‘Can we put the thrust and parry on the back burner for now, please?’ Scott sounded almost as pissed off as Carol. ‘What’s the other circumstantial?’

Tony looked at Carol and gave a wry smile. ‘Before I say this, in the interests of not getting my face slapped, I want to be clear that this is DCI Fielding’s journey into absurdity. Not mine.’

‘Fielding thinks the victims both look like me,’ Carol said heavily. ‘She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it. She thinks Tony’s killing women who look like me because I walked away from him.’

There was a long sticky pause. Then Scott said chattily, ‘And are you, Tony?’

50

Patience was a virtue he’d learned young. His father had never tolerated tantrums or whining, so he’d understood at an early age that keeping his mouth shut and learning to wait was the key to minimising the pain of his existence. Therefore it was no hardship to him to extend the time she would spend in the freezer before he let her out to play.

But that didn’t mean he had to sit around twiddling his thumbs. By now, her husband must be starting to panic. It was almost midnight – five hours later than she should have been home, given when she’d left work. At first, the husband would have assumed a hold-up in the transport system – a delay on the tram. An accident throwing the city centre into gridlock. Something relatively benign. But as the minutes ticked by and no text or phone call arrived, he’d have started to feel anxious.

What would he have done then, this Marco Mather, this man whose annoyingly handsome face smiled out of the photo in her purse? He’d have tried to phone her, of course. But by then, her phone was not only turned off, it had its battery and SIM card removed. He’d put them back later, when it didn’t matter if she was traced or not. But for now, he was taking every available precaution.

So, Marco would get a dead phone. What would his next step be? He’d probably call her friends to see whether she was with them or if she’d confided any plans to them. He’d draw a blank, of course. He wouldn’t be able to phone anyone from work because she’d only just started her new job and she wouldn’t have built up a social network yet. He wouldn’t even know the names of her colleagues, never mind their phone numbers.

So he’d have to go to the Tellit Communications building, where the night security guard would explain there was nobody left in the office. If Marco Mather kicked off, the guard might even show him the computer record from when she’d swiped herself off the grid and into the lift.