“And, just to check,” Liza was pretty sure she already knew the answer to this but thought it was worth a try anyway, “you didn’t actually meet Mr B in person, did you?”

“No.”

“So he could be anybody?”

“Yes.”

That figured. They turned towards the hotel, Liza holding Hanna tight around the waist and watching Reverend Lincoln very, very closely all the way back.

Chapter Seventeen

Hanna, in the Bedroom, with a Lot of Paper

Sunday afternoon

“Do you think,” Hanna asked when they were safely—insofar as it was safely—back in their room, “that maybe we should be thinking about trying to find a way to get out of here? Instead of working out information that, while interesting, won’t actually stop a criminal mastermind from killing us?”

“I don’t think”—Liza was typing up the day’s notes into her laptop and cursing the inability to back them up to the cloud—”that he wants to kill us. If he wants to kill anybody. If he even exists.” She flopped back and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, this is useless. Let’s just lock ourselves in and forget the whole thing.”

Perching on the end of the bed like a starling, Hanna smiled down. “You don’t want to forget the whole thing. You want to work out what’s going on.”

She did. She didn’t especially want to want that, but she wanted it whether she wanted to want it or not. “I’m sorry. Does being married to me totally suck?”

“No.” Hanna seemed oddly serious. “At least, it doesn’t suck any more than being married to anybody sucks. Marriage is tough.”

“But worth it?” Liza asked, sounding just a tiny bit needier than she’d intended.

“Yes.”

Picking herself up off the floor, Liza wandered over to the desk, which along with its complimentary tea and coffee also included a small amount of hotel stationery. She picked up a pad of branded notepaper and strolled back. “Good, because I’m about to do something extremely analogue, and slightly extra.”

Liza began scribbling down names and known details, each on a separate sheet, and spreading them around the floor in a way that she hoped roughly corresponded to a visual representation of the case.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any red string?” she asked.

“Are you making a conspiracy board?”

Liza gave a sheepish nod. “Trying to. But then I realised I have nothing to stick my bits up with and nothing to use to connect them.”

“To think we came all the way to Scotland without drawing pins and thread.” Hanna arched an eyebrow. “Although I’m not sure the hotel would thank you for sticking pins in their wall either.”

“True.”