“Zoe!” Hilda had come outside. “You’ve got to come in. I’m sure the police can speak to us tomorrow if they have to.” She herded Zoe through the door.

When Zoe looked back over her shoulder at Macalvie, he had a good taste of those arctic eyes. They looked, he thought, hunted.

The door closed but he stood there looking at the cottage for a moment.

Zoe with her wild black hair (and possibly wilder imagination); Zillah, shocked into speechlessness.

Just what he needed in this investigation: two little girls.

“We’ve questioned all of them, boss—staff who’re here right now and four guests. No one seemed to know anything about the vic—”

“She has a name, now, Cody,” said Macalvie, snappish enough to make Cody Platt look up from his notebook.

“Sorry. Manon Vinet. Strange name. French, the manager said. They all had exchanges with her, but not about her history, that sort of thing. She didn’t talk about herself.” Cody stopped, looking rueful. “Failing that, they gave me nothing—nada, nil. Nothing.”

“Failing that” being one of Cody’s favorite phrases. Macalvie chewed a stick of gum Cody had given him and looked at him. “That’s it?”

“’Fraid so.”

“How many staff?”

“Four on site.”

“So out of those four and four guests you got nothing helpful?” Macalvie wasn’t really being critical; he simply found it strange that eight versions of the hotel stay of the victim yielded nothing.

“Nothing beyond the fact they all found her quite pleasant. ‘Pleasant’ was the operative term.”

“Cody, there must be variations on that theme.”

“I hear you.” Cody thumbed up page after page of notes, shrugged again and said, “I’ve got it all here, boss. But I can go back to them again—?”

Macalvie shook his head. It fascinated him that Cody never took offense, or if he did, he hid it well. “No, not tonight. It’s nearly ten-thirty.” He knew the notes were not only copious, but accurate. DS Platt might not have eliciting information down to an art, but his transcript of what was said, well, you could take it to the bank. None better. For all of Cody’s apparent (and sometimes real) lethargy, he had an uncanny knack for picking out the bullshit in witnesses’ statements.

They were seated at one of the tables in the Hell Bay Hotel dining room, looking out on darkness total enough to be oblivion, and listening to water smashing up against rock. Whitten had returned to St. Mary’s with what forensic evidence they’d collected that night; his men were still prowling the rim of Hell Bay.

“Where’s Gilly?”

Cody looked ceilingward. “Up in the vic’s—sorry, up in Manon Vinet’s room.”