‘The phone trail dead-ends there,’ I add. This isn’t true, as far as I know. But it gives us a plausible reason to want in.

A bead of sweat trickles out from under Edwards’s hard hat. ‘I’m not really sure where the key is.’

Thistle looks at me. ‘I guess we could come back with a full forensic team,’ she says. ‘They always bring cutting equipment.’

‘Just … hang on,’ Edwards says. He starts opening and closing drawers in his desk. Eventually he produces a key. ‘Here we go. You can have a quick look.’

He’s hoping we’ll be less thorough than a forensic team. He’s wrong.

Thistle and I follow him out the door and over to the windowless container. Thistle stays a few feet behind him. Not so close that he could suddenly turn and attack her, but close enough that he couldn’t destroy or hide any evidence without her seeing.

Edwards unlocks the container. The keys jingle louder than you’d expect. I think his hands are trembling.

The door creaks open. It’s dark inside. As my eyes adjust, I see more filing cabinets and some archive boxes.

‘See?’ Edwards says, half blocking the doorway.

‘Are there lights?’ Thistle asks.

‘Oh. Yeah.’

Edwards reaches in and clicks a switch. Fluorescents flicker on above, casting more light across the cabinets and boxes. There’s also a folding chair, a little desk lamp and a wall planner.

A well-adjusted person might not have noticed the splotches, but my gaze is drawn to them straight away.

I walk over to the wall planner like a moth approaching a bug zapper. Twelve red spots are scattered across it. Each one has a faint whorl pattern. Fingerprints.

With my back blocking Edwards’s and Thistle’s sight-lines, I scratch off a tiny fragment of red with a fingernail and touch it to my tongue. A familiar copper tang.

When I’m certain, I turn around. ‘Agent Thistle,’ I say, gesturing to the wall planner, ‘does this look like blood to you?’

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 10

J. A. S. O. N. D. J. F. M.

What is the next letter?

‘Mr Edwards,’ Thistle says, ‘do you want to tell us why there’s blood on your calendar?’

‘Blood?’ He looks perplexed.

‘Red stuff. Usually kept inside the body, rather than on the walls.’

Edwards swallows. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know,’ Thistle repeats.

‘Maybe … maybe someone got a papercut before they wrote on it.’

‘Does that seem likely to you, Mr Blake?’ Thistle asks.

‘It does not, Agent Thistle,’ I say.

‘How many people have access to this container?’ Thistle asks Edwards. ‘Just you?’

‘My office isn’t locked during the day. The key was in the drawer. Anyone could have—’

‘Could have what? Broken in here, given themselves a papercut, dabbed some blood on the wall planner and then left again?’