Shawn doesn’t notice the inconsistency. ‘That’s a bummer, man. But hey—’ he slaps me on the shoulder, ‘—maybe you’ll have one soon. That woman I saw hanging around your house? She looked like a keeper.’

I feel an excited little kick inside, distinct from the heart palpitations which are slowly killing me.

We jog past a row of trees, turned into skeletons by the snow. The fog hasn’t lifted. Car headlights struggle to penetrate the mist. It’s a dangerous day to go running.

‘What does she do, anyway?’ Shawn asks.

‘FBI agent.’

‘Shit! For real?’

I nod.

‘Man. She didn’t look like one.’

I wonder what he thinks an FBI agent looks like. ‘Well, she—’

‘Your phone’s ringing, bud.’

He’s right. I didn’t hear it over my pounding heart. I check the screen. ‘It’s her.’

‘Be cool,’ Shawn says, with a wink.

I answer the phone. ‘Hi,’ I say, trying not to sound like a panting dog.

‘Blake. You okay?’

It’s weird that we’re still not on a first-name basis. ‘Yeah. Just, uh, working out.’

Shawn gives me a thumbs up.

‘Uh-huh.’ Thistle sounds sceptical.

‘What’s up?’ I gasp.

‘We found Armana Black. Want to meet her?’

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 37

The police call a man to tell him they have found his wife’s body, and that he must come to the crime scene to identify her.

When he arrives, they arrest him. Why?

‘This is costing me money, you guys,’ Armana Black says.

She has blonde hair cut short, with a tattooed neck and polyester clothes that are designed to look like leather. Maybe she cut her hair and added the ink when she heard the police were looking for a woman with long, blonde hair. She’s also younger than I expected. Twenty-four, according to her licence.

I don’t like going into the interview rooms. I’d rather see a suspect in their home or workplace, where their surroundings give me clues about them. And it’s hard not to imagine myself on the other side of the table, being interrogated by two suspicious cops. It could still happen. I may have turned over a new leaf, but old leaves have a way of blowing back onto the sidewalk.

The room doesn’t look like they do on TV. Black is seated on a cheap sofa next to a coffee table. Thistle and I are on hard plastic chairs opposite her. There’s no one-way mirror—just a camera in one corner, positioned to see the suspect’s face. The resolution and frame rate are good enough to catch all the micro-expressions—a twitch at the corner of the lips, a widening of the eyes, a contracting of the pupils. Then computer software processes it to determine if the suspect is lying. But it’s another deep-learning algorithm, and it’s not good yet. I trust my instincts instead.