Pat held out his hand. “I suppose you’d better show me.”

Taking the key Kit offered, Pat turned it over in his hands and pulled a pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket to take a closer look.

“Recognise it?” asked Kit.

“No,” said Pat, handing the key back. “Anyway, it’s not like Mary went to that kind of school. You know why?”

Kit shook his head.

“Because the first private school we tried refused to take her. Oh, she passed their exam all right. Except someone told them about Katie, and we had a very embarrassed letter from the headmaster saying he’d made a mistake with class sizes and he was really sorry, but there wasn’t a place after all.”

“What happened?”

“Half the school burned down.”

Kit looked at him.

“Before term began,” said Pat tiredly. “No one got hurt.”

“Were you upset?”

“About Mary losing her place? Of course not. I was delighted. It was Katie who…” He stopped as Charlie escorted Neku up the bank, her fingers closed tight around a dripping mass of leaves, petals, and water weed.

“What’s that?”

Neku smiled. “You’ll see,” she said.

When Neku and Charlie reappeared it was with a glass full of cloudy water and a tiny box made from neatly folded paper. “Drink this,” said Neku, putting the glass on the picnic table. And the fact Pat did showed either extreme faith or an unusual level of tact.

“God,” he said. “That tastes vile.”

“Maybe,” said Neku. “But it will help. My grandmother taught me about plants.”

“About plants?”

“Well, poisons…they’re close enough. It’s what you do at the molecular level that matters.” Holding out her paper box, Neku showed how it opened to reveal one pebble. Kanji characters on each side of the box had bled into soft focus as ink seeped into paper.

“The box is meant to look like that,” Neku insisted.

“I’m sure it is,” said Pat. “What does this charm do?”

“It summons the kami,” promised Neku.

Pat smiled.

CHAPTER 42 — Friday, 29 June

It was Pat’s suggestion that Charlie and Neku travel back in Charlie’s old Mini and Kit stay for coffee. “It’ll only take five minutes,” Pat told Neku. “I just want a quick talk and Charlie needs to get home.”

“But I don’t have front door keys,” said Neku, sounding put out.

“It’s all right,” promised Pat. “Kit will catch up with you.” When Neku looked doubtful, Pat smiled. “Charlie can drive slowly,” he said.

Charlie nodded.

“She’s a good kid,” said Pat, once the gravel was empty and the Mini a memory of noisy horn bursts from the road beyond. “And she’s obviously worried about you.”

“Worried?”

“She told me you were in trouble. Something about Yakuza bosses and fire bombing. Katie mentioned you had problems, but didn’t tell me what…Katie always tried to keep that stuff from me.” Pat took a deep breath, then lost a whole minute to the coughing fit this induced.

“Shit,” said Kit, when he’d finished helping Pat inside.

Spitting into a tissue, Pat nodded. “I’ll live, for a while anyway…What I kept you back to say was that I’m grateful for the help you’re giving Katie, but if you’re really in trouble then tell her. Katie has contacts. Call it payment.”

“Kate hates me,” said Kit. “And the debt is mine.”

“You were kids,” Pat said crossly. “It’s time you forgave yourself.” He sat in silence for a while after that, watching Kit sip luke-warm coffee from a battered mug, while staring out of the window at the river beyond. “I never liked how Katie lived,” said Pat. “It was always a problem between us.”

He was talking about the Firm, Kit realised, the web of criminal connections that Kate O’Mally inherited, built into something altogether grander, and eventually passed to her nephew Michael, the man Kit had half-blinded beside a hedge in Wintersprint.

“She told me once,” said Pat, “that it was just a job.”

“What did you say?”

“That it was a job in which people died. She told me mortality was the human condition.” Pat sighed. “I blame her priest. When I told Katie that wasn’t good enough, she said at least it was the right people who died, and it was the only answer she had.”

“I should go,” said Kit, “if I’m going to catch up to them.”

“What I’m trying to say,” said Pat, sighing, “is that Katie has connections. Global connections. The Yakuza, the Camorra, the ’Ndranghala, the Mafia…Katie’s mob might not have a fancy name but they still command respect. If you have problems talk to her.”

Kit shook his head.

“At least pretend to think about it,” Pat said.

Peeling off his gauntlets, Kit kicked the Kawasaki onto its stand and unbuckled his helmet. Charlie was already negotiating his battered Mini into the spot where the Porsche usually parked, so Kit guessed he was planning to see Neku inside.

The sun was low enough in the sky to be lost behind a tower block and Hogarth Mews stood in shadow, its front doors half hidden. Which might have been why Kit didn’t spot the zinc bust of Karl Marx until he almost tripped over the thing. The door to Sophie’s flat was also wedged open, only this time she’d used a small marble vase overflowing with 5 pence pieces.

“You’re back,” said Sophie, crushing a cigarette under her heel.

“Yes,” said Kit. He caught her glance at the Mini. “Is that a problem?”

“Someone was looking for you. Said they were from the police.”

“The Sergeant again?”

“No.” Sophie shook her head. “Plain clothes this time. A woman, claimed she knew you.”

Kit waited.

“Inspector Avenden…”

“Never heard of her.”

“Whatever,” said Sophie, pulling a battered packet of Gauloise from her jeans. “She wanted to wait. I said she couldn’t. So now she’s in Caffé Nero sulking, well probably…”

“Probably?”

“As I said, she wanted to wait here. I suggested the Inspector find a café in Charlotte Street and wait there instead.”

“Not fond of the Met, are you?”

Sophie’s scowl was fierce. “I’m old enough to remember them unarmed,” she said, “before the laws changed. So are you,” she added. “I used to love this city. Now it’s all fake threats and real guns.”

Beside them, Charlie and Neku had stopped to listen. Charlie was nodding, which Kit found interesting. The boy didn’t look like revolutionary politics came high on his list of interests.

“You okay to take this up?” Kit asked Neku, holding out his helmet. “There’s someone I need to see. It won’t take long.”

“Sure,” said Neku. “I’ll get supper on.”

“If he wants,” Kit said, “Charlie can stay to eat.” The boy seemed pleased, although Neku looked entirely noncommittal.

“I suppose you know what you’re doing,” said Sophie, when Charlie and Neku had disappeared in a clatter of feet on the stairs. “She’s cute. And I know she beds down on the roof terrace…I sleep with my window open,” she added, seeing Kit’s face. “I hear the kid stamping around in the night. All the same, she’s in love with you.”

“No,” said Kit. “She likes Charlie.”

Sophie shook her head. “Charlie likes Neku. Neku likes you.”

“She’s a child.”

“No,” said Sophie. “She’s not. Look at her…She’s cooking, cleaning, wearing neat clothes. She’s digging in for the long haul.”

Kit gave a sigh.

“Someone has to say it,” said Sophie. “And whatever you’re really doing in London, it doesn’t feel like something that should involve a kid.”

A kid who’s killed. One who gets an ex-gangster eating out of her hands in the time it takes to make cheese sandwiches, badly. Instead of saying it, Kit just nodded, because all of the above still didn’t make Sophie’s words untrue.

The ground floor to the café on Charlotte Street had three customers, all at a metal table outside. The counter itself was deserted, and the only member of staff Kit could see leaned against a stool, skimming that morning’s Metro.