‘I expected one side or the other to be all about the Smiling Man,’ said Quill. ‘But from either of them I only heard references to sacrifices being made “to London”.’

They compared notes and found that was true for all of them.

‘I don’t think they know about the Smiling Man,’ said Ross. ‘Maybe he stays behind the scenes in that community too.’ She found the relevant page in one of her notebooks. ‘We still know almost nothing about him.’

‘Things we did learn,’ said Sefton, finding a page in one of his own scrawled notebooks and reading from it. ‘Losley needed a line of sight on her victims, but nobody else seems to. I kind of thought that might be unique to her after that threat against us that was written on a note when we were at the New Age fair. Whoever wrote that could “smell death” near people, which is not a line-of-sight thing.’ He obviously saw the slight smile on Quill’s face. ‘This is the sort of detail I keep track of.’

‘What about Neil Gaiman?’ asked Quill. ‘Him we can find, presumably, and he seemed in the know. We ought to get a statement.’

‘I’ve put a call in to his agent,’ said Ross. ‘Let’s hope he hasn’t flown back to the States.’

‘Yeah,’ said Costain, ‘it’d be awkward to have to bring this up on his blog.’

*   *   *

Sefton realized that there was something he’d expected Ross to have mentioned by now, yet she hadn’t. ‘The barmaid gave you something,’ he said to her.

‘Yeah.’ Ross raised a finger, wait a sec, as if she’d forgotten. Sefton was pretty sure she hadn’t. She found it in her bag and pinned it to the board. It was a colourful flier for the pub evening. ‘I think that was her way of saying that, no matter what had happened to her, I was welcome in that pub.’

Sefton didn’t know why he felt worried at her poker face. An alert went off on Ross’ phone. She looked at it. ‘DCI Forrest’s office. The fingerprint results have been checked between both crime scenes. And … we have a match.’

‘Excellent,’ said Quill.

‘The smeared one at the Staunce scene, by the message on the wall, is the same as one found inside the Spatley car. So, since Tunstall was in custody for the Spatley murder when Staunce was killed—’

‘That should clear Tunstall of suspicion.’ Quill indicated the objectives list. ‘I’d say we’ve achieved objective seven there.’

‘—but said fingerprint doesn’t appear in any criminal database, so Forrest’s office is asking us to help build a case against Tunstall by looking into the possibility that he may have had an accomplice.’

‘This is what happens,’ sighed Quill, ‘when only one suspect is visible.’

*   *   *

An hour later, Ross found Costain alone by the tea kettle. She made sure she was calm, and then she walked over to him. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said.