‘He told you his name at Black Gale and that turned out to be true. Why give you his name – knowing you’d go looking for him – and lie about where he worked?’

It was a good point, one I didn’t have an answer to. But something wasn’t right about this. I didn’t like how easily Mills had given up his name and what he did. What if him giving up his name, as well as the company he worked for, was bait?

What if he wanted me to come to him?

What if he knew I’d followed him today?

‘I need to look into him some more,’ I said. ‘And Seiger and Sten.’

‘I can look into them for you.’

‘It’s fine.’

‘I said I can do it, Raker.’

‘I know you can do it,’ I shot back, and this time I heard the sharpness in my voice, ‘but at the moment you’re hiding out in a hotel room trying to make sure neither of us goes to prison. So I think it’s best if you sit tight, don’t you?’

He didn’t respond this time.

‘Look, Healy, I don’t want it to be like this but –’

‘I just feel helpless,’ he said quietly.

I stayed silent, any anger vanishing instantly.

‘I don’t want to be here, hiding out in this dump; I want to be there, with you, working this case. This was my case. I spent two months collecting all that stuff you’ve got there, and now everything’s gone to shite.’ Even over the traffic noise, I could hear him clearing his chest, the emotion forming a ball in his throat. ‘Whatever I had before this in Devon, it wasn’t much, but it was a life. It was better than this.’

I couldn’t think what else to say to him, didn’t know how else to frame the same response I’d given him, over and over again, during the last three and a half years. There was a revisionism to his memories of living in Devon because, mostly, he’d absolutely hated it, the loneliness and isolation, the back-breaking manual work, the lack of interaction, and the fact that there was no returning to the police force, to the investigations that he’d loved. But he was right: Devon had been something; imperfect and solitary, but still a routine in which he’d found a measure of comfort.

A chime on my laptop brought me back to the present, and when I used the trackpad, I saw that the icon for my file drop was flashing in the top bar of the screen.

Kevin Quinn had delivered.

He’d sent me the file for the Beatrix Steards disappearance.

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