“Putting your hopes into words. Yes. I understand.”
“I suppose the truth is that I couldn't face reality. I couldn't look squarely at the fact that she didn't want me the way I wanted her. I would have done as a friend. As a lover even, when she was in the Peaks. But nothing more than that.” He picked at his wedge of cake with the fork tines. He was, she noted, eating as little as she.
Finally, he set his plate on the window sill. He said, “Did you see the eclipse?”
She frowned, then remembered. It seemed so long ago. “It didn't seem like much fun to wait for it alone. I didn't go after all.”
“That's just as well. We wouldn't want you lost on the moors.”
“Oh, that's unlikely, isn't it? It was only Eyam Moor. And even if it had been one of the others, I've been out there enough by myself that I always know where I'm—” She stopped herself. She looked at her cousin. He wasn't watching her, but his ruddy natural colouring gave him away. “Ah. I see. Is that what you think?”
“I'm sorry.” His voice was wretched. “I can't stop thinking about it. Having the police turn up made everything worse. All I can think about is what happened to her. I can't get it out of my mind.”
“Try doing what I do,” she said past a pounding heartbeat that she heard in her ears. “There are so many ways to keep one's mind occupied. Try considering, for example, the fact that dogs have been giving birth on their own for a few hundred thousand years. It's remarkable, that. One can think about it for hours. That thought alone can fill up one's head so there's no room left for anything else.”
Julian was immobile. She'd made her point. “Where were you on Tuesday night, Sam?” he whispered. “Tell me.”
“I was killing Nicola Maiden,” Samantha said, getting to her feet and walking back to the fireplace. “I always like to end my day with a spot of murder.”
MKR Financial Management was housed in what looked like a pale pink confection on the corner of Lansdowne Road and St. John's Gardens. The decorative icing consisted of woodwork so clean that Barbara Havers imagined a duster-wielding lackey getting up at five in the morning each day to scrub his way from the faux columns on either side of the door to the plaster medallions above the porch.
“Good thing we've still got the guv's motor,” Nkata murmured as he pulled up to the pavement across the street from the building.
“Why?” Barbara asked.
“We look like we fit in.” He nodded to a car whose back end was sloping up the drive at one side of the pink confection. It was a Jaguar XJS, silver in colour. It could have been the Bentley's first cousin. A black Mercedes sat in front of the building, locked between an Aston-Martin and an antique Bristol.
“We're definitely out of our financial depth,” Barbara said, heaving herself from the car. “But that's just as well. We wouldn't like to be rich. People with dibs are always dead choked.”
“You believe that, Barb?”
“No. But it keeps me happier to pretend it. Come on. I need some serious financial managing, and something tells me we've come to a place where it can happen.”
They had to ring to get in. No voice enquired as to who'd come calling, but none was necessary since a high-tech security system on the building included a video camera placed strategically above the front door. Just in case someone was watching, Barbara took out her warrant card and held it up to the camera. Perhaps in response, the door buzzed open.
An oak-floored entry became a hushed corridor of closed doors with a width of Persian carpet running down it. Off this, Reception consisted of a small room that was heavy on antiques and heavier still on silver-framed photographs. There was no one present, just a sophisticated telephone system that appeared to answer calls automatically and send them on their way. This sat on a kidney-shaped desk across whose top were fanned out a dozen brochures with the logo MKR stamped in gold upon them. It was all very reassuring in appearance, just the sort of place one wouldn't mind coming to in order to discuss the delicate matter of one's monetary situation.