I'd never felt guilty leaving a woman's bed in the morning before today. Since my last serious relationship ended, I hadn't been interested in more than one night, and I always made that quite clear up front. And I didn't feel guilty over the blonde sprawled out across the mattress, snoring softly.

No, I felt guilty because while I was pounding into her last night, I hadn't been able to stop thinking about a certain brunette who may or may not have been involved in plotting a murder.

I knew now that she hadn't been there at Daylesford Hall in person. Rania may not have looked directly at the camera on her way in or out of the restaurant, but the curves were all hers, and the manager remembered the unusual necklace she'd been wearing.

"Gold, fancy, looked like some kind of puzzle piece," the woman said.

"Can you describe Rania's demeanour?"

"Quiet. She barely spoke, and as soon as she finished dessert, she left with her friend and gave me the money for their half of the meal on her way out. Good tipper, though."

"So she didn't enjoy herself?"

"Sure didn't look that way. Why? Is it important?"

"Professional curiosity."

Professional my arse. I'd buried my face in the blonde's pussy to avoid further questions, and now I was sneaking out of her place like a damn burglar.

RJ was already at his computer when I got back, the big desktop he'd built from scratch and was constantly upgrading. He always kidded that it could give NASA a run for its money. At least, I think he was kidding.

"Good night?" he asked.

"The best," I lied. "What happened to the waitress? I thought you were onto a sure thing there."

"I had her tucked into bed by midnight, then I came home to do your shit. You can thank me with coffee."

I sighed and headed for the kitchen, mainly because I needed caffeine too. Sleep hadn't come easy last night. RJ worked odd hours, and half of his diet consisted of coffee, which meant we had a complicated Swiss Jura machine that cost him over two grand. It ground the beans to order and frothed milk at the touch of a button. Who needed Starbucks?

I made us both espressos and carried them through to his home office, once the third bedroom but now full of gadgets whirring away.

"Go on then, what have you found?"

"Your girl's an interesting one."

"She's not my girl."

Why did that feel like a lie? Even RJ gave me a "yeah, right" look.

"Rania Algafari, twenty-four years old, Syrian citizen, granted refugee status in the UK three years ago. She arrived from a camp in France a year before that as part of a deal to spread asylum seekers around Europe. She's got another two years before she needs to either leave or apply to stay permanently."

"They can't send her back, surely? There's nothing left out there."

"I'm just telling you the rules."

"Okay, I get it. What else?"

"She lives with a girl called Shannon Doyle and her daughter, Aisling. Shannon's a year younger and left County Kildare in a hurry five years ago. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of that. Anyway, they've been sharing a flat for the last two and a half years. Why do you want to know all this? Is she a suspect? Or are you trying to work out where she might like to go on a date?"

"I'm not entirely sure." Where Rania was concerned, my brain refused to function properly.

"Because most girls would rather you got to know them through conversation and quality time in the bedroom, not by having an admittedly genius hacker go through their records."

"I mean, I don't know whether she's a suspect. She's got an alibi for the murder itself, but she knew Helene's eyes had been gouged, and I can't work out how. Lloyd Weston swears he didn't talk to anyone but the police, and if they've got a leak, how come the only person who knows about it is the office cleaner?"

"Could she have stumbled across the body before Weston did?"

"The timings don't fit. She was still out for dinner when Weston called it in."

Helene had died at nine, and her father rang 999 at ten when he stopped at the office to pick up a contract to read through. His secretary had printed it out for him to take on his train trip to Manchester the next morning.

"Maybe Rania was an accomplice? How did the perp get into the building?"

"Perp? Have you been watching CSI again?"

RJ threw a pad of Post-it notes at me, followed by a pen when I ducked. "Just answer the question if you want any more help."

"There was no sign of forced entry. The old security system registered what time the doors opened and closed, but not who went through, and Helene had turned off the alarm when she arrived."

"If they needed a swipe card to get in, then surely that narrows it down to employees?"

Oh, if only it were that simple. "Not quite. Nineteen visitor passes have gone missing in the last six months alone, along with twelve employee passes. They never got deactivated in case they turned up again. Plus, there's a back door leading to the basement that still uses an old-fashioned key. Nobody's kept track of who's obtained those over the years, and of course, someone could have got an extra one cut."

"Or what if Rania lent her card to somebody?"

"What would her motive have been? She says she barely knew Helene, and everyone I've spoken to says she didn't get involved in office life. She came in, cleaned, then went home again. Most people didn't even know her name."

"What do you always tell me? Most crimes are motivated by sex or money. Maybe she needed the cash. From her address, she doesn't have a lot of it."

No, nothing about her screamed that she had money to splash around. Although the manager at Pizza Express said she was a good tipper. Routine generosity, or a reason to celebrate that night?

Or something else? "She dates occasionally. Any sign of a more serious relationship recently?"

RJ shook his head. "No. And... Never mind."

"What?"

"It probably doesn't matter."

"Tell me."

He swivelled in his seat until he was looking at me. "You won't like it."

"I'm a big boy, RJ. Just fucking tell me, okay?"

"As part of the medical assessment Rania had to go through under the resettlement programme, the doctor noted evidence of repeated rough sex and sodomy. She denied rape but refused to talk about it any further."

Shit. Of all the things I might have suspected... I wanted to hide her away from the evil fuckers who'd hurt her, but as soon as I had that thought, I shoved it away. I couldn't afford to be thinking like that, not when there was a question mark over her involvement in Helene's death.

"Noted," I said through clenched teeth. "But we still can't rule out a sexual angle. How about Helene's boyfriend? Anything there?"

I'd interviewed him myself. Derek, the dull-as-fuck lawyer who headed up Weston Corp's legal department and seemed to spend more time playing golf with Lloyd than romancing the man's daughter. When I'd asked about the last time he saw Helene, he actually got out his calendar to check. They'd had dinner the previous Tuesday, and no, he didn't stay over because he had a breakfast meeting the next day. What kind of dullard couldn't manage to show his girl a good time and still turn up for croissants in the morning?

"I'm not sure he's got the imagination to organise a crime like that."

"Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe he and Rania had a thing going?"

I spat espresso, luckily back into the cup. The thought of Rania with that fool turned my stomach. "I can't see it."

"Another bit on the side?"

"He doesn't seem the type, but I won't write him off."

***

I was on my third cup of coffee by the time I sat down in Lloyd Weston's office for our first proper update meeting. This was the part I hated most about running my own company—the schmoozing. The richer the client, the more face-to-face time they wanted, never mind that while I was talking to them I wasn't investigating anything.

"So, how's it going?" he asked.

AKA, what am I getting for my money?

I gave him a précis of my interviews yesterday, glossing over my suspicions about Rania. I didn't want to play up her involvement until I had a better idea of what was going on. It bothered me that I couldn't get a handle on her personality, even if my cock had its own thoughts on the subject.

"What's your next step, son?"

I may have been thirty-five years younger than him, but I still found it patronising when he called me that. Had he been anyone other than a client, I'd have set him straight. And I bet he wouldn't have called Chris Turner "son," either. The power of a warrant card.

"I have half a dozen interviews left, and I need to do some more research into people's backgrounds, but I was hoping you could help with a few questions."

"About my daughter?"

"Among other things, if you're up to it."

His hands shook as he reached into his desk drawer and came out with a hip flask. Only once he'd taken a generous slug did he nod.

"Anything to see my daughter's murderer behind bars."

"Firstly, I need to ask about Derek."

"It wasn't Derek. He loved my daughter."

"At the moment, I can't rule any leads out. That's why you brought me in, after all. To be a fresh pair of eyes."

Lloyd reached for the flask again, thought the better of it, sat back in his chair. "What I'm about to say doesn't go any further than this room, you understand?"

"Of course."

I only ever talked to RJ, and he knew how to keep his mouth shut.

"You may have noticed my son has...problems."

Yes, I'd smelled one of them on his breath at ten o'clock in the morning. "The drinking?"

Lloyd shoved his flask back into the drawer and slammed it. "It started out as a tipple with lunch, and before I realised it, he was drinking Scotch for breakfast. We've tried everything—rehab, bribery, even a minder. But he just can't help himself. That doesn't leave Weston Corp in a very good position, and I was grooming Derek to take over the company alongside Helene. Not only is—was—she my daughter, she was an excellent marketing director. I know what you're thinking. That statistically, most murders are carried out by someone close to the victim, but trust me, you're on a hiding to nothing with Derek."

Well, Lloyd Weston was the client. And given that he was the one who'd hired me, he had little incentive to steer me in the wrong direction. I'd defer to his judgement for now. Which brought me onto a more sensitive subject.

"My next question is about your daughter, and what was done to her eyes."

Weston deflated before me. "I've been thinking about that too. Why? Why would somebody do that to her? Was it symbolic? A message? Or they genuinely didn't want her to see something?"

"I can't give you an answer to that yet, and it's an important piece of the puzzle, but my question was actually regarding who might know about it."

"I haven't told a soul, not after the police asked me not to. Even my wife. She'd be distraught if she found out. Why?"

"Just something for me to be aware of. One final question, and this one goes back a few years. I heard a rumour there may have been another death in Daylesford Hall. A suicide?"

"You must mean Arthur Brady. The man threw himself over the second-floor balcony late one evening."

"Any idea why?"

"Not at first. His wife said he'd been stressed lately, and that led to us establishing our employee well-being program. We were the first company in the area to do that. A relaxation room in the basement, yoga, Pilates, that sort of thing. Every member of staff also has access to a twenty-four-hour guidance helpline staffed by trained counsellors. That's Arthur's legacy."

I'd seen the relaxation room when Martha showed me around. Beanbags, a pool table, some weird sleep pod that looked as if it came out of a sci-fi movie. Martha reckoned they were considering a flotation tank for next year.

"You said 'at first.' Did something else come to light?"

A huff escaped Lloyd's lips. "Yes, it did. A month later, one of the other finance staff noticed several large unauthorised payments had been made from the main bank account. We traced the funds to offshore accounts, but that was as far as we got."

"And you think Arthur took the money?"

"He must have known transactions that size would get picked up in the quarterly reconciliations and panicked. We tightened procedures right up after that."

"Did the police have any luck finding the money?"

"We didn't tell them. The chances of retrieving it would have been slim, I suspect, and I had no desire to drag a grieving widow through a criminal investigation. No, Weston Corp swallowed the loss."

"That was...kind." I wasn't sure I'd be so forgiving, but then Lloyd Weston was from a different generation.

"We'd just picked up some lucrative contracts, and it seemed like the right thing to do. Do you have any more questions?" He glanced at his watch. "I have a call at ten thirty, but if you do, I'll have my assistant reschedule."

"Not today."

"Same time on Wednesday?"

"It's in my diary."

*********************

Fun Fact:

Daylesford Hall is based on a real building, which is the place that inspired me to start writing in the first place.

Here's a picture of the balcony Arthur fell off...