“Expunged. It was as if it never happened.” Peel closed his detective’s notebook. “Why are you so interested in Edward Knight?”
“I’m restoring a painting he intends to purchase.”
“And?”
“Let it go, Timothy.”
Peel took up his phone and typed. “Isn’t that strange,” he said after a moment. “It’s been a week since Alice’s last post on Instagram.” He set aside the phone. “Missing, is she?”
“Did I say that?”
“Didn’t have to.” There was a brief silence. “Anyone looking for her?”
“The Spanish police.”
“You’re going to help them?”
“Something like that.”
“Theory of the case?”
“Haven’t got one.”
“Gone astray?” suggested Peel.
“Maybe.”
“Dead?”
“Could be.”
“That leaves one other possibility.”
“I suppose it does,” agreed Gabriel, and finished the last of his chicken pasty.
8
Cornwall–Ibiza
“Are they ever going to speak to me again?”
“Only in their Venetian-accented Italian.”
“It’s come to that, has it?”
“A showdown,” said Chiara.
She was behind the wheel of the Range Rover. Irene and Raphael were in the back seat, long-faced, mute.
“I should have walked to the airport,” said Gabriel.
“In those clothes?”
He was wearing a sport jacket, gabardine trousers, and suede derby footwear. “I’m flying private and staying at the Ibiza Gran.”
“How will you possibly manage?”
Chiara sped past a collection of stone outbuildings belonging to their neighbor, a sheep farmer called Twigg. The road was scarcely wide enough to accommodate the Range Rover, and lined on both sides by dense hedgerows.
