Dark Mirror

She took it out of the cabinet and placed it on the counter, and the Dutch couple turned to peer at it.

‘I like it,’ said the Dutch woman. ‘Are you going to buy it?’

‘I think I may. For a colleague at work. She’s getting engaged.’ Brock turned back to Suzanne. ‘I’ve caught you at a busy time.’

‘Yes.’ She looked at the grandfather clocks ticking against the far wall. ‘I’ll be closing in half an hour.’

‘Why don’t I go across to the King’s Head and wait for you there?’

The Dutch couple exchanged a glance, eyebrows raised.

‘Good idea. I’ll wrap your locket and bring it over.’

In the event it was an hour before she appeared.

‘Sorry. Couldn’t get away.’ She thought how serious he looked, stooped over his pint, and felt anxious suddenly, aware of a cold space between them. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine. Your G and T may be a bit warm. Want me to get you another?’

‘No, this will do very well. Cheers.’ She took a gulp then began to blurt out how glad she was he’d come, but he spoke at the same time, head still bowed.

‘So how was your friend?’

‘Rather sad. She got divorced recently and she’s not coping very well. She’s taken to the bottle in a big way. I wished I hadn’t gone. It doesn’t work sometimes, renewing old friendships. We’re not the same people.’

He looked up at her, as if trying to work something out, and she added, ‘I would much rather have gone to the Old Pheasant with you. You were upset, weren’t you?’

He hesitated a moment, then reached out his hand and stroked hers. ‘Just feeling a bit fraught. It’s been a heavy few weeks.’

‘I know.’ She squeezed his fingers. ‘Who’s getting engaged?’ She nodded at the gift-wrapped locket she’d brought.

‘No one yet, but there’s a rumour going around that Kathy’s got herself a new man.’

‘That is good news. Let’s hope he’s better than the last one. How’s she getting on with her murder case?’

‘The poisoning?’ She heard the reserve in Brock’s voice. ‘I think we’re getting there.’

‘I’m sorry I blundered in like that, David. I had no idea the situation was so sensitive. There’s no suggestion that Douglas Warrender was involved, is there?’

He waited a couple of beats, then said, ‘Warrender? I don’t think so. Why?’

‘I’d just hate to think… after me getting tangled with them again… you know.’

‘But you’re not, are you?’

‘What?’

‘Tangled with them-are you?’

‘No! Of course not. I just feel embarrassed about the whole business.’

‘Well, don’t be. I’m sure your old flame is in the clear.’

‘Oh good.’

‘Let’s forget all about it.’

‘I will. That’s a promise. Shall I ring the Old Pheasant?’

‘Already done,’ he said.

•

The next morning, long after Brock had driven off back to London for his Monday morning briefing, Suzanne got a call from Angela Crick.

‘You got home all right then, Suzanne? I felt so guilty about making you miss your dinner on Saturday. Why don’t we do it again next weekend and I’ll make it up to you?’

‘Oh, that would be nice, Angela, but it’s so busy here in the shop at the moment. I was rushed off my feet when I got back. Maybe we could leave it for a while.’

‘Oh well. I had something else to tell you about Dougie Warrender.’

‘Really? What was that?’

‘I remembered more about the girl in India, the nurse’s daughter. It’s funny how things come back to you when you’re doing something else. I was putting the bottles out in the recycling bin. They come today, you see… Anyway, I noticed this little green bottle, and it just triggered this memory. It all came flooding back. Poor Jack.’ She sighed.

‘What memory, Angela?’

‘Don’t you want to save it till we get together again? It is rather juicy.’

‘No, please, tell me now.’

Angela giggled. ‘You are interested in him, aren’t you? Well, according to Jack…’ Angela’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if telling a children’s ghost story, ‘Dougie got her pregnant and then murdered her, with poison, from a little green bottle.’

The line went silent. Finally Suzanne said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

Angela laughed again. ‘No, of course not. I’m sure it was all rubbish, but according to Jack it’s what people said at the time. Mind you, Jack was always trying to shock me with outlandish stories.’

‘But what did he say happened, exactly?’

‘He claimed Dougie told him that the Warrenders had to hush it all up and leave India and come back to the UK, like me being packed off to boarding school. Notting Hill must have been a bit of a shock for them, in those days, after India. No wonder Dougie made up whopping tales.’

Suzanne felt a tight pain in her chest, and realised she was holding her breath. ‘What kind of poison was it? Do you remember?’

‘What kind? I haven’t the faintest. What does it matter? It was just gossip and scandal-mongering, that’s all.’

Angela went on for some time, but Suzanne didn’t take in much of what she said. When she finally hung up she sank into a chair, wondering what on earth she should do. Then the bell on the shop door tinkled and the Dutch couple came in. ‘All right now,’ the man said, ‘we’ve finally made up our minds.’ twenty-six

M y darling, it’s five days since you left and already it seems forever. I console myself with our secret knowledge. Every day I feel it growing inside me, a part of you, feeding on me. But I am lost without you. Yesterday was miserable. Tony spotted me in the university library and threatened to make a fuss about my scholarship unless I agreed to a tutorial. Loathsome man. I had to go to his room where he demanded to know what I was working on. I fudged and he hectored, oh how he hectored, a dreary repetitive rant about how I am on the wrong track. Little does he know! He demanded to see my Cornell paper, but I said it wasn’t written yet, though I don’t think he believed me. He made the foulest cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted, and afterwards I was very sick. I had to go home and lie down. It wasn’t like the usual morning sickness, much worse. I’m sorry to sound miserable. I just miss you so.

Your M.

‘Two days later she miscarried,’ Kathy said, as Brock looked up from the printout. ‘There are lots more like that, as well as copies of her work documents.’

‘Can we be sure it’s genuine?’

‘That’s the thing, isn’t it? He handed the memory stick over to me, knowing we’d read this. I’ve sent it to the lab, to see if they can establish when the text was written or amended.’

‘But you felt Warrender was on the level?’

Kathy hesitated. ‘He sounded very plausible, but there were things he said, as if he knew exactly what I knew, and how far he had to go. It seemed to me that there was only one way he could do that.’ And finally Kathy told him about Guy Hamilton, and confronting him at the airport. ‘If Warrender had spoken to me an hour later I wouldn’t have been able to see Guy before he left, and I’d never have been sure.’

Brock gave an angry growl, his eyes narrowing. ‘That’s very disturbing, Kathy. Is it really possible? How could Warrender have set it up? How could he have possibly known you were planning to go to Prague?’

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to work out. I think it must have happened after we arrested Keith Rafferty. My guess is that it was Warrender who arranged for Julian Fenwick to represent Rafferty and Crouch. From them he’d have learned that I was investigating Marion’s death, and could have got my mobile number, which I gave to Sheena Rafferty.’

‘You think they were listening in to your phone calls?’

‘It’s possible. Or they might have had someone following me when I met Nicole Palmer that Friday evening and overheard me get the information about our trip from her. Guy said Warrender only approached him at the last moment, on that Friday night before we left.’

‘Either way, it’s too damn personal, Kathy. I don’t like this at all.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did Bren get on with Rafferty? Did he make any headway?’

‘Not really.’ Bren had phoned in that morning, struck down by the flu. Kathy had spoken to him and he’d been apologetic. There had been so many other things demanding his attention. She was sympathetic, but angry all the same. Her anger had been growing over the weekend, as she’d tried to work out the machinations that had allowed Warrender to follow her moves. And now, the memory of Guy at the airport gave her heart another wrench.

Brock saw it, the anger burning inside her. He leaned forward, eyes on her, and said, a note of caution in his voice, ‘But if that letter is genuine, Kathy, it sounds as if da Silva was making an earlier attempt to poison Marion, doesn’t it?’

‘Not with arsenic. Sundeep established she hadn’t previously taken it. But it could have been something else.’ What it reminded her of, in fact, was the diary entries of Emile L’Angelier complaining about feeling sick after visiting Madeleine Smith. And of course Marion would have been very familiar with those.

‘All right,’ Brock went on, sounding brisk, wanting to rouse Kathy from her introspection. Clearly she had been fond of this Guy, he thought, and was understandably upset, but they had work to do. ‘Da Silva is our prime suspect. How do we nail him?’

‘He’s been careful. We haven’t been able to find him on cameras at the critical scenes, except the British Library.’

‘We’re saying he murdered Marion to prevent her from presenting her paper at Cornell that would destroy his life’s work, is that right? Is that credible?’

‘He certainly sounded pretty desperate about it.’

‘Then why kill Tina?’

‘Because she’d followed the same trail as Marion and found the same source.’

‘How would he know that?’

‘She must have told him when she came to his house the night before she died. Donald Fotheringham told me that he, Tina and Emily had been investigating the archives of the Havelock family in the India Office Records at the library.’

‘Yes,’ Brock said, ‘the woman who found Tina at the library, Lily Cribb, told me that she’d first met Tina trying to find the India Office Records. It seemed odd.’

‘I think that Haverlock’s diary must have been stored there in the Havelock family’s archive. I wonder how Marion found it. It must have seemed like a miracle. If we’re right, it was her death warrant.’ Kathy thought. ‘By last Monday, when da Silva found Marion’s notes in her house, he would have realised that the source of Marion’s revelations was Haverlock’s diary, but he still wouldn’t have known how to find it-her paper only refers to a London archive. It was still tucked away in the India Office Records. On the Wednesday evening, when she called at his house, Tina must have told him she’d found it. He would have gone spare, thinking he’d put a lid on it all with Marion’s death.’

Brock said, ‘And the following day he would have been tracking her, trying to find out where the diary was.’

‘Yes. The trail will be there in the record of the books that Tina called up at the British Library. If we can show that she had found the Haverlock diary before she went to see da Silva, that would then put her in the same situation as Marion before she died.’

Brock nodded. ‘Circumstantial, but it might just be conclusive.’

Kathy returned to her desk and called over Pip Gallagher, who was working for her again now.

‘You okay, boss?’ Pip asked. ‘You seem a bit down.’

‘No,’ Kathy said, too abruptly. ‘I’m fine, Pip. I just wish I knew where the hell da Silva might have got arsenic from, if it wasn’t from the laboratory.’

‘How about Rafferty? Da Silva admitted paying him money. Maybe it wasn’t just for the key to Marion’s house.’

‘That is a thought. Look, I want you to drop what you’re doing and go over to the British Library and get them to give you a list of all the documents Tina requested in the week before she died. I’m particularly interested in a diary written by someone called Haverlock, which we think is held in this archive in the India Office Records.’ She handed Pip a note of the references. ‘Find out if she requested it, okay?’

‘Sure. I was never that hot as a reader, but I’ll give it a go.’

It felt like a penance, Kathy thought, as she worked through the day, poring over the details dredged up by her team, cross-checking the witness statements.

Finally Pip phoned in. ‘I’ve got it, boss. Tina was here all right, looking at stuff from the Havelock archive. She requested the Haverlock diary on the evening of Wednesday last.’

Kathy sighed, rubbing her hand across her face. ‘Great.’

‘What do I do now?’

Kathy thought. ‘I think we’ll need to retrace Tina’s steps. Leave it for now. Tomorrow, I want you to go round all the libraries we know Marion and Tina went to, and get a complete record of their borrowings.’

The line was silent for a moment, then Pip said, ‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

Kathy put the phone down. The evening was drawing in, the streetlights flickering on outside the window. She felt a tightness in her chest, her stomach. Maybe Brock had been right, she thought, this had become too personal-Rafferty’s threat of legal action against her, Jock’s cat, Prague, Guy. Rafferty. What was his part in all this, the predatory stepfather? She remembered sensing a false note when Douglas Warrender had described his relationship with Rafferty. If Warrender had arranged Julian Fenwick’s services, then it suggested that Warrender and Rafferty were closer than Warrender had implied. And Rafferty knew them all-Warrender, Ogilvie and da Silva-all of them locked together somehow, using and reluctantly protecting each other, a single nut to be cracked. She closed down her computer, shrugged on her coat and caught a District line tube out to Ealing Broadway.

•

Kathy followed the deck to the door of the Raffertys’ flat and rang the bell. Sheena Rafferty answered, not recognising Kathy straight away. Kathy explained that she had some important information of a personal nature to explain to her, if she could spare a moment.

‘I dunno,’ Sheena looked doubtful. ‘Keith told me not to speak to you.’

‘It could be to your advantage, Sheena. It won’t take long.’

The word advantage did the trick, as Kathy knew it would. She didn’t enjoy deceiving Sheena, but she was sure that Marion would have thoroughly approved of what she had in mind. She followed Sheena into the sitting room. Two half-drunk glasses stood on the coffee table, a gin and a beer. Sheena reached for the gin and a cigarette.

‘Make it quick, will ye? Keith’s takin’ a shower. He’s lost his job and he’s not in a good mood.’ The rumble of plumbing promptly stopped.

‘How have you been?’

‘Fine, fine. What is it ye want exactly?’

‘It concerns your daughter’s estate, Sheena.’

‘Estate?’ She looked dubious.

‘Her property, her assets, that will come to you, as her next of kin.’

‘What, like an insurance payout?’ she said hopefully.

‘I’m not aware of any insurance, but it’s possible, I suppose.’

‘Och, well, what about compensation, victims of crime? I’m a victim too, you know.’

‘Again, I don’t know about that. What I have in mind is potentially much more significant.’

There was a roar from the doorway. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Keith Rafferty stood with a towel around his waist, skin pink from the shower, eyes blazing. ‘I’m calling my lawyer right now.’

‘No, hang on, darlin’,’ Sheena said quickly. ‘The inspector’s come to see me, about Marion’s assets.’

He hesitated. ‘What assets?’

‘She’s just about to tell me, is that no’ right, Inspector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, go on then,’ Keith said.

‘This is a private matter I have to discuss with Marion’s mother, Mr Rafferty. I’m well aware of your lawyer’s insistence that I should have no further contact with you, and I don’t feel comfortable having you present. Maybe I should speak to you another time, Sheena, when you’re alone.’

‘Now wait a minute.’ Keith stuck his jaw out. ‘If you’ve got anything to say to my wife I want to hear it.’

Kathy shook her head and rose to her feet.

‘Sheena!’ Keith snapped. ‘Tell her you want it that way.’

Sheena winced under his glare and nodded. ‘Aye. I want Keith to hear.’

‘Well, if you’re quite sure. This is only an advisory visit, you understand, to make you aware of a potential situation that could concern you.’

‘What?’ Sheena looked mystified, Keith aggrieved.

‘Get on with it,’ he snarled.

‘Are you aware that Marion owned a house?’

Sheena’s eyes widened. ‘What sort of house?’

‘A very attractive detached property, in Hampstead.’ Kathy turned to meet Keith’s eyes. He looked away.

‘Hampstead? Owned it, you say?’

‘That’s right. It’s in her name alone, no mortgage.’

‘But… how much would that be worth, then?’

‘Quite a lot. Three-quarters of a million, at least.’

Sheena gasped. ‘But how? Marion was a student. She had no money.’

‘No, but she had an admirer, a wealthy man who bought it for her, as a present.’

‘Oh my dear Lord! My wee Marion? Who is he, this feller?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t disclose that.’

Kathy felt Keith’s eyes on her, burning, trying to work out what she was up to.

‘Oh!’ Sheena gave a sudden trilling giggle, jumping to her feet. ‘Did ye hear that, Keithy?! Did ye hear that?’

‘Yeah. So what’s the catch?’

‘Yes,’ Kathy said, ‘I’m afraid there is a catch. Marion signed a document giving the house back to this man in the event of her death.’

‘Oh…’ Sheena collapsed again onto her chair, horror on her face.

‘But,’ Kathy went on, ‘and this is the reason for my coming to speak to you, that may depend on the results of our investigation into Marion’s death.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you see, this man is naturally a person of interest to us, having been so much involved in Marion’s recent life. And if it should turn out that he was responsible for her death, well, the courts might decide to set aside that document, as amounting to the profits of a crime.’

There was silence for a moment. Then Keith said softly, ‘But is that likely? Do you suspect this man?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say, Mr Rafferty. The case is still wide open at this stage, and we’re sifting through a great deal of evidence. I just thought I should alert Mrs Rafferty to the fact that if we were to lay charges against him at some point in the future, then she should consider seeking legal advice. Three-quarters of a million pounds is a great deal of money.’

‘Aye,’ Sheena said dazedly. ‘It sure as hell is that.’ twenty-seven

B rock dropped the report into his out-tray and sat back with a sigh, rubbing both hands across his face. It was all very well giving advice and direction to Kathy and the others, but he had learned to doubt such advice when it came from senior figures who hadn’t actually touched the evidence for themselves, hadn’t heard the subtle doubt in the witness’s voice, had forgotten how contradictory and confusing the options were. Alex Nicholson’s suggestion that they might be investigating a double suicide had already occurred to him. Tina’s death seemed like a mirror image of Marion’s, following Marion’s example, perhaps even fulfilling a pact of some kind between them. Kathy had known Tina, and Brock had sensed her sympathy for the student and her scepticism of Alex’s idea, just as she had resisted from the start the possibility of Marion’s suicide. He suspected that Kathy identified with Marion’s struggle, and with Tina’s, too closely for that.

But what did he know, stuck behind his bloody desk reading other people’s reports? And then there was that disconcerting thing, the sudden appearance of Douglas Warrender on the scene, immediately after Brock had reassured Suzanne that he wasn’t involved. Had Suzanne heard something? He wanted to talk it over with her, but that would only complicate things further, and probably put her in a compromising position.

He heaved himself out of his chair and reached for his overcoat. ‘I’m going up to the British Library to see how they’re getting on,’ he said to Dot as he strode through her office.

‘The new HR Deputy Liaison Officer is coming to see you in an hour, don’t forget.’

‘Put him off. Urgent business.’

Just getting out of the office lifted his spirits. When he reached the forecourt of the library he paused and took it in once again, peaceful now, the police tapes gone, tourists mingling with students and researchers, people cheerfully drinking coffee in The Last Word cafe. He went across to the library entrance beneath the lowering roof planes, catching a glimpse of the towers and finials of St Pancras station next door. At the enquiries counter inside he showed his ID and was directed to an office in the administrative area nearby. There he found Pip Gallagher bent over a pile of books. She jumped up when he greeted her, looking guilty, like a school student caught falling asleep over her homework.

‘They’ve given me this table and they’re bringing me the books that Tina asked for in the past couple of weeks, Chief. I’m trying to make notes for Kathy.’ She gestured at a clipboard on which she had laboriously written comments beneath the titles of each volume.

‘Big job,’ Brock said.

‘Yeah.’ Pip sighed. ‘I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. Kathy wants to establish some kind of logical trail that Tina followed, leading up to the diary that undermines da Silva’s work. I’ve got the borrowing or request records for both Marion and Tina at all the libraries we know they went to-that’s the British Library here, the London Library where Marion collapsed, the National Archives at Kew, the Family Records Centre in Finsbury, and the University of London Senate House Library.’

She spread the printouts over the table, and Brock immediately understood why she was looking so glum.

‘Lot of books,’ he murmured.

‘Yes. I’ve started with Tina’s lists, putting them in date order, and starting at the beginning.’

‘Makes sense.’

‘I wondered if she might have left any notes in the books, or written anything in the margins. No luck so far. Basically I’m trying to write a short description of each book, so Kathy can get an idea of what they’re about.’

‘And you started here because…?’

‘Well, Tina was attacked here, and also she spent most time here recently. She wasn’t a member of the London Library like Marion, so she has no borrowing record there, although they do remember her visiting a couple of times and having a look around. She did leave a record at the other places, but I haven’t got to them yet.’

Brock realised the size of the task Pip had taken on. It would take her weeks. ‘Hm.’ He scratched the side of his beard, looking at the lists. ‘Most of the titles look like books about Victorian history and art, don’t they? Are they all like that?’

‘Some are about poisons and criminal cases.’ She pointed at one, The Cult of the Poisoner, and another, The Arsenic Conspiracy. ‘And there are some that you can’t really tell.’ She indicated After Midnight and The Brinjal Pickle Factory, which were among the later entries on Tina’s list. ‘They could be about anything; you wouldn’t know from the titles. There’s a few like that. Why The Brinjal Pickle Factory? God knows what that’s doing here.’

Brock was intrigued. ‘Okay. Well, I might have a look at the lists while you carry on checking the books.’

Pip looked apprehensive, clearly wondering what the chief was up to, as he took off his coat and jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

He began by looking for items that cropped up most frequently, books that Marion and Tina had kept returning to. They seemed predictable enough: volumes of poetry, diaries and letters relating to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Then he tried to relate borrowings to what they knew of the key events in Marion’s life-when she moved out of Stamford Street, when she lost the baby, and immediately before she died. It seemed that Marion had first discovered the Haverlock diary, hidden in the Havelock archive, the previous September, after which she made regular requests to see it.

At the same time she’d been checking other volumes from the Havelock archive, including the two memoirs that Pip had mentioned, After Midnight and The Brinjal Pickle Factory, both written by a Robert Harding. Marion had also searched for items from the archive at other libraries, presumably to see if there could be other copies of the Haverlock diary in existence. Her requests for ‘Haverlock’ were apparently unsuccessful, but it seemed that she had found the Harding books at both the National Archives in Kew and the London Library, and had requested them at both places. Brock wondered why. Tina must have noticed these requests, he thought, because they had been among the latest items she had been investigating. In fact, The Brinjal Pickle Factory was the last book that she had requested from the British Library, on the morning of her death.

‘Have you had a look at this Brinjal Pickle Factory book?’ Brock asked Pip.

‘Yeah, it’s like a cookbook, Chief.’ She poked around in the pile of volumes in front of her and handed him a slim hardback. Its dark green covers were faded, its pages yellowed, and when he opened it he caught the musty smell of old, unread pages. It wasn’t just a cookbook, he discovered, more a memoir by a former colonial administrator of his early years in India before the war. Skimming it, he could find no references to arsenic or the Pre-Raphaelites that might have provided some clue as to why it was on the lists.

‘How about After Midnight then?’

It turned out to be much the same. Its subtitle was A Memoir of Bengal, 1947-71.

Brock scanned the index at the back of After Midnight, a catalogue of the great names of the early years of independent India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, from Mountbatten and Jinnah to Sheikh Mujib. There was no mention of Haverlock or Rossetti, but his eye did pick out Warrender, R. 82.

He turned to page eighty-two and found the reference: Among our staff in Calcutta at that time was Roger Warrender, later Sir Roger, newly arrived in early 1948 with his attractive young English bride, Joan. Roger had had a great war, by all accounts, serving with Wingate and the Chindits in Burma with distinction in 1943, and later in the counter-offensive against the Japanese invasion of India in 1944. He had enormous panache and energy, and the turbulent conditions in Bengal at the time of Independence soon called upon all his courage and stamina, not least when Joan fell pregnant with their first-born, Douglas, under trying conditions. They became among our longest-serving staff, both playing significant roles in our evolving relations with the ruling groups in East and West Bengal. They departed finally in 1963, to London briefly, before moving on to New York, where Roger took up a senior position with UNICEF.

‘Found something, sir?’ Pip said.

‘Call me Brock, Pip, for goodness’ sake.’ He showed her the page. ‘Looks like Marion was doing a bit of homework.’ He took the book and the lists of borrowings over to a nearby photocopier and worked for a while, then returned them to Pip’s table.

‘I’ll let you get on,’ he said, and strolled off, humming to himself, leaving Pip with a puzzled frown on her face.

•

Kathy looked flustered, negotiating with her Action Manager and someone from head office over a file of time sheets. From the doorway Brock could see that it wasn’t going well. He called over, ‘Kathy, can you spare a moment?’ She looked relieved, and left the others to it.

‘I just paid a visit to Pip at the British Library,’ Brock said.

‘Oh?’ She looked surprised. ‘Any luck?’

‘She’s plodding on. But maybe you can tell me something about this

…’ He spread out the photocopies he’d made. ‘These two books are in the Havelock archive, along with the Haverlock diary, and Marion also requested them at Kew and the London Library.’ He’d highlighted the entries with a coloured marker. ‘They’re about India. But when I looked in the index of one of them, After Midnight, I found a reference to the Warrenders. Here.’ He handed Kathy the copied page which she read.

‘Reading up about her boyfriend’s family history,’ she suggested.

‘Yes, only she discovered this book last September, see? And Douglas Warrender told you he didn’t meet Marion until October, didn’t he?’

‘But she was working for Sophie Warrender, so the name would still have been of interest to her.’

‘Mm, yes. Why look for the same book in three different libraries, though?’

Kathy said, ‘I didn’t realise that Douglas’s father was with UNICEF in New York. I wonder if he was involved with the well-drilling program in Bengal, where he’d been working all those years. Dr da Silva’s friend, Colin Ringland, told me about it. It’s his area of research. It’s funny, isn’t it, how they all seem to be interconnected.’

Brock thought. ‘Perhaps we need to shake them up a bit, open up some of these connections.’

‘Yes, I agree.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

He watched her go back to her desk and thought, She’s up to something. He knew her well enough after all this time.

•

Kathy didn’t have much longer to wait. As she sat down with a fresh cup of coffee her mobile phone rang, the number she’d given Sheena Rafferty. It was Keith, sounding all the more shifty for trying to appear guileless.

‘Yeah, erm, look… I was thinking about what you were saying to Sheena the other night, and it made me put two and two together, like.’

‘And what did you come up with?’

‘Eh? Well, some things began to make sense. You were talking about Warrender, right?’

‘Was I?’

‘Well, I know he was Marion’s squeeze. I think I may be able to help you with your inquiries.’

‘That’s very public spirited of you, Mr Rafferty. You’d better come in and see us.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Mr Warrender has got friends all over the place. I just want a little chat, somewhere neutral. You know the Swan in Lambeth?’

‘Okay, but I’ll have a colleague with me.’

‘No, don’t do that. Just you and me, okay? Make it five, tonight.’

•

The pub was dimly lit and almost deserted, the air sour with stale beer. The publican didn’t look up as she came in, both he and a customer at the bar engrossed in their newspapers. She spotted Rafferty sitting at a small table in a far dark corner with a pint of bitter in front of him and, to her surprise, Nigel Ogilvie at his side, sipping anxiously at a Bloody Mary. Kathy went over to the pair.

‘Wanna drink?’ Rafferty said nonchalantly.

‘Not from you I don’t,’ Kathy replied. She sat on a stool facing them and took a tape recorder out of her coat pocket.

Rafferty waggled a finger at it, frowning as if at her bad manners. ‘This is for your ears only, darling. I don’t want my words floating around CID and God knows where else.’

Kathy placed it on the table but didn’t switch it on. ‘All right. What’s the story?’ She looked pointedly at Ogilvie, who flinched and busied himself with a cocktail stirrer in his glass. The left side of his face was still puffy and discoloured from the incident in the library and he seemed to have lost weight inside his raincoat, which was buckled up as if for a rapid exit.

‘After I saw you,’ Rafferty said, ‘I got to thinking about one or two things.’ He leaned forward to interpose himself between Kathy and Ogilvie, who shrank further into his coat. ‘About arsenic, for instance.’

‘What about it?’

‘A month ago I was in my local and got chatting to this bloke. He bought me a drink and asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a driver for a fireworks company, and eventually, when we’d had a few, he asked if I could get hold of fireworks cheap for some friends of his. He said they built their own rockets, for a hobby. He mentioned the sort of stuff they’d be interested in-black powder mainly, but other chemicals too. He mentioned arsenic.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘No, not really. I thought he might be a cop, trying to set me up. They do that you know.’ Rafferty smirked. ‘He had that look about him. But you never know.’ He reached for his pint, gulped, smacked his lips.

‘So what did you do?’

‘I said I could find out, but I’d need some money up front, my search fee. I asked for a fifty and settled for a pony. He said there was a deadline-some competition they were going in for-and we agreed to meet the next night at the pub. I thought about it and decided not to get involved. The next evening I parked the van outside the pub and took a couple of pictures of him when he arrived. Insurance, in case he got difficult; I thought I could ask around about him.’

Rafferty opened his wallet and took out two photographs. The first showed a man illuminated from a streetlight overhead, his features mostly in shadow, the second in profile in the pub doorway, both blurry. Kathy didn’t recognise him.

‘Anyway, when I told him I couldn’t help him, he didn’t make a fuss.’

‘So when was this, exactly?’

‘Four weeks ago? About that.’

Two weeks before Marion died. By then she and Douglas Warrender knew about the baby.

‘Did you find out who he was?’

‘Didn’t try. Said his name was Benny, that’s all I know.’

‘You met a man in a pub who maybe wanted to buy arsenic? Is that it?’

‘Hang on. After you called round the other night, I thought about it again. Who was this bloke? Who were his friends? And I also thought about that other thing I was supposed to have done, beating up old Nigel here. So I went to see him.’ He clapped an arm around the unhappy Ogilvie. ‘Go on, Nigel, tell the inspector.’

‘Well…’ Ogilvie briefly met Kathy’s eyes, then took a keen interest in his cocktail stirrer again. ‘What I told you about the attack on me in the London Library, it wasn’t the whole truth. I mean, I didn’t know who the man was, but I did know why he was there. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid. He warned me, you see, in no uncertain terms, to tell no one. He even said that he’d hurt Mother. But I wanted to tell you, and when Keith came to see me… well, it wasn’t just my word against a total stranger anymore.

‘You see, when Marion collapsed, in the confusion, I picked up a computer memory stick I noticed lying on the floor, meaning to hand it in. Only I forgot about it till later, and then I thought I should open it, just to see whose it was, so that I could return it to them. I soon realised that it had belonged to Marion, and that it contained private correspondence with a lover. I’m afraid-I didn’t mean to, you understand-I read enough to get his name, “Dougie”, or Douglas Warrender, and the fact that he lived in the Notting Hill area and had an office very close to the library.’

Kathy listened without comment to this tale, probably larded with half-truths and omissions to make it flow, and imagined how greedily Ogilvie would have pored over every detail of Marion’s correspondence.

‘So I contacted him direct, in order to return it to him.’

‘For a price.’

‘Certainly not!’ Ogilvie puffed up in outrage. ‘Although I did feel that his reaction was one of suspicion, rather than simple gratitude. In fact I became quite wary, and insisted that he come to the library to pick it up, where I felt safe. I told him to come to the front counter at midday, where I would meet him. However, at a quarter to, when I was still in the book stacks, I was approached by a man I’d never seen before, who said he’d been sent by Mr Warrender. But far from offering me thanks, this man was threatening and abusive, and when I objected he became actually violent. He hit me several times and threw me down the stairs, before he left with the memory stick.’

‘So it wasn’t Keith here who hit you?’

‘No.’ Ogilvie raised his chin defiantly. ‘I told you that before.’

‘What did this man look like?’

‘Him.’ He pointed a chubby finger at the photographs. ‘That’s him, the same man. In his late forties perhaps, with grizzled hair. A Londoner by his accent. A very tough character. That’s what persuaded me to tell you, when Keith showed me these pictures. Now you can do something about it. Only, I’ll need protection. If they ever find out I’ve spoken to you…’

‘We can’t prosecute this man for attacking you without your evidence, Nigel.’

‘No! I don’t want that. Keith said…’ He looked anxiously at Rafferty. ‘He said it would help you, if I told you this, with your main case, Marion’s murder. That’s all I want.’

‘And you’ve done that, Nigel. Good lad.’ Rafferty patted him on the shoulder. ‘Now piss off.’

Ogilvie scrambled to his feet, ducked his head and made off. Kathy looked back at his departing figure and caught a glimpse of the face of the other customer at the bar, before he shifted away behind his paper. Brendan Crouch, Rafferty’s partner in crime.

She turned back to Rafferty. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? We caught you on camera at the library at the time he was attacked.’

‘Yeah, I was there, but I didn’t do it. Fact is, I knew Warrender. I happened to see him with Marion one day, in the West End, having a drink together, all very cosy. I thought, what’s she doing with an old bloke like that? It’s not right. I was thinking of Sheena, see? How she’d feel about it. So I kept an eye on them, and when she left I spoke to him, asked him what his game was. You’ve spoken to him, have you? Smooth bugger, yeah? He told me that they were just good friends, but to keep it to myself, slipped me a few quid and said he might be able to put a bit of work my way. That’s why I was at the library that day. He asked me to meet another guy at the back entrance to lend a hand to pick up some merchandise from someone inside. I was to make sure the negotiations weren’t disturbed. Only I got held up in traffic and I was late. By the time I got there it was all over. I heard the fuss and scarpered.’

He saw the doubt on Kathy’s face and leaned closer, dropping his voice, his breath beery. ‘Listen, I’m just trying to be helpful, okay?’ He tapped the photographs. ‘I don’t know who this guy is. Maybe he’s nothing to do with Warrender. Maybe you can’t use it. But I could be more helpful.’

‘Go on.’

‘Maybe I could arrange for arsenic to be found in Warrender’s car, or on his clothes. Would that help?’

Kathy looked thoughtful, reached for Ogilvie’s glass and took out the plastic cocktail stick. It had a sharp point, for spearing cherries or slices of lemon. She brought it down on the back of Rafferty’s hand, not quite hard enough to puncture the skin. He blanched and his head jerked back, his hand still pinned by the spike.

‘Rafferty, if you so much as think of doing anything so stupid, I’ll have you locked away forever. I’m not interested in your lies. I want the truth.’

She tossed the stick back in the glass.

Rafferty rubbed his hand, his eyes sliding over to his partner at the bar. ‘Fuck you. The truth is that Warrender had Marion killed. We both know that.’

‘Do we?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know why, but he did. Maybe she got too greedy, or wanted him to leave his wife, the usual crap. He tried to make it look like suicide, didn’t he? Fucking weird way to do it, if you ask me. But he’s a scary guy, underneath that smooth suit. I reckon he wanted her to suffer, and for her to know that. And he’s smart and rich. You won’t catch him easily.’

‘What about Tony da Silva? You know him too, don’t you?’

‘Her tutor? Yeah, he contacted me, trying to find out where Marion had moved to. Said it was urgent academic business. Oh yeah, sure.’ He pulled a face.

‘What do you think it was?’

‘Well, he fancied her, didn’t he? And she wasn’t having any.’

‘So maybe he killed her.’

‘Nah. Doesn’t have the balls. And he didn’t know where she lived. Not until afterwards.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I told him eventually, after she was dead.’

‘Yes, he said you gave him a key. Is that right?’

‘Not so as I’d admit it. He phoned me at the weekend, wanting me to tell you, confirm it was after she died. I said forget it.’

‘Of course he could just be using you to disguise the fact that he did know where she lived.’

Rafferty thought about that, then shook his head.

Kathy gathered up the photos. ‘If we can’t identify these I’ll get you to come in to look at some mugshots. Assuming this isn’t just some bloke going for a drink.’

She got to her feet and walked out.

•

When she got back to the office she tried without success to find a match for the man in the photographs. In the end she sent them off to technical support to have them enhanced, and by the next morning she had a reasonably clear large image of his face pinned up on the board, still none the wiser as to his identity. None of the others recognised him, until Bren came in, sniffling and red-nosed, sucking throat lozenges.

‘What’s Harry been up to then?’ he rasped as he passed the picture.

‘You know him?’ Kathy asked. ‘I haven’t been able to find him in records.’

‘He’s not a crook, he’s a cop, or used to be. DS Harry Sykes, retired about four years ago.’

‘Know what he does now?’

‘I can probably find out.’

After making a couple of phone calls he came back with the information that Sykes was now working for a West End brokerage by the name of Mallory Capital. twenty-eight

T he prince closed the file with a sigh. It had a very smart cover, gold embossed, which he liked, but the contents were impenetrable-bear spreads, cliquets, vanilla options-what did he know of such things? He just wanted to spend the bloody money. ‘Might one smoke, Douglas? One never can tell these days.’

‘Of course, Ricky. I’ll get you an ashtray.’

As he passed the window Warrender glanced down into the street and saw a police car double-parked outside the front door. He gave a little frown, then noticed a solitary man in the central gardens of the square. The figure was clad in a long black coat, with a shock of white hair at its head, and was standing motionless, apparently looking straight up at him. Then the man took a hand from his overcoat pocket and lifted it to his ear. Almost immediately, as if by magic, he heard a telephone begin to ring in the outer office. When the buzzer sounded on his desk, Warrender was almost expecting it.

‘Hello?’

‘I’m so sorry, Mr Warrender, only it’s the police. They say it’s urgent. A Detective Chief Inspector Brock. I tried to tell him…’

‘It’s all right, Carol. I’ll speak to him. And get Harry to bring the car round to the front, will you?’

‘I’m not sure I can. The girls downstairs just told me that he’s been arrested.’

‘What’s an iron butterfly again, Douglas?’ There was more than a hint of frustration in the prince’s voice.

‘It’s the four-option strategy, Ricky, with three consecutively higher strike prices and a long or short straddle in the middle. Look, I might get Jason to come and talk you through the technical steps again, okay?’

‘It’s just that Daddy will expect me to know what it’s all about,’ the prince grumbled.

‘Of course. Just excuse me one moment.’

He went out and spoke to his secretary, then took the call at her desk. ‘Hello? Warrender here.’

‘DCI Brock, Mr Warrender. I need to talk to you, concerning Marion Summers’ death.’

‘Yes, well… later this afternoon perhaps.’

‘This won’t wait. I’m outside in the square. We can talk here if you wish, or go up to West End Central.’

When Warrender crossed the street into the gardens he saw that Brock had seated himself on the bench near the statue, where, he knew, Marion had taken her lunch, fifteen days before.

‘Did she always choose this seat?’ Brock asked.

‘Unless someone else got here first.’

‘So that you could see her, from your office?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you might have looked out and watched her sip the poisoned drink.’

‘Except that I was in Corsica that day, and she knew it.’

‘Did you arrange to have it done?’

‘Certainly not. Is that why you’ve arrested my driver?’

‘He’s not under arrest. He’s helping us with our inquiries. We have a witness who claims that he tried to obtain arsenic on your behalf.’

‘What? That’s absolute rubbish. What witness?’

‘The witness has also suggested that your relationship with Marion had become impossible, her demands too great.’

‘Well,’ Warrender replied coolly, ‘that just shows how ill-informed your so-called witness is.’

‘All the same, it happened at a time when you were faced with a major disruption in your life, weren’t you? Were you really ready for the rupture it would cause, with your wife, your daughter, perhaps your mother? The loss of the house you’ve shared with them all those years? The gossip in your professional circles? Were you ready for all that? To take on a child again, mewling and puking and keeping you awake half the night?’

‘You sound as if you’re talking from experience. I have one very considerable advantage over my first efforts to start a family-I can now afford to outsource most of the difficulties. Marion made me feel thirty years younger. I looked forward to it as the start of a new life.’

Brock was watching Warrender carefully all through this, measuring his answers, trying to gauge his credibility.

‘Weren’t you just a little concerned by that-how shall I put it?-that rather obsessive side of Marion’s character? Her ruthless need to be recognised, at all costs?’

‘You’re speculating. You didn’t know her. Look, didn’t you read the contents of the memory stick I gave your inspector at the weekend? If you’re that desperate for a culprit, there are a few clues there, I should have thought.’

‘Yes, but apparently you didn’t give us the original memory stick that belonged to Marion. According to our experts, each of the items has been recorded onto its memory within the last week, and we can’t be sure when they were originally written, or by whom. The whole thing could be a fabrication, made for the purpose of feeding us false leads, which, as you say, point away from you.’

Warrender sucked in his breath. ‘The original contained some other things, intimate things, that I wasn’t prepared to show you. I thought that even if I deleted them your people might be able to retrieve them. I couldn’t risk that, and so I transferred the items I was prepared to share with you to a new stick and destroyed the old one. But the entries are all genuine, believe me. And as far as I can see they point in only one conceivable direction-her tutor, da Silva. Rereading those letters, those notes of hers, I feel very angry now that I didn’t see the signs; her instinctive revulsion towards him, the way he attempted to pursue her, and how she fell ill and lost the baby after finally agreeing to see him.’

Warrender sat on the edge of the bench, fists clenched, and his voice dropped. ‘And most of all, the way she was killed. Arsenic, for God’s sake! Don’t you find that just too damn symbolic and… and. .. anachronistic for anyone living in the real world? Sounds to me like the ultimate academic put-down.’

‘You know Dr da Silva’s close friend at the university, Dr Colin Ringland, don’t you?’

Warrender looked up sharply. ‘How do you know that?’

‘You’re mentioned on the website of his research unit.’

‘Oh, the consultative committee. Yes, I do know him, although he has no idea that I was involved with Marion. But you’re thinking, “Dr Ringland equals arsenic”, yes? Well believe me, I’ve been nowhere near his laboratory during the time I’ve known Marion. My connection with Colin Ringland goes back four or five years, and arose out of my father’s will.’

‘I think you’d better explain that.’

‘My father was with the diplomatic service for many years, mostly in the Indian sub-continent. I was born out there, and we all had a tremendous affection for the place. We returned to the UK in the sixties, and then my father took a post with UNICEF in New York, where he particularly focused on their programs in Bengal and Bangladesh, which he knew well. One of his most ambitious projects was to bring clean drinking water to that area, because illness and death from contaminated water were widespread. He initiated the tubewell program, to tap clean aquifers deep below the surface. UNICEF financed the sinking of almost a million such wells, and the immediate health improvements were dramatic. Unfortunately, no one had any idea that the deep water was contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic. It took many years for its insidious effects to become apparent, and when the scale of the problem began to be realised there was some panic, scapegoats were sought. This was long after my father had retired, but a group of activists identified him as the main culprit and attempted to bring a case against him in the American courts. Things got out of hand. He was actually accused of being a murderer at one point. Quite absurd. It was all very tragic and he was devastated. He died before it was resolved, and left a provision in his will to establish a trust fund to sponsor research into solutions to the problems of groundwater contamination. I am now the chairman of that trust, and one of our principal beneficiaries for the past couple of years has been Dr Ringland and his research team. So naturally I’m acquainted with him, and meet him at several progress reviews each year.

‘You know, many of the people in Bangladesh who have suffered from the poisoning of the tubewells regard it as fate, of a particularly cruel kind, as if there had been a curse upon them and the whole enterprise from the start. And it has occurred to me that Marion’s death could be seen as a vicious extension of that fate. Without the tubewells there would have been no research program at the university, and without Dr Ringland’s research program, his friend da Silva would have had no access to arsenic with which to murder Marion and Tina.’

•

‘Did you believe him?’ Kathy asked.

Brock scratched his beard. ‘Both he and Harry Sykes have solid alibis for the time of Tina’s poisoning, and both were a lot more convincing than Rafferty. What’s his game, anyway? Does he think there’s a reward?’

‘I think,’ Kathy said slowly, ‘that he may be hoping to get his hands on Marion’s house.’

‘Really? How did he work that out? I wouldn’t have thought he was smart enough.’

‘I suggested to his wife, Sheena, that Warrender might lose his claim on the place if he was implicated in Marion’s death.’

Brock looked sharply at her. ‘Ah, did you indeed?’

‘We wanted to shake them up.’

He gave a growl and she braced herself for a bollocking. But after a moment he shook his head and said, a little too calmly, ‘I think this case has become a bit personal for you, Kathy. I can understand your distaste for both Rafferty and Warrender, but it seems to me, on any objective measure, that Tony da Silva is still our prime suspect. Damn it, he has no alibi for the first murder and was actually at the scene of the second. He had access to arsenic at his friend Ringland’s laboratory, and he had a powerful motive-Marion was about to destroy his career. I think maybe we’re being too clever by half. We’ll have him in again, and do it the slow way, bit by bit, again and again, until we find the cracks.’

•

Sophie Warrender answered Kathy’s knock, her mood very different from when Kathy had last seen her. She looked drawn and worried, her forehead furrowed by lines that hadn’t been apparent before.

‘She says she wants to see you,’ Sophie said, ‘but she’s not at all well, so please be careful. It seemed to hit her on Friday, the day after Tina died. She’s hardly eaten a thing since then, or come out of her room. You’ll see the change in her. I’ve had the doctor look at her twice and he’s quite concerned. I even thought she might have been poisoned herself that day without realising it and was suffering the after-effects, but the doctor says not.’

Emily was sitting in her mother’s office, curled up in a corner of a chesterfield sofa, a thick woollen cardigan over her shoulders although the room was very warm. She did look diminished, her eyes large and red-rimmed in her pale elfin face. She had an old leather-bound volume on her knee, gripped in slender white fingers.

‘Emily’s been digging about in her grandfather’s collection up in the belvedere, haven’t you, dear?’ Sophie’s bright, encouraging tone sounded strained. ‘What have you got?’

Emily raised the book wordlessly for her mother to see.

‘Wilkie Collins, yes, well… We call it the belvedere’-she pointed to the spiral stair leading up into the Italianate tower visible from the street-‘because it was originally open, but Dougie’s father had it enclosed and turned it into his private library, his refuge.’ She seemed momentarily at a loss, then said, ‘Can I get you some tea, Inspector?’

‘That would be lovely, thanks.’

‘Right.’ She looked doubtfully at her daughter, then said, ‘Shan’t be a moment.’

Kathy sat on the sofa, turning to face the girl. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me again, Emily. I know it’s not easy, especially if you’re not feeling well.’

‘I want to help if I can.’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

‘Have you remembered anything else about that day at the British Library? Maybe noticing anyone at the cafe?’

Emily shook her head, a loop of auburn hair dropping over an eye. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Maybe you could take me through exactly what you did with Tina, that would have been on the Tuesday, when we met at Marion’s house, then on Wednesday and Thursday?’

Kathy took notes as Emily haltingly described agreeing to help Tina on the Tuesday, then on the following day going around several libraries with Tina and Donald Fotheringham, trying to establish what Marion had been doing.

Several of the librarians recognised Tina as having worked with Marion previously, and were sympathetic, supplying lists of requests, and what with those, and what Tina and Emily could remember of their own work with Marion, they had built up a considerable list.

Kathy nodded. They had found library printouts in Tina’s bag at the British Library, as well as in her room at Stamford Street.

‘And on the rest of Wednesday and Thursday?’

‘Tina gave us topics to investigate. She and Donald were looking into an old archive in the India Office Records, and I was to try to find out more about the inquest into the death of Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti’s wife.’

‘Did Tina say what they were looking for in the India Office Records?’

‘Not really. She thought that Marion had found something important somewhere, and she knew she’d requested items from there.’

‘But she was obviously very interested in the events surrounding Lizzie’s death.’

‘Yes. She seemed to think that had been very important to Marion’s research. She also…’

‘Yes?’

‘She said we mustn’t tell anyone else what we were doing, especially anyone from the university.’

Sophie Warrender returned at that point, carrying a tray of tea things, and followed by her mother-in-law, Lady Warrender, who was rather unsteadily bearing a large Dundee cake on a plate. Kathy got to her feet to help, and was introduced to the elderly woman.

‘Here we are.’ Sophie arranged the things on a side table and began to pour while Joan handed round the cake. Emily gave a sharp shake of her head.

‘It’s freshly baked, dear,’ Joan said. ‘I’ve been enjoying myself in the kitchen. And it’s your favourite. You must eat, you know.’

Emily put a hand to her mouth, looking as if she might be sick. She got to her feet and ran out of the room.

‘Oh, darling…’ Sophie rose as if to follow her.

‘Delayed shock,’ Joan said briskly. ‘I’ve seen it many times before. Time will be the healer. Drugs only delay things.’ She chomped on a slab of cake and smacked her lips.

Sophie sank down again. ‘Poor girl. She’s been very shaken up. Was she able to help?’

‘I think so. I’m trying to get a clearer idea of what Tina was doing in the forty-eight hours before she died.’

‘We almost saw her again, the evening before.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, she’d been going to come with Emily to our local book-shop where I was giving a talk about my last book. Apparently she was quite interested, and I told Emily she should come and have a meal with us afterwards. Only she decided at the last moment she couldn’t make it.’ She lifted the book Emily had been reading. ‘ The Woman in White. Oh dear.’

•

Donald Fotheringham rang Kathy as she got into her car. He was back in Scotland now, and apologised for leaving without saying goodbye. ‘I got word that one of my flock had passed away suddenly, and it was important for me to be here. I felt I’d really told you as much as I could.’

‘I’m glad you called, Donald. I was going to ring you. I believe Tina had been intending to go to a talk given by Emily’s mother on the Wednesday evening, but didn’t. Do you know what happened?’

‘Oh aye. I was invited too, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea, and to tell the truth I was feeling pretty exhausted by that stage. But those young women were tireless. Tina especially, she just kept on going. That’s why she missed the talk that evening-she wanted to stay at the library till it closed, though we’d been at it since first thing that morning. She said she thought she was getting somewhere, but as I told you, she didn’t share it with us.’

‘I see. And the next day?’

‘She seemed tired and frustrated. You know, I’ve been chatting to Bessie about what we were doing, following Marion’s trail all over London without really getting to the heart of the matter, and she said that it had been that way with Marion since she was a lassie. She would play hide-and-seek with her auntie, leaving little messages around the garden that Bessie had to follow. And later, as a teenager, she was awfy secretive. She had a china ornament in her room, an old balloon seller it was, and she hid letters inside it, though Bessie found them, sure enough.’

‘That ornament was in Marion’s house, Donald, but there was nothing hidden inside it.’

‘No, well, I’m sure her adult ways would have been more subtle. Perhaps we’ll never know the whole truth about Marion.’

‘We’ll certainly do our best. Thanks again, anyway.’

‘But there was something else I wanted to tell you about. I went to see Marion’s mother before I left, and gave her my phone number, just in case she needed to get in touch. Well, to my surprise she did, just an hour ago. It seems she’s become somewhat disenchanted with her husband Keith, and wanted to get something off her chest. She told me that he and his army friend, Crouch his name is, have a wee racket going, robbing the dead.’

‘Pardon?’

‘They read the death notices in the paper, then visit the deceased’s house while everyone is at the funeral. A particularly unsavoury kind of thieving, you might say. Apparently they’ve been doing it for a long time-since they were in Ireland together with the army. Sheena has known about it for some time too, only now it’s become a little personal.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I rather gathered that Sheena is hoping for a windfall following her daughter’s death, and is concerned that Keith will try to get his hands on it. The thing is, when Keith studies the funeral notices, he marks the ones he intends to visit with a cross. Sheena has kept a note of many of their names. She wouldn’t want to contact you herself, but was quite happy for me to do it on her behalf, if you were interested.’

‘Oh yes, Donald,’ Kathy said. ‘I’m interested.’

•

Kathy couldn’t find Pip at first in the offices of the British Library, hidden behind a mound of books, and when she finally dug her out, the DC blinked and looked disoriented, as if surfacing from a great depth.

‘Blimey, you been here long, boss?’

‘No, just arrived. How’s it going? Brock said you were doing a great job.’

‘Did he?’ She brightened a little. ‘Not sure if I am, but still.’

‘Show me.’

Pip took her through the books she’d checked so far, without discovering anything that looked significant.

Kathy said, ‘I’ve just learned that Tina spent last Wednesday evening in here, working on something, and I’m wondering what it was.’

‘Wednesday… here we are.’ Pip showed her the printout. ‘Just two requests.’

Kathy looked at the entries: the Haverlock diary and Sir Robert Harding’s second book about Bengal, After Midnight. ‘Have you looked at these?’

‘ After Midnight is here somewhere. Brock asked me about that. I haven’t seen the diary yet. Shall I ask them to get it?’

‘Yes, do that, and I’ll buy you a coffee while we’re waiting.’

When they returned from the cafe there was a note waiting on the desk: Request for Diary, author H. Haverlock, Add. 507861.86…. . NOT AVAILABLE.

They found a library assistant who said, ‘May be lost, or withdrawn for repairs.’

‘Or on loan to someone else?’ Kathy suggested.

The woman shook her head. ‘It’d say.’ She tapped at her computer for a moment. ‘No, it’s down as not yet returned by the last person who requested it.’

‘That would be Tina Flowers.’

Another shake of the head, her finger running across the screen. ‘She returned it last thing on Wednesday. The final request was the following day, the twelfth, at eight minutes past nine, as soon as we opened. By a Dr Anthony da Silva.’

Kathy thought. ‘Did he request anything else that day?’

Another search, then the woman showed them the entry on the screen: After Midnight: A Memoir of Bengal, 1947-71, author R. Harding, Add. 507861.103.

‘But we have that here,’ Kathy said. ‘Unless there’s more than one copy.’

‘No, that’s it. It was returned later that morning.’

‘So he asked for both the books that Tina had been investigating the previous evening, and now one of them is missing.’

‘How would he know what she’d requested?’ Pip asked. ‘Could he have accessed her records?’

‘No.’ More tapping. ‘But he was here that evening. See? He requested several books-about arsenic by the looks of it. Maybe he met her, saw what she was reading.’

‘It makes sense,’ Kathy said when they returned to Pip’s table. ‘He had finally traced the source of Marion’s revelations in her paper to the Cornell conference, and he knew that Tina had found it too.’

‘So he stole the book and murdered her. Kind of explains everything, doesn’t it?’ Pip said.

‘Looks like it.’ Kathy reached for the Harding memoir from the book pile, and opened it to a handwritten dedication on the inside cover: To my very dear friend Toby Havelock, a mischievous memoir, from one old India hand to another. Bob Harding. She flicked through the book. ‘And this, about the twentieth century, would have been of no interest to him.’

‘Brock found a reference to the Warrenders in there,’ Pip told her, and Kathy nodded.

‘Yes, he showed me a copy.’ She checked the index and read the passage again. ‘Marion must have found this while she was searching through that family collection, and noticed the reference.’ Kathy tried to imagine Marion’s method, skimming hundreds of books for obscure clues and trails, scanning their chapter headings, their indexes, for her key words. Arsenic, for instance. She looked it up in the index of Harding’s book, and there it was, page 213. She turned to the place, and found no such page. It had been very neatly sliced away, close to the binding. ‘Look at this,’ she said, showing Pip.

‘You think da Silva vandalised it before he returned it?’

‘Who knows? I’d better tell Brock what we’ve discovered.’

When she got through to him and described the sequence they had uncovered, he was grimly pleased.

‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I thought the answer must lie in those books somewhere. We’d better have him in.’

‘Yes.’

‘You sound unsure.’

‘No, I’m just wondering what was in that missing page of the Harding book. It may be nothing at all to do with da Silva of course, but I’m wondering. Suppose there was something there about using arsenic as a poison, some traditional Indian preparation perhaps that Harding described, which maybe Marion discovered and told her tutor about, and then da Silva used it on his two victims.’

‘I see, yes. Another link. All right, but there are other copies of that book, aren’t there? I seem to remember it appeared on the lists of both the National Archives and the London Library borrowings. I remember wondering why they needed to look at it in three different places.’

‘I’ll check.’

Kathy rang off, still uneasy. She hadn’t mentioned it to Brock, but what had really unsettled her was her session with the Warrenders. She was haunted by Emily’s sickly appearance, the unhealthy glitter in her eye and air of despair, and her mother’s comment that she thought she may have been poisoned too. And the terrible thought Not another one, please God, had been followed by an even more shocking one: Three young women, following obsessively in each other’s footsteps, like a suicide chain.

No, Kathy told herself, not that. Brock’s right, da Silva’s the one.

‘Come on,’ she told Pip. ‘Let’s take a drive. Where was the next place that Marion found this After Midnight book, after she discovered it in the archives here?’

Pip checked. ‘The National Archives.’

‘Okay, we’ll go there.’ twenty-nine

T he National Archives, housing nine hundred years of official records back to the Domesday Book, is housed in a modern building on a curve of the river near the botanical gardens at Kew. They found their way to a member of staff who listened to what they were after, intrigued by the request, and got to work on her computer.

‘Yes, it’s here.’

‘Do you have its borrowing record?’

‘I can get that.’ They waited a moment, then, ‘Not terribly popular, only two calls in the past year: T. Flowers within the past week, and before that M. Summers last August.’

‘No Anthony da Silva?’

‘’Fraid not. Do you want to have a look at it?’

‘Yes please.’

The woman returned after a while with the now familiar small green volume in her hand, and gave it to Kathy. This time the dedication in the flysheet read: To the Public Records Office, in appreciation of your generous assistance in the preparation of this little book. Robert Harding KCMG.

Kathy turned to page 213 and found it to be, as at the British Library, missing.

•

Kathy saw that the greenery in the square had thickened and darkened during the past week into more mature, summery foliage, although perversely the weather had turned cold again and grey. They mounted the front steps, went into the library and asked for Gael Rayner.

‘Any news?’ she said, voice hushed.

‘Not really, Gael. We’re trying to retrace Tina Flowers’ movements in the days before she died, last Thursday.’

‘Oh yes, we heard all about that, and of course your colleague came to collect the record of Marion’s borrowings.’ She nodded at Pip. ‘We just couldn’t believe it, Marion’s friend, taken in the same way. We’re all still in shock.’

‘Did you ever meet Tina?’

‘Yes, she came a number of times with Marion, helping her with her work. And after Marion died she came back again. She said she wanted to tidy up some loose ends in Marion’s research. She was obviously distressed by what had happened. I should really have charged her for a temporary reference ticket, but I felt sorry for her and let her in on the strength of Marion’s membership. But we couldn’t let her borrow books.’

‘Right, so we don’t have a record of what she was looking at here. Can you remember if she came in last week at all, in the days before her death?’

‘Oh yes, she was certainly here, her and the other girl helping her.’

‘Emily Warrender?’

‘That’s right. I’m a great admirer of her mother’s work.’

‘Would you have any idea what they were doing?’

‘Well, they had unsupervised access to the stacks, so I wouldn’t know really. Let me think… Yes, I do remember Tina asking about one book in particular, because she couldn’t find it.’

‘Do you remember what it was?’

‘It was in History, or should have been. But I don’t think I can remember… hold on, I may still have my notes.’ She took a sheaf of papers from a filing tray and thumbed through them. ‘Yes, this is the one, I think. Its shelfmark was H. India -that’s H for history-and Social etc. We arrange our books differently here, you see, not by DDC.’ She deciphered her notes. ‘Apparently it was shelved under Harding, R., but I don’t seem to have a title. I’ll have noted it as misplaced. Do you want me to check?’

‘I think we know what it was, Gael-a book called After Midnight? It was a memoir.’

‘You’re right, I do remember now. They spent quite a lot of time looking for it.’

‘Do you have the borrowing record for that book?’

‘I can check.’ She called it up on her computer and said, ‘Only one borrower-Marion herself, last September. Nobody else.’

‘And she returned it?’

‘Yes, on the twenty-sixth of September.’

‘So what happened to it? Did someone steal it?’

‘Unlikely, I think. We assumed it must have been returned to the wrong place in the shelves.’

‘How could that happen?’

‘Well, either by mistake or on purpose.’

‘Why would anyone do it on purpose?’

‘To hide it. What better place to hide a book than in a library?’ She smiled. ‘You look surprised. Obviously you were a very law-abiding student.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’m afraid it’s a not-uncommon practice in university libraries. If a book is in demand by students and on restricted access, the first one who gets to it places it on another shelf, where its location will be known only to them, although the computer will say it’s not on loan. Very frustrating for everyone else.’

‘But this book wasn’t in demand,’ Kathy said. ‘Only Marion was interested in it, apparently.’

‘True. Let’s see its publishing history.’ Another flurry of computer keys and she said, ‘Well, it was obviously a self-published memoir, a vanity publication, probably just for friends and relatives, with a very small print run. You might find a copy in the British Library, otherwise it’s probably vanished into obscurity. Is it important, do you think?’

‘I really don’t know, Gael. I might ask Emily. Tell me, is Marion’s tutor, Dr Anthony da Silva, a member of the library?’

‘Oh yes, I know him. He was here a lot when he was researching his wonderful book on Rossetti, but I haven’t seen him lately. Not for a while. Shall I check his borrowing record?’

‘Please.’

‘Here we are. No, nothing this year. His last loan was that new biography of Stanley Baldwin, last December.’

‘Thanks for your help.’

Kathy phoned the Warrenders’ house from the car. Emily was a little more settled, apparently, after a lie-down. They put her on.

‘Hi Emily,’ Kathy said. ‘Just a small thing. We’re tracing Tina’s movements before she died, as I told you, and I understand you both spent some time in the London Library last week, looking for a lost book. Do you remember that?’

‘Mm, yes, that’s right.’

‘Do you remember what it was?’

‘I think… some sort of memoir? I’m not sure. We never found it.’

‘Why was it important?’

There was a moment’s silence, then Emily replied, ‘Tina thought Marion had been looking at it. I think Tina thought there might have been something there about how Lizzie Siddal died. That’s what she was most interested in, some discovery of Marion’s that got her tutor really upset.’

‘She said that, did she?’

‘Yes, she did.’

Kathy phoned Brock, and told him what they had learned.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to interview Emily later to get that on record, but that’s good enough. Come on in and we’ll get to work.’

•

The room was drab and dispiriting, as if to tell those who were interviewed in it that anything they might come up with had certainly been heard between these grubby walls before.

‘Since we saw you last, Dr da Silva,’ Brock began, ‘we’ve had a chance to check some of the things you told us.’ He stopped and stared at the man across the table.

Da Silva tried to meet his eyes, but only succeeded in looking shifty. He was a changed man, Kathy thought, the arrogance gone along with the colour from his face. His clothes looked crumpled and soiled, as if he’d slept in them on someone’s sofa, and she wondered if his wife had thrown him out. He took a pair of glasses out of his pocket and put them on with an unsteady hand, as if for protection.

‘We’ve been trying to confirm your account of your movements on Tuesday the third of April, the day that Marion Summers was poisoned, but without success. None of your neighbours saw you that day, you made no calls through your house phone nor received any. There’s no evidence of you being at home that day at all.’

Da Silva’s solicitor began to object, but Brock simply nodded his head patiently and then went on, questioning the tutor again about the details of that day, what he’d had for lunch, what letters he might have written (none), and emails he might have sent from his home computer.

‘No, nothing like that. I told you, I was completely engrossed in the paper I was writing for a conference presentation that was overdue.’ His voice was different, like a nervous public speaker whose throat is stretched tight with tension.

They would require his computer, Brock said, and would carry out a search of his home, although from his tone he didn’t expect to find much. He moved on to the days following Marion’s death, and da Silva’s visit to her house.

‘I spoke to Keith Rafferty,’ Kathy said. ‘He denied that he’d supplied you with a key.’

Da Silva made a noise intended as a scoff but that came out as a choke. He took a sip from the plastic cup in front of him and said, ‘That’s no surprise.’

They turned to his relationship with Dr Ringland and access to his laboratory, laboriously working through every detail until eventually the solicitor said, ‘I think that’s really enough. As you can see, Dr da Silva is suffering greatly from the strain of these terrible events, of which he is entirely innocent. Unless you have something specific to ask him, I’m going to advise him to say no more.’

‘It’s true!’ da Silva blurted out, loud enough to make his solicitor glance at him in alarm. ‘You… you’re trying to make me out to be some kind of predator, preying on girls like Marion and Tina. But I’m innocent! I was proud of Marion, proud of her as a father might be proud of his daughter, proud of her development, of her intelligence and insight. Proud of her independence, too, of her refusal to accept my opinion on trust, difficult as that sometimes was.’

There were tears in his eyes now, and the three other people in the room, despite their long experience of such situations, drew back a little in embarrassment.

‘When she hid her Cornell paper from me, and I began to suspect the way in which it was intended to undermine me, I felt bitterly betrayed. Her disloyalty was like a knife in my heart. But I never, for one moment, thought of hurting her. That is obscene.’

Silence filled the room, then Brock said mildly, ‘Where were you on the afternoon and evening of Wednesday the eleventh of this month, Dr da Silva?’

‘What?’

‘A week ago, between the hours of three and eight. Please think carefully before you answer.’

Da Silva frowned, then reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a small diary. ‘Umm… lunch with Dr Ringland, a two o’clock lecture, then…’ He looked up. ‘I believe I went up to the British Library.’

‘What was the lecture?’

‘Victorian literature.’

‘To?’

‘Third-year arts students mainly. Why?’

‘Tina Flowers was in that class, wasn’t she?’

‘Um… it’s possible, I suppose.’

‘And then she went to the British Library, where, shortly after four o’clock, she requested two books. Do you know what they were?’

‘How could I?’

‘Because the following morning you returned to the library as soon as it opened, and requested those same two books, books so obscure that almost nobody else has ever requested them.’

‘Um… I believe I do remember. Marion had told me about them.’

Brock shook his head impatiently. ‘You followed Tina after the lecture up to the British Library, and watched her order the two books, one of which was the source of Marion’s revelations in her Cornell paper. You had been unable to find that book because it was stored in one of the special collections, the papers of the Havelock family, a name slightly different from the one you’d been searching for-Haverlock.

Da Silva sat rigid in his chair.

‘Where is that book now, Dr da Silva? You collected it the following day, but never returned it. Where is it?’

He said nothing, jaw locked.

‘Did you hide it somewhere in the library?’ Kathy pressed.

For a moment it seemed he would keep silent, but then he gave a kind of shudder and whispered, ‘She just read and read and read, completely engrossed, but she seemed to make no notes, nor photocopies, before the library was closing and she had to hand it back. So the next morning I was there before her and took out the book. It was a scurrilous store of gossip, that’s all; a travesty, full of innuendo and rumour. Marion should never have considered it seriously. It was unconscionable that it should cause so much distress. I knew exactly what Rossetti would want me to do with the damn thing, and I did it.’

‘You did what?’ Kathy asked softly.

‘I destroyed it,’ he said defiantly. ‘I tore it into shreds and flushed it down the loo. There, I destroyed a library book. You can arrest me for that.’

‘But Tina had read it,’ Brock said, ‘just as Marion had before her, so you had to destroy her, too, didn’t you?’

•

Guiltily, Kathy now also felt like a disloyal daughter. Brock was energised by the arrest, firing instructions to the team-her team-to fill the gaps in their case against da Silva. She worked with him, of course, following up his ideas, adding her own, yet all the time she held back a little, feeling they’d got something wrong. It worried her that he hadn’t been immersed in the case as she had been, but was that just pique at having him take over now? But if there was some flaw, it was up to her, who should have developed a deeper understanding of the dynamics, to put her finger on it.

She puzzled over this later that night, when she finally got home and sat on her sofa with a burger on her lap, staring up at her wall. The diagram, she had to admit, looked pretty convincing with da Silva in the centre, the perfect counterpart to Marion’s pattern on the left with Rossetti in that central place, ringed by his women, and Kathy could almost sense that Marion would have approved. So what was wrong?

She went to bed without an answer, overtired and uneasy. She soon fell into a deep sleep, only to wake again after a couple of hours. Her brain immediately began whirring with images of imagined scenes-Marion collapsing in the library, Pip in the pub with Rafferty and Crouch, Ogilvie tumbling down the library stairs, Douglas Warrender meeting Marion in Bastia, then returning across flower-covered hills to suffer a pool-side barbecue with his family and friends…

No, that was wrong. She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark room, remembering Warrender’s remark in St James’s Park: We were a perfect couple, making friends with other holidaying couples at the local restaurants, entertaining neighbours around the pool…

A perfect couple, not a perfect family. Was Emily with them? Kathy realised they’d never checked.

And suddenly it came to her that what had been wrong from the start was the way in which Marion and Tina had died. It was entirely plausible that da Silva, or Douglas Warrender, or even Keith Rafferty, might have desperately wanted Marion dead. But how would they do it? A hit and run, perhaps. An attack in a dark street. A strangling in a car, the body dumped. Something desperate, brutal and anonymous. But not arsenic poisoning.

The way Marion died had felt… what? Bizarre, certainly. Eccentric? That wasn’t quite it. Rather elaborate and clever, with its references to her studies. Too much so. Like a student prank. It reminded Kathy of those student pranks at school on April Fools’ Day, the bucket of water balanced over the door, the boot polish on the door handle, the collapsing chair. Elaborately staged, spectacular in their effects and at their best-or worst-cruelly matched to their intended victim.

She simply couldn’t imagine any of those men doing it that way. The diagram on her wall was all wrong, she realised. She had been so influenced by Marion’s, with its brooding male at the centre. Perhaps it wasn’t like that at all.

A final image came into Kathy’s mind, of Emily sitting sobbing on the leather sofa, as pale and racked as the two victims, whose symptoms she almost seemed to mimic. Da Silva wasn’t the only one who’d been at the British Library when Tina died. Emily had been there too. thirty

S uzanne also spent a disturbed night. Angela’s story about Dougie had unsettled her more than she’d been prepared to admit to herself. He had been her first great love, a dazzling figure against whose memory later boys had been measured and invariably found wanting. Even much later, when she matured and married, the summer in Notting Hill remained a lost Eden in her mind, to be nurtured and occasionally savoured in secret. Angela’s story had thrown all that into a new, grotesque perspective, and one that, if it were remotely true, resonated horribly with the case David was working on. She shuddered to think of the ramifications if she told him; but suppose Angela, who obviously hadn’t heard of the connection between Marion Summers and the Warrenders, did eventually pick it up, and decide to tell her story to the police? Where would Suzanne be then? One way or another, she didn’t see how she could keep it to herself without some kind of reassurance that the story was nonsense. She couldn’t approach Dougie, that was unthinkable, but in the end she decided that there was perhaps just one person who might put her mind to rest. And so, that Wednesday evening while Brock and Kathy were charging Tony da Silva with Marion’s murder, Suzanne had phoned the house in Notting Hill and asked to speak to Lady Joan Warrender.

Joan remembered her straight away. She was polite, but naturally puzzled at being approached like this, especially after Sophie had told them all about how angry she’d got with DCI Brock.

‘But how exactly can I help you?’

‘I wondered if I could meet you briefly in the next day or two, perhaps over a cup of tea, Lady Warrender.’

‘Oh, I really don’t think that would be a good idea. Things have been said, you know, people upset. Sophie is very touchy about it. This is a very tense time for us all.’

‘Of course, I do understand.’ The old woman sounded so stern, and Suzanne tried in vain to think of some way to mollify her. It had been a bad idea approaching her like this.

‘Perhaps if you gave me some idea of what it’s about?’

‘Well, I happened to meet another old friend recently, Angela Crick, who used to live next door to you, remember?’

‘Yes?’ Joan sounded bemused.

Suzanne ploughed on. ‘She told me a story that your nephew Jack had told her, all those years ago, about something that happened in India when you were living there, to do with Dougie.’

‘In India? About Dougie? Good Lord, what sort of story?’

‘Well, it wasn’t very nice, and I’m sure it was completely untrue, but I thought it might be a good thing if I could talk it over with you, and get to the bottom of it, so that I could get back to Angela and put her right. I didn’t like the idea of her repeating it to anyone else.’

Suzanne heard a little gasp from the other end, and imagined the old woman sinking onto the chair in the hall beside the telephone, trying to gather her wits.

‘I’m sorry, Lady Warrender. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sure I can take care of it myself.’

‘But… no, if it concerns Dougie… Have you spoken to him?’

‘I thought it best to speak to you first.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right. Oh dear. Very well, let’s meet. Not here at the house, and not in a cafe either-I can’t hear anything in places like that any more. Meet me at the churchyard of St John’s, just up the hill from us. I often walk up there for a little exercise. Tomorrow? Shall we say eleven?’

•

First thing that morning Kathy checked the passenger lists of both airline and private flights between London, Nice and Bastia for the months of February, March and April-something, she told herself, she should have done weeks ago. She established that Douglas and Sophie Warrender alone had travelled out on the tenth of March, returning on the sixth of April.

Impatient as she was to follow this up, she couldn’t get out of a scheduled team meeting, and sat through it barely concentrating on the briefing about a new computer system. When it was finally over she picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Warrenders’ house. Sophie’s secretary Rhonda answered.

‘I’m afraid Sophie’s out this morning, Inspector, working in the library.’

‘Ah. Is Emily with her?’

‘No, she’s at home. Do you want to speak to her?’

‘No need to disturb her. Actually it would be better if I spoke to her in person. I’ll come over right away.’

Bren tried to intercept her on her way out, but she put him off. She would have found it hard to explain the sense of urgency she felt. Rather than wait for a car from the pool, she caught a passing cab, and made good time to Lansdowne Gardens.

‘That was quick.’ Rhonda opened the front door to let Kathy in, then hesitated. ‘After you rang off I wondered if this was wise.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Emily’s really not very well at the moment, in fact she’s still in bed, and Sophie’s very protective. She probably wouldn’t approve of you interviewing Emily with neither her nor Lady Joan here in the house.’

‘Well, let’s ask Emily, shall we? She is eighteen, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, and I’m sure it would be all right, but…’

Kathy sensed something equivocal in Rhonda’s voice, as if she didn’t want to be accused of wrongdoing, but at the same time wanted to help.

‘Were you here at all during the month Sophie was away, Rhonda?’

‘Yes, I came in each day and kept an eye on the decorators and reported on progress to Sophie from time to time.’

‘Was Emily here?’

‘Yes, she and Lady Joan didn’t want to go to Corsica, so they stayed here, more or less camping in their rooms in the middle of all the mess. Emily was helping Marion with her research most days, and Joan got out in the garden when she could. Look, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you wait in the office, and I’ll tell Emily you’re here?’

‘Fair enough.’

Kathy walked down the short corridor to the room at the end where Rhonda and Sophie worked. The tall sash windows filled it with light, and the shelves of books gave it the appearance more of an elegant library than an office. She was examining the books on Sophie’s desk when Rhonda returned.

‘We’re considering Alice Kipling for the next book, after Janey Morris is done with,’ she said. ‘Rudyard’s wife, one of the MacDonald sisters. Her sister Georgiana was married to the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones and got very chummy with William Morris, commiserating over the fact that both their spouses were unfaithful.’

‘All these Victorians seem to be interconnected,’ Kathy said.

Rhonda laughed. ‘Too right, you need a bloody good database to sort them all out.’

‘Lovely room to work in.’

‘Yes. Have you been up to the belvedere yet?’ She nodded to the spiral staircase in the corner.

‘No. Is it interesting?’

‘I think so.’ She said it with an emphasis that made Kathy pause. ‘Why don’t you pop up now? Emily’s getting dressed.’

‘Okay.’

She mounted the stairs, arriving in the corner of the square tower room which Joan’s husband Roger had converted into his eyrie. The original owner of the house had an interest in astronomy, and built it as an open loggia to house his telescopes, but Roger had enclosed it, leaving narrow windows in each of the corners with views out over Notting Hill, and with timber bookcases and a desk filling the walls between. The room had a lingering smell of cigar smoke, which had thoroughly permeated the wood. The ceiling and floor were both polished timber, so that the room had the feeling of a large cigar box.

Kathy sat in the red leather antique office chair, feeling the snug fit of the room around her, a sanctuary for contemplation. A thick leather-bound tome lay on the desk in front of her, and she read the title in gold letters on the front, British Pharmaceutical Codex.

There was a place marker, a piece of folded, stained paper, and when Kathy opened the book and removed the paper she found that it was a piece of old wallpaper, faded green in colour, with a pattern of swirling leaves. It marked a section headed with the title Arsenic.

She read for a moment, then heard feet on the stairs behind her. She turned to see Emily’s pale face appear.

‘What are you doing?’ The girl reached the top of the stair and took in the open book on the desk, the unfolded piece of wallpaper. ‘Oh!’ She bit her lip. ‘I put that away! How…?’

Kathy held her eyes, saying nothing, and suddenly Emily gave a little wail. ‘You know, don’t you? You know!’ Tears started from her eyes and she sank to her knees, wrapping her arms around herself, and began to sob.

•

Suzanne found Joan waiting on a seat in a quiet shady spot at the side of the church. She was wearing an overcoat and hat against the cool breeze, and had a large bag on her knee.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she cried, and Suzanne shook her hand and sat beside her.

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to see me. I did feel awkward about approaching you.’

‘Yes, well, in view of Sophie’s sensitivity on the subject, I think it best if we don’t mention it to anyone.’

‘Yes, but you see, it was because of those sensitivities that I thought I should talk to you about this.’

Joan frowned. ‘About what Angela said about Dougie in India? So what did she say?’

‘I don’t know if you remember, but Angela and Jack were very close in those days, and she said that he’d told her that the reason you all left India and returned to the UK was because of a scandal about Dougie getting a girl pregnant-the daughter of one of your servants, actually.’

Suzanne was aware of the elderly woman at her side becoming very still.

‘I’m sorry, this is probably distressing for you, and I’m sure utterly mistaken, but I thought if you could tell me the truth of the situation I could put Angela straight, and stop her repeating the story.’

‘Was there anything else?’

‘Well, yes, there was actually. She said that the girl took poison and died, and there was a fuss. You see, I’m afraid that if Angela were to read something like the report in last week’s Observer, which mentioned that Marion had been working for the writer Sophie Warrender, she might… well, I don’t know, start talking to other people about it.’

Joan was silent for a moment, then said quietly, ‘I see. And you didn’t tell her about that connection?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘And have you discussed this story with anyone else?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘Good.’ Joan took a deep breath and went on, ‘You did the right thing to speak to me. Because there is not a shred of truth in it. It sounds like some kind of fanciful tale that Dougie must have told Jack to make our days in India seem more interesting and exotic. I remember him telling Jack another ridiculous story about the elephant’s foot, about how he shot the beast, quite absurd. Good Lord, Dougie was only sixteen when we left!’

That didn’t seem an altogether conclusive argument to Suzanne, and there was something else about Joan’s explanation, a kind of resentful, defensive tone that seemed out of key. But she said cheerfully, ‘Oh good, I thought it must be something like that.’

‘So you’ll tell Angela this?’

‘I will.’

‘If she’s not convinced, you can tell her to look up the diplomatic papers for the period at the National Archives in Kew. They’re accessible to the public now. Emily looked them up, when she was helping Marion. There’s not a whiff of scandal, but plenty of glowing praise for Roger’s splendid service. I can give you the references if you like.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ Again there had been a defensiveness about Joan’s reply, almost as if it were a prepared defence, but then, Suzanne thought, she had probably been deeply offended by the suggestion that their time in India might have been soiled by any kind of scandal. ‘I am relieved. I’ll tell Angela in no uncertain terms, and I’d better tell my friend, Chief Inspector Brock, as well, so he knows, in case it ever comes up.’

‘What? No! Certainly not. You mustn’t do that.’

Suzanne was startled by the vehemence of the other woman’s words, and felt that she was suddenly seeing a younger, more abrasive version of Lady Warrender, imposing her will on those around her.

‘I think it would be sensible to tell him.’

‘No, do you hear? You’ll do no such thing!’

Suzanne flushed and turned away. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to her like that. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘that’s really for me to decide, Lady Warrender.’

The old woman gave a strange, guttural growl and hunched away. There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then she let out a deep sigh. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, her voice now frail again and winsome. ‘I’m afraid it is one of the tragedies of old age that one can so often see the wise and safest course, but is unable to summon up the ability to persuade others. You really must do whatever you see fit, my dear. Please, we mustn’t quarrel about it.’

‘No,’ Suzanne said with relief. ‘I don’t want to do that.’

‘Now look, see what I’ve brought.’ She opened the bag on her lap and drew out a gold cardboard box. Opening the top, she showed Suzanne the chocolates inside. ‘I’ve been busy this morning. The kitchen is my refuge these days, and one of my great joys is making treats for my family and friends. Do you like liqueur chocolates? Of course you do, everyone does. And what are your favourites? I have made them all-rum raisin, cumquat brandy, creme de menthe. They’re all here. Come now, let’s be friends. Take your pick.’

Suzanne smiled. She didn’t really want a chocolate, but she could hardly refuse. She chose a rum raisin. She bit into it and its syrupy heart oozed into her mouth and down her throat.

‘Good?’

‘Delicious.’

‘Try another.’

•

‘Tell me,’ Kathy said.

‘You know. You’ve found her, haven’t you?’

A jangle of alarm sounded in Kathy’s head. Found who? ‘Emily, tell me quickly!’

But the girl suddenly clamped a hand over her mouth and jumped up. She clattered down the spiral staircase in a rush, and Kathy got up to follow her. By the time she reached the foot of the steps Emily was gone. Kathy looked at Rhonda, who was staring at her in consternation. ‘Where is she?’

Rhonda pointed at the door to the hall, and followed as Kathy ran out, calling Emily’s name. They heard a cupboard door bang in the kitchen, and found Emily standing at a bench holding a glass jar of white powder, which she was shovelling into her mouth.

Kathy cried out and lunged at the girl, jerking the jar out of her grip, then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her over to the sink where she used her free hand to turn on the tap and force Emily’s head under it, then stuck her hand in the girl’s mouth. She choked and struggled, but Kathy forced her fingers into her throat until she was sick. She turned back to Rhonda, who was looking horrified, and said, ‘Has she seen anyone else this morning?’

‘No, no one, only her grandmother.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She went out for her morning walk, as she always does, to St John’s church, up the hill.’

‘Call an ambulance, Rhonda, and don’t let anyone touch that powder.’

She half carried, half dragged Emily out to the hall and sat her in the chair beside the phone while Rhonda made the call. She didn’t want to leave Rhonda alone with Emily, but the girl looked utterly defeated, and Kathy was gripped by a terrible anxiety. She fired some more instructions at Rhonda, then flew out of the house and raced down the street, at the same time calling on her mobile for help. A man getting out of his car stared at her in surprise as she sprinted past, down to the corner, then up the long rise towards the stone spire of St John’s. As she drew closer, heart hammering in her chest, she made out two people sitting on a bench against the church wall. She thought she recognised the elderly figure in the burgundy hat and coat, and the other looked a little like Suzanne. Astonished, Kathy realised that it was Suzanne. She called out.

•

Suzanne heard the shout and looked up to see a fair-haired woman running up the hill towards them. She paused, her hand with the second chocolate almost at her mouth, then lowered it again. ‘Kathy?’

She turned to Lady Warrender, and was shocked by the curl of utter hatred on the old woman’s mouth, as if for the first time seeing the real face behind the genteel mask. thirty-one

S uzanne sat propped up against the pillows. It was absurd the fuss they were making. After the second bout of sickness had passed she’d been reasonably comfortable, though her stomach still ached. Dr Mehta had been in to see her, eagerly discussing symptoms with the A amp;E registrar. And Kathy, to whom she’d given a statement. But not yet Brock, though she knew he was pacing impatiently outside in the waiting room. Finally she took a deep breath and asked a nurse to let him in.

He came like a storm front through the ward, black coat flying, face dark, trolleys rattling in his wake. ‘How the hell are you?’

She smiled. ‘Completely fine.’

He subsided onto the chair beside her bed. ‘You’re white as a sheet. What are they giving you?’

‘Everything’s under control.’

‘That’s what Sundeep said, but I didn’t like the look on his face, as if he was already planning the PM.’

They lapsed into silence, and then she said, ‘Has Kathy explained?’

‘She gave me some sort of account. I understand you felt you had to check the story you got from your friend, about Warrender poisoning someone in India.’

‘I didn’t know if it was relevant. I had to be sure before I told you, David. I’m so sorry, after I promised-’

‘Hush.’ He took her hand. ‘My fault. I should have been a better listener. I’ve been taking you for granted.’

She shook her head. Another silence, while someone was wheeled past, groaning. Then Suzanne nodded at the parcel under Brock’s arm. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, when they told me to go away for an hour, I went for a walk and came across a bookshop.’ He handed her the package. ‘A get-well present.’

She peeled away the wrapping to reveal a thick volume, a biography of David Hockney. ‘Aha… lovely.’

‘I thought I’d give the nineteenth century a miss,’ he said. ‘And the girl assured me no one gets poisoned.’

She had turned to an image of palm trees against a blue sky, and said, ‘California… I believe there’s an antique dealers’ convention in Sacramento next month.’

She said it with a certain edge, reminding him of the last time she’d planned a big trip and he’d let her down.

‘Well then, we should go.’

•

They found more scraps of the wallpaper in the garden outhouse, and a tub in which, according to Sundeep, the paper had been soaked in vinegar, a weak acid, in order to dissolve the colouring of Paris Green, copper acetoarsenite, used in the William Morris print. The women had then apparently mixed washing soda with the solution, to precipitate the insoluble copper carbonate and leave a clear solution of arsenic trioxide, which could be concentrated and eventually collected as a fine white powder.

‘Emily was good at chemistry at school,’ Kathy said. ‘She was going to read it at Oxford. She must have discovered what was going on between her father and Marion, and when her parents went off to Corsica, she and her grandmother decided that something had to be done. She found the old books on the chemistry of arsenic in her grandfather’s eyrie, where he’d pondered over them, trying to understand what had gone wrong with his tubewell project in Bengal, and she realised that the arsenic-coated wallpaper being stripped from their walls, hidden under layers for over a hundred years, could be the instrument of retribution. It must have seemed like poetic justice somehow.’

But this was all conjecture, for neither Emily, in a hospital ward, nor Joan were saying a word. Douglas too, devastated by what had happened, denied all knowledge of the tale that Angela had told Suzanne. It seemed that forensic analysis of her homemade arsenic-laced chocolates would certainly support a charge of attempted murder by Joan against Suzanne, and possibly, though more circumstantially, of murder by Emily against Tina. But if they held their silence, there was frustratingly little evidence to connect them to Marion’s death, and Kathy could imagine the sympathetic effect of the two defendants on a jury, and the psychologists’ reports that the defence would call up, representing the crimes as desperate acts of temporary insanity by two essentially decent people.

There was still, Kathy felt, a void at the centre of the story, a darkness, like Sundeep’s arsenic mirror, hiding some crucial element that no one would admit.

•

The London Library was busy when Kathy arrived. A group of Welsh librarians on a trip to London were being given the tour, and Kathy waited for a while in the main hall for Gael Rayner to be free. It seemed such an improbable place for an act of violence, she thought, and yet, at the British Library, Marion had uncovered a little book which might have destroyed a man’s reputation and very nearly, perhaps, provided a motive for her murder. Maybe it wasn’t the only innocent-looking text she’d found.

‘Kathy! Hello. Any developments?’

‘I believe there are, Gael. We’ve charged Emily Warrender and her grandmother Joan with murder and attempted murder.’ She saw the astonishment register on the librarian’s face. ‘Yes, I know. It seems they didn’t like the idea of Marion and Emily’s father being lovers.’

‘Sophie Warrender’s husband? Oh my God!’ Gael shook her head, taking it in. ‘And is there something you need here? Evidence of some kind?’

‘Maybe, if I can find it. Tell me, do you have any books on balloons?’

‘Balloons?’ She stared at Kathy, then, seeing she was serious, collected herself and sat down at the computer. ‘How about The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783-1903, by Rolt, L.T.C.?’

‘Could be.’

‘You want me to get it for you?’

‘I’d like to look at its place in the stacks.’

‘Its shelfmark is S for science, Ballooning. Come on, I’ll show you.’

They went through to the floors of book stacks at the back of the building, coming to the Science and Miscellaneous section, then working alphabetically through to S. Ballooning, between S. Astronomy and S. Biology against the long side wall. Kathy began to remove books, until she found what she was looking for, a small green volume tucked between two others, its shelfmark H. India.

‘This is in the wrong place,’ Gael said.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Kathy said, and turned to page 213. It was intact. of unparalleled devotion to the service. There was, however, one incident in 1963 which cast a disastrous pall upon all our efforts, a potential scandal so serious indeed as to threaten a diplomatic rift at the highest level. One of our senior diplomats, let us call him W, had a son, a cheeky and unruly brat in his childhood, who had developed into a precocious youth, whose sense of seemly conduct left much to be desired. This youth, D, was raised by a devoted ayah, a modest Christian woman of impeccable character, who had a daughter, a year younger than D, who was flattered by his attentions. She became pregnant by him, and, so it was said, overcome with shame and unable to face her mother, she took her own life by eating arsenic, a horrible fate. Then a younger sister revealed the association with D, and rumours began to circulate that he had been with her on the night she took the poison, and that he had forced her to take it. Her family was incensed, their cause was taken up by opportunistic politicians in Dacca, and the affair threatened to take on the dimensions of an international incident. Fortunately I was able to call upon my extensive contacts in the Pakistani cabinet to bring the scandal under control. A compensation package was agreed between W and the girl’s mother, mediated principally by myself and a good friend in the Justice Ministry. W and his family were hastily posted back to London, and official references to the affair deleted from the records. For W it was an ignominious end to a meritorious, if somewhat unconventional, term in Bengal. On a more positive note, however, shortly after this unfortunate episode was concluded I convened a round table of Western diplomats to reach a consensus on our response to the new constitution for Pakistan promulgated by General Ayub Khan; a meeting, I think one can in all modesty claim, that was a triumph for British diplomacy.

•

‘Harding was a shit,’ Douglas Warrender said. ‘He was pompous, smug and dull, everything my father wasn’t, and he hated us as a result. The scandal over Vijaya’s death was a godsend for him, and he wallowed in it. When my father heard that he was publishing his memoirs in 1973, he demanded to see Harding’s manuscript, and threatened to sue if they didn’t remove page 213. It was a lie, you see, about my involvement in her death. Vijaya took the poison without telling me or anyone else. The book had been printed, a short run that Harding intended mainly for his friends, to big-note his mediocre career. In the end he agreed to cut out the offending page, but out of spite he kept one uncut copy which he presented to the London Library, where he was a member. Marion found it.

‘I told you before, didn’t I, about the sense of tragic fate that hung over my father’s attempt to help the people of Bengal? Well, it was even worse than I said. You see, although my father defended and supported me, I don’t think he was ever quite sure if the accusation that I had murdered Vijaya was true. I believe he threw himself into the tubewell program as a kind of atonement for the wrong that had been done to her. And then, you see, Marion’s interest in arsenic in the nineteenth century led her to this stupid book. She was a very smart researcher, Marion. Very thorough, as Dr da Silva also discovered.’

‘What did she propose to do with it?’ Brock asked.

‘Despite her apparent self-confidence and independence, Marion had a deep streak of insecurity. Although I had given her the house, the baby and many promises, she didn’t really trust me to go through with it. She actually thought-it sounds so sad and pathetic to say this now-she thought she could guarantee my fidelity by holding that damn book over me. She actually said she would give it to me on our first wedding anniversary. I laughed. I told her that it was history, no one was interested in that stuff any more. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? I think Emily overheard us, and told Joan. She couldn’t allow it to come out again. My father had gone through so much.’

•

‘I heard them talking together in the house one day. They thought no one else was at home. I heard Marion say she’d hidden the book somewhere no one would ever find it. Then she told Dad she didn’t want him to go to Corsica. She said that he couldn’t have us both, he would have to decide. He said he had to go, but he would tell everyone when they got back.’

Emily was sitting in an armchair in her room in the private clinic, Kathy recording their conversation, Brock listening in silence. Her solicitor was seated at Emily’s side, silhouetted against the windows and a view of bright sunlight glittering on green foliage. But Emily seemed shrouded in a dark world of her own, her voice faint, eyes rimmed with shadow.

‘It was the first I knew about their affair. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know who to talk to. I couldn’t tell Mum, I just couldn’t. So I spoke to Gran. She said she’d suspected as much. She didn’t tell me what was in the book, but she said it was pure poison, and must never be found. She said Dad had got into a scrape like this once a long time ago, and that it was up to us to put a stop to it, as she had then. Marion was a parasite who would destroy all our lives, she said, but if we were strong enough we could put everything right, while Mum and Dad were in Corsica.

‘I thought, I really did think, that she meant we would confront Marion and make her leave Dad alone, maybe give her money, but Gran said that wouldn’t work with someone like Marion. She said there was only one way to stop her.’

Emily buried her face in her jumper and began to cry, soft, choking sobs. They waited, and waited, and she began again.

‘I said no, I couldn’t do something like that, but Gran said it was simple, she knew a way, but if I didn’t want to be involved she would do it on her own. Only she needed a little help with the preparation. I tried to argue with her-I did! But she had made her mind up. Well, you know Gran.’

By now Kathy felt Emily wasn’t talking to them any more, but instead to someone inside her head, her better half, perhaps, to whom she’d made this appeal many times before.

‘We’d talked about the wallpaper before. Gran knew the stories about old green Morris wallpapers containing arsenic, and we’d spoken about warning the decorators. She wanted me to find out how to extract the poison. When I refused, she said, oh well, she’d have to resort to some other method, take Mum’s car and run Marion down in the street, or push her under a train on the tube. She’d have tried, too, so in the end I looked up Grandpa’s old books in the belvedere and worked it out. I never thought we could make much, and I hoped it might just keep Gran quiet, but then I had to help her-I was afraid she’d poison herself with the fumes, boiling up all that wallpaper, night after night, after the workmen had left. I was amazed when we ended up with as much as we did.’

There was a touch of eagerness in this, as if the experiments, the trials and errors, had been rather exciting. Kathy imagined the two of them in the darkened house, witches preparing a deadly brew.

‘I spent as much time with Marion as I could, helping her, and I got to know her routine. I followed her home one day and found out where she lived, and Gran found a set of Dad’s keys in his study. I also knew about the packed lunch she prepared each day, always the same: a sandwich, a chocolate biscuit and a bottle of juice.

‘When it came to that last week before Mum and Dad came back, Gran said we had to act. On the Monday, while Marion was away at the library, we drove over to Rosslyn Court and let ourselves in. We found her bottles of drink in a kitchen cupboard and poisoned each one, then we returned later that evening and waited outside the house. We thought, if she drank one of the bottles that evening we could wait until it was all over, then go in and arrange the things to make it look like she’d done it herself. But she didn’t. When she went to bed we phoned her, pretending it was a wrong number, just to be sure. When we returned the next morning we saw her leave for the London Library just as normal, and when we went inside we saw that one of the bottles was missing.’

‘What about her computer?’

‘I borrowed it from her on the Monday, saying I needed to transcribe work I was doing for her, and on the Tuesday morning I took her spare hard disk from her study. Once we knew she was dead we threw both of them away.’

‘Okay. So after you realised she’d taken one of the bottles with her on the Tuesday, what happened then?’

‘I took Gran to St James’s Square, then returned to Hampstead. Soon after one o’clock she phoned me to say that she’d seen Marion having lunch in the square, and drinking from the bottle. Then she phoned again to say that the ambulance had arrived, and I went into the house and set up the things in the kitchen.’

‘And Tina?’

‘Ah…’ A sad, exhausted sigh. ‘I begged her to let me help her with what she was doing, because she was so determined to find out what had happened. She just wouldn’t leave things alone, trying to find that book. I could tell, that day at the British Library, that she’d found it. She wouldn’t say, but she was boiling inside. She said we’d soon have the answer, so I had to do something. I bought us a coffee, and… put stuff in hers.’

‘But Tina knew nothing about your father’s story,’ Kathy said. ‘The book she was searching for was the Haverlock diary, wasn’t it?’

Emily gave Kathy a despairing look. ‘I wasn’t sure. We felt that if she was following the same trail as Marion she was bound to find the book that incriminated Dad. We felt we had no choice, you see. I hated it, the whole thing. It made me sick to think of it, but I had to just shut my mind and do what Gran said, otherwise I knew it would be a disaster.’

But Brock wasn’t buying that. ‘You knew Marion was pregnant, didn’t you?’ The girl gave him a sudden sharp look.

‘No,’ she said softly.

‘You picked it up from the conversation you overheard.’ Kathy saw a moment’s consternation on Emily’s face and knew that Brock was right. ‘And you assumed that she was still pregnant when you killed her. How could you know otherwise?’ He leaned forward and said, ‘Your grandmother didn’t have to persuade you, Emily. You thought Marion deserved to die, didn’t you?’

Emily held his eye, silent for a moment, then whispered, ‘Yes.’

•

At the end of the following week Brock invited Suzanne and Kathy, along with Alex Nicholson and Sundeep Mehta, to dinner in a newly refurbished restaurant not far from Rossetti’s house in Chelsea. Both Joan and Emily Warrender had been charged with the murders of Marion and Tina, while Bren had arrested Keith Rafferty and Brendan Crouch on a string of burglary charges arising from the information passed on by Donald Fotheringham. It was important, Brock felt, to acknowledge the end of the business and move on, and while he might have done this with Suzanne alone, and no doubt would in time, for the moment he sought safety in numbers. Despite their good humour, there was, he felt, an air of mortality about the occasion, only heightened by the stylishness of the surroundings and the size of the eventual bill. Earlier in the day there had been a painful interview with Sophie Warrender, and her distress lingered on, for Brock at least, like a shadow in the background. She had reminded him of her comment when they had first met, that their work was similar, searching for the truth beneath the surface of things, but now she realised the bitter fallacy of the comparison. The difference between probing the past and the present was pain.

But Sundeep was in good form. The son of his friend, who had made the initial misdiagnosis, was off the hook, and during the course of vetting Colin Ringland’s laboratory, Sundeep had become friendly with the scientist, to the extent of agreeing to collaborate on the medical ramifications of the research into the poisoned wells. Now he was debating with Alex about the death of Lizzie Siddal, and whether the doctor who examined her could really have mistaken arsenic for laudanum as the cause of death. Alex had been reading up about the case and was intrigued by a number of aspects. What was the nature of the insanity that grew in Rossetti after Lizzie’s death? And why did he insist that he must on no account be buried in the same cemetery as her? But Marion’s theory about the involvement of Madeleine Smith/Lena Wardle was frustratingly elusive. No complete copies of Marion’s paper to Cornell had surfaced, and without Haverlock’s diary it was impossible to test da Silva’s claim that it was nonsense.

It was almost midnight when they left the restaurant and went their separate ways. When Kathy got home she stripped the notes and images off her wall, then had a long shower. Only then did she look through the mail she’d picked up from her box. Among the envelopes was a letter from the UAE. It contained an airline ticket, first class, to Dubai and a very brief letter. Dear Kathy, it said, Forgive me. Please come and let me make it up to you. Love, Guy. She threw it in the bin.

Later, as she went around switching off the lights, she fished it out again, and looked at it for a while. Then she put it on the table and said softly, ‘Oh, what the hell.’