Marcus hugged his arms to himself and continued to moan.

‘There are no injuries that we can see,’ said one of the medical team. ‘But he should be checked out anyway.’

Armstrong nodded and tried again. ‘Marcus, tell us what happened. Why were you in Trevor’s trailer?’

It was the implication that he’d been up to no good that finally broke through Marcus’s brain and encouraged him to pull himself together. Somewhat. He was still shaking like a leaf and his voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. ‘I went to fetch Mr Bellows’ stick,’ he said.

We all looked at the wannabe witch. He swallowed and nodded, his purple robes flapping gently in the breeze. ‘My staff. I’d left it here and asked Marcus to get it for me.’

His staff? Who did he think he was? Gandalf?

‘Good,’ Armstrong said. ‘That’s good. What happened next?’

Poor Marcus looked like he was about to keel over. ‘I went inside. I was sure no one was there and it looked empty. I went to the corner and picked up the sti— I mean the staff, and then something hit me on the back of the head. When I came round, I was surrounded by blood. It was everywhere.’

He began to moan. Any second now he’d be screaming again. Someone probably ought to fetch him a cup of sugary tea but I wasn’t going to suggest it. If I said anything, I’d be the one sent off and I needed to find out everything I could about what had happened. Winter would not be happy if I missed the salient details of another murder because I was waiting for the kettle to boil.

Armstrong glanced up at Bellows. ‘What time did you send him to get your staff?’

Bellows scratched his head. ‘It was just after the final sound check so that would have been…’

‘Just after ten.’

Bellows jerked his head in assent. ‘Yeah, I guess.’ He cleared his throat and tried to sound more confident. ‘After ten.’

I tapped my mouth thoughtfully. This was supposed to be a closed set. Either someone who was already a crew member had sneaked inside when no one was looking or someone from outside had found a way in.

It seemed impossible that someone could have created that kind of bloody mess and stayed clean themselves and there was certainly no one here – other than Marcus, of course – who looked like they were splattered in O neg. I stepped back and edged away from the rest of the crowd, most of whom were still wringing their hands. It was inconceivable that our murderer had just blithely strolled out of the front door with no one noticing.

The intelligent security guard was giving instructions to the others. I tapped his arm. He paused in mid-sentence and looked down at me. ‘You need to find out who’s not here,’ I told him. In other words, who had been drained of their blood.