It was hot as hell inside, hotter than the second-floor room she’d just left, but she’d take the heat in here to the scene upstairs any day of the week. Once Dan Chen and his assistant had got the young man out of the tub and on to a sheet on the bathroom floor, they’d been able to see the full extent of what the acid had done to him, and it had been difficult to look at. The kid had been shot through the cheekbone from close range, the bullet entering just under his right eye, and livor mortis – the way blood had pooled inside his body – seemed to confirm that he’d been dropped into the tub, face down, pretty soon after. Chen believed the acid was added once the man was in the bath, and that the body had been there for between thirty-six and forty-eight hours, based on the amount of damage the acid had already done to the corpse: it had eaten away at his front, turning his face, chest, groin and shins into a creamy mulch; a paste that had begun to slide away from the bone. A few more days and they would have been picking him out of the tub in bits; after seven, they would have needed a shovel.

Jo got out her notebook.

‘You called in the scene upstairs, is that right?’

‘That’s right,’ the manager said.

‘What time did you find him like that?’

‘About 4 a.m. The couple in the room next door came down and said they could smell something bad.’ He shrugged again, as if he heard that complaint all the time. ‘Place like this, that usually means a blocked drain, a blocked toilet – or a dead body.’

‘So you knocked on his door?’

‘Sure. Went up and knocked about twenty times.’

‘And there was no response?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Which is when you let yourself in?’

‘Correct.’

It was the same story he’d given the first responders.

‘What’s your name, sir?’

‘Rivaldo Torus.’

‘You got a guestbook here, Rivaldo?’

Torus reached under the counter. The guestbook had leather covers, but the pages had yellowed and there were coffee stains all over the front. He opened it up about three quarters of the way in, today’s date printed at the top, and then flipped back a couple of pages.

Spinning it around, Torus pointed to the second-from-last guest name.

‘There he is.’

Gabriel Wilzon.

‘Did he show you any ID?’ Jo asked.

‘No,’ Torus responded, as if the idea were absurd. ‘Most of the guests here, they pay cash. I mean, we ain’t exactly the Chateau Marmont, you know what I’m saying?’

‘So he checked in last Friday?’

‘That’s what it says.’