Click.

A cool rush of air. It smells of soil and pine needles and rain – we’re in the countryside somewhere – and the sound of some sort of insect fills the air. Arms reach in and grab me. Forcefully, I’m hoisted over his shoulder. I crack open my eyes to look around and he slams the boot shut. It’s Thomas. I recognise the scent. He’s holding a torch and the light sweeps across the number plate. The last two letters are AA.

It’s the same number plate as that car I saw speeding off on the night Sabine was taken.

My pulse thuds in my ears and I struggle to stay limp as we move to the passenger seat of the car and he reaches for the handle. Who is in the passenger seat?

What are they going to do to me?

But when the door opens and the car’s interior light flicks on, all I see is a big black bag. Thomas reaches for it and then slams the door and we move away from the car.

Something isn’t fitting together properly. Because it’s just me and him here.

And he was dating my neighbour. And I know from his number plate that he was there the night Sabine died. And he was on that bridge with Matilde.

I think back to his iMessage. There was nothing in there from Agnès. Nothing about me. Nothing about Le Voltage. And if Agnès Bisset had decided I knew too much and it was time to get rid of me, I’d be dead by now. There would be no value in keeping me alive.

No, something about all this – the car boot, the countryside, and every murder podcast I’ve ever listened to – tells me Thomas did this alone.

My brain struggles to recalibrate.

If Thomas did it alone then it was him who planted the white covering near the crime scene not Agnès Bisset. Him who was trying to frame Noah. Was he covering his tracks after that article about Paris having a serial killer came out? I think of the evidence in the most recent instalment: blunt force trauma to the back of the head. And my own head is throbbing right now… And Noah was the perfect person to frame because he was already in the papers as being questioned…

But how the fuck did Thomas get that white sheet of fabric to begin with?