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‘You’re insane,’ Mary said. ‘This sick fantasy is all in your head.’

Ryan shook his head. ‘No. It’s not me who’s insane. Anyway, I became friends with her at the clothes shop where she worked. I used to go in and buy clothes for my girlfriend – I didn’t have a girlfriend, but she thought I did and that made me less of a threat – and spend time talking to her. She told me about you and your business, so it was easy enough to find photographs of such a successful, public figure.’

‘Why did you want photos of me?’ Carl said.

‘That’s the clever part. I told her I worked with sex workers, providing support for them when they were the victims of violence. Happens all the time, apparently. I think they deserve it, personally, but she was very moved by their stories. She expressed some interest in working with them herself. It’s pretty harrowing, I told her. I shouldn’t do this, but I’ll show you some photos of the kind of thing that happens. So I did. A young woman being violently raped, caught on camera in a brothel. You can imagine her surprise when she saw who the rapist was.’

He pivoted slowly on the bed and pointed at Carl.

‘Her husband.’

‘How?’ Carl said, his voice soft and low. ‘Where did you get the photos?’

‘Once I had some images of you it was easy to manipulate them into whatever photos I wanted,’ Ryan said. ‘She believed it, one hundred percent.’

‘You didn’t do this.’ Carl was pale. ‘She would have said something to me.’

‘No. I told her that I would lose my job if it came out that I had showed her the photos. And I also told her that the women would face retribution. I had to break it to her that you were well known in the sex worker community as a violent and aggressive rapist.’

Ryan shook his head again.

‘I left the photos with her, but told her to keep them safe. Sadly, you found them and you sent her a death threat.’

‘What?’ Carl gave a low moan.

‘She received a note from you – in your handwriting, so she knew it was you – telling her that now she knew what you were, she had to leave and never come back, or she would suffer the same fate as your other victims. She was terrified. She came to me for help.’

He shrugged.

‘I told her the only option was to flee. And so off she went. The first few weeks she was in a shelter.’ He looked into the distance. ‘I helped her find it.’

It was becoming clearer to Mary what had happened. There was one thing puzzling her still.

‘Why aren’t you with her?’ Mary said.

Ryan frowned.

‘That,’ he said, ‘was my big mistake.’

As Evil as Her Husband

‘She disappeared from me as well,’ Ryan said. ‘I’d bought her a new phone, and one day when I called it was switched off. I went to the shelter to find her, but she wasn’t there. She’d left the phone for me, along with a note.’

He bit his lip.

‘It explained that she needed to get away, to make a complete new start, that a man as evil as her husband would find her, if he decided he wanted to. She didn’t feel safe.’

He shook his head. ‘So she vanished. I had done too good a job of persuading her of what a monster you were. That fear – the thing I needed to create to get her away from you – meant she didn’t think she could be safe. It was ironic; it was my own fault that she was so terrified, and it was my own fault she had to go for good.’

He smiled.

‘She did say she would be in touch when she was settled. I never heard from her again.’

‘You don’t think there’s a reason for that?’ Mary said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Something must have gone wrong.’

‘I think she knew you were a fucking psycho.’