Perhaps sensing this, Zinnen shakes my hand again and disappears back towards her office. She doesn’t ask any questions about the evidence for my theory. This makes me think she was never a cop—just an administrator who rose through the ranks.

Thistle sighs heavily. ‘All right. We’ll check the strip clubs. What else you got?’

‘I’d like to meet his wife, and his co-workers.’

‘I don’t want to use up too much of your time,’ Thistle says, knowing my time is worthless. ‘We still don’t have the budget to pay you. So just tell us what you’d like to know about them, and I’ll find out.’

I ask her point blank: ‘You don’t want me on this case, do you?’

Thistle keeps her voice low so the cops in the neighbouring cubicles won’t overhear. ‘Do you really want to be on it?’

Thistle is wrong about me in a lot of ways. She thinks I helped the FBI out of a sense of justice, when really I just liked the free food. And she thinks I don’t like her—there’s no way I could explain that I was rejecting her for her own safety. Now she has no idea why I would want to take this case when working with her would be so awkward.

‘I do,’ I say. Not ready to say goodbye.

Thistle looks neither pleased nor displeased by this. ‘Fine,’ she says, picking up her keys and a black coat, polyester made to look like wool. ‘Where are we headed?’

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I need more information about Biggs.’

‘You can read the file on the way.’ Thistle leans back over her computer, selects a document and hits print. Papers start chugging out of her printer.

‘I need the file to decide where we’re—’

I stop dead. Because I’ve just seen Biggs’s face come out of the printer. Skinny, greying hair, hollow cheeks. I know exactly where he is.

My freezer.

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

What goes up and down without moving or changing?

‘You okay?’ Thistle asks.

It’s like standing on the deck of a tilting ship. ‘Huh? Yeah. What?’

Thistle looks from the picture of Biggs to me and back. ‘You know him?’ she says.

‘No. I expected him to be older, is all.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he’s a math professor.’ My mind is racing. I’m in deep trouble. I’ve just volunteered for a case I can’t allow myself to solve.

‘Blake, if you know this guy …’

‘I don’t.’

‘You knew it was his birthday.’

I look her in the eye. ‘I guessed.’

My heartbeat is through the roof, but I’m good at keeping my face slack.

After a long moment, Thistle raises her hands. ‘Okay. You were about to tell me where we were going.’

‘The university,’ I say quickly. His home is the best place to start, but I need to buy some time.