‘Romantic.’

  Jake and Kate used to prefer the Designer Outlet at the old Great Western Railway works. When Jake got bored with shopping, he’d slink away to look at the steam trains.

  ‘And all these people wanting no-strings sex come up,’ he says. ‘A hidden layer of promiscuity just beneath the surface. Who knew?’

  ‘Welcome to my world.’

  Bex has never made any secret of her use of dating apps. He should have asked her how they work – it would have saved him a whole lot of trouble. His relationship too.

  ‘And one of them looks nice enough, says she’s up for anything, so we meet and the next thing she’s kissing me,’ he continues. ‘I can’t say it wasn’t exciting – it was the first time I’d been kissed by anyone other than Kate in twelve years.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Bex says.

  ‘We went back to her bedsit, but I couldn’t go through with it. I left in a hurry. That didn’t matter, of course. The damage was done. I never saw her again, but Kate did – our meeting had been filmed.’

  He will regret for the rest of his life the manner in which Kate found out. It must have been such a shock. The chances of her seeing the CCTV footage that caught the moment they kissed in the shopping centre were slim, to say the least, but it happened. He has to live with that.

  ‘Maybe it brought things to a head,’ Bex says.

  ‘I still wish it hadn’t.’

  One crazy, midlife moment had ruined everything. It’s all behind him now, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped caring for Kate, worrying about her.

  ‘Is it roasting in here or just me?’ Bex asks.

  ‘It’s hot,’ Jake says, pleased that it’s not only him.

  He opens his window and searches the touchscreen for the climate-control settings. ‘The heating’s on full,’ he says, turning it off.

  ‘I didn’t touch it,’ Bex says.

  A second later, loud music starts to play through the speakers. Heavy death metal.

  ‘Turn that off.’ Bex glances across at Jake, who’s still fiddling with the touchscreen.

  ‘That wasn’t me. I promise,’ he says.

  He manages to shut down the music, but it comes on again, even louder this time: growling vocals and fast, incessant drumming.

  ‘I’m going to pull over while you sort it.’ Bex slows the car down on the hard shoulder. ‘I can’t drive with that bloody racket on.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  She brings the car to a safe standstill, the music still playing.

  ‘Shitters, I knew it was too good to last,’ she says as Jake finally manages to turn off the sound system.

  ‘What?’

  Bex sits back, shaking her head. ‘The car’s been disabled.’

  ‘Really?’

  She tries again, but a message confirms that the car isn’t going anywhere. They sit there in silence, staring ahead in the heat and the dark as Bex tries in vain to start the car. And then a video of a burning log-fire flickers into life on the touchscreen.

  ‘What the hell?’ Jake says.

  The death metal music starts up again. Jake reaches for the door. He can’t seem to open it.

  ‘Shit, it’s locked.’ He’s starting to panic. ‘It’s so hot in here.’

  There’s a click and the door is unlocked. Jake’s not sure if it was him, Bex or someone else. The cool night air floods into the car as Bex and Jake look at each other, both of them shaken.

  ‘I don’t think Rob wants us to drive to London,’ she says.

  Tuesday

  78

  Silas

  Strover is already in the Parade Room when Silas arrives. He glances at his watch. Seven a.m. He’s only been away from this place for six hours. They both need to get some balance in their lives.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’ve already been for a run,’ he says, sitting down next to her.

  Strover’s hair is wet, as if she’s recently showered after an effortless dawn 10k. His own fitness regime couldn’t be going worse. Fifteen sit-ups this morning, feet wedged under the bed, and he began to feel dizzy. He didn’t sleep well last night either, troubled by what Jake had told him. Why was Rob visiting Gablecross – and before he met Kate for the first time at the Great Western Hospital?

  Maybe Silas was too relaxed last night about Kate staying at Rob’s London apartment.

  ‘I wanted to talk to Thailand,’ Strover says. ‘They’re six hours ahead.’

  ‘Anything interesting?’ He’s asked her to look into the gun used in Cornwall, last fired in Bangkok nine years ago, and the Thai police file on Gilmour Martin, the same name as the registered keeper of a Tesla recently seen in Cornwall. It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore, but his boss will no doubt dismiss it as circumstantial.

  ‘The police over there are proving helpful about Gilmour,’ Strover says.

  They could do with some more information. The Royal Thai Police file was not exactly bulging with detail.

  ‘I managed to get through to one of the detectives who interviewed him after he crashed the party,’ she continues, glancing at her notes. ‘An officer called Manu Jabthian. He’s teaching these days, at somewhere called the Bang Kaen Detective Training School.’

  Nice work if you can get it. Maybe Silas should offer his services. He fancies a trip to Thailand.

  ‘How long have you been in?’ he asks, knowing that this sort of spadework takes time.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Strover says.

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ Silas says, particularly if she eats a single apple every morning and insists on calling it breakfast. Kate was pushed too hard. He’s wary of Strover going the same way.

  ‘Manu says he remembers the case well,’ Strover continues, checking her notes again.

  ‘What exactly was Gilmour arrested for?’

  ‘Causing trouble at a private party on Ko Samui – Chaweng beach, in the northeast of the island.’

  ‘Is that all?’ he asks.

  ‘Off his head on drugs, apparently. But get this – someone saw Gilmour on the beach waving around a handgun. That’s why the police were called.’

  Silas looks up.

  ‘Do we know what sort of gun?’

  ‘According to Manu, Gilmour was unarmed by the time the police arrested him. They let him go in the end – nobody at the party was willing to give statements. He had no ID or passport on him and wasn’t making a lot of sense, but they assumed he was British.’

  ‘What happened to him afterwards?’ Silas asks, looking at the police mugshot again, his mind racing.

  ‘That’s why Manu remembers the case,’ she says. ‘Two days later, a body washes up on the same beach, gunshot wound to the head. The police try to call in Gilmour for questioning again, but they can’t find him. He’s vanished.’

  ‘And the bullet?’

  He already knows the answer.

  ‘Same markings as the one fired in Cornwall.’

  His boss is going to love this.

  ‘Who was the victim?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Small-time drug dealer from Bangkok. Police weren’t too concerned.’

  He knows the feeling. But the Royal Thai Police would have filed a report linking the Ko Samui case to Gilmour Martin, suspected of being a UK citizen. No real evidence, but enough for the National Ballistics Intelligence Service to flag up a possible British connection.

  ‘Do we have any idea where Gilmour is now?’ Silas asks.

  ‘The Home Office doesn’t have a record of anyone of that name matching his age,’ she says, turning to her laptop. ‘I’ve looked everywhere else too. Mispers, Europol, Interpol.’

  He knows Strover would have been thorough, doesn’t want to think how long she’s already been working on this.

  What about the DVLA?’ he asks. ‘Anything on the “care of” address in London?’

  ‘I’m still trying to establish exactly who lives there,’ she says. ‘No other vehicles registered at the property. Seems like it’s owned by a shell company in the Cayman Islands. Wouldn’t mind taking a look in person.’

  ‘And maybe get your friend in digital forensics to help with information on Gilmour,’ he says.

  ‘She’s already had a trawl. No social-media footprint, nothing. But she did find one thing.’

  Silas looks up. He’s come to recognise Strover’s tone when she’s onto something.

  ‘A person calling himself Gilmour Martin appears to have flown into Stansted from Cork on a British passport six months ago,’ she says. ‘And given the Home Office has no record of a Gilmour Martin matching his age, it must have been a fake.’

  Silas is aware that passports aren’t always checked as closely as they should be on flights from Ireland to the UK, but there’s also been a recent rise in convincing counterfeits. And many of the best are coming out of Bangkok.

  ‘I’m trying to get a photo and flight manifests, but it’s going to take time,’ Strover says.

  ‘Just don’t tell the boss what you’re doing,’ Silas says.

  ‘We should tell Kate, though – she asked us to look for a match for Rob and she still doesn’t know about Gilmour Martin.’

  The discovery is hardly going to put her mind at rest.

  79

  Kate

  Kate knows she’s woken late. Not because of the daylight outside – the steel blinds are still down and it’s dark in the apartment, a faint light seeping in from the bedroom. It’s just a feeling. She sits up on the sofa, the memories of last night flooding back. She’s here in the main room with a blanket because she was sick – after thinking again that Rob had been replaced by a double. Knowing, not thinking. There’s no way her Rob would have known what she was saying in French, given her that look of understanding. He could barely speak a word when she tried teaching him. She hasn’t got Capgras.

  At least the power is still on. She gets up from the sofa and walks towards the bedroom. Rob’s not here, she can sense it. The flat feels empty. Sure enough, the sheets have been stripped back, the bedside light left on, a note beside it. She reads the message without picking it up:

  Sorry you had such a rough night. Hope you’re feeling better. Power working but blinds still not responding. I’ll call mid-morning. Had to leave early for Brittany – looking forward to you joining me… R xxx

  Her passport, which he’d asked her to bring to London, is beneath the note. She doesn’t want to go to Brittany. She wants to get out of here, back to Wiltshire, to Bex’s house, where she feels safe. The events of last night have left her shaken, disorientated. She reads Rob’s note again, the breezy tone, written as if nothing happened. But then she thinks of the strange man lying on the bed, the shock and the nausea. She tried so hard, wanted to believe in Rob, in the two of them, but she was being naive, wishful, by avoiding the sight of his face all evening. Denying her eyes, her most reliable sense.

  She spots the phone and picks it up. At least there’s a dial tone. She calls Jake’s number, but the line doesn’t connect. She tries Bex’s, but it’s the same. No outgoing calls. She searches for her mobile phone, but she can’t find it anywhere. Has Rob taken it?

  Ten minutes later, she’s showered and changed, filled with a deepening unease. She’s still trapped in this apartment and she’s not convinced it’s for her own safety. She’s about to brush her hair when she hears the front door open. Her whole body stiffens. It’s like a repeat of last night.

  She creeps out of the bathroom into the main room, turns on the lights and sees… Ajay. He is standing inside the front door, wearing his usual dark-blue suit and holding an attaché case, bigger than the one he normally brings to their meetings.

  ‘Thank God it’s you, Ajay,’ she says, with a loud sigh of relief.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was told to let myself in,’ he says apologetically, glancing at the hairbrush still in her hand.

  ‘By Rob?’ she asks.

  Ajay nods, walking over to the kitchen table. Rob would have been worried by her behaviour, would have told him to visit her again.

  ‘I tried ringing you last night,’ she says, watching Ajay as he puts his case down beside the kitchen stool. His manner is subdued today; there’s no sign of his usual bonhomie. Something’s not right. ‘You were engaged.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Was there a problem?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, there was,’ she says, trying not to revisit the events of last night. ‘I don’t think I have Capgras.’

  ‘As I think I said yesterday, it’s a very rare condition and I’d be surprised if you—’

  ‘I saw him on the other side,’ she interrupts. ‘In my right field of vision, not my left. And it wasn’t Rob.’ She moves her head from side to side, trying to reinforce her words. ‘If I had Capgras, I would only see a double on my left, isn’t that what you said?’

  Ajay looks at her. Is it pity in his eyes? For a second she thinks it might be fear.

  ‘How did he sound?’ he asks, ignoring her question as he opens up his attaché case. ‘Did you try closing your eyes and just listening?’ He pulls out his laptop and a reporter’s notebook and puts them on the table.

  ‘He sounded like Rob,’ she says quietly, thinking of the scarf. Her plan seems so naive now. ‘But it wasn’t him. It’s scaring the shit out of me, Ajay. This isn’t him either,’ she adds, nodding at the blinds. ‘Shutting me in like a bloody prisoner.’

  ‘I can understand,’ he says in his best bedside voice. The one he used when he first came to visit her at the hospital.

  ‘What’s going on, Ajay?’ she asks, walking over to the sink. Her hair’s still a mess after her shower – there isn’t a hairdryer in Rob’s bachelor pad – and she starts to brush it as they talk, tilting her head to one side.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he says.

  ‘You have a key. So does Rob. But oddly I don’t seem to have one. That’s not right, is it? Not bloody normal at all.’ She sounds deranged as she vents her frustration on the tangles in her hair.

  ‘Rob’s nervous about you being in London,’ Ajay offers.

  She’s brushing too vigorously now. ‘Is that so?’ she asks, unable to disguise her anger. She walks over to the bathroom and checks her hair in the mirror. ‘I’m thirty-bloody-three, Ajay,’ she calls out through the open door, still looking at herself. God, she’s a wreck. ‘I’m not a child.’

  She doesn’t mean to be angry with Ajay. They normally speak so freely at their meetings. He’s helped her through a difficult recovery, become a friend.

  ‘What’s that for?’ she asks, coming back over and nodding at the laptop.

  ‘Rob wants me to run some final recognition tests.’ Ajay manages a pinched smile. ‘The results from the weekend were so encouraging.’

  She shakes her head in despair. She’s too tired. She was hoping that Ajay might have come to get her out of this place.

  ‘I’m not doing any more tests,’ she says, glancing at his laptop as she sits down on a stool opposite him.

  ‘I understand,’ Ajay says, writing something down in his notebook. ‘Rob thinks you’re still at risk from the criminals you helped to identify,’ he continues. ‘Hence all this.’

  He gestures towards the blinds, the front door. She follows his gaze and spots the camera. It’s been angled further into the room. Is Ajay reassuring her or trying to warn her? Let her know that they’re being filmed? He adjusts his laptop with one hand, positioning it so that the screen is facing towards her. His other hand is on the notebook. She watches as he makes sure it’s turned towards her too. And then she glances down at what Ajay’s written on the page.

  Please do the tests – for my sake and yours. He can see and hear everything.

  80

  Silas

  ‘I know this is difficult, Silas. Kate was a good friend of yours as well as a colleague. We were all upset by her accident. And the decision to close the super-recogniser unit was not one that I took lightly, as you know.’

  Silas looks out of his boss’s window. He’s never heard such tosh.

  ‘I still think we should call Rob in for questioning,’ Silas says. ‘At least ask him what he was doing on the night of Kate’s crash.’

  His boss, Detective Superintendent Ward, is ten years younger than Silas, and the talk in the force is when, not if, he’ll become Detective Chief Superintendent. Silas has always tried to like him, but he’s not making it easy today.

  ‘You say a Tesla was spotted at the scene of the accident, but we have to look at where this information’s come from,’ he continues. ‘An anonymous local drug dealer who was told by the barman of the Bluebell, now deceased. It’s not exactly gospel, is it?’

  Put like that, Silas can see Ward’s point. Except that he hasn’t come clean, told him that the anonymous local drug dealer is Conor, his own son. How could he?

  ‘And Rob’s not the only person in Britain who drives a Tesla,’ Ward adds.

  He’s trying not to make Silas sound stupid. Silas’s lack of a university degree never used to be a problem, but he is finding it increasingly hard these days, and not just because his boss happens to have a first from Oxford. Every new officer who joins the force seems to be a graduate, challenging his own education at the ‘university of life’, as his dad used to call it.

  ‘But Rob did visit Kate in hospital and is now her partner,’ Silas continues. ‘Don’t you think it’s a coincidence worth investigating if he was there that night?’

  ‘We don’t know who was there.’

  Silas is not going to win this one. He hasn’t even tried to explain a possible connection between the gun used in Cornwall and Gilmour Martin, Rob’s double in Thailand, who has also been seen driving a Tesla. There’s only one thing left to try.

  ‘I think Rob might have visited here before the accident,’ Silas says.

  ‘Here, as in Gablecross?’ Ward asks calmly, but Silas detects the subtlest shift in his boss’s tone.

  ‘He was seen in the car park,’ he says. ‘The day before the crash.’