‘Why? I’ve got round the clock protection, just like you. Just like Weislander, just like Hoban. All of us should be safe.’

‘I know. It’s just that –‘

‘What?’

Cassie sighed. ‘The dream I had. It was about you.’

‘And?’

‘Oh, it was nothing. Don’t listen to me. It’s the painkillers. Nothing but –‘

‘Cassie, I want to know.’

There was silence.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘You were down at the beach house. You were taking photographs just as you were that morning – when you found the baby. But you had – what are they called? One of those things that produce photos straight away?’

‘A Polaroid?’

‘Yes, one of those. As you looked through the camera you saw someone come closer towards you. You couldn’t make him out at first, he was in shadows. And you couldn’t take your eyes away from the viewfinder. Somehow, in the dream, the camera had become your eyes, well, sort of –. Look, I told you it was nonsense, stupid nonsense. Doesn’t make any sense if I - ’

‘Go on,’ said Kate.

‘So you carried on looking through your camera until you realised that the man who was walking towards you was Gleason. Well, not quite him, but a younger version of him. And not quite like the man who attacked me, the one you think is Ryan, his son. But a man who looked like both of them. I can’t explain. Anyway, as he came towards you, you realised he was carrying a knife, a long knife with a horrible blade, all raised and serrated. You don’t need to hear any more. Honestly, Kate –‘

‘I want to hear it all,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’

‘You couldn’t move. You couldn’t take the camera away. You saw his face coming closer, looking at you through the camera, until all you could see were his eyes. He continued to look at you – and you at him – as he moved his knife down to your stomach. At the moment you felt him push the blade into you, you took a photograph.’

Kate didn’t want to listen to any more, but it was no use. She felt compelled to ask the question, the answer she knew she didn’t want to hear.

‘And what did the photograph show? What was it of?’

There was no answer.

‘Cassie?’

‘That was the odd thing about it,’ she whispered. ‘It was a picture of the man holding a baby. Your baby.’

‘Was – it – okay? The baby, I mean.’

‘Yes, she was fine. But the man said he was going to bring it up as one of his own.’

A shiver went through Kate. She thought about what Roberta had endured. Abuse at the hands of her father and her brother. The knowledge that she was both the daughter and sister of a serial killer. She remembered the way she had looked in that interrogation room. Her face pale, miserable. Her eyes lifeless. By the time Kate had left her Roberta had fallen silent, withdrawn, reduced to a mere fragment of a person. Josh told her that she hadn’t uttered a word since. Even if Ryan was apprehended, Kate wondered whether she would ever be able to fully recover.

‘Cassie, you need to get some rest. It’s not good for you to keep worrying about the –‘

‘I know. I told you it was stupid.’

‘It’s not surprising you’re having nightmares, after what you’ve been through. But I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘But you will be careful, won’t you?’

‘Me? Of course. What am I going to do?’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

Kate looked at her watch. She had a date with Josh. Not a proper date, of course. A catch-up about the case.

‘Look, I’d better go. I’ve got to see Josh. I’ll come tomorrow, okay. Same time?’

‘Same time,’ said Cassie, her voice infused by sadness.

Kate took hold of her hand.

‘We’re going to get through this. We’re all going to be okay.’

‘You think so?’

She nodded her head. ‘What am I doing?’

‘You’re nodding your head.’

‘How do you do that?’ said Kate, trying to lighten the mood. ‘I always said you were a witch.’

Kate turned to go.

‘You know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘I think he’s going to ask you back.’

‘Who?’

‘Who do you think? Josh.’

‘Not in a million years.’

‘I think he still loves you.’

‘I think you’ve been reading too many romances.’

‘I’m blind. Or have you forgotten?’

‘Point taken. But no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.’

‘Talking hypothetically – what would you do if he did?’

‘What?’

‘Ask you back.’

‘I told you, it’s not a –‘

‘I know, but if he did.’

Kate felt a surge of anticipation within her. It was tempting to indulge her feelings, but she had to keep those fantasies in check. She had been there before.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.

64

Kate thought about Cassie’s dream as she drove along the Pacific Coast Highway. She pictured Ryan Gleason holding her child – Cassie had pictured it as a little girl – in his arms. He looked at it neither with affection nor sympathy. His cold, black eyes studied it like a snake gazes upon its prey in the moments before the kill. What would he do to her? Cassie said that in her dream he planned to bring the child up as his own. She couldn’t bear to think of what he might do to her when she reached – what? How old had Roberta been when her abuse started?

Would it all have been different if Mary Gleason had not died? Would Robert Gleason’s murderous urges – his proclivity to sexual violence – have been contained had he not lost his wife? Certainly, if Mary had survived it’s unlikely that Gleason would have fostered a child like Ryan. He had created a monster in his own image.

And now that monster was free. Free to kill again.