He swallows. ‘She wanted a key to the container, the one with the filing boxes. I had to steal it from my boss’s desk, then copy it. I was supposed to add her licence plate to the database so the gate would open for her automatically. I parked a truck in front of the security camera whenever she entered or left. And sometimes she gave me something to get rid of, like a phone. I was supposed to break it up and bury the parts so deep they wouldn’t be found for a hundred years.’

‘How often did she come?’

‘Most nights. Twice, maybe two hours apart.’

‘For how long?’

‘The last few months.’

I exchange a glance with Thistle. Is it possible that there are more victims we don’t know about? Maybe hundreds?

‘Did she bring a phone every time?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘That was rare. One every two or three weeks.’

‘On these dates?’ I recite the twelve dates that Biggs highlighted on the wall planner.

‘I don’t think so,’ Gomez says. ‘The last time was last week—the second.’

I’m guessing that was Daniel Ruthven’s phone. ‘What about cars?’

‘Just the one car. It was still in the crusher when you guys showed up.’

‘Tell me about the shipping container,’ I say.

‘I don’t know why she wanted to go in there,’ he says. ‘There are just files. After the first time, I went in to look around. It didn’t look like she had touched anything.’

I think of the bloody fingerprints on the planner. Biggs, trying to tell us something.

‘You should have come to us,’ Thistle says.

‘The next time we talked—the day after she gave me the envelope—she told me not to talk to the police. She said her boss would skin my boys. She told me Judah had disobeyed him. That is why I ran, the first time you saw me.’

‘We could have protected you. We still can.’

‘I mean no disrespect,’ Gomez says, ‘but police don’t always take the side of the undocumented. Even legal aliens, they are treated with suspicion.’

‘The woman didn’t threaten your wife?’ I ask. ‘Just your children?’

‘Just my children? I take it you’re not a father, Mr Blake.’

‘You realise you’ve assisted with a range of homicides?’ Thistle says.

‘No, no!’ Gomez shakes his head vigorously. ‘When she arrived, she usually had a man with her. One of them, I knew his face. On my son’s birthday, I had seen him working in the kitchen of the T-Rex.’

T-Rex is a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston’s south. I’ve never been inside.

‘The day after the woman took him to the dump, I went to the restaurant,’ Gomez continues. ‘He was there. I was relieved to see him alive. So I thought she was using the container just for sex. Not murder.’