‘I don’t fucking know. I assume she went back to the US. Like I already told you. I don’t really give a shit anymore. We’re done recording, so it doesn’t matter. The rest is up to Brynn and Kore.’

Karen stares at him.

‘But she did come back,’ she says. ‘From England, I mean. Just a few days after she disappeared. Forensics picked up signals from her phone up in Ravenby. She must have bought a return ticket.’

Leo looks unconvinced.

‘Right, and where are you saying she went after that? I bet the police kept track of that, too, right?’

Karen shakes her head.

‘No, we dropped it. Assumed she’d come back to finish up at KGB. You told me you were making a few changes.’

Assumed.

‘She didn’t come back. At least not to KGB,’ Leo bristles. ‘Don’t you think I would have told you?’

‘I thought we did talk about her being back—’ She breaks off and changes tack. ‘Well, I guess she must have stayed up there, then.’

‘In Ravenby? What the hell would she be doing in Ravenby, of all godforsaken places?’

‘How should I know?’ Karen snaps. ‘She might be visiting her parents, I suppose. Or her brother. She was there, that’s all I know. And since she was back in the country, I assumed you . . .’

Assumed.

With a growing feeling of unease and guilt, Karen recaps the past two weeks.

The instant dislike she had felt at their first and only meeting. The relief when she found out the divine being seemed to have vanished into thin air, the irritation at being dragged into the search for her. The worry that had been there in the background, the nagging notion that something serious might have happened. And then the smugness when the text from Luna seemed to have frayed those angel’s wings ever so slightly. Proof that she was nothing but a spoiled, self-centred diva who took off on a whim without a thought of the consequences for anyone else. Even Leo had finally seemed to realise it.

How quickly she had suppressed that little pang of surprise at the text having been sent from Harwich, at Luna, the celestial one, having deigned to take the ferry.

And how quickly and gratefully she had accepted her orders when Jounas Smeed told her to drop it and focus on more important things. Like catching the prick who was cutting up women with broken glass bottles.

And then. The rape investigation, the grinding worry about her health, and the news of her pregnancy. All things that had made her realise that Leo’s old girlfriend was the least of her problems.

But she could have sworn they’d talked about Luna being back.