There was another rumour. One that said Nico, Petro, and Antonio shared no DNA with the father who died before they were born. If this was true, then the heirs to High Strange had no link to the original family other than name. It also threw an interesting light on an even darker rumour. That Lady Katchatka shared her bed with all three of her sons.

If they came from her body alone, then Lady Katchatka was, if rumour be believed, effectively sleeping with herself. Personally Lady Neku doubted it. According to Nico, the only times he’d shared a bed with his mother, the woman had done nothing but fall asleep and snore.

CHAPTER 32 — Sunday, 24 June

A house phone started ringing half way through breakfast. Until then neither Kit nor Neku had realised the flat in Hogarth Mews possessed one. It was Neku who found the thing in an alcove behind a Warhol print near the front door.

A joke, Kit decided, given the endless repetition of silk-screened ears on the print itself.

The phone was ivory white, and so old it teetered on the edge of being fashionably retro. Although what Kit noticed was a row of keys hanging from hooks on the wall above. It looked like the police hadn’t needed to break the locks on Mary’s cupboard after all.

“Kit Nouveau,” he said, picking up the receiver.

The laugh at the other end was mocking. “How much longer are you going to keep calling yourself that?” demanded Kate, sounding herself now she was back on home ground.

“Until I can be bothered to change it back.”

“Which will be when?”

“Probably never,” said Kit. “Maybe sooner. What do you want…?” He hadn’t intended to be so blunt, but with Kate it was probably the best way to be.

“You saw Pat?”

“Yes, of course. I told you I would.”

“And how was he?”

“Dying,” said Kit.

When Kate spoke again, even Neku, who hovered at Kit’s shoulder, could tell the woman was fighting to hold her temper. “He gave you Mary’s original letter?”

“Yes,” admitted Kit. “He did.”

“I knew he would,” she said. “Pat always wanted to send that letter on. Unfortunately, by the time he argued me into it you’d vanished. Anyway, I was more worried about tracking down my daughter.”

“Who came back,” said Kit.

“Eventually…So what have you found out so far?”

“Kate!”

“Just asking.”

Kit considered what he knew. Wondered what the underlying tidiness of the flat said about Mary’s state of mind in the hours before she’d locked the door for the last time, leaving a bag of rubbish forgotten inside. The chaos was superficial, upturned drawers and emptied cases. The carpets had been clean and the floor tiles in the shower room wiped down. Even the wastepaper bin in the bedroom had been emptied.

“She cancelled her milk, gas, and electricity,” said Kit. “But not her telephone. The washing up was done, her washing basket was empty, ditto the fridge, and her cooker’s been cleaned.”

Mary had also put unwanted vegetables into a Sainsbury’s bag to throw away, then left them by the door. A single flaw to suggest she had bigger things on her mind. Neku had dumped the bag before Kit arrived, only to watch in bemusement as he hauled it back and upended it into the shower cubicle, sorting through a slush of long-rotted lemons, peppers, and carrots.

“I thought it would be messier,” said Kit, “what with a police search and everything.”

“They didn’t do one,” Kate said. “Apparently, once Pat confirmed Mary’s writing there was no need.” Her voice made clear exactly what Kate thought about that. “The police were too busy to come out.”

“Really?” Kit was pretty sure the flat had been searched by someone. “Doing what?” he said.

“Whatever they do these days instead of solving crimes. Rounding up people in Bradford probably.”

It took all Kit’s will not to snort. Kate O’Mally, ex-crime boss and icon of old London—well, in certain circles—complaining about police inefficiency and their lack of commitment. He wanted to give the woman more…some hope, for whichever one of them really believed Mary was still alive, except nothing in the flat suggested she was. All the neatness, the card to Tokyo, cancelling the milk—it looked to Kit like a woman tying up the loose ends of her life.

“Tell me again,” said Kit. “Why do you…” He paused, rewording his question. “What makes Pat think she’s alive?”

“Her Visa card,” Kate said. “Someone used it in Gwent the day after she…” Kate’s voice trailed into silence.

“Took the ferry,” said Kit, finishing the sentence for her. “What did the police say?”

“Did Mary know her pin numbers by heart? Or might she have written them down…because her wallet and purse were both missing when her suitcase was found.”

“And what was the answer?”

Kit heard a deep sigh. “Mary couldn’t do numbers to save her life.”

“Which means…”

“I’m aware of what it means,” said Kate, breaking the connection.

Kit had woken that morning to the clatter of dishes and the smell of burning toast. An acrid catch at the back of his throat had him out of bed before he remembered where he was. Stumbling from Mary’s bedroom, still glitching with jetlag, he found himself suddenly face to face with Neku, who seemed to be wearing nothing but a long black jersey. She was scraping carbon into an empty supermarket bag that she’d suspended from a door handle.

“Built a fire,” she said.

“You’ve—”

“On the roof…it’s okay,” she added. “I’ve put it out again.”

“And the bread?”

“Bought it when I couldn’t find noodles. There’s a shop round the corner that sells underwear, bread, batteries, and milk. Also these.” She nodded to an MP3 player and that was when Kit realised he could hear music.

“You didn’t go out like that?”

Neku saw him gaze at her bare legs. “As if,” she said, putting the scraped toast onto a plate and placing the plate on the tiny breakfast bar in front of him. “I’ll buy butter tomorrow,” she promised. Huge eyes watched him from across the table. Eyes that were dark and speckled in colours he couldn’t remember having seen before.

“What?” Neku asked.

Kit shook his head. “Come on,” he said. “You still have to tell me why you followed me.” The shrug she gave was neither sullen nor pointed, simply matter of fact.

“What choice did I have?” she said.

Maybe he was missing something. Actually, thought Kit, it was a fair bet he was missing a lot more than one thing. Where Neku was concerned, he got the feeling everyone missed more than they caught. Her change of image for one thing. She’d gone from the ripped lace of a cos-play to black jersey and minimal make-up in a single week.

“You’re going to have to tell me sometime,” he said.

“So are you,” said Neku.

“Tell you what?”

“What all this is really about.” And then, luckily for both of them, Kate O’Mally telephoned. About three minutes later Neku’s new video phone started buzzing. She took one look at the number, began blushing, and retired to the roof garden outside.

Charlie Olifard read maths at Imperial, wrote his own code until he was thirteen, when he got bored and began trying to work out if the Fibonacci sequence contained an infinite number of primes. In his spare time he mixed music, releasing his work into common ownership so it could be mixed further. He was quite keen on joining Government Communications Headquarters, but felt most spooks were probably boring by nature. So he was worried what joining GCHQ might say about him.

Neku, by contrast, studied English at a language school behind Oxford Street. At least she did in the version of her life she gave Charlie. But then, according to her new friend, life was a mathematical construct, with solutions that made sense only if one first understood the question. So what did lying matter?