Thirty-two

“Seeing as you don’t like to drink alone,” Sam remarked, and grinned all the way up to the corners of his aquamarine eyes. They clinked beer mugs and Billie smiled back across the table at him as he downed another large mug of foaming ale.

It was Friday, two and a half exhausting days since the fire and the discovery of the shed, and it was time to put the whole sordid affair to rest, time to somehow move on. In aid of that idea, Billie and her assistant had come downstairs to let off some tension in the billiards room in the basement of Daking House. Billie, true to her personal rule, was not drinking alone. Indeed, on this occasion she was in some wonderful company.

“Your father would be proud,” Baroness Ella von Hooft said, and instead of raising a glass she turned and loudly tried to order a bottle of champagne for the table for the second time. For the second time she was informed that the billiards room did not have any champagne. They didn’t have a waiter, either.

“Good goddess, can’t you just sip what’s in front of you?” Billie implored her mother. This wasn’t The Dancers, but under the circumstances that didn’t feel like a downgrade. Alma clinked her mug with Billie’s, and they each took generous sips, leaving Ella to crossly watch them from beneath her penciled brows and flawless marcel waves.

“I don’t think the waiting room will be empty again for a while,” Sam said to everyone at the table. “Clients are lining up.” He took another swig.

That appeared to be true. While Billie had been in the Blue Mountains with Inspector Cooper and, later, had crept around Upper Colo, her assistant had fielded calls and visitors. The past two days had not slowed down, either. Word had spread about the spectacular fire and her uncovering of possible Nazi loot, and that along with the front-page coverage of the car chase had now attracted new clients. She’d not been entirely sure whether the publicity would scare people away or draw them in, but it had proved better than taking out an advertisement. In a way it was odd. Clients always wanted everything on the down low and hush-hush, yet with her sudden notoriety she had new cases lined up for weeks. The turn of events, professionally speaking, was cause for celebration, even if she hoped she wouldn’t need to investigate a similar case to keep Sydney calling on her little inquiry agency.

She looked around the party of revelers packed like canned sardines in a cozy booth in the basement billiards joint. It was an eclectic group, rounded out by Shyla and Constable Primrose, who was downing the off-license ale as fast as Sam could. Billie suspected such a group might never assemble in quite the same way again.

Shyla, who did not drink alcohol, raised her glass of Cherry Cheer courteously. “Another?” Billie suggested, and she shook her head. For someone who could kill a rapist stone dead with one swing, she was very quiet, at least in this company. Franz, and indeed the late Georges Boucher, had massively underestimated her. Perhaps Billie had, too. It was a quality that would come in handy in the trade, if she could convince Shyla to join the agency. So far, Shyla had refused. One thing they were in agreement on, however, was that it was a relief that news about the young girls had not hit the newspapers. Not yet anyway. The last thing they needed was the lack of privacy that would bring. Cooper had done well, if indeed it was him who had managed it. The Upper Colo fire and the discoveries at the house had attracted a lot of speculation. Ruthie had already found a new placement, but as for Ida and Eleanor, Billie knew only that they were in hospital being treated for shock and minor injuries, and Shyla would update her when she could.

“To victory!” Sam said in an overly loud voice, bringing to mind the cry of 1945 and the end of the war, so recent and yet a lifetime ago.

“To victory,” the rest of them said in surprising harmony, even Shyla joining in.

They clinked glasses again and she smiled, trying to enjoy the moment of triumph.

Victory, in reality, was a mixed affair, not quite the glorious beast the posters and the songs so fondly announced it to be. It was the end of something, yes, a victory over some things, but it was also a time to take stock, a time to bury the dead. There was Con Zervos, who might still be breathing had Billie not come asking questions of him. There was what Adin Brown had been through, and what those young girls Ida and Eleanor had endured, things no shout of victory could erase. The police weren’t finished with them all, either. There was the matter of Boucher’s demise, and how that might appear once the dust settled. Billie hoped it would be put down to panic in the fire, but he’d been a powerful man and that could spell trouble for a while, trouble she hoped she would be equal to. And there was the matter of identifying just who the man Franz was, and from whom he’d had help to acquire and ship so many precious things into Australia without attracting the attention of the authorities. And there was the matter of Moretti. Yes, Moretti. She had a word or two for him. Was Franz the one paying him? How much had he known? Billie was going to see to it that he came to justice for his part in all this if it was the last thing she did.

“I have something for you,” Constable Primrose said, putting down her empty glass.

Billie raised a brow. She was presented with a small package emblazoned with the word Tussy. “You didn’t . . .”

“I did. I found one of the last sticks of Fighting Red.” The constable smiled widely, her curls bouncing in her enthusiasm.

“How?”

She just smiled knowingly. Yes, she was a resourceful one, that Primrose. And she’d come through with the information on the owner of the car with plate XR-001, albeit too late as the drama unfolded in remote Upper Colo.

“Pardon me, Billie. I should go,” Shyla said, pulling Billie from her thoughts.

Billie looked into the young woman’s deep caramel eyes, and they exchanged an unspoken understanding. “Thank you for coming. And thank you.” She paused. “I will do what I can to keep searching for your brothers.”

Shyla nodded. “Ruthie says hello. Things are better for her now,” she said quietly.

That could only be an understatement. The young woman had not been able to release the two girls herself in that isolated and violent place, but she’d alerted contacts of Shyla’s, and Shyla had in turn reached out to Billie. However Ruthie had managed it, she took a risk. She’d been brave. Franz was armed and had doubtless threatened them with severe consequences if they stepped out of line. If Ruthie hadn’t taken that chance, who knew how much longer they would have been trapped there? There was no way to undo what those girls had been through, but it was at an end now. The man responsible was in custody, and Boucher was no longer able to hurt anyone, either. The rest of the men in that notebook? Well, there was a reckoning still to come.

Constable Primrose was also making moves to leave. She flashed a toothy, gleaming smile. “Enjoy the lipstick. It’s good on you. I’m supposed to be off for the day, but I get the feeling Inspector Cooper might want some assistance. It’s a heck of a pickle, this whole thing, and having had him behind bars at Richmond.” She blew some air out of her mouth, a silent whistle, then grabbed her things, gave Billie a hearty squeeze, and went to follow Shyla up the stairs.

“Wait. A pickle?” Billie echoed, confused.

Primrose bit her pink lower lip. “I’ve spoken out of turn,” she said. “I’ll speak to you soon, I’m sure. Billie, you really aced it. I’m so pleased for the Brown family. Sock it to those Nazi bastards,” she added enthusiastically, punching the air, her blond curls bouncing once more.

“Indeed . . . but what did you mean by it all being a pickle?” Billie pressed, feeling anxiety building in her gut. Primrose was not forthcoming, bidding her friend adieu and clattering up the staircase.

Billie exhaled heavily and moved closer to her mother on the bench, feeling the tension of the past few days sliding back in. Now she worried that there was something she wasn’t being told.

“What is it?” Sam asked her.

In lieu of answering, she picked up her beer mug and examined its state of unacceptable emptiness with an exaggeratedly arched brow, and her assistant dutifully filled it again. He seemed to glean what was needed by way of osmosis, yet another quality to recommend him. Ella raised a penciled eyebrow at Billie, then glanced meaningfully at Sam. Alma, catching the exchange, shook her head ruefully and clinked glasses with Billie, who chose to ignore her mother’s pointed signals.

“I could sleep for a week,” Billie remarked, and meant it.

The celebration was winding down when the door to the street opened once more. Billie was surprised when Detective Inspector Hank Cooper appeared in front of their booth and offered a good-natured if restrained greeting to the dwindling group.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Billie said, sliding out from the bench seat. The ale had gone to her head, and that didn’t seem to be a terrible thing for the moment. She’d been thinking over her plans for the night. Would she go home, or try to coax the inspector out for a meal? He’d refused her in the Blue Mountains, but perhaps he wouldn’t now.

“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” Cooper said, and remained standing. Billie frowned. Something in his expression made her excuse herself from the table and go to his side. This wasn’t a social visit, evidently. Perhaps this was about the charred body of Georges Boucher, if they had identified him. She was quietly pleased at Shyla’s timing, not wanting her around when the subject inevitably came up.

Billie and the inspector made their way over to an unoccupied pool table, and she fished a cool ball out of the recesses of a corner netting. An eight ball. “I could be mistaken, but I got an inkling from Constable Primrose that something might be wrong,” she said in her most restrained voice, holding the black ball and considering its meaning. Cooper did not answer her, which did not help the sense she had that all was not well.

Instead, the inspector reached into his overcoat and removed a piece of paper bearing an image. “This man look familiar?” he asked.

Billie considered Cooper’s guarded expression and his veneer of formality, sighed with frustration at this part of his character, and looked at what was on offer. It was a photograph, or a copy of some sort, and it showed a man in perhaps his forties, or even his thirties, with extremely pale hair. He was wearing a crisp Nazi uniform, his cap at a slight angle, and on it Billie could see the crest of the eagle atop a swastika, and below that, the Totenkopf, the distinctive skull and crossbones worn by Nazi officers. The uniform suited him the way a black hood suited an executioner. The man’s lips were thin and his eyes bright. Across one side of his face were lines of scars, the skin pulled.

Billie contained a shudder. “Yes, that’s him all right. The girls knew him as Franz or Frank.”

“His name is Franz Hessmann,” Cooper said in a low voice, pocketing the image. “He was charged in absentia in Hamburg, in the British zone, and sentenced to death. They say he was quite high up at the Ravensbrück camp.”

Billie felt a chill rise slowly up her spine. The Ravensbrück trials. Ravensbrück was the dedicated women’s camp set up by the Nazis north of Berlin where Jewish and Romany women, and women and girls accused of “prostitution” or poor moral standing, were sent during the war. She’d heard that thousands of women from occupied nations were also inmates there—Soviets, Dutch and French women, Poles, and many more. Few survived. Often the women arrived with children, most of whom died of starvation along with their mothers, thanks to the gradually decreasing rations. Conditions were said to have been extraordinarily brutal. The female auxiliary SS guards at Ravensbrück, including Irma “the Hyena” Grese, later transferred to Auschwitz and since sentenced to death, and another guard known as the Beast of Ravensbrück, were infamous. The guards literally worked the women inmates to death with slave labor and, from what Billie had heard, had devised strange tortures and power games, perhaps hoping to impress the Third Reich establishment with their commitment to destroying the will of the prisoners in their care. Eventually, as the Final Solution was put in place, gas chambers had been installed to speed up the killing, and when the end of the war neared, the killing had accelerated yet further, the guards not willing to let their prisoners survive to tell what they had witnessed and endured.

Yes, Billie knew of it.

“He wasn’t one of the doctors?” she asked, feeling suddenly as sober as a judge. In addition to the female guards, the place was notorious for the experiments performed on the prisoners—amputations, removing bones and attempting transplants. Cutting the women and infecting the wounds with germs to see what would happen. Introducing dirt and glass into their bodies and refusing to administer pain medication. And when the women succumbed, the Nazis took what was left, of course. Their shoes. Their wedding rings. Their gold fillings. Hessmann had a barrel full to melt down and live off.

Cooper shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He was a camp administrator. A major in the Waffen-SS and, later, camp commandant.”

The camp commandant. Billie swore under her breath. A Nazi camp commandant, here in Australia? It was almost unbelievable.

“And the airman’s burn? Did he do time with the Luftwaffe? Or was it something else?” she speculated, remembering his reaction to the fire, the extreme fear in a man who had otherwise seemed devoid of emotion. It was as if the fire had triggered something, shocked him psychologically.

Again, Cooper shook his head. “The scarring, you mean? Apparently he earned that in the camp from some prisoners in one of the factories. Saboteurs.”

The Ravensbrück women had been pressed into different types of slave labor, depending on their physical strength and abilities, forced to aid the German war machine against their will. Some worked in textiles, some made parts for Daimler-Benz or electrical components for the Siemens electric company, and some were involved in making Hitler’s V-2 rocket, among other tasks. Some were made to pull a huge roller to pave the streets. Billie had seen a photograph of the roller after liberation. It was a terrifying image—the roller huge and looking like it needed twelve horses to pull it, not human women. There were incredible stories of defiance. Even the women who had been forced to sew, many of them elderly and increasingly frail, used to rig the German soldiers’ socks so they’d get blisters, Billie had heard. A thousand small rebellions in the face of torture and death.

“A group of the women sabotaged some rocket components for the Siemens company and there was an explosion and fire at the factory. Hessmann was there at the time and got out with just the facial burns, I guess.”

Billie thought on that. The bravery of it.

“You do agree it’s him?” she asked. “I don’t think I can be mistaken. He’s quite distinctive-looking with that hair. I mean, you’ve seen him with your own eyes?” Cooper looked down at his shoes, and Billie’s heart leaped into her throat. Her chest felt constricted, as if someone was sitting on it. “Tell me everything is okay, Inspector,” she demanded. “Constable Primrose didn’t tell me anything particular, but I got the feeling . . . Well, I got the feeling it wasn’t all good news. What is it I’m not being told?”

At this, Cooper took a deep breath and appeared to steel himself, which did nothing for Billie’s gut. “There was something of a . . . mix-up,” he finally answered. “There was a constable on duty at Richmond and he let Hessmann go.”

Billie’s lips moved to form words, but none came. Stunned, she regarded Cooper silently. She felt the urge to strike him, strike anything, but he was not the one she was angry with.

“Constable Howard says he was faced with a solicitor who was persuasive, and he appears to have panicked and agreed to release Hessmann. He didn’t know all the details, of course, only knew about the claims made by the Aboriginal girls. He said there wasn’t enough to keep him. The sergeant was not there. It never would have happened on his watch. He . . .” The inspector trailed off, seeing her expression.

The claims of the girls. Claims.

Billie brought a hand to her face, and she pulled it down slowly over her eyes, her nose, and stopped it over her mouth. The floor seemed to be moving beneath her feet. “This isn’t some kind of . . . joke?” she managed.

Cooper shook his head.

“So, we had a commandant from goddamn Ravensbrück, wanted for war crimes and now imprisoning and abusing girls here in Australia, on our watch, and he’s gone? And we have witnesses as to what he was doing here, and he was let go? We have Adin and the girls and their testimony . . .” She shuddered, thinking of how Shyla and the girls would feel when they found out a police officer had willingly let the man go, knowing they were prepared to testify. What a betrayal. What an utter betrayal by a system Shyla herself had said they didn’t trust because they’d been let down before. And Adin would have been able to identify him. Adin had agreed to testify.

“We have witnesses, Inspector. We have that horrific book of dates and names. We have the surviving oil drums in that shed.” A couple of people at the billiards tables looked in her direction, and a game on the other side of the room stopped. She seemed to be speaking more loudly than she’d realized.

“Yes, I believe we have identified him,” the inspector said carefully, “and we are still sorting through what survived the fire. I’m trying to convince my superiors—”

“Your superiors aren’t convinced?” She slammed her fist down on the billiards table and it stung where the skin had been grazed and torn.

Cooper didn’t answer. Billie wondered where Hessmann was now. Where would he go? Did he have enough connections to stay on the run? For how long? Could he leave the country unnoticed?

“Inspector, what am I supposed to tell Shyla, Ruthie, Eleanor, and Ida? And Adin? Adin’s family?” she demanded, keeping her voice lower this time.

Cooper reached out and placed his hand gently on hers. Billie looked down at it and, surprising herself, decided not to pull hers away. The large male hand dwarfed the scratched and more delicate one she’d been leaning on the table, his fingers so much larger than hers. She raised her eyes from his hand to his face and waited, eyes unflinchingly on his.

“Please call me Hank,” he said to her again in the face of her terrific glare, and though he moved his hand away, that unreadable formality he so often seemed to slip into was dissolving, she could see. His hands slipped into his pockets. “I cannot . . .” he began. “Billie, I cannot begin to convey the disappointment I feel. I believe there is more to this than meets the eye. Hessmann had help; that much is certain. Suffice it to say it is my top priority to locate him and his associates and investigate each of the men listed in that book. You have to believe me. I give you my word.”

Billie waited for more.

“He can’t get far,” Cooper went on. “He’ll try to flee to another state, probably another country. South America, perhaps. He may have connections, but we won’t let him get far. We’re looking for him at every port.”

How hard would it be to hide a face like his? It seemed he hadn’t even tried. He must have thought Australia was safe for the likes of him. And it certainly had been, until Ruthie and Shyla and Adin.

Billie contemplated the sad certainty that Adin’s great-aunt had perished at Ravensbrück under unspeakably inhumane conditions, one of the majority of the women who did not survive the camp. And her necklace had ended up coming to Australia with the camp commandant to be auctioned off to help pay for his life on the run from the war crimes tribunal. Margarethe was the connection, the reason her great-nephew had searched for those associated with the auction house selling the necklace he recognized and remembered. She might have perished, but she and her great-nephew had helped to lift the lid on a fleeing war criminal. They’d come close, so close, to being the cause of his capture.

“The constable at Richmond has voluntarily resigned from his position,” Cooper said. “The sergeant wants to apologize to you personally.”

“What good will that do?” Billie replied, folding her arms. “And it’s not me he ought to apologize to,” she added. “Does the constable have any connection to this Hessmann? Is that possible? What about the man who helped set him free? The solicitor?”

The inspector shook his head, his mouth turned down. “We can’t be confident he even was a solicitor. The details he gave were false. I have an alert out at every port,” he repeated. He lowered his voice and locked his eyes with hers. “We don’t think Hessmann was acting alone—I mean in addition to the auction house, and the solicitor. There has been some investigation into the possibility of Nazi activity in Australia since the war, but it wasn’t . . .”

“Taken very seriously?”

“Yes.”

“And now you have a singed house full of evidence.”

“Exactly. What’s left of it, anyway.”

“Have you checked the names in the book for whoever might have helped him at Richmond?” she asked.

“We’re working on it. Hessmann appears to have used that book for blackmail, writing the details of those who . . .” He stopped.

“I know what they did,” she said, sparing him. Hessmann had shipped his stolen goods to Australia, where he thought he could get away with it, and was selling them off one by one. He was living on the final pieces of the broken lives of the women and children he’d helped to murder. And he’d used the girls at his homestead to cement Boucher’s loyalty and the loyalty of whoever else was in that book. His dirty little black book was a record of blackmail and assault and it would not reflect well on the wealthy clients who’d purchased the goods Hessmann had to sell. It ensured their silence.

“Hessmann was apparently known for that sort of thing. That kind of blackmail and depravity. It had worked for him in Berlin. One of the ways he kept loyalty was to promise . . . access to certain prisoners, and then he would keep evidence. The men involved wouldn’t want their wives knowing. He also kept other paperwork and a diary. Fragments survived the flames. It’s being translated now, which will take some time, but it already seems that his diary will provide some leads and . . .” Again the inspector hesitated. “Detail,” he finally said.

“That must make some pretty bedside reading,” Billie said darkly. “Surely your superiors can’t doubt his identity.”

“The official line is that his identity is yet to be established.”

Billie licked her lips. Her mouth had become dry, and inside her was an unhealthy anger, a simmering rage she thought she’d left in Europe. “Have you a cigarette?” she asked, shaking a little.

Cooper took her request in his stride, pulling a pack of tobacco and some paper from his coat pocket. He assembled a cigarette with the quick precision of a soldier who’d performed the same ritual in countless trenches and in the windows of abandoned, bombed-out buildings on late-night watches. “I didn’t think you smoked,” he said finally, and handed it to her. Billie placed it between her red lips, and he leaned close and lit the tip with a battered Ronson lighter. She caught sight of something scratched into the side but wasn’t able to make it out before he pocketed it again.

“It’s a smoking day,” Billie replied simply, and took a deep drag. She stifled a cough, her lungs still sore from the smoke of the fire. “Let me get this straight, just so we are absolutely clear. Your superiors don’t want it to look like they let a Nazi go. One who was high up in command. Is that it?”

“Without his blackmail book and without those treasures, he won’t have so much power now,” Cooper said, sidestepping the question.

But that didn’t necessarily mean Hessmann was on his own, if there was a network of some kind he could draw support from. And that seemed to be the suggestion. Did he have access to funds to get him out of the country? On one of the ships leaving soon, perhaps? That must have been how he’d got his Nazi loot to Australia to begin with—some amenable connections at the docks. Someone, or a few someones, happy to look the other way. He could stow away if he didn’t want to risk more official passage. He would disappear back into the woodwork, to emerge again—where? South America? Hong Kong? Canada? He’d lost a great deal of his war loot in the Australian bush, but it was impossible to know how much more he might have access to.

“I want you to know that we have Vincenzo Moretti in for questioning, right now,” Cooper went on. “Though we haven’t any evidence against him at this stage, and he claims to know nothing about any of this.”

“Of course he’d say that,” Billie retorted. A bitter laugh escaped her throat. “I could have told you that for free.” She took another drag of the cigarette, felt the burn, the smoke in her lungs. “Moretti is involved. I haven’t a shred of doubt.” But there would be time enough for Moretti. He was deep in this, and there was no way she was going to let him walk away from it after all that had happened. His men had tried to mess her up, they’d assaulted her assistant as well as her client’s boy, and they’d made a fair effort of shooting her off the road. “If you want any help interrogating him, I’ll have a word or two to say,” she added darkly.

“Just one more thing,” Cooper said.

“Do go on.”

“There were remains found at the Colo homestead. From a motorcar found at the scene, it seems the body may be that of Georges Boucher, originally hailing from Vichy, France.”

Vichy. How fitting, Billie thought. Vichy France, or the Régime de Vichy, had been an authoritarian administration of infamous Nazi collaborators and enablers.

“I think his is the auction house where Hessmann was selling some of his more valuable wares. Seems a nice business.” Billie’s voice was cutting.

“You wouldn’t know anything about what happened to Boucher, would you? He is . . . implicated in the activities recorded in Hessmann’s notebook.”

“What an unpleasant person,” Billie said, as if this was news to her. “I can’t enlighten you about his passing, though I will say that the fire was sudden and quite fierce. It’s a miracle any of us managed to get out.”

“Death by misadventure, then?” the inspector suggested. “Another unfortunate accident?”

“Fires can be terribly lethal.”

“And roads.”

“Indeed,” she said, and caught his eye, daring him to accuse her.

Cooper watched her carefully. Her expression was steady. He said nothing.

“Thanks for keeping me informed about Hessmann,” Billie finally said, knowing full well that he didn’t have to, and neatly changing the subject. She’d be damned if Shyla or those exploited girls would see any negative repercussions after what had happened. Death was far too good for the likes of Boucher. “And thanks for the cigarette.”

“You’ll do the same, if you uncover anything?” Cooper asked. “I mean, you’ll keep me informed?”

“You know I will, Hank,” Billie said, though she was still seething inside. “I told you in your office that we can be of better use to each other if we share information. I meant it.”

They shook hands, much as they had up in the mountains. A formal gesture, perhaps overly formal considering the events of the past week. He’d held her, as wet, trembling, and exhausted, she’d surveyed the ruins of the Upper Colo homestead. She’d felt a touch vulnerable then. She didn’t now. Rage strengthened her anew. When they withdrew their palms they exchanged a look of unspoken understanding. It lasted just a few seconds but felt like longer, the air around them electric with something ineffable but powerful. She hadn’t felt that since Europe. Yes, Jack Rake, wherever he was, would approve of what had transpired—her part in it, at least. He would approve of her determination not to let it go now, either, not that she needed approval from him, or any man, dead or alive as the case might be. This wasn’t the end of it. Every man in that book deserved the attention of the law. And Hessmann had better not get far. She’d go to the papers if she had to. Everyone would know that face.

“I have to get back,” Cooper said. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights, and he was not likely to see a day off soon. “Sorry to have broken up your party,” he added, and she noticed that Sam, Ella, and Alma were standing, and a young woman was next to Sam now, pulling at his hand. Ah, this would be Eunice. Billie had been so engrossed in her conversation with Cooper that she hadn’t seen her come in. The celebrations, however brief, were indeed over.

“Thank you for telling me,” Billie said once more, and Cooper walked away, pausing on the stairs to incline his head to her. She returned the gesture, and in moments he had slipped out the door onto Rawson Place, the din of the traffic outside filling the space and then receding as the door shut behind him.

“Ms. Walker, this is Eunice.” Sam’s voice pulled her back to the moment. He was standing with a fair-haired woman of about twenty. She had a chocolate-box prettiness and a tightly closed mouth.

“Pleasure to finally meet you,” Billie said to her, and Eunice nodded awkwardly.

“We have to go,” Sam said reluctantly.

“Of course,” Billie said. “See you in the office tomorrow?”

“Naturally,” he replied, and nodded to her.

The pair slipped away and Billie turned to Ella and Alma.

“A lift home?” Alma suggested, and Billie shook her head.

“Thanks, but no. I think I’ll head back upstairs for an hour or two. The agency won’t run itself.” The truth was, there was no relaxing for her now. If she went home to her empty flat, she might go insane. She needed to sit at her father’s desk and think. And perhaps break her rule about drinking alone.