Owain stares at the basket’s contents. He carefully removes the single object and handles it with reverential respect. He turns it over in his scarred hands, then kisses it. ‘Who recovered this?’
‘George.’
‘And the rest?’
‘Still missing.’
Owain winces. ‘Were there casualties?’
‘Unfortunately, yes.’
The ambassador flinches then passes the ancient relic back. ‘I am late. Please make sure it is returned to its proper place. We need to talk this afternoon about what’s still missing and what we tell the others when I meet them.’
5
Irish bangs on the apartment door for the second time. ‘Police. Open up!’
He stands to the side and slips the safety off his gun. Sophie Hudson is only a store assistant at Goldman’s but she called in sick on the day of the murder. If she’s mixed up in this killing, anything might happen and Irish doesn’t want that ‘anything’ to include a doped-up boyfriend with a spray-and-pray Mac-10.
There’s a click. The door opens barely six inches.
A croaky voice spills through the crack. ‘I’m not taking the chain off. Not until I see some ID.’
Irish flips out his badge and holds it to the gap.
She could be buying time. The killer might be climbing out a window and down a fire escape.
‘C’mon lady, open the door, or I’ll do it for you.’
The slab of cheap, blue-painted MDF closes and reopens without the chain. A small woman in a short nightdress steps back so he can come in. She’s five six, a little plump and looks disorientated. Without make-up, her nose is Rudolph red and her long dark hair a mass of rats’ tails.
‘Sophie Hudson?’
‘Yeah. What’s this about?’
‘Lieutenant Fitzgerald, Washington Homicide. You work at Goldman’s in Kensington, right?’
‘Right.’ She’s quick enough to add together Homicide and Goldman and realize it equals something bad. ‘Is Mr Goldman okay?’
Irish goes Hawkeye. Now is the very second a killer or accomplice has to put on the best performance of their life.
‘No, he’s not. And he never will be. I’m sorry to say, he’s dead.’ He holds back the rest of the details.
Sophie’s hand goes up to cover her open mouth. ‘Oh, my God.’ She stretches out a bunch of fingers to the arm of a sofa, steadies herself and then sits.
It seems she’s forgotten she’s in a short nightie and Irish sees more of a young woman than he’s done for many a year.
The cop averts his eyes and walks to the back of the apartment. He runs water in the tiny galley kitchen and takes a tumbler to her.
‘Thanks.’ She looks dazed.
Seconds pass before she takes a drink and puts the glass on a side table. She pulls a tissue from a pink box with flowers on it and blows.
Irish can tell the cold is genuine. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved in the crime. Even killers and accomplices come down with flu. He glances at his notebook. ‘The answerphone in the store shows that you called Saturday around seven a.m. and said you were sick and couldn’t make it in.’
She holds up a tissue. ‘Been dying most of the weekend.’ She is instantly horrified by her unintentional pun. ‘I’m sorry. What happened to Mr Goldman?’
‘He was murdered in his store.’
He watches her face for twitches and her hands for tension. ‘So you were sick on Saturday but went in Friday. What time did you finish?’
‘A little after four. He sent me home early because of the cold.’ She bites a nail.
‘That was kind of him.’ Irish’s tone hints that he still needs to be convinced she’s telling the truth. ‘Did anything happen during the day that was different, or anything strike you as unusual in any way?’
She hesitates and chews the last of a hangnail.
‘He said he had some business happening. I guess he was referring to the cross that he bought.’
‘What kind of cross? A Nazi cross? Wartime stuff?’
‘No. Mr Goldman was Jewish. He wouldn’t touch anything like that. This was Christian.’
‘Catholic Christian or just Christian Christian?’
She gets to her feet. ‘I made a drawing of it.’ She goes to the back of her room and brings him a sheet of A3 notepaper from her bag.
Irish regards it with scepticism. ‘Why did you sketch this?’
She looks embarrassed. ‘Mr Goldman kept the cross from me and that made it intriguing. But he’s forgetful. He sent me to the safe to get an item for a customer and I saw it. Only a glance, but it was interesting, so I made the drawing. It looks kinda weird, don’t you think?’
Irish isn’t thinking about the cross.
He’d missed the safe.
Hadn’t seen one anywhere. Searched behind the counter, wall panels, back rooms, everywhere.
‘You said “safe” — did you mean as in a lock-up box or a wall safe?’
She smiles for the first time since she heard the knock on the door. ‘You couldn’t find it?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Goldman would have been pleased. It’s not a regular safe. It’s fitted into a wall and hidden behind a panel in the grandfather clock.’
6
Ruth Everett waters a long, wide bed of flowers at the front of her twenty-acre ranch. Through the spray rainbow, she sees the battered station wagon of her older sister raising dust at the end of the drive.
The two of them have always had an up-and-down kind of relationship, and since Mitzi moved in with her kids it’s been more down than up. She hopes it won’t be long before they find a place of their own and she and Jack get their privacy back.
The two women share their mom’s dark hair and good cheekbones, and these days pretty much the same ‘fuller woman’ body shape as the catalogues so kindly call it. But Ruth is tanned, toned and dresses like she has her own personal stylist, while Mitzi often looks like she got dressed in a thrift store.
Ruth watches the old car stop at the top of the drive, its long tail of brown dust wagging in the faultless blue sky. Her sister gets out and slaps the Ford’s door shut. Birds scatter from trees and a rabble of butterflies desert a buddleia.
She locks off the yellow nozzle on the end of the hosepipe as she approaches. ‘So how did it go?’
‘Jury’s out.’ Mitzi looks tired. ‘There’s an ex-priest with OCD, some Italian glamour puss who’s angling for a slap and a cute kid who makes crap coffee.’ She takes off her unfashionable, police-issue shades.
‘You being harsh?’
‘Yeah, I probably am. I hope so, anyway.’
‘How about I open a bottle of wine?’
‘How about I jump in the air and click my heels?’
Ruth smiles and hands over the hosepipe. ‘Spray a little while I get it.’
‘Sure.’ Mitzi twists the nozzle too much and decapitates several roses. ‘Where are the girls?’
‘They’ve gone into town with Jack to get stuff for a barbecue. I think they had it in mind to soft-soap their uncle into buying treats.’
‘Yeah they would. That’s the kind of sneaky thing my daughters do.’
Ruth drifts inside and Mitzi plays the water spray over the yellow roses, pink chrysanths and startlingly blue ceanothus. It’s a nice feeling. After living out here at ‘South Fork’, as she calls it, it’s going to be hard moving the kids to the kind of shack they’ll be able to afford. Still, they’re holding things together and Jade is kicking up less than she used to. The first few months after she threw Alfie out were bad for everyone but especially Jade. She’s always been closest to her dad and still misses him. As time goes by, Mitzi will probably let them visit the creep more, but right now one weekend a month is as much as she can stomach.