Chapter 14: Later

Rafe's POV

Rhiannon rang me at ten past nine, from a lane in the dark, and it was the first time she had rung me since the porch.

I took the phone out onto the hotel balcony so the room could not hear.

"Did she ring you on Tuesday night?" Rhiannon said. "Did Cressida tell you Tilly had nobody?"

"No."

"She has a voice note. It says Tuesday, nine twelve. In your voice: Cress, not now, I can't, I'm at the. Then a gap, and then: later."

I felt the cold of the railing go through my sleeve.

"I never said that about Tilly," I said. "Rhiannon, I swear it on both of them."

"I'm not asking you to swear."

"What are you asking?"

"I'm asking you to prove it," she said. "You have a week of phone logs. Use them."

She hung up.

I stood there with the dial tone in my ear and understood that she had just given me the only door she had.

My work phone records every call.

The compliance team set that up six years ago, after a bad quarter, and I had cursed it every day since.

I rang the head of IT at home and told him to send me every recording from my number between Tuesday noon and Thursday midnight.

He sent them within minutes.

I sat on the edge of the hotel bed with earphones in.

There was no call to Cressida on Tuesday at 9:12 p.m.

At that hour I had been on the Hallam Court terrace with a whisky.

I had thought Tilly was asleep in London with a nanny I'd never met.

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