With a resigned shake of her head, Hanna said, “Honestly, I don’t know what the rules even are anymore. He is the person who’d have found it easiest to get the gun the first time around. And he’d be able to get into everybody’s rooms because he has the master key.”

This was beginning to add up. Not necessarily to add up correctly, but to add up to something, like when you split the bill in a restaurant and somehow everybody came out feeling like they were down about a fiver. “And he has no alibi for any of the killings. And he could have searched our room while we were out of the building. Shit, shit, shit, that makes it harder. If Belloc had ruled him out, I might have said we could trust him.”

“Really?” Hanna sounded beyond sceptical. “You’d bet our lives on the judgement of a dodgy PI with a fake accent?”

“We’ve got to bet them on something. Not trusting the right person could be as bad as trusting the wrong person.”

Returning to the bed, Hanna sat down glumly. “I don’t think I like this game anymore.”

“Did you ever?”

“Some bits of it were growing on me.” She shuffled closer again. “Seeing you—you know, dealing with it. I know I’ve been freaked out a lot of the time, but you’ve kept it together and, yeah, it’s not a side of you I see much.”

Liza looked up from the book and frowned. “Are you saying I’m not normally together?”

“No, I’m saying I don’t normally get to see you taking charge of a murder investigation. Hell, you normally don’t even take charge of putting the bins out.”

“I put the bins out.”

“But you don’t take charge of putting the bins out. Over the last few days, though, you’ve organised investigations, set up search parties. It’s been … impressive.”

Putting the notebook aside, Liza swivelled to face her wife. “I’ve organised quite a lot of things, you know. I directed plays at uni, I sort out basically everything for the podcast because Rachael is even more of an artsy flake than I am. And you do know this.”

“Yeah.” Hanna nodded. “I know it. I guess I’ve just never really seen it. And that’s completely on me. I just—I’ve watched your shows and listened to the podcast, but I’ve never really been around to see you doing your thing, and it’s … I like it. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.”

It was a bittersweet compliment to get from somebody you’d been with for ten years. But that was the problem with long relationships: it was so easy to fall into patterns; to miss huge, important parts of each other out of sheer habit and repetition. “But you see it now?”

“Yes. I see it now.”