Before she logged out, however, she took another look at Justin’s messages and saw the other e-mail he’d failed to send. The one to Ogden Bush.

I need to see you.

She grabbed her coat, but instead of leaving, she headed down the empty office corridor to Bush’s office. She let herself inside, the way she had two days before, and unlocked the man’s filing cabinets again. The file on Justin was still missing. She remembered a file on Birch Fairmont in another drawer, and that file suddenly took on new significance for her. She opened the other drawer, but the file on Birch was gone, too.

Bush had cleaned house.

She relocked the filing cabinets and did a search of the man’s desk. She reviewed pink handwritten phone messages, copies of research reports that been gathered and written by the employees in the office, lists of media contacts around the state, and drafts of Diane’s events calendar for the week ahead. Nothing looked unusual or suspicious. Bush wouldn’t leave anything lying around that he didn’t want someone to see. It was a dead end.

Then she saw that his voicemail light was flashing.

With only the slightest hesitation, Peach punched the speakerphone, and she heard a voice with a faint southern drawl fill the office. ‘I need to talk to you right now. It’s urgent.’

It was a short message, but the voice was familiar. She’d heard it before. For a moment she struggled to place it, and then she knew. The recognition washed over her. The voice belonged to the man who called himself Curtis Clay, the man who’d pretended to be a St Petersburg cop. The man who had held a gun on her and tried to put her in handcuffs in Justin’s apartment.

That man. That fraud. He was in bed with Ogden Bush.

She clicked off the phone, but as she did, a silky voice called to her from the office doorway.

‘What are you doing here, Peach?’

Ogden Bush had his hands on his hips. He wore a wet fedora. His raincoat dripped on the floor, and she could see a tailored black suit underneath it. His face was dark and curious, but he didn’t sound angry. He was too smooth to blow up at her, and that made her trust him even less.

‘You’re a spy,’ she said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘You’re a spy. You’ve been spying on me.’

Bush’s face melted into a politician’s smile. He sat down in the guest chair and made no attempt to dislodge Peach from behind his desk. He crossed his legs, displaying wet shined shoes, and smoothed the creased lines of his suit pants.