‘I was there that night,’ Mills said. ‘And then I was here when we took them all out to the forest. I know everything.’

He swallowed, looked up at me.

‘But Beatrix Steards, that’s more of a mystery. He never really told me much about her. What I know, I’ve pieced together over the time I’ve worked for him, and from what Jacob Pierce has let slip over the years.’

‘Vale told Pierce the truth about Beatrix?’

‘Enough of it.’

‘And the truth is what?’

‘She spurned him,’ he replied mechanically. ‘Isn’t that where most of this shit begins? Half the cases I worked in my time as a cop were because a woman said no.’

‘So Vale asked her out?’

‘He liked her, he wanted to date her, but she found him weird – definitely too weird to date – and then he got his signals all mixed up and made his move on the night she vanished, when the two of them were alone at that party. When he came on all hot and heavy, she was taken aback, wasn’t polite or subtle about it – probably saw what I saw, a stone-cold psychopath – and she told him no. But not no; more like no way, not ever.’ His silence filled in the gaps. ‘Anyway, he’s so besotted with her that instead of just taking it like a man, he gets angry.’

He sighed, the sound like fat crackling in a pan.

‘He’d learned something from what happened back in LA: taking his former boss’s car made it hard to put him at the scene, so he did the same the night he took Beatrix. This time, he borrowed a car belonging to one of his housemates – did it without the housemate ever knowing. And, of course, that was clever because why would the cops look at a car that didn’t belong to him, and there was no evidence of ever having been taken, when they were searching for Beatrix?’

‘How did he get her into the car?’