The others stood back, raised their eyebrows at each other or stared around as if the rolling fields behind the barn were some alien landscape. One of them even pulled a phone from his pocket, fingers stabbing at its keys as he kept half his attention on Kit and the rest on some text he was answering.

No one was taking this seriously, Kit realised. Hurting him was just a tick on a list, like filling a car with fuel or remembering to buy beer on the way home. A job they’d been given…

Somehow that made things worse. “Who?” Kit demanded.

“Why would I tell you?” Gelled hair tapped the weighted cosh against his hand, anxious to get things moving. “We’re just doing a favour.”

“A favour?”

“How do you think these things work?”

“I don’t know,” Kit said.

“Well, guess what?” said the man. “You’re about to find out.”

The first swing of the cosh smashed Kit’s stick, splintering the wood an inch or two above his fingers. Reversing direction, the man began to sweep the cosh towards Kit’s elbow, harnessing all the energy in its coiled handle.

Two histories hung on the flick of that wrist. In the first, Kit’s ulna smashed under the weight of the blow, a single sliver of bone skewering muscle in what was almost a clean break. This was the most likely outcome, until Kit stepped into the blow and used his arm to block the handle, twisting his body sideways as the weighted end of the cosh snapped round.

Flesh tore, staining the cotton of Kit’s shirt, but it was surface damage only, little more than split skin and blood. If the blow had landed, his elbow would be broken, the fight over, and his leg next in line. Instead Kit now had control of the fight, moving so far into the moment that his Sergeant would be proud of him, if the man hadn’t already been dead.

Flicking upwards, Kit’s own hand was moving before he’d even had time to decide he wanted to fight, the splintered stub of stick he held rising towards the attacker’s jaw, ready to punch through to his brain. But in the last second gelled hair threw back his head, and Kit’s stick scored its way across his cheek and splintered against bone overhanging the man’s left eye.

Instinct made gelled hair clasp a hand to his face. So it was instinct that drove a splinter of wood the final few millimetres into the man’s eye, blinding him. By then the cosh was already in Kit’s hands and he’d cracked the knee of the man closest, stepping over him to reach the person behind. Kit smashed his phone, fingers, and wrist first, in a single blow, before moving on to a leg.

One arm and one leg, Kit took the price from each of them, swiftly and brutally, sparing only their leader, who was on his knees in the road, his hands covering his face.

“Who sent you?” Kit demanded.

When gelled hair refused to answer, Kit knelt in front of him and gripped the man’s little finger, prising his hand away from his face. There was little blood and no sticky liquid running down his cheeks like egg yolk. Just a sliver of wood about the length of a needle protruding from the corner of one eye.

“Tell me,” said Kit, reaching for the splinter.

On his way back to the cottages Kit passed their car. A black Jeep with smoked windows and chrome bars on the front. The glass in the windows was good quality, though it cracked eventually under blows from the cosh, having crackled into tiny diamonds first.

A top-of-the-range, hands-free phone system came with the Jeep, at least it looked ready-built into the dash, so Kit called an ambulance. Leaving the Jeep, he used a bridle path to reach the old main road to London. There was nothing he wanted from his father’s cottage at Wintersprint, and he didn’t recognise the Kit Nouveau who’d broken all those bones or smashed up the Jeep, though Kit guessed his father had always been there inside him, waiting.

Sometimes, decided Kit, the only safe choice was to walk away from yourself. So he did.

CHAPTER 36 — Monday, 25 June

“So what did he want?” asked Neku.

“Who?” said Kit, looking up from his bowl. Somehow Neku had found fresh udon noodles in Soho, and breakfast had been waiting when he finally staggered out of the shower.

“That policeman.”

“Not sure,” said Kit.

“But it was about Mary O’Mally’s suicide?” Neku’s Japanese accent made the first and last parts of Mary’s name sound identical.

“I thought it was,” admitted Kit. “At least to start with. Now I’m not certain.” Aggression and interest had faded from the moment Sergeant Samson realised Kit hadn’t seen Mary in years. It blipped again at Kit’s mention of a letter and disappeared altogether when Kit admitted this had been six months before and the contents entirely personal.

“She didn’t mention boyfriends?” said Sergeant Samson.

A shake of the head was all it took to make the uniformed officer reach for his cap, push back his chrome stool, and remember, at the last minute, to thank Kit for the barely touched can of Coke.

“A friend of the family?” asked Sergeant Samson, on his way out. He was nodding towards the roof garden door, which stood slightly open.

“Something like that.”

“How long’s she been in the country?”

“Less than a week,” said Kit. “She’ll be going home soon.”

“Just as well. Still, she’s pretty. I’ll give you that…” The big man paused on the stairs. “I mean, for a Chink, obviously…”

Now watching Neku ladle the last of the warm noodles into his bowl, Kit wondered how much of that particular conversation she’d overheard and which part of it was making her alternate between frowns and an anxious smile.

“Mary left a suicide note,” said Neku. “So why don’t her parents believe it?”

“How do you know about the note?”

“You told me,” she said. “The night I arrived.” Picking up her bowl, Neku carried it over to the sink and ran it under the cold tap, washing away a solitary strand of udon and the last of the miso. When she looked at Kit again something in her eyes was troubled. “We’re not getting very far, are we?”

We? “I’m not getting anywhere,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” said Kit, “I’m not sure there’s anywhere to get.”

He told Kate O’Mally the same thing when she called half an hour later. It was probably the wrong thing to say, but Kit wanted to be honest. He was also trying to work out if either of Mary’s parents really believed she was alive; he had started to wonder if they both knew she was dead, just didn’t know how to admit it to each other.

“Sergeant Samson,” said Kit, into the static that followed his original admission. “He came by last night.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Wanted to talk about Mary’s recent boyfriends.”

“Why would you know about that?”

“Good question,” said Kit, “I thought you might have an answer.”

A click was his reply.

Personally Lady Neku doubted if the moon really had been split into six and divided between families like an orange…

“I’m going out,” said Kit, opening the door to Neku’s wooden hut. The sun was hidden and the clouds thick enough to be cut in slabs. A chill wind ruffled the few plants that had survived Mary’s absence, but neither the wind, nor the sky, nor the darkness in the little hut seemed to worry Neku. She was inking a diagram and annotations into a notebook, her lips moving in time to the brush.

“My diary,” she said, blowing carefully onto the paper. “Where are you going?”

“Canterville Gallery.”

“Already been,” said Neku. “I went with Charlie.”

“You what?” demanded Kit.

“Yesterday afternoon. You asked me. Charlie and I had coffee with the manager, remember?”

Kit shook his head.

Neku sighed. “Are you sure?”

By the time Kit left, they’d established three things. Kit seriously needed to get more sleep, Neku would remain at the flat while he visited the gallery, and if she wanted to help while he was away, she could keep translating the police files or start making a list of Mary’s possessions. Actually, they established four things, because they also established that Charlie could come round.