What about Chloe and Jade? Didn’t they realise they were in danger after their fellow co-authors were murdered? How could they have been so naïve? It was another question he hoped to ask soon. If it wasn’t already too late.

The final piece of the puzzle was how Nancy Marr fitted in. All they knew so far was that she’d lived three doors down from Melanie Haggis’s small council flat.

It was far more important to find where Graham was at that moment. His phone was off, so they couldn’t get a trace on it. They would need to figure it out.

Patrick placed a laptop on the desk in the centre of the room and gestured for everyone to gather round.

‘We know,’ he said, ‘that the first two murder scenes were connected to OnTarget. Jessica was killed at Rocket Man Studios, here.’ He had already brought up Google Maps and pointed at the location of the disused studio on the map. ‘That place was used to shoot an OnT video. And Wendy told me that “Room 365” is an OnTarget song. Rose was found in room 365 of the Travel Inn, here.’

He typed in the address and pointed to the location.

‘We know Burns isn’t at home.’ Two uniformed officers had already been round to check. All the lights were off and the neighbours said they hadn’t seen him or his car all day. ‘He hasn’t taken them to Melanie’s old flat either. Somebody else lives there now. It has to be somewhere connected to OnTarget, like the others. Somewhere symbolic.’

All of the faces around him were blank.

‘If only Wendy were here,’ Carmella said quietly.

‘Hang on,’ said Winkler. ‘Didn’t that teenage twit have an app that traced Jade’s phone? Where was it?’

Occasionally, Patrick thought, Winkler could surprise him. ‘Yes. He traced it here.’ He typed Platt’s Eyot into Google Maps. The uniforms he’d sent to the Eyot had found the phone in the undergrowth, lying among wet leaves. It was dead, water damaged, and wouldn’t switch on. Patrick guessed it had survived just long enough for Kai to trace it. Now it was a useless lump of plastic. ‘If Jade met Graham here, the chances are he didn’t take her far. We need an OnTarget expert.’

‘Don’t look at me,’ said Winkler.

‘Hattie Parsons,’ Patrick said, calling her and putting her on speaker.

She answered on the second ring. ‘Detective Lennon,’ she said in a flirty voice. ‘I was wondering if you’d call me again.’

Winkler guffawed.

‘Are you near a computer?’ Patrick asked.

‘Right in front of one. Why?’

He told her to open maps and to look up Platt’s Eyot. ‘Are you there?’

‘Yep. Well, I’m looking at the map. What’s—?’

‘I need to know if there are any locations near there that have any connection to OnTarget. Somewhere referenced in one of their songs. A place where a video was shot. The house where one of them grew up, or where they met, or where Shawn lost his virginity. Anything.’

She laughed. ‘I think Shawn popped his cherry in a park in Stoke.’

‘Hattie. This is serious. Please.’

‘OK. Sorry . . . Let me think.’

‘You should zoom out, look at all the locations around Platt’s Eyot; be systematic.’

‘All right.’ There was a protracted silence at the other end of the line. Then: ‘Yeah. That old hotel . . . Sunbury Lock Manor.’

‘Did the band stay there?’

‘Maybe. Sunbury Lock Manor is dead posh – or, rather, it was. It’s shut down now – I think some other hotel chain is planning to refurbish it at some point – but the band shot the cover of Twilight Kisses there, in this amazing shell grotto they’ve got in the grounds.’

‘And that’s the only place you can think of that’s nearby?’

‘Yeah. Why—?’

He hung up.

‘Sunbury Lock Manor,’ he said, fingers flickering over the keyboard to get the address. ‘Let’s go.’

Patrick put on the blues and twos all the way to Sunbury, switching them off as they neared the derelict building, not wanting to alert Graham who might be listening out for sirens. Carmella sat beside him, rubbing the side of her belly, subconsciously remembering what had happened at the end of their last big case. Suzanne was back at the station organising the armed response unit, getting uniforms in place, but Patrick had been unable to wait. They needed to get here as quickly as possible, so Suzanne had given him permission to scout ahead.

He killed the lights and pulled up outside the hotel gates, which were chained up – but with, he noticed, a new and shiny padlock. Beyond the gates, the building sat among rolling lawns, the grass now overgrown, piles of rubbish lying in heaps where someone had been fly-tipping. Patrick realised now that he had driven by here before. In daylight, the place looked like a typical English stately home – the former home of a long-dead earl or duke. But in the darkness its abandonment lent it a creepy air, like a haunted house, a place where schoolboys would dare each other to spend the night.

He got out of the car and went up to the gate, rattled it. Carmella came up behind him.

‘It’s been shut for three years,’ she said. She’d looked it up on the way over. ‘Useless management ran it into the ground – and then there was a near-fatal food-poisoning case that proved the final straw. It says on Wikipedia that Shawn Barrett was rumoured to be buying the building, after falling in love with it during a photo shoot. But it never happened.’

‘We need to get in there,’ Patrick said, examining the surrounding walls, trying to work out how easy it would be to climb over. He would need Carmella to give him a leg up, but it was possible.

‘No, Patrick. We need to wait.’

‘He could be killing them right now.’

‘In which case, we’re already too late,’ she said.

‘But what if they’re still alive?’ he said. ‘What if we wait, get in there and discover that they were murdered while we were standing here following fucking protocol?’

‘Pat . . . there must be loads of other places associated with the band. What if we’re wasting time here when he’s got them somewhere else . . . ?’

But he was walking off along the side of the wall, trying to find a way in, anxiety making his voice sharper than he intended.

‘What do you propose we do, Carmella? Just walk away, and find out later they’re in there?’

‘No . . . but—’

‘Give me a leg up – now.’

‘Let me call and see how far away back-up is—’

‘That’s an order.’

Carmella knew better than to continue to question him. She crouched and held out her cupped hands so he could step onto them and hoist himself up to grab hold of the top of the brick wall. She pushed and he pulled, heaving and panting until he was on the wall, looking down at his colleague. Without another word, he was over, and running. Tucked in a clearing between the trees was a small car park – empty, apart from one solitary vehicle: a new black Audi A4 with tinted windows.

‘Shit!’

They were definitely in there.

Halfway across the lawn he realised he’d left his phone charging in the car. But he wasn’t turning back now. He had no weapon, but he didn’t care. He had to reach Chloe and Jade. He could hear Wendy’s voice in his ear as the building loomed up from the darkness, framed by moonlight. Go on, boss, she urged. Go on, Patrick.

He reached the hotel. Of course, the front doors were shut, locked. He could smash a window with one of the earthen pots that lay scattered around, but he didn’t want Graham to know he was coming, in case it made him panic and kill the girls, if he hadn’t already.