‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ He looked down at himself in wonder.

He was back to the old philandering manner, putting on a playful act and forcing her into a defensive response. Except she dodged it all and told him to shut up. ‘Don’t start,’ she added warningly.

He collected his drink and they continued to analyse every detail of Thea’s weekend. In summary, Clovis suggested that there might be two possible lines of enquiry. ‘Either she was involved in the trafficking of rare animals, working with a criminal Chinese gang or else she was being trafficked herself. They could have told her she was coming to work in a hotel or other respectable business, and then broke the news that she was their prisoner in some way.’

‘I can’t see it,’ Thea objected. ‘Neither one seems to fit with what I saw of her.’

‘But she was escaping? So she must have been a captive, surely?’

‘I suppose so. But there are just too many possible explanations. I really hope the police can find out who she was, and with any luck they might track down some film of her running away from the business park.’

Before they knew it, it was half past two and every scrap of food and drink had long ago disappeared. ‘You’ve missed your vocation,’ she told him. ‘You’re a born detective.’

‘I enjoy a good puzzle,’ he admitted. ‘So many people’s lives are riddled with secrets, and I like to ferret them out.’185

‘Not much chance of secrets, with all these cameras everywhere.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘They still haven’t invented a camera that can see inside people’s heads.’

They’d drifted a long way from his stated intention to seek her guidance concerning his forthcoming marriage. She began to wonder whether that had all been a ploy, in any case. Had he just used it to gain her confidence? To convey the message that he was not looking for a passionate affair? Neither idea explained why he should seek her out as he had. If it wasn’t sex, then what exactly did he want from her?

‘Did you ask me out so we could talk about the murder?’ she asked him on an impulse. ‘You seem awfully interested.’

He hung his head, and looked at her from under his immaculate eyebrows. ‘You weren’t supposed to suss that out,’ he said. ‘But yes – the fact is, I did want to hear more about it. It’s all totally hypothetical at the moment, but we did just wonder whether there could be a link to the pangolin smuggling. It seemed too good a chance to miss, with me knowing you and you being on the spot – do you see?’

‘We?’ she echoed. ‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Me and Jennifer,’ he said simply. ‘Who do you think?’

186

Chapter Fourteen

‘We can’t just leave it like this,’ he said, as they went back to their cars. ‘I’m free for a couple of days, and you’re here all on your own. Can’t we team up and solve this murder together?’