Rachel needed to run.

It had always been the most effective way of calming herself and clearing her head. She drove back to the Howard Johnson near Pikesville, where she had booked a room, and changed into her running kit, heading along the highway until she came to a green space. It turned out to be part of the golf course, but there was a trail around its edge that she could pound along. Her headphones were not plugged in for once. She needed to listen to her thoughts.

Kaydance was not their killer. There was no doubt about that. Even before the woman at the residential centre had confirmed her recent incarceration, Rachel knew it to be true. There was the small matter of the neck tattoo, of course. But one look at her room had been enough. Kaydance was a slob with little control over her own life. Their killer was highly organised, meticulous and clinically clean. And Rob’s check would surely confirm that Kaydance Rowe’s DNA was one of the nine and a half million offenders on the CODIS database. So she couldn’t have left the traces on the dress, lipstick and shoes, or the match would have been picked up straight away.

Which brought her back to Harland. She had to be the woman who visited Kaydance, and so she had known exactly where her sister was. Yet she had deliberately obscured this fact, inventing a very plausible wild goose chase that sent Rachel scurrying off to Florida. If Kaydance had been convicted and served time for her most recent crime and been released on licence, why would Harland claim she was on the run? It was a classic obstructive move, one people made when they had something to hide.

She phoned Rob as soon as she got back to the motel, before taking a shower or even removing her sweaty kit. As he had promised, he took her call. By now her agitation had dissipated a little, and she was able to give a clear and logical timeline of the last two days.

‘What we have to do now is go back to the family tree and fill in the blanks. There must be more cousins, half-sisters, aunts of Ethan Rowe that we haven’t accounted for.’

Rob was silent for a long beat.

‘What?’ demanded Rachel.

‘I was just thinking. You’ve only got a couple of days before you need to fly back to London. Back to your job. I admire your sticking power, I really do, but realistically what can you do in that time?’

‘I could come back to DC now – today – and we could get our heads together. My return flight to London leaves from Dulles anyway, and it’s so close to here. I’ve got a car so it’ll only take me an hour.’

The pitch of her voice rose to a squeak, and she was aware that this made her sounded desperate. So be it; she was desperate.

‘Rachel,’ Rob’s voice was gentle but very firm. She found herself picturing him talking to his children. He was probably a great father. ‘Rachel, I’ve handed the case over to the FBI. And if we can’t make this Ethan Rowe link stand up, then it’s looking like whoever filled in for Phoebe’s job on that commercial has no relevance to her killing. We’re back to the evidence against Wyburgh, and treating the murders as unconnected.’

‘But you know the same DNA was on the lipstick in Tiffany’s apartment,’ Rachel pleaded. ‘That proves the two cases are linked.’

‘Only if the DNA testing was one hundred per cent accurate, and on a potentially contaminated sample like the lipstick, we can’t be sure. Very occasionally, DNA results are wrong.’

‘Rob, can’t we at least have this conversation face to face in Washington?’

‘Rachel… I’d be happy to see you; you know I would. I’m just not sure it would achieve anything. I think we’ve reached the end of the road on this one.’

Rachel screwed her eyes tight and counted to three to slow her breathing. ‘I’m heading back to DC tomorrow anyway, so please just think about it. Okay?’ She hung up before he could refuse her again.

---

After a shower and some food, Rachel felt calmer. She sat down with her laptop and composed an email to Mike Perez in the hope that he, at least, would still be willing to help her. Then, after checking the time in London, she did something she had been wanting to do for a while. She video-called Brickall.

He was at home in his flat, eating pizza and watching a Champions League match.

‘Well, well, look who the digital cat dragged in.’ He muted the TV, but continued eating the pizza. ‘How’s life being AWOL?’

‘There’s no WOL; that would imply ‘Without Leave’, you moron. I’m on leave.’

‘Whatever.’ Brickall took another bite of pizza, sword-swallowing the long, greasy strands of mozzarella.

‘What’s that?’ enquired Rachel. ‘Let me guess – ham and pineapple with extra chilli?’ Brickall’s love of spice was extended to the blandest of foods.

‘Quattro formaggi, actually. With extra chilli. Hang on a minute.’ He vanished from shot and reappeared with a can of lager.

‘How are things?’ Rachel asked. ‘Have you seen Shaun Rawlings again?’

Brickall shrugged. ‘Not recently. But that doesn’t mean anything. I’m just trying not to think about the little scrote… So what’s going on over there? You’d only be phoning me if you wanted something. And if you’d cracked the case you wouldn’t want anything. So you can’t have cracked the case.’

He leaned back and swigged from his can, looking pleased with this analysis of the status quo.

‘I’m bloody close actually. I’ve managed to narrow the potential field of perps from the population of one of the biggest countries in the world to a handful.’

Brickall frowned. ‘How the fuck did you manage that, Prince?’

‘Hold on, let me send you a visual aid.’ She took a photo of the family tree and sent it to him from her phone. ‘This will help you make sense of what I’m talking about.’

She ran through the familial DNA match with Ethan Rowe, and her encounters with the female relatives she had found so far.

‘So it’s not Rainey – about to give birth. Or Harland – overweight, a bit of a cripple and dead plain. Or Kaydance – in prison during the critical time period.’

Brickall consulted the family tree. ‘Brianna?’

‘She’s a teenager. Hardly seems likely she could pull off something like this.’

Brickall nodded. ‘Probably, but look at her anyway.’

‘I wondered if Lynette, Norma’s allegedly childless daughter, had a baby no one knows about. I’ve asked my contact at the LAPD to check.’

‘More cousins seem a possibility. Raymond Rowe could easily have siblings. Any number of them. So there could definitely be female cousins on the dad’s side. Or he could have had other children we don’t know about, given he was putting it about a bit.’

Rachel dropped her chin onto her hand with a sigh. ‘True. Problem is, it will take time to trace them and they could be anywhere. Realistically, I can’t do much about it in less than forty-eight hours.’

‘And you’ve got to be back for your promotion board next Tuesday,’ said Brickall cheerfully, tearing a chunk off his pizza. ‘So basically you’re stuffed.’

‘Thanks a lot. Very validating.’

‘Seriously though, Prince –’ Rachel was sensitive to his changed tone of voice. Thanks to their long-standing partnership she could tell when Brickall’s brain was engaged – ‘If you phoned me because you want my advice—’

‘It was hardly to admire your face.’

‘What does your gut tell you?’

‘To talk to Harland Rowe again.’

‘Well listen to your gut; that’s what you always tell me. She’s told you a load of porkies to keep you away from her sister. Who is a criminal. Why, that’s what I’m wondering. Is there someone else with links to both of them that she’s shielding?’

‘I might as well. She’s just up the road from where I am now. I don’t need to catch another bloody plane.’

‘She’s hiding something: that much is obvious. Maybe something she knows about cousins on her father’s side of the family? At the very least, before you get your arse back here you need to try and find out if that’s the case.’

Rachel nodded slowly. She had been thinking the same thing; she just needed to hear someone confirm her hunch.

‘So do what you can, and at least you have a chance of returning with some questions answered. And when you become a Detective Chief Inspector, this will all be a dim and distant memory.’

‘Thanks, Mark.’

‘And don’t be late on Monday morning or Patten’ll have yet another baby. And not in a good way.’

There was a strangled electronic gurgle as he cut the connection.

A few seconds later, an email alert appeared on her screen.

Colorado Springs. That rang a bell. Something Paulie had said the first time she visited CasaMia. Heather Kennedy had used an address there. Excited, she ran a Google search on Melody Burr.

About 295,000 results.

This was someone who was hiding in plain sight. And someone whose exposure instantly ruled her out. Melody Burr’s Instagram account announced her as a ‘Plus Size Model and Body Positivity Icon’. A stream of images spilled onto the screen, of a stunningly pretty redhead with huge blue eyes, blowing kisses and seducing the camera. There she was in a burlesque corset, a fifties prom dress, even naked apart from a coyly draped sheet. And she must have weighed getting on for 300 pounds.

She moved on to searching for Rainey’s younger sister Brianna, but all she found was an unremarkable teen’s social media activity, full of dental retainers, Snapchat flower crowns and torrid crushes. From the banal commentary posted by her and her friends, this was no sociopathic criminal.

Rachel snapped her laptop shut and lay back on the bed with her eyes closed. She was too disheartened to email Perez and thank him, even though his help had been invaluable throughout her wild goose chase. The light was fading outside; another day almost over. There was just Friday and part of Saturday left before she went back to London. She could give up now and try and enjoy the rest of her time. Drive to Washington and do some sightseeing, with or without Rob’s help.

Or she could listen to her gut.

She grabbed her bag and headed out to the car park.

---

The apartment block was peaceful, as the residents settled in for their evening. The parking lot was almost full, and there were lights on in most windows. A faint murmur of TV sets was carried out on the evening breeze, along with the smells of dinner cooking. The lobby area was quiet, the doorman gone, leaving a security light on in his booth.

Rachel walked up the fire exit stairs, not wanting the pinging of the elevator bell to announce her arrival, and tiptoed the length of the corridor. There was light visible under Harland’s door, and the almost imperceptible sound – more a sense – of someone moving about. She pressed the button to the right of the door and heard the electronic ‘ding-dong’ inside. There was no response, although the moving stopped. This time she rapped smartly on the door. Nothing.

‘Harland!’ she called. ‘It’s Rachel Prince. I need to speak to you.’

As she had anticipated, she was ignored.

‘Please, I need to ask you some more about Kaydance.’

Nothing.

‘Why did you lie to me?’ she shouted, slapping the door for good measure. It was solid, with no handle, only a couple of heavy duty deadlocks. As a police officer, assessing front doors became second nature, and this would need either a battering ram or a set of keys. Without either, all she could do was head for the elevator.

There were two women in fitness gear waiting to get in when it arrived on the ground floor. They were engaged in animated chat about their recent trip to the gym, smiling briefly at Rachel as they passed her, then continuing their conversation. Once the elevator had gone, the lobby was deserted. Rachel peered through the glass entrance doors, but could see no one heading into the building.

Moving quickly, she tried the door of the security booth. It was locked. Of course. Her twenty years in the police force had pitted her against hundreds of locked doors. She pulled her Swiss Army knife from her bag and selected the reamer tool.

You need two things to pick a lock, her old sergeant had told her when she was a rookie constable. A straight pin to poke at the tumblers and a tension wrench to twist the plug to the shear line. He had shown her how a reamer, which was designed to stitch leather, would act as a pin, while the hook tool would act as a wrench. She had carried a Swiss Army knife with her ever since.

This was a flimsy partition door, and the lock a basic one, so it took her no more than twenty seconds. The drawer under the desk was also locked. As she reached for her knife again, a man walked in through the lobby door. He was distracted by his phone screen long enough for Rachel to duck down below the front window of the booth. From her squatting position, she prised the locked drawer open, and once he had gone, clambered to her feet again. The drawer was full of spare keys, but they were all jumbled up, and the paper labels attached to them so faded they were hard to decipher. It was going to take time to sort through them, so Rachel crouched out of sight on the floor and used the torch on her phone to help her read the faded pencil marks.

Eventually she found it. 714. Harland’s apartment. She switched off the torch, closed the door of the booth and used the reamer to lock it again. Then she sauntered out of the lobby and walked to where her car was parked. If Harland Rowe wouldn’t open her door, then Rachel would have to do it herself.