The last two days of the week passed in a blur. The team had been so full on that Tomek had barely had time to stop and think about Friday night’s activity. He was starting work at seven, leaving Kasia to make her own way to school, and in the evenings he wasn’t getting home till eight or nine, arriving home to a ready meal in the microwave and a daughter who’d locked herself in her room, leaving the television and sofa for himself. He hadn’t watched anything; he spent his evenings working on the case, going over the team’s notes for the day, handling all the administration headaches and pain-in-arse parts of the inspector’s role he’d been handed. All of this had meant there was no time for Abigail to come over. Not in the afternoons, not in the evenings. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d messaged one another. And when they had, it had only been brief, small talk, almost platonic. Tomek knew what that meant in today’s instantly connected society: that their days as a couple were numbered. That their relationship was coming to a gradual close. And, to think it had happened only a few weeks after he’d introduced her to his mother. That his mother had approved and spoke highly of her, and yet he hadn’t been able to see it through. Was there something fundamentally wrong with him? Or was he just incapable of love? He had battled that question alone in bed at night. In the end, he’d decided that he wasn’t worthy of love, that he was an idiot, an immature, childish idiot who always threw away a good thing. A childish idiot who always got scared at the first sign of trouble, because, in the past few days, thoughts of Rose Whitaker had frequently entered his mind. Her smile, her dress sense, her mannerisms. The way she controlled herself. On several occasions, he had fought the urge to pop into the jeweller’s just to make unnecessary conversation, just to see her face. He only hadn’t because, as far as he was aware, he and Abigail were still boyfriend and girlfriend, and it would be the worst type of betrayal. It wasn’t what she deserved. He’d made that mistake in the past, and he wasn’t prepared to do it again.

But right now, all Tomek could think about were the numbers, the budgets, the facts and figures that he’d memorised ahead of this meeting. It had been in the calendar all week. The last thing on a Friday. And so he’d had plenty of time to prepare. Which meant the expectation placed upon him would be even greater.

Tomek waited outside Nick’s office, listening for the call. When it came, he placed a nervous hand on the handle and stepped in. Wearing one of the fakest smiles he’d ever pulled off, he nodded to Nick and Victoria and seated himself opposite them.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Nick started. He cast a quick side glance at the time on his computer monitor, and added, ‘And with a couple of minutes to spare, too. The old Tomek would have got that the other way round. I’m impressed.’

‘God bless modern technology and alarm systems,’ Tomek replied. ‘I imagine back in your day you had to wait for the suns and the moons to cross paths before you knew what time it was, right?’

‘Almost,’ Nick answered. ‘It was the sun, moon, and Ur-an-anus – sorry, I mean, you’re an arsehole.’

Tomek fired a finger gun at the man, accompanying it with a little wink. ‘Touché.’

Before they could continue their slightly immature banter, Victoria interrupted by clearing her throat. She gave them each a scolding look, like a disapproving mother, and said, ‘Have you prepared everything we asked?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘Good. So give us the latest.’

Straight in for the jugular. No hanging about.

Time to sink or swim now, mate.

‘This week myself and Rachel spoke with a man called Micky Tatton, the owner of Melback Manor, and the organiser of The Nights of⁠—’

‘Ah, yes. I heard about this from Chey,’ Nick interrupted. ‘The place that has the little sex parties.’

‘Big sex parties, if what we were told is true.’

‘I also hear you’ve bagged yourself an invite.’

‘For work purposes⁠—’

‘I wouldn’t say that qualifies for overtime, would you, Victoria?’

The inspector gave a leering grin. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Exactly my thinking. Sounds like there’s going to be more fun than fact-finding.’

‘Sir…’

Nick raised a hand to stop him. ‘Just remember to behave yourself, Tomek. You’re representing the police when you go along to this… orgy.’

Tomek opened his mouth to fight the decision, but quickly realised defeat.

‘As I was saying, we’re going to one of The Nights of Eden tonight. Our aim is to speak with someone we’ve dubbed “The Donkey Man”. We don’t know what he looks like, or anything else about him, other than the fact he goes to these things wearing a donkey mask. Hopefully, he’s not hung like one. We’re hoping to see what he can tell us about his sexual encounters with Angelica.’

‘Perv,’ Nick said flippantly. Then, more seriously, he added, ‘And you think this person might have had something to do with Angelica’s murder?’

Tomek hesitated. ‘We’re keeping our options open. As far as we’ve been able to discern, Angelica Whitaker was no stranger to sex, which muddies the waters a little when it comes to her pregnancy. But from our discussions with Cole Thompson, one of her current sexual partners, she always ensured he wore a condom. We can only assume that this rule extended to the random people she picked up on nights out. The only instance where that isn’t the case is at The Nights of Eden. According to the owner, half of the condoms are pierced, half aren’t, so it’s very possible that The Donkey Man is the father of Angelica’s unborn child, and there’s every possibility that she told him on the night she died and he killed her.’

Nick nodded thoughtfully. Tomek thought he saw an ounce of pride in the chief inspector’s expression. ‘Understood. Continue.’

Tomek did as he was told. ‘Also this week, the team has been interviewing the rest of Angelica’s friends and colleagues. They’ve taken over thirty witness statements and checked various alibis with the aim of doing more over the weekend and early next week. The teenagers who discovered the body have come forward and given us detailed accounts of what they did and what they saw. The poor bastards got the fright of their lives. Hopefully, they’ll think twice about breaking and entering again. The analysis on the padlock that was broken to get into the church has come back, and until we can find the cutters that were used to do it, there’s not much we can follow from there. The blood analysis also came back: they found Rohypnol in her bloodstream, and so we think that Adam Egglington, the guy she was dancing with at the club on the night she died, was successful in slipping something in her drink. As for Angelica’s clothes and phone, they’re still nowhere to be found. Every opportunity we get, we’re searching for them in suspects’ homes with the necessary warrants. We’ve done several rounds of forensic analysis on some of the hairs and trace fibres found at the crime scene, but so far nothing’s come back with any degree of success. The hairs that were discovered were found to have come from the paintbrush used to paint the angel wings. I’m still pushing for more forensic analysis on the bits that were picked up at the scene.’

‘Why?’ Victoria snapped.

‘Because I think there must be something there. The killer must have left a trace.’

‘And what about the budget? You don’t have that much left to play with, and continuous rounds of forensic examination are going to blow a pretty large hole in a fairly small budget.’

Tomek shrugged, then continued with his explanation. ‘Also, Chey, meanwhile, has been looking into the CCTV footage from around Park Road Methodist Church. We’ve had several neighbours come forward with home security footage of the night Angelica was murdered, but so far nothing concrete has come up. We anticipate that she was killed between two and four in the morning, and was then dropped off at the church a short while later. We think the killer might have been cutting it fine with painting the wings before it started to get light and people started to wake up for the day job, but regardless, they were able to get in and slip out undetected. In addition to all of that, Chey has been looking at footage in the surrounding area and along the main roads at that time. Fortunately, it was the early hours of the morning, so we’re hoping that we can find one or two cars that might have been on the same roads that followed the journey from Angelica’s house to her crime scene. But so far nothing’s come of it.’

Victoria opened her mouth to speak, but Tomek cut her off.

‘Also, Chey has been diving deep into Angelica’s social media accounts, making a note of all the names of those who used to comment on her posts, and anyone who messaged her online, across all her accounts. We also found a Tinder and Hinge account, which we’ve started to scour. She spoke to a lot of men in the past few months, but so far, none of them are screaming out at us. But if anything changes, Chey will be the first to know.’

‘Chey’s been busy,’ Victoria remarked bluntly. After her last comments about the constable, Tomek had taken it personally and decided to defend his team member as much as possible. Now she had no leg to stand on if she chose to launch another attack on the young detective.

‘No busier than usual.’

Tomek noticed the chortle escape Nick’s lips. He caught it escaping any further by asking, ‘Have you got any suspects?’

‘A few.’

‘Who?’

Tomek rattled them off: Shawn Wilkins, the stalker who had overstepped the mark on several occasions; Cole Thompson, the friend with benefits and possible father to her child whose alibi ran out after one in the morning; Micky Tatton, and The Donkey Man. Tomek had other suspects floating about in his mind, but decided to keep those quiet for now. They were based solely on intuition and a feeling deep in his stomach. He pointed out that, if they were able to find any DNA at the scene, he would be able to answer her question more definitively.

‘And in the case you don’t find any DNA, what then?’ Victoria said. ‘You need to have a backup. Run me through what you think happened to her. What’s your hypothesis?’

Tomek shuffled in his seat. He’d prepared for this, rehearsed it. ‘Angelica Whitaker went out with her friends. Four of them in total. They were at Memo in Southend, where she was dancing with Adam Egglington. At one fifteen am, her and her friends went home. She was dropped off first at one twenty-eight, then, a little under twenty-five minutes later, she was picked up in a car. At around the same time, her phone was switched off. We do not know why. It was either done manually or it had run out of battery. We’ve reached out to her provider for the call logs or last messages she sent, but they don’t have any information for us about who she was contacting. We believe she may have been using WhatsApp because there’s no record of any messages being sent on her social media accounts. And to complicate matters, she doesn’t have a laptop, just an iPad without the app on it, so there’s no way of us logging into her WhatsApp account without access to her phone. Anyway, shortly after she was picked up, she was taken somewhere, killed, raped, shaved, cleaned, drained, and then she was transported to the church, where her blood was used to paint angel wings behind her.’

Nick and Victoria nodded politely, making notes in their books as he spoke.

‘What sort of person did this? Do you have an answer for that yet? Do you think it was random or someone she knew?’

That particular question had stuck with him the most since their first meeting. Of them all, he’d torn that one apart from all angles imaginable, and he was now prepared to lay his claim on one choice with a fairly high degree of certainty.

‘I think this is someone who knew Angelica. Someone who knew her very well, intimately. Someone who adored her. They took so much time cleaning and preparing her body that this was carefully thought out. They would have needed a place to do it quietly and without threat of interruption, and crucially, they would have needed to know that she was baptised there. I don’t think that’s a detail we should overlook. But rest assured we’re looking into all possibilities, and we’re working round the clock to find out who did this.’

‘Excellent. Thanks for that,’ Victoria replied, flat. Tomek was taken aback by how blunt she was. Perhaps he’d been naïve to think she might stroke his ego and give him a pat on the back for a job well done so far.

‘How are we looking on budgets?’ she asked, going back to her earlier question.

He told her.

‘Very good,’ she said. ‘I think that’s all from me. Nick, any questions?’