Today was Tuesday. He’d been here four nights, and if Chen was right, the kid had been lying in a tub full of acid for two of them. There was no way he was actually called Gabriel Wilzon – after Torus had told the first responders what name the guy had used to check in, Jo had done the legwork and tried to find someone with that name, matching the guy’s general description or approximate age. But there were no missing persons reports, and no one in their early twenties with either a social security number, driver’s licence or criminal record using the name. There might be something to be gained in finding out why he chose Wilzon for a fake name, especially with the unusual z – in Jo’s experience, these things were rarely selected at random – but that relied on knowing more about him, and at the moment they couldn’t lift his prints because his fingertips had dissolved, and they didn’t have a face because his features were like melted wax.

‘He paid for seven nights up front,’ Torus said, bringing Jo back into the moment. ‘Fifteen bucks a night, hundred and five bucks for the week – but I called it a round hundred.’ He nodded at Jo as if he expected something in return – perhaps congratulations, or a positive reinforcement of his generosity.

‘Did you see him much after he checked in?’ she asked.

‘Not once.’

‘He didn’t come out of his room at all?’

‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying, I don’t watch my guests.’

She looked around. ‘Is that why you don’t have any cameras here?’

‘We had one out front for a while,’ Torus said, waving a finger in the vague direction of the courtyard, ‘but the VCR got screwed up and the wires burned out.’

‘Better get that done after the a/c, then,’ she said.

Torus made a hmph sound.

‘Do you remember what this “Gabriel” looked like?’

A frown. ‘Ain’t you just seen him upstairs?’

‘He’s been in there a while,’ Jo said, keeping it vague. Torus made an oh with his mouth, obviously taking that to mean natural decomposition. That reassured Jo: he couldn’t have snooped around the room before calling the cops, or had any direct contact with the body – or, worse, actually been involved somehow – because he clearly didn’t realize the tub was full of acid and that the issue wasn’t decomposition, it was corrosion. ‘Anything you remember about his face? Scars? Marks? Teeth? Maybe he had a harelip or a distinctive pattern of freckles?’

Torus leaned forward and put his elbows on the counter, drumming both sets of fingers against the walnut. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I mean, I saw him for a couple of minutes on Friday night. He handed me the money, I gave him the key, y completo.’