‘Never messaged her online or on social media?’

Another shake of the head.

‘Would you be willing to come down to the station so we can discuss this in more detail?’

‘Of… of course.’

‘Tomorrow?’

After a few seconds of processing, Florian finally answered yes, then proceeded to give Rachel his contact details. Just before they left him to his thoughts, alone in the room, she placed a hand on his shoulder, thanked him for his time, then followed Tomek out of the room. Together they headed towards the exit. Outside, Tomek found the valet, searched through the bowl for his car keys, then waited for the man to bring it round.

The valet arrived a moment later. Tomek thanked him, then climbed into the front seat. As he shut the door behind him, he turned to Rachel and said, ‘We must never speak a word of this to anyone. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Tomek wanted nothing more the following morning than to knock the smug little smile from Chey’s face. The twenty-five-year-old had looked as though he’d just won the lottery. And to make things worse, Tomek and Rachel had arrived at the same time, making it appear as though they’d spent the night together and were doing a police version of the walk of shame.

‘So…’ he said, leaning back in his chair, chewing on the end of his pen, his unbearable grin still visible. ‘How was it?’

‘Don’t fucking start,’ Tomek called as he dropped his bag beside his desk. ‘You’ve got some fucking grovelling to do.’

‘Why?’

‘That costume.’

Chey burst into laughter, his voice breaking midway, flooding through the office. They were the only three in there, first thing on a Saturday morning. Soon the place would begin to fill up.

‘Did you get any photos?’ the constable asked.

‘Perv,’ Rachel retorted, seriously at first, then her face cracked and the two of them collapsed with laughter at Tomek’s expense. ‘It was possibly one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.’

Tomek gave them both the finger. ‘Do you know what’s funnier? When I put the two of you on performance reviews. Who’ll be laughing then?’

‘Nothing will be funnier than the memories I have from last night,’ Rachel remarked.

Sensing they were about to disclose on all the gossip, Chey climbed out of his chair and hurried over.

‘You can knock that smirk off your face,’ Tomek told him. ‘We’re not telling you anything.’

‘Come on! Wouldn’t you be a little bit fascinated if you were in my position?’

Yes. Yes, he would.

‘No,’ Tomek said, ‘because I have some respect for the investigation. If I need to know something, then I’ll wait to be told.’

It was a cold, stone-faced lie, and they all knew it. As Tomek turned to switch on his computer screen, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rachel lean over to Chey and heard her whisper, ‘It’s all right, mate. I’ll tell you everything later.’

‘Like fuck you will,’ Tomek snapped, spinning so fast he made himself dizzy. ‘What do you want to know? We got there, all dressed up, had to kiss each other’s hand, kissed a pig, got some drinks, saw a lot of sex, saw a lot of knobs and vaginas, and then spoke with a suspect.’

‘You found a suspect?’

‘Course we fucking did. We didn’t just go there to see what all the fuss was about.’

Rachel scoffed playfully. ‘Speak for yourself, Sarge.’

Tomek did a double-take on her, then turned to face Chey. ‘Right. Well, I went there for investigative purposes. If I’d known Rachel was going there for something else, I might’ve taken you instead.’

The young man’s face lit up.

‘Sarge, come on, think about that for a second,’ Rachel implored. ‘Him… twenty-five years old… going there. That would be like letting a fox loose in a chicken farm. It’d be a fucking massacre.’

The fervent nod and smile on Chey’s face confirmed Rachel’s analogy.

‘In that case, if I have to go again, I’ll go alone,’ he said.

Chey and Rachel looked at one another, giving each other the eye. ‘Yeah, all right, Sarge. Course you will. We see how it is.’

Tomek sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Behave. Don’t be so childish.’ He was keen to move the conversation away from himself, Rachel and The Nights of Eden, so asked, ‘Anyway, what did you spend your Friday night doing, young Chey? Crying yourself to sleep because you missed out?’

‘No, actually. While you two were fulfilling your fantasies at your little sex party last night, I was having a little party of my own scrolling through Angelica’s Instagram.’

Tomek looked at him, concerned. ‘That’s equally weird, mate.’

Chey’s expression dropped. ‘I know. I heard how it sounded. But hear me out, I found something I think might be interesting.’

Tomek waited for the man to elaborate.

‘I found a blog!’ he exclaimed. Now the excitable, puppy-like expression had returned to his face, but for very different reasons. ‘It’s called “My Little Corner Of The Internet” – which is actually the URL for it as well. It’s one of those Blogspot things from the early two thousands, where it’s literally just text and a couple of images. There’s nothing fancy going on.’

‘How did you find it?’ Tomek asked, eager to start at the beginning before Chey got lost in his own excitement.

‘It was at the bottom of her travel Instagram account,’ he answered. ‘I finally reached the bottom of her feed after days of going through each post. Her first ever one. It was a little selfie with a caption about people going to her blog where she would post more in-depth information about her travels.’

‘And that was the only time she posted the link?’

Chey shrugged. ‘Guess she thought that people would see it and remember it. It was a few years ago, before they fucked about with all the algorithms and organic reach was much better than it is nowadays.’

Algorithms. Organic reach. Words he’d been forced to learn very recently, but still had no clue what the fuck they all meant.

‘Did you read any of the blog posts?’

‘Started, yeah. But there’s a lot. The thing goes back as far as 2016, the same as her Insta, but there’re over two thousand posts on there. One for each day, sometimes more. I think she originally used it for her travel diaries, but then as she realised nobody was finding it, I think she started to use it as her journal.’

Tomek’s ears perked up.

‘When was the last post?’