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‘The guy who came to see you, Brian, was the one I shared a cell with. He was in for armed robbery. The prison was short-staffed so we were often locked up together for twenty-three hours a day. This was right at the beginning of my term. The worst time, everyone says, the first few months, when you don’t accept where you are and you can’t stop thinking about what you could have been doing and how you’re going to get out, and getting your appeal together and getting angry with the solicitor because nothing seems to be happening.

‘I was getting into all sorts of trouble. I mean fights. They told me I had anger problems and they were right. I thought because I was six two and played rugby in the second row I could look after myself. That was crap. I knew nothing about real fighting. I got my throat slashed and could have died.

‘I came to hate my cellmate, as you do when you’re shitting in the same bucket every day. I hated his whistling, his stinking teeth, his press-ups and jumping jacks. He was a vicious little runt. But somehow, in his case, I kept control of myself and he delivered my message once he was out. But I hated you ten times more. I used to lie on my bunk and burn with hatred. Hours on end. And here’s the thing and you might not believe it. I never connected you with the Indian girl.’

‘Her family was from Pakistan,’ Miranda said softly.

‘I didn’t know about your friendship. I just thought you were one of those spiteful man-hating bitches or you woke up the next morning and felt ashamed of yourself and decided to take it out on me. So I lay on my bunk and planned my revenge. I was going to save up the money and get someone to do the business for me.

‘Time passed. Brian got out. I was moved a couple of times and things began to settle into a kind of routine when the days are all the same and time begins to go faster. I went into a kind of depression. They gave me anger-management counselling. Round about that time, I began to be haunted or obsessed, not by you but by that girl.’

‘Her name was Mariam.’

‘I know that. I’d managed to put her right out of my mind.’

‘I can believe you.’

‘Now she was there all the time. And the terrible thing I did. And at night—’

Adam said, ‘Let’s have it. What terrible thing?’

He spelled it out, as though for dictation. ‘I attacked her. I raped her.’

‘And who was she?’

‘Mariam Malik.’

‘Date?’

‘The sixteenth of July 1978.’

‘Time?’

‘Around nine thirty in the evening.’

‘And who are you?’

Possibly, Gorringe feared what Adam might yet do to him. But he seemed eager rather than intimidated. He must have guessed there was a recording. He needed to tell us everything.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Tell us your name, address and date of birth.’

‘Peter Gorringe, 6 St Osmund’s Close, Salisbury. Eleventh of May 1960.’

‘Thank you.’

Then he resumed. His eyes were half closed against the light.

‘Two very important things happened to me. The first was more significant. It started out as a bit of a scam. But I don’t think it was chance. It was guided from the start. The rules were you could get more time out of your cell if you came on as all religious. A lot of us were on to it and the screws understood but they didn’t care. I put myself down as Church of England and started going every day to evensong. I still go every day, to the cathedral. At first, it was boring but better than the cell. Then a little less boring. Then I started to get drawn in. It was the vicar mostly, at least at the beginning, the Reverend Wilfred Murray, a big fellow with a Liverpool accent. He wasn’t scared of anyone, and that was something in a place like that. He started taking an interest in me when he saw I was serious. He sometimes dropped by my cell. He gave me passages to read from the Bible, mostly from the New Testament. After evensong on Thursdays he’d go through them with me and a few others. I never thought I’d find myself volunteering for a Bible-study group. And it wasn’t for the benefit of the parole board, the way it was for some. But the more I became aware of God’s presence in my life, the worse I felt about Mariam. I understood from Reverend Murray that I had a mountain to climb in coming to terms with what I’d done, that forgiveness was a long way off but that I could work towards it. He made me see what a monster I’d been.’

He paused. ‘At night, as soon as I closed my eyes, her face would be there.’

‘Your sleep was disrupted.’

He was immune to sarcasm, or pretended to be. ‘For months, I didn’t have a single night without nightmares.’

Adam said, ‘What was the second thing?’