I checked the pockets of the training top, found nothing, and then returned to the box. There were more clothes underneath, male and female, these much smarter: a jacket, two pairs of tailored trousers, a dress, a skirt, tracksuit bottoms, a selection of shoes. There was an iPad and a series of leads. I pulled the iPad out but it didn’t work; the back had been separated from the screen, smashed, levered apart in order to neutralize it. There was a phone too, reduced to pieces – the casing splintered, its battery and its SIM both gone – and a power bank, but again it had been destroyed.

Uncertain if these things belonged to two people or ten, I pushed it all aside and – conscious of time – switched my attention to the second cardboard box.

Inside were even more clothes.

New jeans. A collared shirt.

Size eleven boots.

I found more men’s clothing under that: a shirt, a pair of tailored trousers, a second pair of jeans, and then a woman’s dress, red with blue trim, a pair of heels, some brown cords and polished brogues, a man’s checked shirt, another dress – this one floral – and a green V-neck sweater. And, as I looked at them all, at even more shoes stowed underneath, my heart dropped. I knew who these clothes belonged to. I’d seen them in the photographs that Chris Gibbs had taken the night of the dinner party.

And I recognized what was lying underneath them too.

Five wallets.

Four purses.

Nine phones.

Martina: Part 2

1985

Los Angeles | Monday 5 August

Adrian Vale sat down opposite Jo.

He was in a suit that he was a fraction too big for, the sleeves not long enough, the waistcoat struggling to deal with the width of him. It looked like it had been worn a lot, perhaps by his father before he’d died. As he shrugged off the blue jacket, he seemed to become aware of what Jo was thinking. ‘This was Dad’s,’ he said quietly, looking down at himself. ‘It was probably a nice suit twenty years ago.’

Jo nodded, her eyes taking in the Vales’ living room, the things that surrounded them: things that he could make use of if it went south, if she cornered him and he started to feel trapped. Ornaments. Paperweights. Potential weapons. Or maybe even actual ones: maybe a blade somewhere close by, maybe a concealed gun.

Maybe nothing.