But why hadn’t he killed him when he had the chance?

Was this his home? Was this where he had been hiding out? Was he a member of the Greyly family? If so, was that why Harold Greyly had been so much on the defensive? Moving over to the desk under the library window, Nino searched the drawers, finding nothing more than stationery and bills. The centre drawer opened without resistance. Apparently there were no locks in Courtford Hall. Even feeling behind the desk, and beneath it, gave up no secrets.

If he was going to hide something, Nino asked himself, where would he put it? The room gazed back at him impassively as he searched, pulling the cushions off the seats to check that there was nothing hidden underneath and looking behind every painting. Curtains were shaken, linings examined, shutters opened and closed, window seats plundered, rugs lifted and shaken – but with no result. He drew a complete blank.

So perhaps there was a safe?

Moving back to the sitting room, Nino bent down towards the stupefied man and shook him awake. ‘Have you got a safe?’

‘Whaaat?’

‘Where’s the safe?’

Greyly’s lips were furred with saliva. ‘What safe?’

‘You have a safe. Where is it?’

‘No safe!’ he slurred.

‘All right, let’s try another tack. Who came here today? There was someone here – I heard them. They left, then came back and attacked me.’ Nino shook Harold violently. ‘Wake up! I need you. Who came here today?’

He could see a shift in Greyly’s expression, from slackness to unease.

‘No one! I’ve told you. No one … No one comes here any more …’

Nino didn’t believe him. Someone had been there. Someone Harold knew and feared.

‘Was it a member of your family?’

‘They’ve gone …’

‘You said you’d sent the staff home for Christmas,’ Nino persisted. ‘Did one of them come back? Did they try and rob you?’ He shook the man urgently. ‘Wake up! I need your help – you let them in. There was no break-in, so you knew them. You opened the door to them, so you must have trusted them. If not now, once. Who was it?’ He jerked Harold upright, holding him by the lapels of his jacket. ‘Look at me! Concentrate. Tell me the names of your staff.’

‘Let me sleep!’

‘Tell me their names!’

‘Let me sleep!’

‘You can sleep after you’ve told me.’

Harold’s eyes tried to focus, but failed, his voice a mumble. ‘Mr and Mrs Harrison, the cook … the gardener, Len … Len Owen … All been with me for years … All bloody old, on their last legs.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Edward.’

‘Edward? Who’s Edward?’

His head was rolling, his voice blurred.

‘Edward Hillstone. My assistant …’

Letting go of him, Nino stepped back. The memory returned, sharp and clear. When he had first come to Court-ford Hall, Harold had wanted him to make an appointment with his assistant. And that assistant had been Edward Hillstone. A diffident young man in the background. Edward Hillstone. Eddie Hillstone. Eddie Ketch … Dear God, Nino thought, was he the killer? Vespucci’s impersonator? Had he found him? If so, Hillstone would have been ideally placed. The Greyly family had a connection with Angelico Vespucci: an ancestor murdered by the Venetian. At Court-ford Hall the killer would have access to the library, would be able to read the books on Vespucci and hide his own notes where no one would find them. Harold Greyly wasn’t interested in the collection – he would have left Hillstone to his own devices, left him to his research and plotting, to his immersion in the legend of The Skin Hunter.

Moving fast, Nino left the room, making for the upper floors. He found the master bedroom, guest rooms and bathrooms, then followed a narrow corridor which led to the servants’ quarters in another wing. He was running, only pausing when he reached a door on the third floor. The only one locked. Kicking at the handle, he broke the lock and entered.

The bedroom was cramped and extended a long way, half of its floor space under the sloping eaves. All the available wall surface was covered with bookshelves and a copy of the Vespucci painting loomed above the narrow bed.

The room was Spartan, neat, without character apart from the books and portrait. In the wardrobe were a few pairs of jeans and some T-shirts, a couple of fleeces neatly folded. On the bedside table was a copy of The Book Collector and an alarm clock set to eight a.m. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unlike a thousand other bedrooms occupied by single men.

Frowning, Nino glanced around, opening some of the books and shaking them to see if there were any loose pages. Nothing. He continued his search, looking behind the books and under the shelves. Again, nothing. Wondering if he was suspecting the wrong man, he turned back to the wardrobe and opened it again. A long mirror on the back of the door caught his attention, a tiny edge of paper poking out at the corner. Pulling the mirror off the door, Nino stared at the collage in front of him.

The photographs told him he was on to the right man. There were some of Edward Hillstone, others of a young woman – a slim woman, dressed casually. But in every one her face had been blacked out with a felt-tipped pen. He thought of Patrick Dewick’s message. Was this the woman who had broken the killer’s heart? Or was this the next victim? Was this Rachel?

One thing was certain: Edward Hillstone had picked his lair with skill. Courtford Hall was the perfect place from which to operate. It was remote, with a pompous employer unlikely to fraternise with the staff. Hillstone would have been a faultless employee – quiet, efficient, determined not to draw attention to himself. And all the time he was working as Harold Greyly’s assistant, he would have had access to the prodigious and arcane library.

Had Hillstone already known about Claudia Moroni when he first came to Courtford Hall? Or did he find out later, when his fascination with Vespucci grew? For an experienced researcher, it wouldn’t have been difficult to discover that Claudia Moroni had once been a member of the Greyly family. And in researching Claudia, Edward would have researched the three other victims. Stoking up his obsession, probably enjoying the added frisson of living in a family who had experienced The Skin Hunter’s deviation first hand.

Nino could feel his heart pulsing as he flung back the mattress on the bed, hoping to find another selection of photographs. But that would have been too obvious for Hillstone. Hurriedly, he looked around, then tapped the floorboards. Nothing loose. He walked to the window, pulled back the shutters – but there was nothing to be found. There were more photographs, Nino knew it – but where? Then another idea came to him and he moved over to the door. It had been repanelled and he levered apart the space between the original and the façade. The photographs fell at his feet. Some were of Venice, horribly familiar – the exact place where the body of Seraphina had been discovered. Other prints were of a woman he recognised as Sally Egan. Some had been taken through her kitchen window, others were snaps of her walking home, a solitary figure under the dismal street light. And then there were the photographs of her skinned body.

He had taken the shots from all angles, her flayed corpse laid out on a plastic sheet, her skin placed neatly beside her like a lover. Repelled, Nino hurried through the other photographs, hesitating when he came to a shot of the airport in Tokyo and another image, of Harriet Forbes, sitting alone at a café window. The last prints were of Greenfield’s Hospital, where Eddie Ketch had worked. Only it wasn’t Eddie Ketch any more, it was Edward Hillstone.

Moving over to the desk, Nino looked for a computer, but there wasn’t one. Hillstone wasn’t that stupid. He had taken the most incriminating evidence with him. He might have been rushed, but he had made sure he took the laptop and the notes. As for the photographs he had left behind, perhaps he thought he would be able to explain them away. Or maybe he didn’t care any more. Maybe being recognised as the killer was what he wanted.