Death of a Murderer, By Rupert Thomson

Here we have a policeman's dark night of the soul. He is PC Billy Tyler, and the night is that of 19 November 2002, before the day of Myra Hindley's funeral. He has been assigned to stand guard over her body, which is locked away in the mortuary of West Suffolk Hospital. Outwardly, it is an entirely uneventful night for Billy, who is a practical fellow and not inclined, unlike many people, his distraught wife included, to believe that one might be tainted by some kind of miasma of evil which surrounds the woman. All the same, sitting alone in that stark room, all his thoughts seem to turn down gloomy avenues. And halfway through the night, he begins to engage in conversation with her ghost.

Thomson's novel isn't really about Hindley (indeed her name isn't used in it; she is only ever "that woman"). It is about the darker recesses of the psyche – both Billy's and the nation's – her deeds force us to confront. It is about certain impulses we have, moral decisions we have to make, and consequences that we're not always good at predicting. It comes as a relief when her body is taken away at the end of the novel, but a powerful unease still lingers.

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