‘Saturday,’ she answered.

After The Nights of Eden. After the argument.

‘And Martin?’

She huffed, shaking her head. ‘Like I said, I’m dealing with it.’

And that was that on the matter. There was nothing more that he could do. Nothing more to add. Abigail, the spiteful bitch, had circumvented him, gone behind his back, and preyed on a clearly inept and inexperienced DC who had nothing to do with the investigation and had told her everything he’d overheard and everything she wanted to know. That calculated, conniving…

Victoria clapped her hands, pulling him from his reverie. ‘As Nick explained, I’ll be overseeing everything from now on, so you’ll be reporting to me. Much the same as you have been since I joined, it’s just, now⁠—’

‘I’m back to my former job title.’

‘Pretty much.’

Tomek left the room in a huff and headed straight towards the small kitchen area at the back of the office. There, he made for the coffee machine. As the machine whirred into life, he rested against the countertop, staring into the plughole of the sink nearby. A second later, his phone began vibrating.

A part of him hoped it would be Abigail so he could launch a verbal assault on her and officially end their relationship for having reduced his involvement in Operation Butterfly. A part of him wanted to fly off the handle at her and let her have it. But, disappointingly, it wasn’t her. It was a number he didn’t recognise.

Tentatively, he answered the call and held the phone to his ear. ‘DS Tomek Bowen speaking.’

‘Detective, it is you!’

The French accent gave him away immediately.

‘Good morning, Florian. Is everything all right?’

‘As fine as can be. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about everything all weekend.’

‘Sometimes it can take a while to process.’

‘As I said, I was doing some thinking,’ the man continued, as though he wasn’t listening to Tomek at all.

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘And I remembered what you said about calling if I think anything might be important.’

‘Okay…’

‘And I was thinking about this all weekend, and I do hope you’ll forgive me for not mentioning it earlier. I did not think it was important, but now I do…’

‘Any time now, Florian,’ Tomek said, checking his watch.

‘Right. Of course. Forgive me. I haven’t been nervous like this in years.’

Tomek imagined the artist pacing around his studio, surrounded by a dozen more paintings of Angelica on the walls.

‘It’s about Angelica…’ the man continued.

‘Yes, I gathered.’

‘On more than one occasion, her and I… we… we spent the evening with another woman. The three of us, in one of the rooms. And… and I’m fairly confident that she slept with the same woman alone. I don’t know if it’s important, but… I just thought I would let you know.’

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Tomek did think it was important. He thought it was very important indeed. His mind, after he’d eventually hung up the phone with Florian, immediately went to Angelica’s crime scene, to her body lying face up on the floor. The make-up, the shaving, the care and attention – the almost womanly care and attention – that had gone into cleaning and preserving her body in death. And then his mind had transported him to one of the rooms. With Florian, with Rachel, with the four-poster bed in the middle of the room and the sex toys lying on it.

The dildo.

All this time, they’d concluded that she had been raped by a man. A man who’d worn a condom and cleaned up after himself. But what if there had been no penis at all? What if it had been a twelve-inch rubber dildo like the one he’d seen on the bed instead?

It wasn’t impossible.

After his call with Florian, Tomek had sent Rachel and Chey out to speak with Angelica’s closest friends, Xanthia, Elodie, and Zoë. If Angelica’s bisexuality went beyond the exploration and experimentation of the rooms at Melback Manor, Tomek wanted to know about it. If she had other female sexual partners that they, and her family, didn’t know about, they would need to track them down and question them because Tomek was adamant there was a lead there. A faint, almost intangible one, but a lead all the same (and after his previous spiel to Victoria about having overturned all the stones and followed up on the leads, he didn’t want this one to come and bite him in the arse). In order to give himself a head start, meanwhile, Tomek was on the way to the manor. Accompanying him was Oscar, the only other officer right now that he trusted fully, and one of the last remaining members of his original team. So far, neither of them had said anything, neither wanting to be the one to tackle the elephant in the cabin, but Tomek didn’t mind. Sometimes he enjoyed the silence, the vacuum of a long drive. It helped reset his thoughts. And as he pulled up to Melback Manor, thirty minutes later, he had only one thought on his mind: Micky Tatton.

After rolling the car to a slow stop in the car park on the other side of the building, Tomek was transported to that Friday night. How different the place looked in the daytime, now that it had been tinged with depravity and salacious behaviour in his mind. He couldn’t look at the building the same way, at the staff that had seen things they’d been sworn to secrecy over. They were all carrying with them a secret, and he wondered how many more they might have.

And in particular, how many more Micky Tatton might have.

Tomek and Oscar found the owner outside in the manor grounds. He was standing inside a timber gazebo that was situated in the middle of a small lake to the south of the property, deep in conversation with a member of staff. The gazebo was painted moon white, with six wooden struts supporting it in the water. Small lanterns adorned the walkway, and vines of synthetic flowers were wrapped around the gazebo’s pillars. In the water, lily pads and fallen leaves floated on the surface, gently moving in the breeze. Surrounding the waterline was an arboretum of oak, elm and birch trees, their leaves sprouting as the seeds of spring began to grow. To the right, a large water feature sent plumes of water vapour into the air. Tomek found the noise soothing. It reminded him of a water fountain they’d had growing up; lying in the garden in the summer as a teenager, letting the sun scorch his body, hearing the gentle rushing of water from the fountain beside his head like he was in the middle of an Indonesian rainforest.

As they approached, Micky Tatton, the hotel owner, caught sight of them, whispered to the member of staff, and then sent them on their way. The female staff member avoided their gaze as she sidled past on the narrow walkway.

‘Sergeant,’ Micky said. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

He held out his hand for Tomek. Tomek took it, then stepped aside for Oscar.

‘Who do we have here?’ Micky asked.

‘DC Perez.’

‘Pleasure,’ Tatton replied.

‘No weddings today?’ Tomek asked.

‘Not on a Monday. No one wants to get married on a Monday, even if it is considerably cheaper.’

‘I imagine you’ve got a lot of cleaning to be getting on with still.’

Micky’s face scrunched in discomfort. ‘Always plenty of cleaning to do. Even the most well-behaved guests make more mess than they realise.’

‘I can only imagine how much mess the worst behaved guests make,’ Tomek replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Oscar’s face contorting in polite confusion.

Before replying, Micky turned to the water and gestured at the trees. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t it? This is my favourite part of the entire property. Sure, some of the original features are still here from its inception – like the chimneys, the doors, and some of the windows – and you’ve got the tunnels and some of the master bedrooms. But out here… out here you feel isolated from it all. This is where we create memories for people, and by standing here, I feel like I’m a part of that somehow.’

So not only was he a part of people’s sexual deviance, but he was also trying to wedge himself into the happiest memories of his customers’ lives. The man was a control freak.

He continued: ‘Sometimes I come out here for some quiet reflection. And also for some ghost hunting!’