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To one side, Lock could see two tennis courts, one grass and one clay. Beyond them lay an Olympic-sized swimming pool with separate ten-person hot tubs at either end. A pool boy was fishing out a couple of rogue leaves with a large net.
    He pulled into a space between a special-edition Aston Martin V12 Vantage Carbon Black and a Bentley Flying Spur and got out. He took a moment to check out the two automobiles. Neither looked as if they had ever been driven: they were showroom new. There was money, he thought, and then there was Montecito money.
    Sunlight filtered through the sycamores at the edge of the house, dappling the steps leading up to the vast front door. Lock rang the bell and settled in to wait. His invitation was for four p.m. It was one minute past. He had no idea if that counted as fashionably late.
    The front door opened and a maid ushered him inside. She offered to take his jacket but he declined. ‘Mrs Mendez is in the drawing room,’ she said.
    He followed her down a long corridor, their footsteps echoing on the dark mahogany floor. Lock didn’t know much about art but he could pick out one or two names from the pictures on the wall. Carrie had dragged him around the Museum of Modern Art in New York a couple of times. There was a Klimt and what looked to him, from the angular face staring at him, like a Picasso. He doubted they were prints.
    Glancing up, he saw the red orb of a camera tracking their progress. You didn’t spend that kind of money on an art collection without an efficient security system to protect it. He wondered what the cameras had witnessed, whether they had observed Charlie Mendez saying a final goodbye to his mother before he had taken off.
    ‘Mr Lock. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.’
    The corridor opened into a large sunny room, dominated by a vast marble fireplace. Miriam Mendez was standing by a set offrench windows, which opened on to the azure swimming pool. Whatever Lock’s preconceived notions had been, she was not the woman he had been expecting. For a start, the perfectly coiffed blonde curls of a wealthy Santa Barbara matron were gone, reduced to a few wispy clumps at the side of her head. Her face was gaunt, cheekbones jutting, not unlike those in the Picasso he had passed. She was skeletal and drawn.
    ‘Cancer,’ she said, by way of explanation. ‘Terminal. If there was a cure then, believe me, I would have found it – I have the money and access to the finest doctors in the world. Sadly, there are certain things that money can’t buy. Please, sit down.’
    Lock eased himself into a club chair.
    ‘You’re looking for my son, I believe,’ she said, after a long pause.
    Lock cleared his throat. ‘Like many people. The only difference is that I’m going to find him and bring him back to serve his sentence.’
    Miriam Mendez smiled. It was a warm, open smile, which wrong-footed Lock. It wasn’t the reaction he had been expecting. ‘Good. I hope you do. I mean that. Charlie has brought nothing but shame to our family. Of course I don’t wish anything terrible to happen to him but it’s right that he should take his punishment like a man.’
    ‘So will you help me find him, Mrs Mendez?’ Lock asked.
    ‘You don’t know where he is?’ she asked, innocence personified.
    Lock smiled. ‘I have no idea.’
    ‘Well, Mr Lock, if I knew where he was, I would fly down there myself and tell him to put an end to all of this nonsense. All the family knows is that he’s in Mexico somewhere, and even that’s a guess. He may have moved on from there for all we know.’
    ‘So if you don’t know where he is, why did you want to see me?’
    ‘You heard what happened to the other men who tried to find him?’ She allowed the question to hang in the air. ‘Charlie has obviously got in with a bad crowd.’
    Lock bit back a smirk. ‘Bad crowd’ suggested kids who hung out late smoking dope and drinking beer, rather than narco-trafficking paramilitaries who