Today marks 372 days since my last kill. And if I don’t strike again soon, I fear for my sanity. It’s begun to consume my days, thinking about all those poor souls out there who need me and who I’m letting down on this self-imposed sabbatical. By doing nothing, I am as complicit as everyone else.

Until recently, it wasn’t an urge that controlled my everyday life. I didn’t pass schools or trawl shopping centres targeting the next one. I went about my day the same way as Joe Public. I admit there were times, back in the late 1990s, when I gave in to my urges more frequently, and struck twice, and even three times, in a calendar year. Not now. I have limited myself to helping one child per year, because if I spread myself too thinly, I risk being exposed. Multiple disappearances of children with similar profiles within too short a time or close a radius creates a pattern. And as more police forces work together and share information, red flags are raised and my safety is compromised.

But I can’t ignore these visceral urges. They’ve started targeting me at night when I’m at my most vulnerable and there are fewer opportunities to distract myself. In the darkness, I relive how I have helped the others, recalling each scene with clarity. However, it’s no longer enough. The need to deliver the worthy into a better world is like having

rats under my skin. They claw at my insides and tear at my flesh until they break through the surface.

So I cannot turn the other cheek any longer. This afternoon, I will do what I am trained to do. And the anticipation alone is enough to unleash a river of adrenaline coursing through me, rendering me light-headed and dizzy, almost. Every part of me is awakening.

You might not think it, but I possess enough self- awareness to question what I do. Many a time I have wondered if I’m fooling myself into believing I do it for the victims’ sake when it’s actually for my own satisfaction. I can’t deny there’s a small, selfish element to taking a life, a physical release that is hard to explain. But it’s a by-product of what I do, not a reason. In doing one thing, I am enabling another. It’s no different to giving money to charity. By helping someone in need, I feel better about myself.

I find myself sitting on a bench opposite a playground in Newmarket, and sipping coffee from a flask. I check the news headlines on my phone and take a bite from an apple. It’s the nearby community centre I’m here to watch. Today it’s a polling station and is buzzing with voters deciding whether our country should remain in or leave the European Union. I eye the centre up and down. Half of its windows have been boarded up and a CCTV camera above the door is dangling from its brackets. The housing estate behind it has also seen better days. It’s a good location.

I’m counting on the high footfall working to my advantage because there’s nothing memorable about me. I don’t stand out and I’m not behaving oddly. My clothes are ordinary, my expression calm. I have made blending in an art form. No one will recall me.

Some of the children brought here today have been left to play outside as their parents put an X in a box. But they’re rarely inside the centre long enough for me to make my approach unobserved. One lone boy, however, garners my attention, and I stare at him long and hard. He is short

and bespectacled, his frame is slight, and headphones filter out the noise and presence of anyone around him. He fits the bill. I’ll keep my eye on him. He arrived alone but if I take the right approach, we will leave together. He is already making my skin prickle.

It’s in moments like these I can’t help thinking how nice it would be to have a like-minded soul to enjoy these experiences with. I thought I had them once. I shared everything I knew with that person, I trusted them with my life and my freedom. But it takes strength, resilience and conviction to be someone like me, and as much as I wanted it for them, ultimately, they didn’t have it in them.

I sank into a deep funk after we parted ways, something I managed to hide from all those around me. Eventually I dusted myself down and returned refreshed and rebooted – if a little bruised – but with the same purpose.

Watching parents come and go from here makes me dwell on my own. It’s only as an adult and with the benefit of hindsight that I recognise how twisted and cruel their behaviour was. Yet there were glimmers of normality if you knew where to look. Along with my brother George, we celebrated Christmases, Easters and birthdays together, and like other families, we enjoyed spending the summer months on caravan holidays.

It was always just the four of us. There were no visits from aunts, uncles or cousins. I didn’t even know if I had any. And I had no relationship with my paternal grandparents until I was twelve. From what they told me later, they had disowned my father for marrying Mum. I’ve considered this a lot over the years and I wonder if it was because they saw a darkness in her that my father didn’t. I will never know who damaged who or if they met on a level playing field. All I can be sure of is that for the first decade of my life, they shaped me into the contradiction I am now. I am not like them yet I am them. I kill as they killed but not for the same reason. I kill to save others, not punish them. I

walk my own path yet I am always aware of the outlines of my parents’ footsteps before me. Killing is as natural to me as walking or blinking. It’s like bursting a blister or taking a tablet for a headache.

Only, here in this playground, there will be no footsteps today, not mine and not my parents’, because a television camera and reporter have arrived to interview voters. I don’t need to be caught by a lens. So I screw the top of my flask on tightly, take my phone from my pocket and examine a map of this partially familiar town.

I’ll drive to another area where the pickings may be richer yet poorer. Then I hesitate, taking one last look at the boy with the headphones. He will never know how unfortunate he is not to have met me.