Relieved that he seems to be doing better, she turns to her computer screen and watches the short Last Supper video featuring Ben Peters over and over again. He is wearing a blue checked shirt and is seemingly unaware of the frankly terrifying faceless mask that appears at his kitchen window. She searches through the other videos and finds Hanged Man. It’s uncomfortable viewing, the dog tears viciously at the mask of the man bound and hanging upside down.

She wonders if the masked man at Peters’ kitchen window and the man in Hanged Man could be the same person, but instantly realises they are not.

‘You fool!’ she whispers to herself. How has she not seen it before?

‘Quinn. Look at this,’ she calls, displaying both videos alongside each other.

His eyes dart between the films and after a few moments sees it.

‘I guess now we know what happened to Ben Peters.’

Archer watches with a grim feeling as the dog gnaws and pulls at the bloody mask of the hanged man who is wearing a blue checked shirt, the same shirt that Ben Peters wears in the Last Supper video.

Chapter 19

19

MEGAN BURCHILL QUIVERS WITH EXCITEMENT at the thought of her date with Max in less than one hour’s time. She stands in the brightly lit bathroom of her small Ealing flat applying a dangerous shade of cherry red lipstick, appropriately called Desire.

She pouts and bats her lashes at her reflection.

‘Oh, Max, you flatter me,’ she says, with a girlish giggle.

She glances at her phone sitting on top of the avocado sink.

Still no message from him.

Patience. He’ll call.

She thinks about the last time she went on a date and reckons it was fifteen or twenty years ago. She mulls it over.

Definitely fifteen.

Has it really been that long?

He had been an uncouth bricklayer with crooked teeth who, to her absolute mortification, told her that he loved ‘big girls’. The date had ended as quickly as it had started.

She feels a flush of embarrassment and looks herself up and down in the full-length mirror. In her wardrobe she’s found an old sheath dress with a zip up the front.

It fitted her once.

She sighs heavily and feels like weeping. Max will take one look at her and run. What on earth was she thinking? She stifles a sob. She can’t go through with it. She just can’t.