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methodically in his room through the witness statements in the file Marcie Braun had given him. There was nothing new, although reading it in detail made what had happened seem more real – in a way that urged him to cause serious physical harm not only to Charlie Mendez but to his smarmy high-powered defence lawyers.
    Halfway through, he found that he had lost his appetite. He put the sandwich on the tray outside the door, then returned to his work. With the file exhausted, he got out his laptop and opened up the web browser. He threw Charlie Mendez’s name into Google and waited.
    On the second page of search results there was a link to a video clip from a local news channel. The heading read: ‘Mendez Bail Outrage’. He clicked on the link and a separate window opened. He hit Play. It was only when the footage rolled that he realized hehad no idea what Mendez looked like. Although he had read several thousand words about the man, the file had contained no photographs.
    On screen, dressed in a smart but obviously off-the-rack suit – probably chosen by his multi-million-dollar legal team to downplay his wealth – Charlie Mendez stood on the courthouse steps. He was about five feet ten inches tall, slim, with sandy blond hair, brown eyes and broad, handsome features. He had the healthy glow typical of those who had grown up wealthy.
    To his left, with one hand resting on his shoulder, was his mother, Miriam, a pinch-faced WASP dressed in a twin-set and pearls. Her hair was blonde and perfectly coiffed. Charlie’s lead counsel was on his right: Tony Medina, a handsome, but prematurely greying middle-aged Hispanic, with serious political ambitions. Although the Mendez family were about as Hispanic as Ronald McDonald, Medina had done his best to introduce a racial element into the case, arguing that police and prosecution fervour had been heightened because the victim was a young white woman and his client was, at least in name, a member of a minority group.
    Needless to say, painting the playboy heir to a multi-billion-dollar fortune as a victim was a tough sell in a country still reeling from a bitter recession. But, like any attorney, Medina was working with what he had: very little.
    As a forest of microphones bunched around him, Charlie Mendez read from a prepared statement. His delivery was flat and almost entirely devoid of emotion. ‘I would like to thank my family, particularly my mother, for standing by me during this difficult time. I would also like to thank my attorney, Anthony Medina, and the other members of my legal team,’ Medinasqueezed Charlie’s shoulder paternally, ‘for their hard work and dedication so far. I am also grateful to the judge for allowing me to return to my family for the remainder of this process.’
    ‘No kidding,’ Lock muttered, under his breath, and paused the clip. Less than two weeks later, Mendez had fled. A rapist and a coward.
    The phone rang on his desk. It was a local number. He picked it up. ‘Marcie?’
    ‘Mr Lock,’ said a perky-sounding young woman, ‘I work for Mrs Miriam Mendez, the mother of Charlie Mendez. Mrs Mendez would like to speak with you. Do you have a pen so you can take down the address?’

Twelve
    TWELVE-FOOT-HIGH BLACK SECURITY gates slid open and Lock’s Audi nudged its way through. Next to him on the front passenger seat was Marcie Braun’s case folder. As he crested a rise leading up to the Mendez compound, he glimpsed Montecito laid out beneath him, the upscale part of already upscale Santa Barbara. A deep blue Pacific shimmered in the distance.
    He wondered how the matriarch of the Mendez family had known he was in town. Not that it was much of a jump: the Santa Barbara Police Department was a small force. Santa Barbara, at the higher end, was probably a pretty tight-knit community. Word would have got round.
    A minute and a half later he pulled his Audi on to a large motor court, which fronted the main house: a 1930s colonial mansion.