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behaviour. When Heidi had joined the Professor’s team she had taken over Barclay’s care. Quickly she had unearthed tendencies which had pointed the way to a darker conclusion. Barclay had expressed no remorse, displayed no conscience. He had scored high on all the sociopathic assessment lists and had eventually confessed to sadistic tendencies when a child, mainly towards animals. Without making any real issue of it he had told Heidi when he was six he had cut his rabbit’s ears off to see what he’d look like without them. At the age of ten he’d put a sparrow in the oven to see how long it would take to die, carefully timing its death throes.
    In Heidi’s handwriting:
    ‘And how long did it take to die?
’
    Answer ‘Six and a half minutes. Much longer than I’d thought. But then I didn’t preheat the oven but let it slowly
come up to temperature. I thought it would be more interesting
.’
    By sixteen he had strung up a boy who had crossed him at school. The boy had been cut down by his friends, no harm had resulted. It had been put down to boyish high jinks.
    He had admitted attending football matches armed with an eight-inch blade – just in case.
    Barclay was a danger to people. Had his mother or his erstwhile girlfriend pressed charges Heidi Faro would have been asked to give an opinion on Barclay’s mental state and capability of inflicting harm. Without a doubt she would have used this knowledge to recommend that he be given a custodial sentence.
    But both women had retracted their statements, possibly because of Barclay’s threats. So neither case had come to court.
    And Heidi Faro had been denied her chance to put Barclay away. The only option she had been left with had been a close supervision order.
    Claire continued reading Heidi’s most recent assessment. It was not all bad news. As far as sexual matters were concerned Heidi had believed he was safe.
Promiscuous but
not a rapist
, she had written.
    Claire doubted it. Barclay was turned on by cruelty, inflicting pain. But Heidi’s notes were detailed.
    Months had gone by during which she had explored the relationship between Barclay and his parents. It had quickly become clear that his father had been the less indulgent of the two while his mother was prone to giving in to every whim.
    The father had died when the son had been ten years old. Heidi had written that there were no siblings.
    So she had done what she could – and should – warned the police and the courts when asked for an opinion whether he was a potential danger to society but the minor crimes had not warranted a frank psychiatric analysis or a custodial sentence; the animal cruelty had been too long ago, there was only his word for it and certainly no proof, committed when Barclay had still been a minor; and each time a cheque fraud was committed Barclay’s mother refused to press charges. And the big chance of charging him with two major assaults had been thwarted.
     
    So had begun the dance of death between them, the psychiatrist obsessed with learning more about the dark nature of the psychopath and the patient himself who craved an audience even though it had led both of them to dangerous places. They were locked together by their mutual needs.
     
    Heidi had believed that by letting Barclay know she was aware how deep he could sink she might prevent him from committing a major offence.
    But on Barclay’s part the dance had merely been a mime. A year ago, six months before Heidi’s murder, Barclay’s mother had had ‘another accident’. And this time Heidi had told Barclay quite clearly that she did not believe a word of it. She had tried to contact Mrs Barclay only to have her flatly refuse to speak to her.
    Claire tried to put herself in Heidi’s shoes.
    As she had written these notes she must have exulted. She had foreseen this crime. Known Barclay would reoffend. And yet at the same time she would have felt guilty
.
    She should have prevented this, protected her