Chapter Eight #3
The “architect” stood silently by. She said nothing; she was paid to have no memory of what she saw or heard and no comment,
but she felt happy. One clean, professional shot was always the goal. It was important to end a life efficiently, when it
was deserved. And thank God she didn’t have to pretend to know about architecture anymore.
“Can I move her now?” she asked.
“Yes,” Bridget snapped. “You know what to do.”
Charlotte looked at her. “What do you mean?”
Sid
Sid left his neighbor’s cottage after about an hour, feeling blindsided. While he was with her, he’d found her convincing,
but now that he was back home, alone, he wasn’t so sure. He had zero appetite for believing that his new life was going to
implode, and on that basis alone the temptation not to believe her was strong.
He paced the cottage. Several times he started to call Anya, but didn’t go through with it. If his neighbor was wrong, he
didn’t need to bother Anya; he could tell her all about it when she got home. It might even entertain her. But if his neighbor
was right, best not to tell Anya when she was with Diana Cornish. She would feel afraid, and might not be able to hide how
she felt. That could be dangerous. He decided he would hold out until she got home and talk to her in person.
He sent her a quick text: How are you doing? Good day?
She didn’t reply right away. Sid decided he would try to find out more. He didn’t have a number for Paul, but he knew where
he lived, because Paul and Giulia had taken him on a walking tour past their house the first time he visited. Sid vaguely
remembered that Paul ran the admin side of his business from their place. Hopefully, he would be home and Giulia would not.
Sid walked around the headland, following the walls of the cathedral complex. The sea glinted silver where the sun broke through.
Waves broke over the harbor walls.
Paul and Giulia lived in a modern place just behind East Sands Beach, overlooking the Kinness Burn, a wide, shallow stream.
A heron stood in the water, still as stone, and gulls shrieked overhead, but the sound fought to be heard over the clanging
of cables against the masts of the boats docked at the mouth of the burn.
The house was part painted white and part clad in weathered wood. It had large picture windows and a balcony at the back, overlooking the street. In the yard a small silver birch offered some privacy but not much.
Sid pressed the buzzer and waited. He was about to give up when Paul answered. He looked disheveled, as if he’d just pulled
on his clothes, and he’d lost weight, too. Shockingly, he was a shadow of the man Sid had met before.
“Good to see you,” Paul said.
“I’m sorry to drop in on you, but I was wondering if you were free for a chat?”
Paul glanced over Sid’s shoulder, then smiled tightly. “No worries. Come in.”
“Are you sure this is okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Do you want a coffee? I could use one.”
Sid took a seat on a stool at the kitchen island. Paul opened the blinds, and the drab outside light drifted into the open-plan
space. The décor was simple, but expensive. Designer lamps and abstract paintings brought color to the sleek, minimalist furnishings.
Paul prepared coffee. As he set the French press and two mugs out on the island, Sid noticed his hands were shaking.
Paul said, “I’ve been meaning to get in touch, mate. Just been a bit busy. How’s it going? The cottage working out for you?”
“Yeah, great. We like it.” Sid paused. “Can I ask you about a woman who lived there before me and Anya?”
“Not sure I know much about that,” Paul said.
“She worked for the Institute. Her name was Minxu, or Min.”
“Oh, yeah, maybe Giulia mentioned her. What’s this about, mate?”
“Do you know what kind of work Minxu did?”
Paul shrugged. “I dunno. Historical stuff, I guess, like the others. Giulia didn’t talk about her much. I don’t think she
was there long.” His words couldn’t have sounded blander, but there was a muscle twitching in his jaw. Sid watched him carefully.
“Did she leave abruptly?” Paul would surely know this, as it was his job to manage the cottage.
“Yeah, I think she did. I’d forgotten, but now you say it.” Paul plunged the French press, poured the coffee. There was that
tremor again.
“Milk or sugar?” he asked.
“Black’s fine.”
“Yeah,” Paul said as he slid Sid’s mug toward him. “It’s coming back to me a bit. I think Min might have had some family troubles.
They wanted her home.”
“Right,” Sid said. “Makes sense.”
Paul took a sip of coffee and put his cup down. He seemed to have to force himself to raise his eyes to meet Sid’s, and when
he did, he shook his head. Sid felt his stomach lurch, because there was no mistaking what he saw in Paul’s expression. It
was pure fear.
Clio
Clio waited at Harringay Green Lanes tube station, her usual coffee order in hand. Large latte, fully caffeinated. The train
arrived in a screech of brakes and a rush of hot, stinky air. Clio stepped on board, grateful that it wasn’t too full. She’d
always been an early bird because she felt it gave her an advantage. What was that old saying about women in the workplace?
They had to work twice as hard for half as much.
She was getting used to the office without Lillian. They all were; it had been hard for everybody. Usually, Clio tried not
to think about it, but since she’d been to Wiltshire and spoken to Lady Arden she couldn’t get Lillian out of her mind. She
wondered if she should give that butler a call, find out if he had a name for the woman who’d been to the house to ask about
the embroidery before she did.
At the office, she squeezed past her colleagues’ desks to reach her own.
Since Lillian retired, and, ominously, hadn’t been replaced, Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad office space consisted of just four desks and four officers, in a cramped corner of a large open-plan workspace.
They were responsible for policing the second-largest art market in the world.
As her boss was fond of reminding them, Italy employed two hundred carabinieri to do the same job.
Clio loved her work, though. It was a man’s world but not overtly misogynist. Nothing she couldn’t handle, anyway. The humor
tended toward childish, not harmful. If it crossed a line, Clio gave as good as she got, just the way Lillian taught her.
“Catch-up?” A rhetorical question from the boss, Detective Inspector Tim Keenan. A career burdened by groaning caseloads,
two divorces, and a chronic case of mortal ennui had etched deep lines on his face.
“Yep. Coming,” she said.
They gathered in a meeting room. Clio listened carefully to updates on a major fraud case. It was complicated, the money trail
long and complex, leading from London via Paris to some shell companies registered in the Bahamas.
“So, there’s that,” Tim said, “and we’ve had an email from a CID colleague asking for help. I’ll read it to you. ‘Dog walker
found a body in the early hours this morning in a park in Tower Hamlets. The body has been laid out in a weird way on a chalk
drawing.’ She’s sent a photo, but I haven’t looked at it yet. They’re asking for help to interpret it.”
He swiveled his laptop so everyone could see the screen. The photograph was horrendous.
They were looking at a dead female, with an exit wound in her forehead. She was dressed in an old-fashioned costume: a dark
red dress, low cut, with white details on the cuffs and the décolletage, and a tasseled scarf wrapped loosely around her head,
like a turban. Her body lay on its side, posed in a sort of crouch, knees bent, bare feet slightly separated, toes pointed.
Her arms were arranged so that one hand was bent toward her bosom, and in it was a long, feathery palm frond.
The other hand was resting on a chalk drawing of a spiked wheel.
Chalk had also been used to draw a crown on her head, topped by a line that could suggest a halo, and elsewhere it had been heavily applied to create a rectangle around her body, framing it from the waist up.
Suddenly, the symbolism made sense to Clio.
“This is supposed to represent an actual painting, Artemisia Gentileschi’s portrait of St. Katherine of Alexandria. It’s in the National Gallery. May I?”
Tim pushed the laptop toward her. Clio made a new tab and brought up an image of the painting beside the photograph the detective
had sent so she could show them the similarities. The painting was one of her favorites, which made this feel strangely personal.
She studied both images closely.
Where else had she seen a palm frond lately? The answer came to her suddenly: it was in a botanical print on the wall of Eleanor
Bruton’s study. Which made her think of something else: the sun that Eleanor Bruton had drawn at the top of her poem. What
if it wasn’t a sun, but a wheel just like this one? Spiked, or flaming. Eleanor was no artist, but it didn’t matter which
she’d intended—both were symbols of Saint Katherine.
Which begged the question: Was this murder linked to the group that Lillian had described?
“Have they identified the woman?” Clio asked.
“Yes, she had ID on her. She’s a professor, called Diana Cornish. She works for the Institute of Manuscript Studies in St.
Andrews.”
Clio stiffened. “What did you say?” It was a couple of weeks since she’d spoken to the butler at Lady Arden’s home, and he’d
told her that it was someone from St. Andrews who’d asked about the embroidery. She needed to follow that up now.
As Tim repeated what he’d said, she felt as if every nerve in her body was twitching.
Lillian might not have wanted her to tell anyone that she was looking into Eleanor, but she couldn’t keep everything to herself now.
If she compromised a murder investigation by withholding what she knew, she could lose her job. That couldn’t happen.
Besides, she trusted Tim. She said, “Boss, can we talk in private? I need to show you something, and I need to tell you what
I did on leave.”