‘You don’t?’

‘I’d rather eat through a straw for the rest of my life.’

Before the conversation could descend further away from the point, Lorna knocked on the table, summoning their attention. ‘Guys, we’re getting distracted, all right. I get it, you’re excited about this “is it a hole, is it a mole” thing, but on this particular occasion, I can tell you unequivocally that it’s a hole. Now, can we move on?’

Tomek sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Excellent. Would you like to know what the hole is for?’

‘This isn’t a trick question, is it, like we got asked in sex ed at school?’

‘No. It’s a real question. The hole was caused by a needle.’

‘Right.’

‘And then a tube.’

‘A tube?’

‘Correct. But not like the ones you find underground in London. This one was a plastic one. One you might get in hospital. A surgical tube.’

‘Okay…’ Tomek was lost. ‘And what has that got to do with Angelica’s cause of death?’

To answer his question, Lorna pulled out another photograph. This time it was of the angel wings that had been painted on the floor of the church. Everyone else immediately made the leap, the connection, but Tomek was still a few seconds behind.

‘The killer drained the blood from her body and used it to paint her angel wings,’ Lorna said, giving him a helping hand. ‘By my estimations, they must have drained over three litres of blood. Maybe four. That’s what killed her.’

That explained why she’d looked so emaciated, so… skinny.

‘How?’ Tomek asked.

‘Gravity and a heartbeat, I assume. My guess is that she was still alive when it happened, though she would have been unconscious, and so her heart continued to pump blood through her body and out of the tube, and then when the blood levels became too low, she passed away. All the killer had to do was wait.’

‘How long might something like that take?’

Lorna shrugged. ‘No idea. But judging by the size of the hole, and the vodka Red Bulls pumping blood around her body, I’d say it would have taken about forty minutes, maybe an hour.’

Tomek turned to the portion of the whiteboard he’d written on the other day. He looked at the timeline so far.

01:28 – Angelica arrives home

01:52 – Angelica leaves, gets in car

09:00 – Angelica supposed to start work

Now he mentally added another hour-long break in that timeline.

‘So the killer must have driven her some place, knocked her unconscious or put her under somehow, and then spent an hour draining the blood from her body.’

‘That’s about right,’ Lorna answered. ‘But they would have needed an even longer time to complete the rest of what they did to Angelica’s body.’

‘The rest?’

Tomek wasn’t sure he was prepared to hear the answer. When he’d first seen the body, he hadn’t thought anything malicious or untoward had happened to Angelica. Then again, he hadn’t thought that the killer had drained her body of its blood either, so what did he know?

‘Post-mortem, Angelica’s body was cleaned and shaved,’ Lorna continued.

‘Cleaned?’ Tomek asked.

‘Yes. Using Aleppo soap. Cinnamon-scented Aleppo soap.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I recognised the smell. It was still on her skin even after all that time.’

‘And she was shaved too?’

‘Yes. When I tell you this woman’s skin was like a baby’s bottom, I mean it. There was nothing left on her, not even the fine white hairs you get on your forearms and cheeks. It looked like she’d never grown a single hair in her life. It was like she’d just come out of the womb.’

In his mind, he conjured images of the killer bathing Angelica’s body in water, rubbing a bar of soap into her skin, and then shaving her armpits, legs and pubic region, before taking the blade across the rest of her skin. The time, patience, and care required was what unsettled him.

‘What else did they do to her?’ Rachel asked, looking slightly uneasy in her chair.

‘The killer also painted her finger- and toenails and applied a full face of make-up.’

‘To make her look like an angel,’ Tomek added.

‘I said that, didn’t I?’ Rachel commented. ‘I said to you it was probably some of the best make-up I’ve ever seen.’

‘So the killer must have known how to do professional-looking make-up?’ Tomek said.

‘So it could be a woman?’ Chey asked.

‘Statistically, yes. There aren’t many men I know that could do make-up that good,’ Tomek answered.

‘But there’s one more thing you haven’t heard yet,’ Lorna interrupted, knocking on the table again with her knuckles.

‘Which is?’

‘That she was raped. Not aggressively or anything like that. But there were signs, just some slight bruising. And whoever it was was… well endowed, shall we say. Some of the bruising went deep. But what’s more is that there was no evidence of it. No DNA. No ejaculate. My theory’s that they used a condom and when they cleaned her body, they cleaned the inside of her as well. They left nothing.’

‘Jesus,’ Chey said softly, staring at the surface of the table. ‘He drained her, raped her, cleaned her, shaved her, painted angel wings behind her… who the fuck is this guy?’

‘Either someone totally infatuated with her or a sadistic fuck,’ Rachel said, the venom from her tone leaking into the room.

‘Quite…’ Lorna added tentatively.

‘That’s not everything, is it?’ Tomek asked. He could sense in Lorna’s tone that there was more, and her expression confirmed his suspicions.