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He starts pulling at the various wires on his body, wincing as he takes out the needle in his arm.
“Nate, stop,” she says. “You can’t leave.”
“There’s no way I’m sitting in here while Jess is out there with a serial killer. I can’t—” He pauses, and Cara knows what he was about to say. I can’t let this happen again. She knows his failure to prevent Mia’s murder nearly drove him out of his mind. She knows there’s no way she’ll stop him.
“What about your back?” she asks, handing him his clothes from the cupboard.
“I’m whacked up on all sorts of stuff right now—I’ll be fine.”
She turns away as he pulls his clothes on. He’s grimacing, clearly in pain, and she helps him with his boots.
“What do we know?” he asks.
“Shenton’s on point; the team are scouring CCTV. She came here, then disappeared from outside by the taxi rank.”
“Here,” he asks. “Why here?”
She holds out her arm and he grabs it for a second as he stands up. He wobbles slightly. “She didn’t come to see you?”
“No.”
Cara can see Griffin starting to lose control. His scowl, the perpetual forward movement. He’s acting, not thinking.
“Nate.”
Her serious tone makes Griffin stop, and she takes his arm and steers him to the bed. He sits down with a thump. She crouches in front of him on the chair, resting her arms on her knees.
She takes his hands; she can feel him shaking. He’s scared. Her tough take-no-shit brother is scared, and that terrifies her more than anything.
“I need you to talk this through with me,” she says, her voice deliberately measured. Her brain feels scrambled; there’s too much to think about, all careering around, bouncing off the sides of her skull. “Help me, please?”
He nods, slowly. He stares at the floor for a second, pulling himself together, then looks at her. “Tell me what we have,” he says at last.
She shakes her head. “Very little. He’s left virtually nothing behind. A footwear mark from Converse sneakers. A Tinder message sent from the police station. A few bits of rare grass found on moorlands from the Sutcliffe murders, and a cipher we can’t solve.”
“Anything back from Social Services?”
“It’s a dead end. Too long ago, not enough to go on. They can’t find the file of that boy.”
“And we know he’s fond of serial killers,” Griffin adds. “But which one? Which one next?”
“Call Shenton,” they both say together.
Cara dials his mobile, and Shenton answers immediately. She puts him on speaker.
“Toby, it’s Elliott. What well-known serial killers are still outstanding? Who hasn’t he used yet?”
“Er …” Shenton thinks for a second. “Well, there’s Bundy, Son of Sam, Boston Strangler, Gein.” There’s a pause as Shenton mentions his name. “You know what he did, don’t you. He …”
“… made a suit out of women’s skin, yes, thank you, Shenton.” Cara meets Griffin’s eyes, then looks away. “Narrow them down to murders that happened near moorlands or countryside.”
“The moors murders—Brady and Hindley?”
“No, that was children. Needs to be a woman victim.”
“Um. Robert Pickton? He lived on a farm. Fed dead bodies to the pigs. Ridgway? No, that was a river.” Shenton’s thinking out loud. Cara can see the annoyance on Griffin’s face. “Hansen?”
“What about Hansen?”
