Late last year, after spending 19 years in a Nepali jail, 79-year-old convicted murderer Charles Gurmukh Sobhraj was revelling in his new-found freedom. The day after Christmas, a text message from Sobhraj landed on my phone, sent from a hotel in Paris: “It’s 6am and I am in my first bathtub since many years. Feels so nice.”
A few hours later, a picture of his Boxing Day breakfast arrived: three types of cheese, salami and prunes on a white plate next to a cup of black coffee. “Have breakfast,” he wrote.
