The photo on her phone had long since disappeared, and she was under strict instructions not to take screenshots, but there it was – the back entrance.

She grasped the handle with a sweaty hand (oh God, what was she going to do about that? He’d be disgusted!) and pulled it open, slipping inside. She could hear clattering and somebody whistling in a kitchen, then heavy footsteps coming towards her, so she ducked around a corner and hid in a corridor.

A man came out of the kitchen and went through the double doors. She heard the spark of a lighter and caught the faint whiff of cigarette smoke. The man coughed and Rose’s heart pounded. She felt paralysed with nerves and had a moment of sickening clarity. This was crazy, what was she doing here, did she really think that he would be interested in her? It was probably Bethany, or one of the other girls, the girls she spent so long chatting to online, pranking her. She should go now, walk out the front door of the hotel and go home to her bed, give Mum a kiss, forget all this nonsense. She was meant to be revising and, as Dad reminded her so often, the chances that she was going to be famous or married to a pop star were about as strong as the chances of him winning Britain’s Got Talent with a PowerPoint presentation about accountancy.

But the desire for this to be real, for it all to be true, was too strong. He had contacted her after reading her tweets and checking her Tumblr. He really did want to meet her. She pushed down the doubts, mentally deleting them, consigning them to history like the Snapchat photos. This was her chance. She had to believe if she wanted to achieve. That’s what the kitten poster on her wall said: Believe to achieve.

She believed.

Her phone flashed again and her heart thudded. This time the picture was of a door. A hotel door. The number was 365.

She smiled at the reference.

This was really going to happen. But when she emerged from the corridor and got into the lift, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Oh shit, she looked like a drowned rat! Her hair was sticking to her forehead and mascara was running down her cheeks. She was sweating too and probably stank, her Friendship perfume washed away by the rain. She needed to find a bathroom, to clean herself up.

But as she thought this, her phone flashed again.

It was a picture of him, that shy smile on his face. The caption read, ‘I CAN’T WAIT ANY LONGER.’

She caught her breath. It would be OK. He would like her exactly as she was. That was the kind of person he was. She read an interview once – actually, she’d read it a hundred times – in which he said that he liked girls to be natural. And he’d also said, in a Q&A with an American website, that his favourite smell was fresh rain.

The lift door pinged open. The corridor was empty. As she walked down towards room 365, she felt light, like she was full of helium, and as she knocked on the hotel door she experienced a great sensation of warmth, of peace, a feeling that she could describe only as coming home. Like this was where she was meant to be. It was her destiny.

The door was pulled open and she stepped into the room. She could smell air freshener, the same one her mum used at home, but she couldn’t see anyone in the room. Just a bed, with – what was that lying on the sheets? Something metal, glinting in the harsh light.

He was, she realised, standing behind her, but before she could turn she felt a sudden, sharp pain in her head, and then she was being dragged, with blood in her eyes, across the room. All she could hear was breathing, and all she could think about was Mum, her lovely mum, knocking on her door at home with a steaming mug of tea.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Day 1 – Patrick

DI Patrick Lennon was in a foul mood as he drove around the one-way system of Kingston-upon-Thames’s town centre with the unmarked pool car’s blues and twos on. He was trying hard not to let it show, out of respect for his passenger, his colleague DS Carmella Masiello, but she knew him all too well.

‘Come on, Pat, spit it out. You look like a bulldog chewing a wasp.’ She chuckled. ‘Don’t you love that expression? I think it’s my favourite, with “a face like a slapped backside” coming a close second.’

He didn’t smile, although her deep voice and soft Irish accent usually helped lift his spirits when he was in a funk. They’d been working together for three years now and increasingly he thought that he couldn’t imagine anyone else as his partner. The traumatic events of their last case had served only to strengthen their bond.

‘Are you thinking about the girl?’ she prompted, then paused, her chatter halted by the grim awareness of what awaited them in the hotel at the end of their car journey.

There was a long silence that Patrick finally broke, his voice barely audible above the wail of the siren.

‘No. I probably should be, but I’m not.’

‘What is it, then?’

Patrick took a corner too sharply and a corkscrew of auburn hair fell loose from Carmella’s long ponytail. She blew a sharp puff of air from her mouth to get it off her face, then tucked it reflexively behind her ear. It was that habitual gesture that finally made Patrick crack a small smile.

‘Sorry, Carmella, ignore me. I’ve just had it up to here with living with my mum and dad. It was a necessary evil when Gill was . . . not around . . . but now she’s out, it just seems crazy that me and Bonnie are still cooped up in my old tiny bedroom, while Gill has our whole house to herself! I can’t moan about it at home because my mother already thinks Gill is the Antichrist. And she’s been so helpful – Mum, I mean. I couldn’t have managed without her and Dad, but they’re clearly knackered as well. It’s been eighteen months! Imagine, living with your parents at my age for eighteen months! Sharing a bedroom with a toddler! My street cred is in tatters, and let’s not even mention my sodding sex life . . .’

He was joking – sort of – but somehow couldn’t raise another smile. Carmella was his friend as well as his partner, but he suddenly wished she hadn’t wormed it out of him. The words had gushed out involuntarily, but now, far from being cathartic, it felt emasculating. He accelerated around a line of stationary cars and zoomed past a red light, on the wrong side of the road, as if the speed could shake off some of his frustration. Frustration, and humiliation, that everyone at the station by now knew his situation. DI Winkler, the perennial thorn in his side, had asked if ‘his mummy tucks him in at night’ just the other day, and it had been all Patrick could do not to sock him one.

He shifted gear up to fifth and took off down the long straight road.

‘Slow down, boss,’ Carmella said. ‘The girl’s still going to be dead when we get there. So, tell me to mind my own business, but when do you think you’ll be able to go home? Doesn’t seem right, somehow, when you’re not the one who can’t be trusted with Bonnie . . .’

Patrick shot a sidelong glance at her – his instinct to tell her, yes, mind your own business – but he knew she was only concerned. And the truth was, he’d bottled it all up for so long that it would be a relief to talk about it. Doing so while driving at seventy in a 40 mph zone seemed as good a time as any.

‘It’s been six months since Gill was released. She seems absolutely fine, and Bonnie sees her most days – unsupervised now. But her doctor recommended that she shouldn’t feel she has total responsibility for Bonnie until she’s completely ready, and I don’t want to push her in case . . . you know . . .’