciling it with another train of thought. He laid the cue across the table and I thought I saw his hand shake slightly. He turned to me, his face sombre.

“How many dead?” he asked.

“They still don’t know,” I said. “They’ve found fourteen bodies so far. But it’s likely several more will die in hospital overnight.”

Kloster nodded. He bowed his head and placed his hand over his face like a visor, pressing his temples.

Slowly he paced up and down alongside the table, eyes hidden by his hand. Was he feigning this emotion? He seemed to be genuinely affected by the news, but in a way I couldn’t quite fathom. Eventually he looked up, his gaze distant so that he seemed to be talking to himself.

“A fire,” he said, still apparently struggling with his thoughts. “Fire. Of course. And I can see now why you came all the way here.” He suddenly flashed me a contemptuous look. “You think I left home a couple of hours ago with my swimming things, torched that care home, then came here to do my hundred lengths in perfect calm while the old folks burned to a crisp. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

I shrugged doubtfully. “Luciana saw you a couple of weeks ago, standing outside the home, staring up at the balconies. That’s why she got in touch with me: she thought you were planning something against her grandmother.”

Kloster eyed me, still slightly contemptuous, but now seeming exasperated as well.

“That’s possible. Quite possible. In my novel I had to plot a murder in an old people’s home. I went to several, in different parts of town. I looked at some from outside, making mental notes. But in a couple of them I pretended I needed to put a relative in a home and looked round inside. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to get into those places. I was looking for distinctive features for a particularly ingenious murder. But I was only ever thinking of one murder, one person. Destroying the whole place-such a simple, brutal solution never occurred to me. I have to say, I’m surprised myself every time by the method. Though if you think about it, fire was an obvious choice.”

There was something distracted in the way he spoke now, as if he were addressing a third person. He looked at me, but his eyes darted about, and he started pacing again, as if engaged in a furious inner struggle.

“All those dead-they’re innocent,” he said. “This wasn’t meant to happen. This definitely was not meant to happen. It’s time to stop him. But it’s too late. I wouldn’t know how to.”

He came very close and his expression had changed again: he seemed now to want to show me his naked face, at my mercy, to be judged.

“I’ll ask again: do you believe it was me? Do you believe it was me every time?”

I couldn’t help stepping back. There was something ravaged and terrifying in Kloster’s eyes. A much deeper, darker madness than Luciana’s seemed to burn there.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “I no longer know what to believe.”

“Well, you should believe it,” said Kloster darkly. “You should believe it, but for another reason. A few hours ago, before coming here, I started writing that very scene, the murder in the care home. I left a rough draft on my desk. And as you see, it’s happened again. Only the method changes. As if he wanted to stamp his seal. Or make fun of me. A correction of style. It’s happened every time. All I had to do was write. At first I tried to convince myself that they must be coincidences. Very strange coincidences, of course. Too precise. But the dictation…had already begun. I suppose you could say it’s a work in collaboration.”

“In collaboration? With whom?”

Kloster looked at me warily, as if he might have gone too far and was suddenly unsure whether he should go on. Perhaps it was the first time he’d told anyone.

“I hinted at it, the first time we spoke, when I admitted that I didn’t believe the deaths were occurring entirely by chance. But at the time I couldn’t put it into words. It was the only possible explanation but also the one nobody would believe. Not even I fully believed it, until now. Perhaps you still won’t. You may remember, I mentioned the preface to Henry James’s Notebooks.”

“Yes, I remember it perfectly: you said that’s where you got the idea of dictating your novels.”

“There’s something else in the book. Something he reveals in some of the more personal notes, which I never would have suspected of the ironic and cosmopolitan Henry James. He had, or believed he had, a guiding spirit, or ‘guardian angel’. Sometimes he calls him his ‘demon of patience’, at others his ‘daimon’, or the ‘blessed Genius’, or ‘mon bon’. He invokes him, waits for him, sometimes senses him sitting near. He says he can even feel his breath on his cheek. He entrusts himself to this spirit, appeals to him when inspiration fails, waits for him whenever he moves into a new study to write. A guiding spirit that was with him all his life, until he started dictating. This may be what most struck me in the Notebooks: all references to his angel ceased at the moment when another person entered his workroom, when spoken words replaced silent pleas. As if the secret collaboration had been ended for ever. I remember that when I read the invocations of the guardian angel I couldn’t help smiling: I had trouble picturing venerable, distinguished Henry James pleading like a child to an invisible friend. It seemed puerile, if touching, and made me feel as if I’d been snooping and had seen something I shouldn’t have. Yes, I found it laughable and I forgot about it almost immediately. Until I started dictating myself. But unlike James, it was through dictation that I had a visitation of my own. Only it wasn’t a guardian angel.”

He took another sip from his glass and stared into the distance for a moment, before placing the glass back on the edge of the table and looking at me again with the same open expression.

“I think I’ve already told you about that morning: after days of silence, paralysis, I started dictating to Luciana again in a sudden rush, as if transported. As I was dictating to her, someone else was dictating to me in an imperious, brutal whisper that cut through all scruples, all doubts. I wanted the scene ahead of me, the scene at which I’d stopped, to be especially horrific. The bloody but methodical revenge carried out by the Cainites. I’d never written anything like it before; I’d always preferred more civilised, more discreet murders. I thought it wasn’t in my nature, that I’d never be able to do it. But suddenly, all I had to do was listen. Listen to the dark, ferocious whisper that conjured up the knife and the throat with perfect realism. Follow the miraculous connection, the voice that wouldn’t back down before anything, that killed and killed again. Thomas Mann said that, while writing Death in Venice, he had the sensation of moving forward unhindered, the impression, for the first time in his life, of being ‘carried in the air’. I too felt it for the first time. But I can’t say that the voice carrying me was benevolent. Instead it seemed to be dragging me, controlling me, a primitive, superior evil that I had to obey. A voice that I could only just follow, that had taken over everything, that seemed to wield the knife with savage joy, as if saying: “It’s easy, it’s simple, you do this and this and this.” By the time I had finished dictating the scene I was surprised to find that I didn’t have bloody hands. But something of the almost sexual euphoria, of the fit of inspiration, persisted. A remnant of that all-powerful urge. I think it was this terrible combination that made me try to kiss Luciana. I only returned to reality when I realised she was resisting.”