I let my mind drift back to my first day here. Waking in the bed upstairs. Waking in a world and a body I didn’t recognize. What did I want?
Answers.
Who am I? Where am I?
I’d gotten them by asking Gray, under the guise of mental confusion.
The killer isn’t going to grab a random guy on the street and torture him for information that he could get by feigning a blow to the head until someone took pity and answered.
Where am I? What year is it? What day is it?
Hell, he could get those answers by finding a newspaper stand.
What couldn’t he find as easily?
Who am I?
The man whose body the killer inhabits knew Evans. He was connected to him in a way that meant he had the information the killer needed.
Who am I? Where do I live? What do I do for a living?
He wouldn’t need to torture Evans for that. Fake a blow to the head and ask, and if Evans got suspicious, then he could kill him. Torture meant he needed more.
What more did I need when I arrived?
Everything. It was like being dropped into a foreign country where you barely speak the same language.
How do I wake up in the morning? What are my duties? How do I perform those duties—where is the mop, the water, the soap?
I’d had my safe cocoon, a houseful of decent people who made allowances for me. Yet I’d needed more, so much more, all the things I’m still figuring out, including information on this body I’m inhabiting. Luckily, I have Isla now, but those early days had been a constant cloud of fear that I’d be found out because I didn’t know the first damn thing about Catriona and “memory problems” only got me so far.
The killer had two choices. Live as the person whose body he inhabited or start over. Living as that person meant having a home and belongings and a job, but it also meant understanding that person’s life in a way I’d skipped with Catriona.
This is what he wanted from Evans. Not just “who am I?” but the crux of that question—tell me everything about myself so I can fully inhabit this life.
Where am I from? What do I like? How do I act? Who do I know?
That’s why he needed torture. He’d captured Evans with the intention of getting as much as possible from him and then killing him, both to cover his tracks and to renew his pursuit of serial-killer fame.
This means that Catriona’s would-be killer knew Evans. Knew him well enough that the killer recognized him as a source of invaluable information.
I need to learn more about Evans. He lived with students. Was he also a student? Part-time, maybe? Wait, McCreadie said he was English. Maybe he came for school in Edinburgh?
He wrote for a newspaper.The Evening Courant.Was that something done in an office—with colleagues—or freelance? I’ll need to ask Isla.
I’m writing feverishly when I catch the distinct sound of footsteps.
I grab the poker, stride to the door, and peer into darkness. It’s quiet again.
Goddamn it. Are my nerves working overtime or is someone actually out there? I walk into the hall.
“Hello?” I say, because by this point, if it’s just Alice sneaking around to see what I’m doing, I’d rather deal with that than keep being interrupted.
I walk along the hall and through the drawing room and dining room, seeing no one.
“If anyone’s there, I’m reading in the library,” I helpfully announce to my would-be killer.
I sigh, adjust my grip on the poker, and return to the library. Back at the desk, I pause and peer around. Nothing. I set the poker on the desktop, within reach, and then I’m pulling out the chair when a floorboard creaks behind me.