There was blood on the cover. Glistening, wet blood, streaked on by her fingers. She turned her hand and looked at her fingers.

She probably screamed or whimpered a little as she yanked at her bootlaces and flung her boots away from her, ripped off her socks. She should have thought more about where they landed, splatting as they did with their heavy load of fine blood-soaked sand, painting apocalyptic designs over the white-painted load-bearing columns, the white cabinets, the glass display cases, the books, the toys, the houseware.

Petra was standing barefoot and bewildered in the middle of the shop floor as Suki emerged from the back office.

‘Well, that was weird,’ she said, then swallowed her words as she looked around her, at Petra, down at her feet. ‘Um, maybe a bit less of the casual, darling? Probably best to keep your shoes on, at least when we’re open, alright? Aren’t you cold, anyway?’

Petra rubbed her eyes and looked around her – at the polished surfaces, the clean white paint, her dry, sand-free socks and boots jettisoned against the front display cabinet. Down at her sock-printed and somewhat puffy feet, the nail polish she’d applied a week before her first date with Vincent growing out and cracking. But no blood, not especially damp. The panic had dispersed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her feeling foolish and cold-toed.

‘Sorry,’ she said, flinging together an excuse for her dubious behaviour. ‘I thought I felt a spider in my sock.’ Really? Both feet? It was the best she could come up with. She put her shoes back on, finished repacking the dumpbin, and walked back behind the counter.

‘So, Ben was really weird,’ Suki said. ‘We talked a little like normal, but when I asked him about Worthing, he clammed up, became rather cagey. There’s something there, but he’s not saying what it is. I know when he’s lying to me.’

‘What do you think it can be?’

‘I have no idea, but now I’m determined to find out.’

Suki spent a while searching alumnus networks and private club registries for any information about Curtis Worthing. He was fifty-nine years and 358 days old, with an undergraduate degree in humanities from Beauchamp University, pivoting to higher degrees in management and biomedical sciences from Harvard and Cambridge. Divorced once, remarried then widowed, two adult children from the first marriage. He was indeed born in Leamington, and attended Barford School. But for all the routine biographical information, he didn’t seem to have lived a life beyond going to school and becoming, by apparent social osmosis, a mega-wealthy tycoon. Some news articles from Private Eye and the Morning Star tried to hint at unsavoury relationships with Tory cabinet ministers that gave him a competitive advantage back when the NHS was dismantled. Then again, people with the right connections and money in the bank tended to have a competitive advantage in any crisis. It was the way the world was set up; you didn’t officially need to be a criminal to make an obscene killing.