This house had six windows. One of them was at ground level and this had iron bars covering a rotting window frame. On the plus side, all the other windows to number 5 Hogarth Mews had flower boxes and the front door had been painted recently enough to still be sticky.
Putting down her shopping bags, Neku examined the buzzers. Not a name or a number between the lot of them. Choosing one at random, she pushed hard and when no one answered, she pushed it again. On her third try someone shouted from inside. At Neku’s fifth attempt, footsteps were heard and a woman with paint in her hair yanked open the door. Whatever she expected to see it obviously wasn’t a smartly dressed young Japanese girl in black jeans, white sneakers, and black Banana Yoshimoto tee-shirt, all from RetroMetro in Covent Garden.
Bowing deeply, Neku smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Could you repeat that?”
“The buzzers,” said the woman, then stopped. “It doesn’t matter…”
“What about them?”
“Fucking broken,” said the woman. “Doesn’t matter which one you choose, they all ring.” She flicked ash from her cigarette, dragged a last gasp from its stub, and dropped the filter onto cobbles, crushing it with a bare heel. “Someone’s going to have to mend it, probably me…”
Neku decided not to explain that she had, in fact, been ringing all of them.
“Which flat were you after?”
“The top one,” said Neku. “I’m looking for Kit Nouveau.”
The English woman was blonde, with long curling hair and jeans far tighter than those Neku wore. She had on a man’s shirt, with the tails untucked and enough buttons undone at the neck for Neku to see her breasts, which were very small. Vermillion paint smudged her cheek. Her teeth when she smiled were slightly yellow.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right flat?”
Pulling No Neck’s note from her pocket, Neku checked the address. Flat 7, 5 Hogarth Mews, Fitzrovia, London, WC1…as an afterthought, she handed over the note.
“Right,” said the woman, “I guess this means Mary sold the place.”
“No,” said Neku. “Mary committed suicide.”
Over gin in a courtyard that had been glassed over to make a small studio, Neku told Mary’s story as No Neck had told it to her, complete with the holes and contradictions he’d appeared not to see. But first Sophie Van Allen, artist and bell mender, introduced herself, having finally remembered that she didn’t know Neku’s name.
“Really…Lady Neku?” said Sophie, sounding impressed. “I didn’t know the Japanese went in for that stuff.”
The gin, when Sophie fetched it, came in tooth mugs, and the chips were still in their packet rather than a bowl, but she listened attentively as Neku relayed all the things No Neck had told her, about Mary stepping off the side of a ferry and about how Mary hadn’t seen Kit for fifteen years but had still left him everything she owned.
“That’s love, I guess,” said Neku.
Sophie’s face twisted.
“You don’t agree?”
“Can’t have pleased the cokehead.”
Neku waited politely for Sophie to realise she had absolutely no idea who that might be…“Mary’s boyfriend,” explained Sophie. “Too pretty for his own good. You know how it is. Looks get to be a problem in the end, because you end up relying on them just around the time they begin to fade.”
It sounded to Neku as if the woman might be talking about herself.
“I thought,” said Sophie, “you know, that Mary and Ben had just moved in together. Happens all the time in London. Couples share, but keep their own flats just in case the shit starts flying. Common sense really.”
“Didn’t you notice the police?” Neku said, then wondered if that was too rude. “I mean, when they searched the flat?”
“They might have come by,” she admitted. “You know, collect a sample of Mary’s writing, that kind of stuff. When did you say this happened?” Sophie Van Allen counted back on her fingers to reach an answer. “I was in Italy,” she said, nodding to herself. “Christmas in Florence.”
“Really,” said Neku. “When did you get back?”
“About five weeks ago.”
Taking a sip of almost-neat gin, Neku grimaced. Nothing would surprise her, and the English woman’s natural habitat seemed to be squalor, to judge from the empty cups and the unwashed plates that stacked a dozen deep, with forks still protruding between each plate. Pizza boxes covered the floor like tiles. How anyone could eat that much take-out and remain thin was beyond Neku.
A row of five canvasses stood drying against one wall, all showing a variation of the same picture. The subject was topless, had wild blonde hair and nipples so dark they were almost black. So far as Neku could tell, that woman was currently drinking gin opposite her.
“Self portraits,” said Sophie, catching Neku’s gaze. “For an exhibition in Amsterdam. 33/33 @ Thirty-three…That’s my age,” she added. “Thirty-three oils showing me aged thirty-three, to be exhibited at Gallery 3+30.”
“Where are the others?” asked Neku.
“I haven’t painted them yet.”
Putting her cup down among the others, Neku stood. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should let you get on with your work.”
“Guess so,” said Sophie. “Who did you say you were meeting?”
“Kit Nouveau.”
“And he owns the flat now?”
Neku nodded.
“Okay,” said Sophie, “I don’t mean to be nosy—but you’re a friend of his, right?” It was hard to tell from the way Sophie said friend if the word meant to carry more than its obvious meaning.
“He used to buy me coffee.”
Sophie smiled. “I’ll get you a spare key.”
None of the lights in the flat worked because the electricity was off, as was the gas. Water still ran from the taps in its tiny kitchen and even smaller bathroom. Obviously enough, it ran cold. So Neku took a cold shower and then used the lavatory, which was incredibly primitive but still flushed and refilled on demand.
It was the lavatory that told Neku the police had been there, because they’d removed its lid and left the thing propped against a shower cubicle. Also, the bed was on its side, the under sink cupboard was open and someone had turned out most of Mary’s drawers, without bothering to repack any of the clothes.
That was the flat—a bedroom, a kitchen, and a shower room. Neku had expected something bigger. A frosted-glass door across the landing had bolts above and below its glass, with an old key sticking from a battered lock. Since the note asking people to keep this door shut was signed Mary, and that meant its secrets had to belong to flat 7, Neku yanked back the bolts, twisted the key, and found herself on a small roof garden.
Roof ex-garden, really. Dead lavender spiked from a terra-cotta pot. An old ceramic sink had been filled with peat and planted with…“Mint,” Neku decided, dropping crumbled leaves to the floor.
It was pretty, the garden; walled and elegant and not really overlooked, unless you included an office block three streets away and the Post Office Tower. What was more, it had a tiny wooden shed built against the far wall. She could sleep there, Neku decided. In the meantime she might as well clear up.
CHAPTER 29 — Saturday, 23 June
“Look,” said Patrick Robbe-Duras. “Have you any idea how badly you hurt Mary?” Liver spots covered the backs of his hands, which were so thin that his fingers looked like twigs wrapped in wet paper. Never the less, Pat shook off Kit’s attempt to take the tray with an abrupt shake of his head.