He didn’t return her license. Instead, he pushed through the flooded park toward the Cutlass. She saw him peer inside and make a circuit around the vehicle. He opened the door, seeing what she saw: the clutter of a man who lived much of his life in his car. He popped the trunk release, checked it, and slammed it shut. He climbed inside the vehicle, and she remembered that she’d left Curtis Ritchie’s roster of fake ID cards on the passenger seat in full view.

It didn’t take long. The officer was smart enough to know that something was very wrong. He re-emerged into the storm, his face grim. He retreated from the car and headed straight for her. Peach knew where she was headed next. A prison holding cell.

She watched him come closer. As she debated what to do, she saw the park policeman pitch forward into the green water. He’d tripped on something snagged on the trunk of a palm tree. Whatever it was jutted above the surface like the back of a turtle. As he pushed himself up, the officer’s arm disappeared under the water, and Peach watched with a weird sense of horror as his hand reappeared a second later, holding something at the end of his fingers.

It took her a moment, through the wild rain, to see that the policeman was clutching a fistful of hair. He was holding a head. A head, white and pale and dead, connected to a body.

She knew that face. It was Curtis Ritchie.

Peach screamed.

She shoved the Thunderbird into reverse and shot backwards, spinning the wheel. The car spun, as if she were riding a Tilt-a-Whirl. It turned, kicking up spray, its tires grinding on gravel and water. The engine coughed once and then roared. She shoved the gear down again, and she sped out of the park without looking back.

41

A bodyguard met Cab at the front door of Diane’s estate. The man wasn’t tall, but he was heavily muscled, and his brown eyes moved constantly, surveying Cab from head to toe and studying the estate’s empty porch, where a curtain of rain spilled from the roof. He seemed competent. But he was one man, and it was a big house: he couldn’t be everywhere at once.

‘Where is she?’ Cab asked.

‘The sunroom.’

‘Alone?’

‘No, Garth Oakes is with her.’

‘Do you have a partner here?’ he asked the bodyguard.

The man shook his head. ‘He was in an accident on his way up from Bradenton. I’m on my own.’

Cab frowned. One man.

‘Stay alert,’ he told him.