“How do you know about the note?”
“You told me,” she said. “The night I arrived.” Picking up her bowl, Neku carried it over to the sink and ran it under the cold tap, washing away a solitary strand of udon and the last of the miso. When she looked at Kit again something in her eyes was troubled. “We’re not getting very far, are we?”
We? “I’m not getting anywhere,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Kit, “I’m not sure there’s anywhere to get.”
He told Kate O’Mally the same thing when she called half an hour later. It was probably the wrong thing to say, but Kit wanted to be honest. He was also trying to work out if either of Mary’s parents really believed she was alive; he had started to wonder if they both knew she was dead, just didn’t know how to admit it to each other.
“Sergeant Samson,” said Kit, into the static that followed his original admission. “He came by last night.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Wanted to talk about Mary’s recent boyfriends.”
“Why would you know about that?”
“Good question,” said Kit, “I thought you might have an answer.”
A click was his reply.
Personally Lady Neku doubted if the moon really had been split into six and divided between families like an orange…
“I’m going out,” said Kit, opening the door to Neku’s wooden hut. The sun was hidden and the clouds thick enough to be cut in slabs. A chill wind ruffled the few plants that had survived Mary’s absence, but neither the wind, nor the sky, nor the darkness in the little hut seemed to worry Neku. She was inking a diagram and annotations into a notebook, her lips moving in time to the brush.
“My diary,” she said, blowing carefully onto the paper. “Where are you going?”
“Canterville Gallery.”
“Already been,” said Neku. “I went with Charlie.”
“You what?” demanded Kit.
“Yesterday afternoon. You asked me. Charlie and I had coffee with the manager, remember?”
Kit shook his head.
Neku sighed. “Are you sure?”
By the time Kit left, they’d established three things. Kit seriously needed to get more sleep, Neku would remain at the flat while he visited the gallery, and if she wanted to help while he was away, she could keep translating the police files or start making a list of Mary’s possessions. Actually, they established four things, because they also established that Charlie could come round.
“How do you know he’s free?”
“It’s the twenty-fifth,” said Neku. “His term ended on Friday…he texted me,” she added, when Kit looked blank.
“Where’s Charlie now?” asked Kit.
Neku rolled her eyes. “Outside,” she said, as if that was obvious.
“I’ve got a question,” said Neku, putting a can of Coke in front of Charlie and placing a bowl of seaweed crackers beside the can. When he put his hands together, in quick thanks for the food, Neku smiled.
“A question?”
“Well, more of a logic puzzle really.”
“Oh, right.” Neku could practically see Charlie relax. “What is it…?”
They sat on Mary’s bed, surrounded by clothes pulled from one of the built-in cupboards. At least a third of these were male. A blue suit with a thick chalk stripe, a blazer with five gold buttons on each sleeve, something that might be a rugby shirt if not made from raw silk. Now that Neku came to think of it, she’d thought the suit Kit had been wearing looked a little flashy for his taste.
“Suppose the police found a gun,” said Neku.
“This has to do with that woman’s suicide?”
“No,” said Neku. “This has to do with something else. Suppose they found a gun and it had been loaded with…” She looked at him. “You might want to write this down,” she said, offering him a note pad. “Five blanks, two live rounds, and one blank…”
Charlie looked up from his pad. “Which order?” he asked. “Five blanks first, or one blank first?”
“Five,” said Neku. “Definitely five.”
“Okay,” he said. “What’s your question?”
“Why?” said Neku.
After watching Neku for a couple of minutes, while she sorted through the clothes and carefully rehung them by colour, beginning at one end of the visible spectrum and ending at the other, Charlie took his can of Coke, bowl of crackers, and logic question out to the roof garden, leaving Neku to draw up her list of Mary’s possessions in peace. By then, of course, Neku had moved on to Mary’s bedside bureau.
Top drawer.
Seven pairs of panties, size 10, all Marks & Spencer, three nylon slips, five bras (34D, but Europeans were large), an old diary, written in something that wasn’t English, Japanese, or any other script Neku recognised, a key ring vibrator, and a pink plastic egg.
Easy reach, thought Neku, looking from the open drawer to the bed.
Middle drawer.
A dozen black tee-shirts from Topshop. Armani jeans, black, size 10, and well worn. A black jersey, frayed at the cuffs. And, beneath this a torn copy of Sandra Horley’s The Charm Syndrome. Someone had taped it back together.
Bottom drawer.
A collection of art magazines. A catalogue from Christie’s New York, dated 2007. Three copies of Time Out, all the same issue and containing a glowing review for a Tessa Markham exhibition at the Canterville Gallery. Removing the bottom drawer only revealed smooth wood beneath, so Neku tipped the whole unit forward to see if the base was hollow. It was, but it was also empty.
Although a Victorian metal fireplace had been removed and the damage plastered over, the gap between the built-in wardrobe’s middle door and underlying chimney breast was only deep enough to take shallow shelves.
On the shelves were three black, two pink, and one green tee-shirt that looked as if it had never been worn, more panties, a bundle of socks, and rolled jeans. Nothing else, and certainly nothing interesting. The jeans were size 8. So either Mary used these and kept the Armani jeans in her bedside dresser because she couldn’t bear to throw them away, or it was the other way round.
A collection of black jackets hung from wooden hangers in the next wardrobe along. All of the jackets where short and most were nipped at the waist. Some had pockets with flaps, others didn’t. One of them had a tiny pocket in the lining, low down on the left-hand side. It was here Neku found the key.
It was the thirty-eighth pocket she’d searched since Charlie took his logic problem outside and the fifth key she’d found. Although the others had been found in drawers or hanging from nails on the wall. Neku tried to open the obvious items first. A battered suitcase under the bed, which was already unlocked…a metal box file, contents missing…both pointless, since the key was evidently meant for a different kind of lock.
So Neku took the key downstairs and knocked at Sophie’s door. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Sophie and suspected the woman felt the same about her, but Neku needed to talk to someone who understood English things.
“What things?” Sophie asked.
Neku held up the key.
Taking it, Sophie stepped back and waved Neku into her studio, which was in chaos. “Sorry about the mess,” she said.
“I’ve seen worse,” said Neku, then wondered if she should have been more impressed.
“Right,” said Sophie, “grab a stool while I make coffee.” And with that the woman disappeared inside, leaving her guest alone in the glassed-over yard that, quite obviously, made up Sophie’s life. Would it be rude to say she’d already had enough coffee to last one lifetime? Would it be rude to open a louvre window? Neku wondered. Or would this ruin the portraits now drying in a row along one wall…
“How do you stand the smell?”
Sophie looked surprised.