‘Right.’ I get in the car. ‘But I think we should treat any information from nTangle as though it’s coming directly from McLean.’

Thistle nods slowly. ‘He could have made up a fake profile to go with his story.’

‘Right.’

I buckle my seatbelt. Thistle starts the engine.

‘Where are we headed?’ she asks.

I give her the address of a factory in Deer Park. It’s after four, but we should still have time to investigate my idea.

Thistle starts driving. ‘I don’t have a sense of what Ruthven was like,’ she says. ‘Although when a man like McLean describes someone as “a sweet guy”, I’m inclined to be sceptical.’

I swallow the urge to defend the two guys. McLean came across as a prick, for sure. But he doesn’t eat people. I want to imagine Thistle could see me as having a high desirability score. That’s hard when she’s looking down on better men.

‘For McLean to see the driver with that level of detail, the car would have had to stop in exactly the right spot,’ I say.

‘You think it was shady that he couldn’t remember anything about the car?’

‘Maybe. Except a good liar would have come up with a common make or model. And if he’s lying about the woman, then he is a good liar.’

Thistle nods slowly. ‘Okay, let’s say he’s a suspect. Motive?’

‘Well, housemates get mad at each other all the time.’ I’m searching on my phone, looking for more information about the factory we’re headed to. ‘Maybe it was a fight over the dishes that escalated.’

‘What about Biggs and the other fourteen victims?’

‘Unrelated. Different killer. Or maybe McLean killed the others for money, and then Ruthven found out about it, so he killed Ruthven too.’

Thistle doesn’t look convinced. Nor am I.

‘It’s a tiny apartment,’ she says. ‘No backyard. How would he get rid of the bodies?’

I dissolve skeletons in the bathtub, but I don’t want to appear too knowledgeable about that.

‘Maybe he dumps them out in the woods,’ I say, thinking of Biggs’s half-frozen corpse.

‘Well, I’ll get someone to check his financials for anomalies, and see if he rents any other spaces. Plus I can get a warrant for his ISP, check out the porn angle. But I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t think he’s our guy.’

I grunt. She’s right. But I don’t like the other possibility that springs to mind.

Charlie Warner is a good-looking blonde woman in her forties. Known for making people disappear. Known to use the woods where I found Biggs.