'D'you mind if we have a quick look, sir, just in case he is here?' DS Mackie said. Rita felt every muscle in her body tense.

'Yes. Er - no. Go ahead. Madre mia, I don't believe it. Again...' A shaken Federico came back to the living room as the officers thumped around upstairs. A muscle in his jaw was twitching. Nobody felt like talking. If that pizza turned up now, Rita had completely lost her appetite. Even Pepperoni had run out the cat flap into the back garden, leaving scratches through Rita's top.

'Well, he's not upstairs,' she heard another policeman say. 'Let's check the downstairs quickly.' Four officers trooped into the living room and the kitchen wearing thick fluorescent jackets. DS Mackie, the only one not in uniform, glanced at Rita but showed no recognition. She didn't know if she should be relieved at his professionalism or concerned in case he wondered why she was here.

'No, he's not here,' one of the other constables said. 'Sorry to disturb you. We might be back. We'll try the addresses you provided.' The door slammed and the policemen left as quickly as they had arrived. After a brief sharpen of claws, a black and white cat - she guessed the third one - shot past the table into the kitchen.

Her mind reeling, Rita could relate to that cat.

Nobody spoke.

Alfonso's hand found hers but she felt too keyed up to reciprocate. Jerry the light coloured tabby had walked back into the room and Rita followed him with her eyes, watched him follow the others towards the kitchen. To stave off her nauseous restlessness, she focused on the cat, visualised him sitting on her lap, imagined him walking through neighbourhood gardens chasing mice.

'I'm going out for a smoke,' Federico mumbled, following the cats towards the kitchen door. Rita was desperate to join him. She had stopped and started so many times, she knew it wouldn't end well. She didn't have to make the effort to fight the urge; her stunned body and frazzled brain wouldn't let her get up.

The time sat in silence felt like an eternity. When a key finally did turn in the lock, momentary relief washed through her.

But only momentary.

'Hola,' Matteo said, walking through the hallway into the living room as if nothing had happened.

Rita was the first to speak. She kept her voice gentle. 'How are you, Matteo?'

For several seconds, Matteo stared at her. For a moment he looked genuinely terrified, his eyes wide, his mouth open in a small O shape. Rita noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the few millimetres of stubble on his pale chin. 'Oh - the whole, leaving? I, er, I get like that sometimes. There was a lot of people in that hotel. I should have let you know, sorry.'

He took a breath, looking between the three of them. 'Sorry. I know it's weird. It was wrong of me to have just left without warning. I should have let you know I was going. But I guess you'd had enough of it too.'

There was silence. 'Or - you wouldn't be here at my dad's. Right?'

'Well, no.' Rita took another sip of wine. 'It was cancelled after the murder.'

Matteo seemed stunned. He shook his head, rocked back on his chair. 'What? That's a joke, right?'

'It's not,' Alfonso said. 'Didn't you see the news?'

'Wow. You're serious? Someone was murdered for real at the Crime Convention? That's mental.' Matteo stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. He took some crisps from the bowl and crunched loudly.

'Yeah. The event is cancelled, so Rita and I thought we'd stay round here,' Alfonso said.

'I was actually going to go back this morning. But I've been asleep most of the day. I had no idea it was actually cancelled. You didn't seem to like it. I thought you just bailed on it.' There was a defensive tightness in his voice. Rita's fingers twitched. A small screwdriver lay at the end of the table near a folded napkin. She hoped he hadn't noticed her glance at it.

'There were some things I would have been interested in, activities and so on,' she said evenly.

The kitchen door clicked open. Federico stepped back inside and a slight smell of tobacco wafted through. Rita had rarely been hit with a craving so severe, and this wasn't the right situation to ask.

'Matteo,' Federico muttered, his voice tight, staring at the young man as he looked downwards. 'The police were here a few minutes ago. Why are they after you? What have you done?'

'Nothing.' Matteo looked like a lost little boy, playing with the strings on his hoodie.

'They looked in every room in the house. Four of them. They wouldn't tell me what happened.' Federico spoke in a low, guttural tone. 'Matteo, those cops better have made a mistake. If you've started again -'

'Dad!' Matteo said testily. 'I haven't.'

'How do I know? That's what you said before.' Federico topped up his glass and rubbed his finger up and down the stem. 'You left that hotel without telling anyone. You didn't even spend one night there. And now the police show up at my door. Tell me what's going on.'

'I told you, Dad.' Matteo was defensive. 'I went to a friend's. Like I said to Alfonso, there were too many people there. I didn't want to...to be around any more. I already explained.'

'What friend?' Federico persisted, as the doorbell rang. He heaved himself off the chair and walked to the doorway. Rita noticed that he was shaking slightly as he walked, the slight beads of sweat on his face. Her back ached from tension and from sitting down too long and too stiffly, unable to relax.

Quickly, Alfonso snatched the screwdriver from the table and slipped it into his pocket.

'So who got murdered?' Matteo mumbled. 'Do you know?'

Rita took a breath. 'I don't know if they have announced it officially yet. I'll look it up.' Not wanting to tell him anything that hadn't been said publicly, she reached for her personal phone and searched on the English version of Google. Unsurprisingly, the Spanish news sites showed nothing about it at all.

'Erica Scott, the podcaster. Pobrecita, she was only 25.' It was the first time she had said it aloud. She found herself choking up. Erica's brown hair and hazel green eyes were embedded in her memory.

'It can't be her. It's not possible!' Matteo raised his voice, his eyes blazing with anger.

Rita was shocked by his sudden fury. 'I wish it wasn't. How horrific for everyone who loved her.'

'No! You're lying,' Matteo spat. 'She's not dead, I don't believe you.' His arm shot over to Rita's phone like a snake, whipping it out of her hand before she could react. He stared at the screen for several seconds, sitting perfectly still. Then his face crumpled, his mouth slightly open. Tears brimmed in his eyes; slowly, he shook his head.

'No. No, no, no, no.' His shoulders shook and he let out a loud, keening howl of despair. Rita's phone dropped from his hand and he followed it, slumping from his chair onto the floor. He took several gasping, sucking breaths.

Whatever reaction Rita had expected it wasn't this.

She pulled out her chair, got up and edged towards him. Crying on the floor, Matteo appeared utterly desolate. He thrashed his arms on the carpet. His cheeks were streaked with tears, sobs wracking his whole body.

'Why wouldn't she see,' he sobbed, picking her phone up and hurling it against the back of the sofa. 'Everyone who loved her, Rita? They didn't really love her. Her so-called boyfriend, the useless Wayne. All those guys she met, all those fake friends of hers. Don't get me started on Donna. None of them were any good for her. None of them.'

She bent down and sat beside him cross legged, her heart pounding. 'What?'

'She wouldn't let me love her. She told me to leave her alone. Everyone said I had to leave her alone. The police. My dad. Everyone. But she would have been better off with me.' Matteo let out another sob. He punched the floor with his fist as he wailed. It hit Rita then, the full significance of Erica's warning, the fear and revulsion she must have felt on seeing him there - with someone, through her career, she knew about and respected.

A police officer.

The realisation made her dizzy with horror.

Rita's mind flashed to a situation she'd had when she was at police college in her 20s. Her breath caught. 'You might not have meant to frighten her, but she was probably scared.' She felt dizzy, forced a scoff before she continued. 'I can laugh now, but I was terrified of my stalker. He used to watch me on the other side of the street. He followed me home on the bus. He even found my number and rang it a few times.'

'No. I didn't try to scare her.' Matteo's voice was firm and angry. He drew another gasping breath. 'And I'm not a stalker. She messaged me first. I made a funny comment on her Instagram post. She messaged me to say I'd brightened her day.' He pulled himself up from the carpet, sat cross legged, winding his hoodie strings around his fingers.

'Probably trying to be friendly.' Rita tensed as soon as she'd said it. It was the wrong thing, but what else was there?

'No! She put a heart! That meant something.' Matteo spoke in a low, tortured voice. 'We used to talk. Talk a lot. But when I told her I loved her - that's when she stopped replying. Her boyfriend must have made her block me. He didn't deserve her.'

Rita's hands stiffened; her words had trouble escaping her mouth. Acid rose inside her throat. Alfonso was still sat at the table, silent and ashen faced. She again thanked everything that he had taken the screwdriver out of sight and was sitting between her, Matteo and the kitchen - where the knives were.

'Did you go to her house?' she asked, hoping her calm tone masked the fear she felt.

Matteo's silence told her everything.

'A few times,' he mumbled. 'Now my dad will twist everything. He'll call me a stalker.'

'Call you a stalker?' Federico suddenly snarled, taking Rita by surprise. She hadn't even realised he was back in the room. Turning her head, she saw him standing by the table, facing them both with enraged eyes. The pizzas she now had no appetite for were in a stack behind him. 'I can't bear to stand here and listen to your crap, Matteo. You told me you'd stopped! You promised me you weren't going to bother that poor woman again!'

Matteo twisted around to look at his dad, his face red and streaked with tears. 'You have to believe me, I stopped. I did everything everyone told me. I did what you said. But I saw her at the convention. She was standing right in front of me. I had to leave right away so - so I wouldn't be tempted!'

His phraseology about being 'tempted' made Rita's skin crawl at the attitude it revealed.

Erica would have been terrified.

And now she was dead.

'I didn't raise you to hassle women, son,' Federico yelled, red in the face. A single tear ran down his cheek. 'You can't force someone to love you! You're lucky I didn't kick you out the first time the cops turned up. I thought that shit was over! And now, that woman you were obsessed with is dead! Was it you?'

'Answer me! Was it you, son? Did you kill her?' The pain was written on Federico's face. His anger was far from helpful but Rita wanted to hug him at his distress, at the strain the situation was having on him.

'No! How could you think I'd do that, Dad,' Matteo sobbed. 'She was the love of my life!'