ELEVEN
He tingled with a strange mixture of excitement and confidence. It had been a long process and now he was about to realise his ambition. He had waited in the wings for so long and now he was about to step out into the spotlight – a very dark spotlight. It was his due. He had endured months of waiting patiently while he built up his relationship with Ralph Northcote, cultivating the man’s intimate friendship, slowly and gently persuading him that there was a fully active killing-and-eating life waiting for him outside the drab walls of his prison. ‘Drab walls of his prison’ – this last phrase made him smile. Northcote had a far worse prison now, enduring a mere existence rather than a life. But that was his own fault: he hadn’t been clever or perceptive enough to be suspicious of th
