Leticia’s thoughts returned to her own safety, and to realising that everything hinged on Anton. She had no idea what the time was, beyond knowing that it was evening and all of Saturday had slid away while she was unconscious. If this Saturday was typical, her partner would have been up by eleven and probably wouldn’t have thought anything of her absence. He didn’t have to hurry to the restaurant. The sous chef at J’adore Ça would handle the lunch preparations and Anton would have gone in for midday, just to check things over. She had been in a hurry to catch the early bus and had just texted him a quick greeting while she was on the way, saying she was going to pick up the car and then some groceries. She had implied that she would be back before he left, but stupidly had not mentioned she was going to Verity’s. The reason? Because Anton would have thought she was wasting her time spending even another minute on this daft theory of hers. Worse still, he knew that she had a fairly elastic weekend schedule. He would probably have sent her a quick text during the afternoon, but it would have been early evening at least before he started to get concerned that he had never heard back from her. The first time he would be really worried was if she was not back by the time he got home from the restaurant.

Which could be one a.m. or later.

She didn’t think it was that late yet. Too much traffic noise. But at this time in the summer it must be after eleven to be so dark.

Would Anton report her missing even then? His distrust of the police was so ingrained and his faith in her common sense so robust that it might well be Sunday morning before he seriously got round to thinking she was in danger.

In the meantime, they were probably going to kill her. She had information that would implicate them. Verity and this other man hadn’t just killed Neville Rollason, but presumably the other person whose body was found on the island. She couldn’t get her head round why, but that didn’t matter so much now. Something else made sense, too: Verity’s vomiting episodes. They could well have been stress and anxiety. Maybe someone was forcing her to be part of this. Even after what she had experienced, Leticia still couldn’t quite accept that her former boss was a cold and calculating killer. She had known her for long enough to be sure of that. She must be doing this under duress. Her unique access to the details of Neville Rollason’s new identity could have led someone else to put pressure on her.