“She couldn’t possibly have fired the Barrett before she took her pot-shot at you, of course,” Nick said. “Otherwise she would have known the recoil from that kind of cannon was going to kick like a demented mule.”
“It was a monstrous weapon,” Grace agreed. “In every sense of the word.”
“You only had to look at the length of the stock and the size of the grip to know it had been customised for someone twice the girl’s size. You have to mould yourself around a gun like that or it really clobbers you. Hardly surprising it smashed her collarbone to pieces the first time she tried it. She must have been off her head even attempting to put a round through it.”
“Which might be something of a Catch 22,” Grace pointed out. “Didn’t you say Edith’s solicitor is calling for psychiatric reports?”
“Mm, I think you’re right.” He gestured with chopsticks. “How’s your sashimi?”
“It’s excellent,” she said warmly. “I’d no idea this place was here.”
They were seated at a quiet corner table in a little Japanese restaurant in Lancaster, with plates of sushi, sashimi and tempura spread between them. Nick had tentatively suggested dinner on the way back up country and Grace, thinking of her empty fridge, readily agreed.
“I’ve always loved Japanese food,” he said. “When I first moved to London, I sublet from an ex-barman I knew. He left the pub trade to train as a sushi chef. He taught me to cook.” Nick deftly dipped a piece of yellowtail on a finger of rice into his soy sauce and wasabi mix, and took a bite, swallowed. His gaze turned cynical. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve spent time out there.”
“Japan’s one place I’ve never visited,” Grace said sedately, “although I’d love to, of course. All the little shrines and temples, and those sublime Zen gardens.”
“I went a few years ago,” he admitted. Almost diffident, she thought, to be able to claim one experience over on her. “Tokyo, Osaka, down to Nagasaki. Took the bullet train past Mount Fuji. All the usual tourist stuff.” He shrugged. “It was a blast.”
Grace sipped her green tea, poured them both a refill from the bamboo-handled pot on the table, and felt compelled to ask, “Did Lisa enjoy it?”
Nick grimaced. “She went to Tenerife with her mates from the salon where she was working, and I went to Japan with mine—including the sushi chef. Big advantage, as it turned out. He could nose out good food in the most unprepossessing places.” He nudged a plate across the table. “Try the eel. It’s delicious.”
“It sounded much more appetising when you called it unagi.”
There was something rather intimate about sharing dishes, she considered, a togetherness she hadn’t felt since Max. Except that with her ex, of course, the conversation would not have turned to motive, or murder.
“I still can’t get my head round the poor kid’s notion this would be her ticket to fame and fortune,” Nick shook his head. “Who’s so desperate to be famous they’ll try and take the blame for slaughtering people in cold blood?”
“What was that old song? Something about being wary of young girls who craved nothing more than to cry at the wedding and dance on the grave.”
“Who sang that?”
“Dory Previn, I believe. Strangely appropriate in this case,” Grace said. “But we live in a shallow, image-driven world. For some people, it seems being remembered for anything, however horrific, is better than not being remembered at all.”
“Yes, but Edith obviously hasn’t cottoned-on to the fact that, because she’s not yet eighteen, we can’t release her name to the media,” Nick pointed out. “Chances are, nobody will ever know the part she played—whatever that turns out to be.”
“‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’,” Grace said softly.
“You’re very poetic this evening. Henry Thoreau, wasn’t it, who said that? ‘And go to the grave with the song still in them’.” Nick reached across to load his chopsticks with gari sliced pickled ginger and grinned at her raised eyebrow. “I’m not a total peasant, you know.”
Grace ignored the jibe, focused on his previous comment instead. “From what you’ve told me, the saddest thing seems to be that, if this man at the Retreat was the one who tried to throttle her—and we know somebody had a go—she didn’t come to us then.”
“What good would that have done?”
“Well, if it wasn’t Edith firing that rifle, it must have been the mysterious Mr Bardwell,” Grace said slowly. “If only she’d spoken out when he tried to kill her, no doubt we would have brought him in, done a little digging. We might have found out about the gun. We might have stopped him.” She looked up, saw the startled realisation in his eyes. “Then she really would have done something to make her famous, after all.”