‘Yeah,’ Kennedy agreed. ‘And I bet nobody bothered to search them, right?’
‘I don’t know. There wouldn’t be much point, would there?’
‘Depends what you’re looking for.’
Rush waited for more, but Kennedy didn’t have any more to say. If she was wrong, she might as well be wrong off the record. There were hundreds of empty boxes on the endless shelves. The full ones were all the same size, since they all had the same contents: books from the British Library overspill. The empty boxes had just been put wherever there was space to put them, so they came in a variety of sizes to reflect the infinite variety of items in the museum’s collection.
Kennedy was only bothering to open the largest ones, and she struck gold before she’d gotten halfway along aisle D.
She beckoned Rush over and pointed into the open box. He stared down and his eyes widened. The box contained a black sweater and a pair of black leggings. Black boots. A black balaclava designed to cover the entire face. And a large quantity of what looked like ash.
‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed. ‘I don’t get it. Is that what the intruder was wearing?’
‘Yeah,’ Kennedy said. ‘It is.’
‘Then why is it still here? We saw him leave the room.’
‘No. We didn’t. We saw him climb up into the ceiling space. But we both know there’s no way out from up there. So whatever we saw, it wasn’t the great escape. It was something else.’ Kennedy was still piecing it all together in her mind, but the fact that she’d gotten this part right gave her confidence to pursue the other, more elusive aspects of the crime. If it even was a crime.
‘The room’s been locked and off-limits ever since the day after the break-in,’ she said — a statement rather than a question.
‘Yeah,’ Rush confirmed. ‘I already told you that.’
‘Clerical assistants did a tally of the contents, but they were watched the whole time. Nobody’s been allowed to come in here alone.’
‘Except the police.’
‘Except the police. Take a note of the box number, would you, Rush? And then close up here. Leave everything exactly as it is.’
‘Right.’
‘And don’t say a word to anyone.’
‘Right.’ He blinked rapidly, gave her a guarded look.
‘I’ll talk to the professor,’ Kennedy said. ‘And to Thornedyke. I’m not asking you to lie to your boss. Just don’t talk to anyone else on the staff here, okay? Word will spread around, our suspect will get to hear about it, and then we’ll be screwed. I think this is our chance to break this case.’
Rush seemed to like the word our, but he had to ask. ‘We’ve got a suspect? As of when?’
‘As of about five minutes ago. I won’t give you a name — not just yet. If you see this person, you’re going to need to behave absolutely normally, so as not to put them on their guard. But I promise you’ll be the first to know after the professor.’
Back in the boardroom, Kennedy picked out the two relevant files and took them down to Gassan’s office. She dropped them onto his desk and stood with arms folded while he read the names.
Gassan looked up at her, with blank amazement on his face. ‘You’re not saying these two had anything to do with the break-in?’
‘Actually, Professor, I’m saying they did it. And I believe I know how they did it. One inside, one outside — probably the only way it could be done. But I need your help for the next part.’
‘Which is?’
‘Figuring out what it was they did.’
Gassan rubbed his forehead, as though he had a slight headache. Clearly the news that the break-in might have been an inside job didn’t thrill him. He looked from one file to the other, then back to the first. ‘I hate to point out the flaw in your reasoning, Heather,’ he said at last, ‘but Mark Silver was already dead when the break-in occurred. You must be mistaken.’
‘Maybe,’ she allowed. ‘Get me the swipe records for that day and we’ll know. Because if I’m right, they’ll both have swiped out at the same time on the night of—’
Kennedy’s phone played a few bars of ersatz jazz — an incoming text, not a call — and she paused while she checked the message. It was from John Partridge and it was good news.
Swansea said yes. Kelvin probe plus operator. One day only. Tomorrow.
She took the files back from Gassan. ‘You don’t have to believe me,’ she said. ‘Just let me run with it. We’ll know a lot more tomorrow. Because tomorrow, we’ll be able to go where they went. See what they looked at, what they touched. Find out what they took, if they took anything.’
Gassan looked at her with a very patrician scepticism, as though she’d just tried to sell him a timeshare. ‘And how will we do that? By magic?’
‘Pretty much,’ Kennedy said.
8
‘Isobel and Heather aren’t here right now, but if you’ve got a message, go ahead and leave it after the beep. We’ll be right back at you.’
Nobody had a message. There was no red light on the phone’s base unit. Kennedy had only pressed the playback key so that she could hear Izzy’s voice. The flat was haunted by her absence — an anti-poltergeist of inimical stillness.
She wandered from the living room into the bedroom, back out into the hall. None of these places felt as though they wanted her.
Ever since she first found out what gypsies were, back when she was about seven, Kennedy had nursed a secret fantasy that involved ditching everything except the clothes she stood up in and going on the road. When she was down, she tended to see rooms as prisons. That feeling came back to her now, stronger than it had ever been.
She took out her phone, looked at it as though expecting it to ring, or else defying it to. It didn’t, but she noticed another text that she hadn’t registered when she read Partridge’s. It was from Ralph Prentice.
Might have something for you on the knife wounds. Just checking it out now. Probably be in touch tomorrow.
She keyed in Izzy’s number, let her thumb hover over the call button for a good long while.
But in the end, she just put it back in her pocket.
The evening was a mausoleum. Kennedy tried — in quick, futile succession — to watch TV, read a book and tidy the flat. Her mind refused to focus down on anything. She ate supper — a defrosted lasagne and two stiff whiskies — then lay on the bed fully clothed, staring up at the plaster ceiling rose. The insane events of the night before sat undigested in her mind. Now that she’d seen it up close, the resemblance between the outfit modelled by the Ryegate House burglar and the one her own attacker had worn was even closer than she’d thought at first. Black is black, but the design of the balaclava was identical to the one she’d held in her hands after the attack on her and Izzy.
She had to face the possibility that someone wanted to halt her investigation — at a time when she barely had one. And wanted it badly enough to kill her. That thought shook loose a very disturbing memory. She’d met some people once who thought nothing of killing for a book. She really, really didn’t want to meet them again.
The heat was oppressive. Kennedy went through into the living room and fixed herself another drink, then sat in front of the open window to feel the breeze. A thick bank of cloud hid the moon, but there were a few stars visible high up near the zenith of the sky. She imagined she was looking down from there — a psychological technique taught her by a crisis counsellor after the incident that had cost her the licence to carry. The exercise was meant to encourage a healthy decentring, putting your own problems in perspective. Kennedy found it useless in that respect, but it did give her a pleasant, mild sense of vertigo.