It Was Her

Book 0: DI Ray Drake

by Mark Hill

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Do you want a thriller where nothing is as it seems?

Twenty years ago Tatia was adopted into a well-off home, where she seemed happy, settled. Then the youngest boy in the family died in an accident, and she got the blame.

Did she do it?

Tatia was cast out, away from her remaining adopted siblings, Joel and Sarah. Now she yearns for a home to call her own. So when she sees families going on holiday, leaving their beautiful homes empty, there seems no harm in living their lives while they are gone. But somehow, people keep ending up dead.

Did she kill them?

As bodies start to appear in supposedly safe neighbourhoods, DI Ray Drake and DS Flick Crowley race to find the thinnest of links between the victims. But Drake's secret past is once more threatening to destroy everything.

Will they catch her?

Release date: May 17, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Now:

This, she decided, was her favourite room in all the world.

There were so many beautiful things. Sitting at the antique dressing table, she touched the bottles and containers of all shapes and sizes – magenta, turquoise, jade, every colour of the rainbow – which glimmered in the gentle light of the bulbs decorating the mirror. The bed was the biggest she’d ever seen, and piled high with pillows and cushions and throws. It was a delight to scrunch her toes into the delicate weave of the soft carpet.

The woman walked to the wardrobe, which was set into a wall so that you hardly noticed it was there. And when the door slid open – with a sound as faint as a whisper – neat rows of dresses and skirts and blouses were revealed, and neatly stacked racks of pretty shoes: heels, flats, pumps, sandals. Hangers clacked when she took out a summer dress imprinted with pale blue flowers.

Holding it to her body, she twirled before the dappled rocking horse in the bay window. The creature’s silver mane fell across one ear. Polished stirrups and buckles sparkled on its leather saddle. She saw approval in its painted eye.

Yes, that one.

If anything, this room with its gleaming walls and silver trinkets spilling from the jewellery box on the dressing table, the sparkling chandelier, and the heavy antique wall mirror with aged black spots on its faded surface, was even more lovely than the others.

Earlier, she had soaked in the oval tub in the bathroom, relaxed in flickering candlelight, enjoying the scent of pomegranate and blueberry and winter spices from the salts and soaps and creams. Let the steaming heat lift the cares and worries from her muscle and bone.

But then a sudden, terrible image of that poor man came out of nowhere, making her gasp and jerk upright. Water surged over the side of the bath to slap angrily on the chequered tiles.

And just like that, her composure was shattered.

Tension knotting her shoulders, the woman reached for the plump towel of Egyptian cotton warming on the heated handrail, avoiding her nakedness in the mirror – the pendulous breasts and heavy thighs, the sagging stomach, the thick threads of scar tissue snaking down her shoulders and back – and wrapping it around her, opened the cabinet to choose from all the lotions. The face cream she selected was cool against her flushed cheeks.

Now, she placed the dress on the bed, careful not to crease it, to apply make-up from golden tubes and black compacts which snapped closed between her fingers. Her face, usually pale and careworn, burst into colour. Finally, there was just a lipstick to choose. Her fingers hesitated over the different shades and settled on a bright red infused with a faint sparkle, to the admiration of the rocking horse.

Yes, it said. That one.

The woman picked up an ivory hairbrush, its milky surface inlaid with pretty curlicues and loops, and pulled it through her hair. The brush crackled against her scalp, the static charge kinking her tangle of curls.

‘It’s ready,’ called a voice.

She winced again at the thought of that man, just left there like that. It was no good, the whole night would be ruined if she didn’t do something about it, so she went to her cargo shorts balled on the floor and took out a phone with a screen as big as her hand.

The woman hesitated. What she was about to do was a dangerous thing. But when she pressed the power button and the keypad appeared, she had no idea of the passcode.

‘Come on down!’

The voice flustered her and she pressed random numbers on the screen. The phone buzzed tersely. She tried again, but it was pointless. The woman turned it off, replaced it in the pocket of the shorts.

Walking past the horse on its bow rocker, she inched the curtain aside. In the early hours of the morning the road seemed abandoned beneath the wash of streetlight. And yet inside all those big, handsome houses, she knew, people were safely tucked up in bed, and the thought comforted her. The roar of a car receded into the distance. She wished the driver god speed and hoped they would be reunited soon with family, with the people they loved.

‘It’ll get cold!’ shouted the voice.

The dress she had chosen was too tight – she’d never be able to zip it up – but there was no time to choose another, and she went downstairs.

The kitchen at the rear of the house was vast. A skylight ran its entire length. This room, like all the others, was a bright, happy place in daylight, and at night was infused with a cosy glow from all the hidden lighting. Sleek appliances covered every surface. A silver range cooker was set into a converted fireplace. The cabinets were the type that popped open at a touch, and the long island unit was topped with a shining granite surface. But pots and pans had been dumped in the sink, and the tap, its neck as long and graceful as a swan’s, seemed to recoil from the mess.

Her companion was hunched over a table, forking food into his mouth, and when she sat he squeezed her hand, gazing at her in adoration.

It was late; they were both weary, both hungry.

‘Eat,’ she told him.

The prongs of his fork rang against the china whenever he speared a shell of pasta on his plate. She prodded at it, but the food was burned, rubbery. Popping a piece into her mouth, the woman tried to enjoy the ambience of the lovely kitchen, and ignore the ugly chewing sounds of her companion.

She considered once again the twisted path that had brought her to this man, to this place.

And then a noise made them both look up sharply …

The door opening at the front of the house.

They heard anxious voices in the hallway. The front door slammed. A fragment of urgent conversation. Wheels fluttered along the floorboards.

Seconds later, the kitchen door swung open and a tanned woman in bright, loose-fitting clothes stood in the doorway. She cried out, and then a man pushed past her, dropping the handle of his case. His face was bronzed beneath steel-grey hair, but his arms, the skin on his neck, were sunburned.

For one stunned moment, the two couples looked at each other, and then the man in the doorway demanded angrily: ‘What are you doing in our house?’

The woman at the table felt a terrible sadness.

She scraped back her chair to stand, its legs screeching on the tiles in the fierce silence. Beside her, the man’s fork clattered to the plate. His chair tipped backwards. He jumped to his feet, the tendons in his wrists jerking taut.

The woman thought of this house, made into a wonderful home thanks to the care and attention, the love, of the couple in front of them.

Tatia wished it didn’t have to end this way.

Stepping over the body was out of the question. It stretched along the hallway, one arm flung over the face, the other reaching for the stairs, fingertips pressed against the bottom step like a swimmer grasping for the edge of a pool. Simon Harrow’s pink shirt rode up over his belly, which was mottled purple. His shock of grey hair was plastered by blood to the tiled floor. One leg, the bone snapped, rested heel-up against the wall. Teeth were scattered like dice along the skirting.

Harrow’s body caused a bottleneck. If police and crime scene examiners wanted to reach the dining room at the rear of the house, where Melinda Harrow’s body lay curled beneath the baby grand, they had to go through the living room to the left.

‘I don’t want to pre-empt the autopsy,’ said Detective Constable Millie Steiner. The young black officer stepped back to consider the fire poker, matted with hair and gristle, and sticky with blood, dropped at the victim’s feet. ‘But I’m guessing they were beaten to death.’

Eddie Upson winked. ‘Top-notch detective work, Millie.’

She shoved an elbow into Eddie’s ribs just as Detective Inspector Ray Drake stooped over the body.

The skin on Harrow’s leg was ruptured, torn apart beneath the force of the poker like the flesh of a dropped peach. Muscle and tendon bulged from the tear; there was a glimpse of arcing white bone. Bruises, imprinted from the killer’s footwear, crisscrossed the edge of the wound.

‘He was brought down hard with a stamp on the lower leg.’ Tugging at the knees of his scene suit, Drake crouched to look at the victim’s crooked fingers, the lacerations and lesions across his arms and shoulders. Most likely defensive wounds from where he lay on the floor trying to protect himself. ‘And hit repeatedly with the poker.’

Millie Steiner watched Drake examine the corpse, fascinated by his hard face, the sharp, jagged cheeks, the straight nose and tapered jaw, those pale blue eyes from which the colour seemed to drain the longer you gazed into them. Not that Ray Drake ever let you meet his eye for very long. He was a shy man, it seemed to Millie, who kept a healthy distance from his team.

‘The crime scene people are happy bunnies,’ she said. ‘They’re picking up plenty of fingerprints all over the house, forensic samples galore, and some new words, too. One of them told me there’s a cornucopia of evidence.’

‘I went to a restaurant called Cornucopia,’ said Eddie. ‘It was very pricey.’

‘And plenty of footprints.’

A faint footprint yielded the best results. Bloody prints were often difficult to read. The liquid poured into the pattern, obliterating the unique signature of the tread caused by wear and tear. Every sole on every shoe was different, in the same way as every fingerprint was unique, or every gun barrel.

‘It’s good to have you back, boss,’ Millie said.

‘Thank you.’ Drake smiled, but his eyes didn’t lift from Simon Harrow’s cruel injuries. ‘This … is not your usual.’

‘No,’ agreed Millie. ‘Not your usual.’

Drake considered the victim’s cotton shirt, his shorts and the boating shoes flung across the hallway. Next door, Melinda Harrow’s body was barely a foot from the phone, sat in its cradle on a cabinet shelf. Like her husband, she had almost certainly been bludgeoned to death, suffering fatal blunt force trauma, multiple blows to the head and body. Melinda was dressed in a fitted shirt and silk skirt. A single espadrille hung off one tanned foot – sky-blue nails glistened in the light – and the other was kicked against a piano leg.

A trolley-case was on its side in the kitchen doorway, a baggage claim tag tied to the handle. A larger case – the companion part of a matching set – stood inside the front door, along with Mrs Harrow’s Hermès handbag. Two passports were tucked into a pocket, and a pair of airline boarding passes.

Everyone knew the relief of getting home from holiday. It was good to go away, but there was a special kind of pleasure in returning home. Boiling water in your own kettle, brushing your teeth at your sink. Curling up beneath a crisp duvet, surrounded by beloved things accrued over a lifetime. But the Harrows had instead arrived home to find themselves plunged into a life-or-death struggle.

The confrontation was swift, catastrophic.

Two plates on the kitchen table contained half-eaten pasta. The lights were on upstairs. A dress was dumped on the floor in the bedroom. A tideline in the bathtub and a damp towel suggested someone had used it.

Someone was here, in the Harrows’ comfortable home. Someone they knew, perhaps, minding the house. Friends, neighbours, or people they had found on Airbnb. But that didn’t explain the forced window at the side of the house.

‘How much do you think a place like this is worth?’ asked Millie. This was a four-floor, six-bedroomed detached home in a sought-after area in Tottenham. All the rooms were bright, spacious and immaculately decorated.

Eddie Upson scratched at the collar of his scene suit. Sweat filmed his forehead. The spring morning was warming up. The bodies would have to be moved soon.

‘A pretty penny, although the asking price is plummeting by the second.’

‘I never thought I’d say it, Eddie,’ said Drake. ‘But I’ve missed your repartee.’

Eddie winked at Millie. Loud voices disturbed Drake. A pair of officers stood at the front door in animated conversation about rugby with the arriving pathologist. Then the fabric of the tent erected outside lifted – Drake glimpsed squad cars and support vans parked in the street – and a small woman pushed through the men. The protective hood that framed her wide face rose unnaturally high around her head and her foot coverings were stretched tight over heavy boots. Deeply engrossed in her phone, thumbs dabbing at the screen, she barely glanced at the body sprawled in the hallway, and walked upstairs.

‘Who is that?’ said Drake.

She wore a lanyard, at least. A lot of people came and went from a crime scene. It would be nigh-on impossible for anyone unauthorised to breach two cordons, but he didn’t like the idea of people wandering about checking their lottery numbers.

‘Who’s what?’ Eddie looked up, but the woman had already gone.

‘Never mind.’ Drake was irritated by the braying laughter of the men at the door. ‘Do me a favour, Eddie. Tell them to take the conversation outside.’

‘Sure thing.’

Drake stood, rolling his shoulder. The wound he had sustained several months ago had healed, but the muscle stiffened easily.

‘Where’s DS Crowley?’ he asked Millie.

She gestured over Drake’s shoulder. ‘In the garden.’

Through the kitchen window, he saw Flick Crowley on the lawn with a police search advisor. He watched her for a moment, his anxiety building. When he turned back to the body, DC Vix Moore was standing beside him.

‘I spoke to the cab driver,’ she said.

‘Hold on.’ Eddie had joined the conversation at the front and it was even louder than before. Drake could hardly hear himself think. ‘Next door.’

In the living room, tasteful abstract art provided splashes of colour on the brilliant white walls. A charcoal-grey sofa and matching chair sat at right angles to an antique fireplace. The long neck of a floor lamp reached across the room.

Pride of place on the mantelpiece was a framed photo of Simon and Melinda Harrow on a beach of white sand. A handsome couple in their fifties, they looked relaxed and happy at a table in the surf, silver water lapping over their feet. A glorious sunset flared off the rims of their lifted champagne flutes. Simon was tanned and trim in tennis linens. Melinda’s white teeth flashed between full lips. Her scooped top was edged with sequins which glimmered in the red dusk.

The circular mirror above the fireplace gave the room a sense of space and light, despite the tent erected across the front of the house. A rattan rug was rolled up on the painted floorboards so that crime scene examiners could collect samples – prints, fluids, stains. In the dining room next door Melinda Harrow’s body was partially hidden beneath the piano.

‘I spoke to the cab driver,’ repeated Vix. ‘He picked up Mr and Mrs Harrow from Gatwick at 12.45 a.m.’

‘And they were alone?’ asked Drake.

‘Yes, they chatted with him about their holiday – the food and the weather.’

‘Neither of them made any calls, or sent texts?’ asked Drake. ‘Or mentioned anyone would be here when they got back?’

‘They were tired, but in good spirits,’ said Vix. ‘Mr Harrow told him they had come home because of a work emergency.’

‘They speak to anyone on the phone?’ Drake asked again, and Vix blinked. ‘You didn’t ask.’

Her cheeks reddened. ‘No.’

Drake stepped back into the kitchen, careful to keep to the transparent footplates laid on the floor. The atmosphere was stuffy as the sun pulled across the roof of the house.

The fridge was a giant Smeg. Using a single finger of his gloved hand, he tugged open the door. The chill air cooled his face. Inside, it was mostly empty. The Harrows had binned most perishables before their holiday. There were jars of pickles and olives on a top shelf; a tub of butter; a lonely bulb of garlic. A carton of milk from Quartley’s Supermarket was forgotten on a shelf in the door. The curdled contents slopped lazily when Drake tilted it.

‘I’ve the driver’s details,’ Vix said. ‘I’ll get back onto him, and do a background check.’

‘Thanks, Vix,’ said Drake. ‘We’ll go over the rest later.’

‘Yes.’ The tips of the young detective’s fierce blonde bob twitched like the antennae of an anxious insect. ‘I’m so glad you’re back, sir. I’ve already learned so much from you.’

Fishing for compliments, she waited for his reply. But Drake’s attention kept returning to the garden, and to Flick.

It was good to be back on the job, doing what he did best. This was his life. But it could all be ripped from him at any moment. And not just his career – everything. His family, his good name – maybe his freedom.

It was all in Flick’s hands now.

Ray Drake took a deep breath and stepped outside.

He stood on the decking beside a wooden table and chairs, among numerous terracotta tubs of plants and herbs. The sun nosed over the roof, chasing shadows up the long, lush lawn. The Harrows should have been sitting here this morning, rested after a sunny holiday, enjoying coffee and toast, surrounded by fragrant sweet peas and magnolias, dianthus and laurentias, watching bees buzz around the purple lavender. Instead, a PolSa – Police Search Advisor – team swarmed across the grass looking for evidence, and CSEs photographed the broken lock on the garden gate.

Next to the garage, beside the nose of a silver Audi series 6, Detective Sergeant Flick Crowley spoke to a uniformed officer.

‘Anything?’ asked Drake.

Flick walked over, arms folded across her chest as if it was cold, and nodded down the lawn. ‘There are a couple of partials in one of the beds down by the gate.’

‘And there are plenty of prints inside. I’m sure we’ll get a suspect soon.’ Drake turned to the officer. ‘Excuse us for a moment, will you?’

Flick reluctantly followed Drake beneath a magnolia tree. Its curling white flowers opened to the sky; the shade beneath its crooked branches was a welcome relief.

He tried not to betray his agitation. ‘How are you feeling this morning?’

Flick’s hand instinctively went to her waist where she had been stabbed months ago. She had undergone an emergency operation for the haemothorax, and weeks of physical rehabilitation. The wound had healed, but Drake knew the psychological fallout of the attack still lingered.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m good.’

She watched the PolSa officers at work, and he studied her in profile: her angular face and cheekbones; her brown hair, lately grown long, and the fringe that fell across her almond eyes; the strong shoulders tapering into a long, lean body and slender arms.

‘Flick.’ Conscious of the officers nearby, Drake spoke quietly. ‘We haven’t had much time to talk since—’

‘Let’s not.’ She held up a hand. ‘Let’s just … get on with the job.’

‘You’re right, it’s not the right time.’ He hesitated. ‘But we’re going to have to speak about it soon.’

‘Why?’ She turned away. ‘Why do we have to?’

‘I need to know you’re doing well.’ Drake moved so that they were face to face, trying to get her to engage.

They were in this together, whether she liked it or not, in the aftermath of that terrible night when they had been attacked by an associate of the man who called himself the Two O’Clock Boy.

Drake wanted Flick to know that he understood the risk she took by supporting his version of those violent events. They had told the Specialist Investigations team from the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards that the killer had targeted officers investigating his murder of former residents of a long-closed children’s home. Drake’s mother had been attacked, a crime scene manager killed; his own daughter had been used as bait to lure him into a deadly trap.

But if the whole story of that evening ever came out, Drake’s reputation would be left in tatters.

Because Flick knew the truth about Ray Drake. A lifetime ago he was somebody else, a disturbed teenager called Connor Laird who took a dead boy’s identity as his own. Took Ray Drake’s name, his home, even his family.

Lies were toxic. Ray Drake had lived a lie for so long that he barely knew any more what was truth and what was falsehood. But Flick was isolated, vulnerable. She was hurting. And if she changed her statement, his whole world – everything he had painstakingly built for himself over a lifetime – would collapse. Drake wanted to help her to a better place. For her own good, but also for his own survival. But to do that, she had to let him in.

‘Let’s not talk about it here,’ she said. ‘Not with two people dead inside.’

Drake could tell she was thinking again about that catastrophic night. The murderous confrontation in Drake’s home, and that isolated cottage in the countryside. The blood pouring from her wound as he stood among the carnage.

A muscle ticked in her jaw, and he knew – the shock was like a punch to the gut – that she was keeping something from him.

‘We’re good, aren’t we, Flick?’ he asked softly.

She watched the search team comb the lawn. ‘I don’t know if I can do this. The counsellor—’

‘What about her?’ He kept his voice calm. ‘What have you said?’

‘I haven’t told her anything.’ She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

He understood the implication. She wanted to unburden herself of what she knew about Drake – and about Connor Laird, and his deadly connection to a string of murders. But if Flick told just one person, sooner or later everything would be revealed. Assigned by the Met to deal with Flick’s trauma in the aftermath of the incident, the counsellor was bound by patient confidentiality – but only up to a point. She would do everything in her power to get Flick to reveal the truth. Drake’s secret history would unravel.

And perhaps the most dangerous secret of all would be revealed. Elliot.

‘Tell me how I can help.’ He wanted to reassure her that the terrible guilt she felt – the loneliness – was temporary. She would heal and together they would move on. He wanted to assure her they were both good people, blameless people, who had become embroiled in a shocking series of events beyond their control.

But he couldn’t.

Because Drake once again forced himself to consider what else Flick had seen that night …

‘It’s over now, it’s the past, and we have a job to do.’ He nodded at the house. ‘Those victims inside need us to focus now. I promise I will do anything to help you—’

She blurted out, ‘I’m going to tell her.’

Despite the dread he felt, Drake kept his voice steady. ‘Tell her what?’

She met his pale eyes for the first time – and her look was defiant.

‘Boss,’ said a voice.

‘Flick—’

‘Boss!’

Distracted, Drake turned to see Eddie Upson at the door. ‘The digital forensics lady wants a word.’

Drake tried to collect his thoughts. ‘Sorry, Eddie, who?’

‘The Digital Forensic Specialist. She’s in the attic.’

‘Give me a minute.’

‘Sure thing.’ Eddie lingered at the door.

‘A minute, Eddie.’

When DC Upson had disappeared inside, Flick said: ‘Every week I sit in my session and I say nothing. I talk about everything but what happened that night, the one thing I need to talk about. But I can’t … keep it inside any more.’

‘You’re not alone. What happened that night happened to both of us.’

‘You don’t understand, Ray,’ she said. ‘You’re not the solution, you’re the problem. People have no idea who you are. But I do. I know who you are.’

‘Yes,’ Drake said. ‘You do.’

‘And I don’t think I can handle that burden. Of knowing about you and … what happened.’

And he knew then, with a terrible certainty, that she saw.

Saw what he did.

Flick walked off towards the search team and Drake gathered his thoughts. Then he walked back into the house, trying not reveal the fear that simmered inside him.

That the world would soon know the truth about Ray Drake.

But he couldn’t do anything about that now. There was work to do. A crime scene to attend to, an investigation to launch. For now, at least, he was back doing what he was put on this earth to do.

Climbing the stairs, Drake tried to focus on the crime scene. He looked inside the door of the spacious bathroom where somebody had used the tub last night. Luminol had been sprayed on the walls and bath but no blood traces had been found. Towels and the contents of the cabinet had been bagged up and taken away for examination.

In the bay window of the main bedroom, a rocking horse sightlessly watched Drake. Behind it, the heavy curtains were drawn. A CSE knelt in front of a long wardrobe, lifting prints off the sliding door.

Drake climbed the stairs to an attic office. The conversation with Flick repeating in his head, he tried to make sense of the enormous implications of it.

Ray.

Drake stopped on the stairs, called over the bannisters. ‘Hello?’

The forensics guy came out of the bedroom below. ‘Sir?’

‘Did you call?’

‘Not me,’ said the examiner, and went back inside.

Drake was at the door to the attic room when he realised he was looking at the broad back of the woman he had seen come into the house earlier, the hood of her scene suit oddly bulbous around her head. She was still hunched over her phone, her fingers swiping fluidly over its surface.

Unlike the other rooms, this one, hidden safely out of sight in the roof, was a messy, comfortable space. There were shelves and cabinets filled with books about art, music and travel; a poster tacked to the wall beneath a rose window advertised an opera in Berlin; box files and papers were piled on a small sofa, bills, receipts and documents spilling to the floor. Two desks were pushed together to allow the Harrows to work facing each other. A MacBook sat on one desk, a PC laptop on the other.

‘Look at this,’ said the woman, looking up.

‘I can’t see what it is,’ said Drake.

The woman presented the phone. The screen wobbled so he steadied her wrist. Drake saw her chipped black nail polish and a twisting henna tattoo along a forefinger, and realised she wasn’t wearing gloves. ‘I hope this phone isn’t evidence.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s mine.’ She lifted a lanyard from inside her protective clothing. ‘I’m Grace Beer. I’m your Digital Forensic Specialist.’

With people increasingly living their lives online via a variety of smart devices, the DFS was responsible for recovering digital data. It wouldn’t be long, Drake was reliably informed, before every household utility and device would communicate wirelessly with everything else. Fridges talking to toasters talking to music systems, the water mains discussing the weather with the garden sprinkler system. And everything run remotely from an app on a tablet or smart phone. The day would soon arrive when experts like Grace Beer, who could make sense of the deluge of digital information, would be given priority access at every crime scene.

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Drake. ‘Why are we looking at your phone?’

‘The apps.’

There were rows of icons on the screen. None of them made the slightest bit of sense to him.

‘The one with the little Viking helmet?’ he asked.

‘That’s a Thrash Metal Lyric Generator,’ she said. ‘The one next to it.’

Drake saw a logo shaped like an antenna, surrounded by crackling waves of sound. He recognised it as the branding of a major telecoms company.

‘You’re going to like this.’ She held the mobile at her shoulder like a tech guru addressing a convention of acolytes.

‘So basically, a lot of public places – cafes, restaurants, airports, libraries, yeah? – have Wi-Fi hotspots. Wait, you know what a Wi-Fi hotspot is, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Drake patiently. ‘I know what a Wi-Fi hotspot is.’

She pulled down her hood to reveal a huge pair of headphones clamped around a complicated milkmaid plait. Piercings ran up and down her ears and tattooed angel wings disappeared into her hairline at the neck. Her eye make-up was dark and heavy. To Ray Drake’s mind, Grace Beer didn’t look older than twelve.

‘It’s a space where you can log onto the internet. To use a public hotspot you’re usually asked to connect from a web page. But if you have a special app that allows you to log on …’ She dabbed at the telecoms app, opening it. ‘It’ll happen automatically, the phone will communicate with the hotspot and say –’ the phone danced in her hand as if speaking ‘– I’m here, let me onto the internet, good sir. And the hotspot will reply, welcome, friend, please partake of all my pleasures. And then they hook up. Follow me?’

‘Yes,’ said Drake, who could live without the funny voices.

‘Well, this house has a private Wi-Fi account, used by the householders. We all have them. You’ll need a password to connect with that. But there’s also a hidden portion in the router which is used to boost the local public hotspot signal.’

She made a face – ta da! – and waited for him to reply, but he didn’t know what he was meant to say.

‘So,’ she continued, unfazed, ‘the service provider uses it as a hotspot for anybody who wants to log on in this area using their paid Wi-Fi service. You’ll probably find a similar thing in many homes in this neighbourhood. And guess what, when I walked into the house the service provider’s app on my android,’ she waggled the phone, ‘allowed me to log o