The deputy governor held a door open for them as they entered the prison’s visiting hall. Aside from the three of them, the room was empty. The man closed the door behind the two officers and followed them into the room.

Reynolds spoke. ‘Do you have some sort of rear exit?’ he asked, although Jessica realised his choice of words was clumsy. ‘I know everything had been arranged for Martin’s release but we didn’t expect all of this attention.’

The deputy governor screwed up his face awkwardly. Jessica knew prisoner releases were generally straightforward things, although, depending on the people and category involved, they might need meticulous planning.

‘It’s a bit late to be changing things now . . .’ he said.

Jessica was regretting wearing one of her better suits as she stretched out her legs in an unsuccessful effort to get comfortable in the back of the van. She didn’t know how clean the floor was and it was too dimly lit to make out exactly what she was sitting on. The man across from her offered a weak smile as if sensing her discomfort. He was also wearing a suit, although it was far too big for him. As she peered through the gloom, Jessica could make out his thinning grey hair, the crinkles around his eyes making him look older than his fifty years.

‘You got the short straw,’ Martin Chadwick said with a small, unconvincing laugh.

Before Jessica could reply, the van bucked upwards over a hump in the road, sending her flying sideways.

After the deputy governor had told them it was unlikely he could find a better way to get them out of the prison without going through the media crowd, Jessica had uttered the words she was now wishing she hadn’t: ‘Isn’t there a service van or something similar we could sneak out in?’

At the time, it sounded like a good idea. With Martin’s unwillingness to face the media, it became an even better one. Unfortunately, Jessica hadn’t thought through the part where someone was supposed to be escorting the former prisoner off-site.

As the catering van reversed towards the prison’s main building after dropping off its daily delivery, Jessica had looked at the deputy governor and then Reynolds, before it dawned on her that the inspector was going to pull rank. While he and the probation officer were to leave the prison via the gates they’d come in through – much to the confusion of the waiting media – she would be in the back of a van with Martin.

Apart from the tinted windows at the rear, the rest of the back of the vehicle was enclosed, a wooden panel separating Jessica and Martin from the driver’s compartment. She tried to steady herself, thinking it was almost certainly illegal to be travelling in such a way without seatbelts. The plan was for the van to drive them to a nearby petrol station, where they would transfer back into Reynolds’s car.

‘Sorry about this,’ Martin said, sounding genuinely apologetic.

‘It’s all right, it isn’t your fault.’

Jessica was wary of getting into too much of a conversation with Chadwick. Although when she’d told Garry Ashford that Martin had served his time, she meant it, that didn’t mean she had to like a person who had burned someone else to death, whether it was on purpose or not.

‘At least it’s not raining,’ Martin added, clearly trying to make conversation.

Regardless of her personal opinion, the more he spoke, the harder Jessica found it not to be charmed by him. She couldn’t explain it but there was a fatherly tone to his voice. Some people came out of the prison system broken but Martin’s voice had no resigned quality to it. Instead, there was hope. She wondered how he’d got to the point years earlier where he was so drunk he burned down a building.

‘It’s not been wet, just cold,’ Jessica told him but the man didn’t seem to be listening.

They went over more bumps as Martin continued. ‘My son Ryan visited a few days ago. He says he’s been getting the house ready for us to move back into.’

Jessica was curious. ‘Is it the house you used to live in?’

Martin barely stopped for breath. ‘Yes. I’ve lived there since I was a boy. It was passed through the family, so there was never any rent or anything. I’ve been . . . away but Ryan was too young to live on his own so one of my cousins stayed in it for a while. It’s been empty for some time though.’

‘Has Ryan been living there since he turned eighteen?’

Martin sounded pleased with Jessica’s interest. ‘Yes. It’s in his name – it’s his house now. I told him I’d sign the papers when he became an adult. It’s only fair after what . . . I did to him.’ The man’s voice tailed off as he finished the sentence.

The van momentarily dropped into a pot hole before leaping out, sending Jessica and Martin sprawling again. Jessica was beginning to think she should find out exactly who Sebastian Lowe was, so she could blame him for her predicament, when Martin began crying.

At first, she just heard him sniffing but then it became a full-blown sob. Jessica felt a moment of panic she wasn’t used to. She had seen people break down in interviews but this was an entirely new situation where she didn’t feel comfortable offering any form of reassurance. She wanted to stay neutral, reminding herself that the person across from her, like it or not, was a killer.

She reached into the inside pocket of her suit. ‘Tissue?’ she asked, trying not to sound as feeble as she felt. Martin shuffled across the hard floor as Jessica reached forward, passing him a small packet. After various accidents with food over the years, she kept tissues on her just in case.

Chadwick pressed himself back into the side of the van and blew his nose loudly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said just loudly enough for Jessica to hear over the sound of the engine.

She didn’t want to get into a conversation about it but, for some reason, couldn’t stop herself. ‘What are you sorry for?’

Martin continued to sniff. ‘This. Everything. I’ve made such a mess of it all.’ He ran his hand through what was left of his hair. ‘You know what I did, don’t you?’

Jessica replied firmly. ‘Yes.’

The man gulped and blew his nose a second time. ‘My wife left me and I lost my job. I couldn’t deal with having Ryan on my own and I . . . got pissed all the time.’ Martin paused for a moment and the quiver in his voice had gone when he spoke again. ‘Looking back, it doesn’t feel like me. I haven’t had a drop since I was arrested. I don’t know why I did it with the fire and everything. I guess it was one of those things that seem clever when you’ve had too much to drink.’

Martin let out another sob and tried to dry his eyes. Jessica was lost for words. It would have been unsettling in any situation but as the van they were sitting in bumped along the country lane and she shuffled to try to get comfortable, it was almost surreal. She thought about the types of people the man would have encountered over recent years. As well as fellow inmates, there would have been counsellors and chaplains who might have heard similar confessions. She wondered if Martin had spoken to any of them, or if the contrition was something that had grown inside him as his release date neared.

‘I’m sorry for doing this now,’ Martin added.

‘You don’t have to apologise.’

‘I can’t believe I’m out. I can’t believe I’m going to live at home again. It doesn’t feel fair, not after what happened to that boy.’

Jessica never knew how to take statements of remorse. When she was younger, she would take everything at face value but years of seeing people’s sentences reduced because of guilty pleas and the ‘remorse’ they showed had left her cynical about the whole thing. Despite that, Martin did appear to be sorry for what he had done. Jessica couldn’t think of a reason why he would break down in front of her. He certainly had nothing to gain by doing so because he had already served his sentence.