Hans did not understand heel. Or stay or stop or whoa. Pepper, on the other hand, refused the indignity of walking after a block and a half. Happily, their destination was in sight: the Right Café, with its welcoming outdoor seating among potted ferns. It’s where she intended to meet Chen Benton-Li, and she’d been reading about her the whole way.
The artist had been born in Newcastle to Chinese immigrants of modest means. Her father passed while she was still a child, and she and her mum lived in the low-rent district. Chen had only intermittent education until her mother remarried; she first entered public school at the age of thirteen, and announced publicly that she was a she. Assigned male at birth, Chen lived the rest of her life as a woman. Jo did the mental math; now seventy-one, Chen transitioned in the ’60s following pioneers like April Ashley (who modeled for Vogue before being outed). Coming out of the closet was hard enough in the present; she imagined Chen must be made of stern stuff.
And, according to Jo’s research, her artwork was impeccable. Jo couldn’t wait to meet her—even if the prospect also gave her new-people anxiety. The joys and woes of excito-terror.
“Can I come in with the dogs?” Jo asked at the front door. “I’m supposed to meet someone—we can sit outside.”
“No problem. Those are Arthur’s pups, aren’t they?” the server asked. “He’s here all the time.”
“Yes. I’m just walking them. To brunch.” That sounded especially odd, but then again, they weren’t even the only dogs inside the place. Jo’s eyes adjusted to pick out a herding dog of some variety near the back—and the flutter of a hand in her peripheral vision. The café was white: white walls, white tables, bamboo-colored chairs. But just beneath the stylized café name, a bright mandala bloomed in teal and aquamarine. A jacket, Jo realized, with structured shoulders and a vanishingly thin waist. Tucked into it and wearing a contrast of summer yellow was an elegant woman, gracefully poised. She held one hand aloft, supporting a nickel-sized sapphire stone, and rolled her wrist to beckon.
“Wow,” Jo said before she could school herself not to.
“Pleased to meet you, too, child,” said Chen. Jo already knew Chen was native to Newcastle, but that she talked like Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope was both incongruous and delightful. “Shall we dine alfresco? It’s a rare thing.”
Jo nodded affirmative, and Hans registered his approval by circling Chen excitedly.
“Arthur wouldn’t leave his babies to just anyone, you know,” she said. “You must be very special.”
“Oh” was Jo’s so-cultured response. Think faster, please, she instructed her brain. “It’s really wonderful that you could see me,” she added as the server led them to the sun-soaked beer garden.
“Of course. I adore Arthur. And besides,” Chen said, lowering magenta sunglasses and looking at Jo over the rim, “I’m interested. You see, no one else knows.”
“About . . . ?” Jo put Pepper down in the shadow of the table and tied off Hans’s leash.
Chen waited until she was settled. “Evelyn’s painting.”
“You—saw it? You were you at the estate?”
Chen smiled. “Oh. Hadn’t you guessed it was my work?”
Jo bit her lip. No, and yes. Dared to hope.
Chen went on. “Aiden invited me; he wanted my opinion about their origins. As I gather you already know, Evelyn’s is an Augustus John. The other two paintings of his ancestors were not. Very strange mystery indeed. Evelyn’s painting was decent work, mind. But not expertly done.”
“So it’s all true. Aiden knew it was an Augustus John! I thought he must have. Was it hard to replicate?” Jo began. She wanted to ask about the message on the torn photo, but the server was standing over her now. “Um, coffee?”
“Try the omelet, pet,” Chen suggested, then to the waitress, “I’ll have my usual,” then back to Jo, “Aiden had a small photo on silver paper in a tiny gilt frame. Very helpful for the repair.”
Chen went on, pausing now and then to make quiet little hums—appreciative vibrations. It was oddly soothing.
“Aiden invited me to the Ardemore estate. He was sick then, and I rather younger and fitter. I worked right there, in the library—was sorry to hear of its demise. Aiden sat in a wingback chair, blanket on his knees, and watched me paint.” She smiled gently. “I’m glad I had the time with him. He supported me when it mattered. I was only too happy to return favors.”
The omelet had come, but Jo pushed the plate to one side.
“I want to know everything,” she said.
“Tut. You want to eat your breakfast is what, pet. There’s a girl. And then, you want to come to this.” Chen burrowed into an oversize bag, half disappearing into its yawning mouth. She returned with a folded brochure. “It’s an exhibition.”
Jo looked at the title: Fractured Genius: Augustus John and the Slade School of Art. It started tomorrow, Tuesday, at the York Art Gallery. Jo lifted her eyes to Chen. “This is . . . interesting timing.”
“Oh, there’s always a show somewhere featuring the Slade pupils. It’s a celebrated bunch, and you’ll see the work of Derwent Lees and William Orpen. Even Augustus’s sister, Gwen.”
Jo nearly choked. Why was everyone called William and Gwen? Across from her, Chen put down her toast and jam.
“Join me,” she said.
“At the museum?”
“Quite. You want to know more about Aiden—you need to see the paintings. Consider it the price of admission.” She winked. “Now, eat up. Those pups will want to be home again before it gets too warm.”
* * *
Chen wasn’t wrong about the temperatures; by the time Jo left the café, she’d started to sweat in earnest. On the street, she saw summer shorts and preposterously white legs to prove how rare a day it was. And Pepper was having none of it. Looking up the museum while carrying an inverted eight-pound dog was not improving the heat index. She retraced her steps at a clip even Hans could appreciate, cutting across the park to one of the main streets . . . just in time to be honked at.
Loudly, Jo dropped her phone, managed not to drop the dog, and quite possibly her heart had exploded. The phone remained thankfully intact. Car horns should be banned. Any horn, frankly. Manic, random noisemakers.
Looking up, she did not see a cranky driver riding away as she’d expected. What she saw, instead, was a white butty van.
Not the same one, obviously. The one with a single window, dinged metal counter, out-of-date condiments—the one that delivered a sizable bacon sandwich but on stale bread Gwilym complained about the whole way back. The one with a bejowled driver with a thick Geordie accent.
Except, somehow, it was. Jo approached the window, dogs in tow.
“Hi, excuse me?” Jo asked. The man had been looking at his phone.
“Closed,” he said.
“Oh. I’m not ordering. I just had a question.” Jo was, in fact, trying to formulate a question just then, but it was hard to know how to begin. Were you parked up at a murder scene yesterday? didn’t seem like a good opener; Have you seen the vanishing hiker? didn’t strike her as much better.
“Closed, I said.” He reached for the sliding glass door—and Jo did something drastic and more than a trifle embarrassing. She blocked it with the bone-shaped dispenser for tiny dog-poo bags she’d been carrying around. That made him shove all the harder, but he’d been thwarted by femoral knob.
“Please, I really just—”
“Look, ye nebby hinny, go off. We ain’t selling today.” With that, he wrenched loose the blockade, shut the window and put up the official closed sign. Jo stared at it, wondering what had got into her lately. The van wasn’t her problem. The hiker wasn’t, either. She had enough mystery women to track down without adding new ones to her repertoire.
And anyway, she needed to prepare for an art opening. She opened a text window and searched for Gwilym. It was time to divide and conquer.
I need everything you can dig up on Augustus John.
The ellipsis of creation appeared immediately.
You’re the boss, he wrote.
* * *
When MacAdams and Green returned to Abington CID, Gridley and Andrews met them at the door.
“About our burner phone,” Andrews said, waving a sheaf of paper. “Guess what? Most of the calls go to another burner, or several—”
“Which you are also tracing,” MacAdams interrupted.
“Yes, sir. But we did get a bit of good news. The reports show a series of calls to a landline, every few weeks over the last six months. The Abington Arms.”
That got MacAdams’s attention, and Green’s, too, he noted.
“Wait just a minute,” she said. “Arianna said he’d never called before, that she didn’t recognize the name.”
MacAdams responded by putting Arianna and Evans back on the incident board in the Active category.
“We’ll get them in for questioning. What about Sophie Wagner’s charity?”
Gridley hopped up from the table she’d been sitting on. “That checks out; cleared with Home Office and registered for community sponsorship. Not as big an organization as something like Citizens UK, but they seem to have helped resettle a few dozen families.”
“Is that a lot?” Andrews asked.
Gridley picked up a marker. “You bet. It’s thousands of pounds per person. If—super conservatively—we say 5K per, that’s over 130,000 sterling.” She wrote that on the board. “But that’s not even the biggest part of it. There’s finding the right housing, getting it approved, sorting the paperwork, job center training, language classes. That’s why it’s usually a communal effort.”
“And not usually attached to a country club,” MacAdams said.
“Fair,” Gridley agreed. “But even though Sophie started the Fresh Start charity, she has a board of directors. It’s not under the business she operates; they just happen to be licensed for job placement. FYI, though. Burnhope is on the board. So is Ava.”
Burnhope had said as much to MacAdams. Tight little family, they had there. Each standing in as supportive alibi for the rest.
“It might be worth looking into the club, anyway. It’s called Lime Tree Greens. Wagner’s son works there, too.”
“Are they suspects?” Gridley asked.
“Not yet. But add them to the list of people surrounding Foley. Where are we on next of kin for Foley?”
Andrews waved a hand. He was nosing over his tablet and chewing his bottom lip. “Nothing. I mean, nobody. No mother, no father, no siblings. Actually, no Ronan Foley earlier than 1998.”
MacAdams picked a stale doughnut, then put it down again.
“Explain.”
“Well, his ID card tells us he was born in Belfast in 1962. I put in a call to Ireland’s General Registry Office, but they don’t have a birth record for a Ronan Foley in Belfast.”
“Have you checked the driver registration?” Gridley asked before stealing the doughnut MacAdams had his eye on. She took a chalky bite before continuing. “To get a driving ID, you have to have a public services card and verified government ID. And if you don’t have those, the list is long—he’d need his personal public services number, at least. Someone’s got to have his details.”
“Tommy, chase it. Also, one of you poke around more in Burnhope’s past. Let’s see if we have any more like the Eton near-miss.”
MacAdams had been trying to capture the important pieces on the incident board. Sophie, Ava, Stanley and Fresh Start. Foley as a dark horse, friendly to single mum Trisha, had a mystery lady leaving things in his flat, but was otherwise a bully who couldn’t get on with authority. Burnhope had said “work-life balance”—an odd thing to remark about a now-deceased employee—and it stuck in MacAdams’s mind. Was the murder in question business or pleasure related?
“Phone, boss,” Gridley said, “Struthers. He wants you to come down—says he’s got something you need to see.”
Please be useful evidence, MacAdams thought.
“Green? Prepare the interview rooms and get Arianna and Evans in here.”
“On it,” she said, and MacAdams slipped out the door. It was better to go it alone, anyway. He needed to call Annie.
“It’s me,” he said when she’d given the flower shop’s singsong greeting.
“Oh! James—is everything all right?”
“It is. I need a favor.”
“Goodness, certainly. But you never ring me; gives me a heart attack. I always think someone must have died.”
“Listen, I need some insight into architecture and commercial real estate for a case. I thought maybe Ashok—”
“Oh my God, James! You’re calling and you want to speak with Ashok?”
“Sorry—”
“Are you kidding? It’s wonderful. Hold on . . .” In the distance he heard her shout “Ashok! It’s James.” MacAdams pressed his phone to his forehead as if that would recall the situation. “Okay, I’m back. He’s just coming down.”
“Annie, please, I’m about to walk into the morgue,” he said.
“Ah. So someone has died. But you want to speak to him?”
“I do. I would like to, when—”
“Wonderful. We’ll have you to dinner. How’s Thursday?” Her voice was fainter as she asked, “Ashok, Thursday—that works for you, doesn’t it?” MacAdams had reached the elevator and, if he were very lucky, the end of wireless service.
“Tuesday,” he said, as the doors closed. Thursday might almost be too long to wait. The call dropped, the doors opened and, for once, MacAdams was almost happy to see the hallway leading to Struthers’s lab.
“Hello, James! Sorry to bother you at luncheon,” he said, waving a home-packed sandwich on the side table. MacAdams wondered, not for the first time, what sort of childhood trauma made for a good coroner.
“Is this about the murder weapon?” he asked.
“Partly, yes. And something else. Right this way—I’ve been experimenting.” Arranged on a steel tray was a curious menagerie: a hammer, a long lead pipe . . . and what appeared to be a fancy ashtray. “I’ve been trying to find a match for our wounds using an assortment of random objects, comparing their weight and force to what we saw in the damage to Foley’s head.”
“Not the hammer,” MacAdams hazarded.
“Very good! Serviceable, yes, especially from a long-armed assailant. I thought it might make sense of the downward-glancing blow. Alas, as you note, the wound is much too broad.” Struthers picked up the lead pipe. “This was no better; whatever struck him wasn’t a uniform shape like this. Not the way to crack a coconut.”
“A what?” MacAdams asked.
“Coconuts! Cantaloupe are better for shape and weight, but I needed something closer to five on the Mohs’ scale of hardness.”
MacAdams had a fleeting curiosity whether Jo would know what the Mohs’ scale was. Probably she would, he decided.
“I needed something heavy enough to do the deed in a single blow, but still do more damage at one corner,” Struthers said. “I used to golf, you know. Had a whack with a heavy iron. It does damage, but still not the right kind.”
“So not a golf club?” MacAdams asked, halfway to calling in a search of Lime Tree Greens. Struthers wagged a finger.
“Cracks the shell, but the wound is all wrong. Weird as it may seem, this came closest.” He handed the glass ashtray to MacAdams.
“It’s heavy enough,” he agreed. “But—”
“But ashtrays don’t make good murder weapons, eh? I agree.” Struthers sighed.
MacAdams looked at the object in his hand. Ungainly. Yes, he could probably wield it, but it would be better as a missile.
“Do you think someone threw it at him?”
“I do not. You lose a lot of force that way. But—” He took it back and swung it downward, for effect. “Say your opponent is already down. On his knees, maybe. Or you are on higher ground. That would do it.”
“You’re saying this is my murder weapon?”
“I am not,” Struthers said, taking it back. “But heavy glass would do the trick, and might explain the complete lack of residue, fiber or filings in the wound. People have been killed with all sorts of strange objects. I once presided over a man done in by a tennis trophy.”
MacAdams wasn’t sure coconut smashing counted as forensics, but it proved one thing at least—
“No one plans to kill someone with a thing like this, do they? Planners use practical, surefire weapons.”
“Unpremeditated, you mean?” Struthers asked.
MacAdams nodded. “If the murderer used something like this, they chose whatever was to hand.” He looked at the chunk of glass, thinking of the modern glass sculptures populating Ava’s music room. Defensive, wasn’t she? Ready to deny all knowledge of her husband’s business—and his partner. He’d found it hard to believe then. Now that suspicion took a slightly darker hue.
“You said you had something else to show me?” he asked.
“Two somethings. We’ll start with the curious and graduate to the strange. Come have a look.” He led MacAdams to the table with his sandwich, a small cardboard box—and a microscope. “First, your golden earring. I’m shocked it wasn’t pummeled to bits by our boots. Lucky anyone noticed it.”
He lifted the tiny object from the box and placed it on a piece of black foam. MacAdams judged it to be about the size of a pound coin, maybe smaller. Sort of a half-moon shape, it had been adorned with filigree work.
“Very pure, maybe twenty-four or twenty-six karat. That’s called box construction, according to our jeweler friend. More specifically, ‘open-work S-curve crescent with an arabesque design.’” Struthers turned it sideways, to show the “box”; the earring was hollow, like a basket.
“Does that help us identify it?” MacAdams asked.
“That’s the curious bit. The design, I’m told, was popular in Egypt and North Africa, Spain, India and Turkey . . . in the eleventh century.”
MacAdams’s attention to the objet d’art had wandered, but this news recalled it. He stared again at the exotic-looking disk.
“You’re telling me that’s a thousand years old?” he asked.
“Well, the design is. There’s no hallmark stamp, and you can’t carbon-date gold. It might have been made last week to mimic the design. In any case, it’s a pricey piece, handmade and not mass-produced. If you know an antiques dealer, they might be able to say with more certainty.”
In fact, MacAdams did know one. He made a mental note to see if jewelry was one of Gwilym’s many specialties.
“I don’t suppose this jeweler friend had any guesses as to who might have made it?” MacAdams asked.
Struthers shook his head. “None he knew of—he reiterated how rare it was, then actually suggested we seek out a museum professional.”
MacAdams sighed. Curious, yes, but not especially helpful. “All right, show me the strange.”
“Ah. You know those white patches noted by DS Green? Not vitiligo. I’ve performed a few tests, and it’s true, the skin has been damaged. But it’s not an abrasion, disease or fungus.”
Struthers indicated the microscope, and MacAdams peered through the lens at tissue on a slide. At high magnification, he saw mainly ridges. When he came up for air, Struthers was smiling giddily.
“The tissue has been severely dehydrated after death,” Struthers said. “And punctured by crystals. Does that help?”
MacAdams looked back to the sample. “It doesn’t.”
“Freezer burn,” Struthers said, and MacAdams blinked hard. It had just called up the brown-white of beef left too long in the back of the icebox.
“You’re telling me the body was frozen?”
“No, the damage would have been everywhere. I’d say it was packed in ice—and not dry ice, either. That freezes too hard and fast for crystal formation. Shame, actually, since dry ice is harder to get hold of and easier to track.”
MacAdams pushed his hands out in front of him, as if that would make it easier to catch the stray thought that kept buzzing around inside him.
“This doesn’t make sense. Someone killed him after midnight, then packed him in ice, then dumped him in a ditch before 3:00 a.m.? Why bother? It wouldn’t be long enough to disguise the time of death, would it?”
“Not really,” Struthers agreed. “Rigor mortis sets in a few hours after death and lasts at least twenty-four.”
MacAdams made a four-cornered circuit of the lab. It clarified nothing. The midnight-to-three window remained.
“Is there anything else to determine exact time of death?”
“Stomach contents.”
“Fine.” MacAdams tapped his fingers against the steel table. “See what you can do to narrow this down.”
“Will do,” Struthers said, peeling his gloves off and making advances on his sandwich.
MacAdams left the long hall feeling far less buoyant than he had on arrival. Shoving a bunch of ice bags on a corpse (in a rainstorm), maybe dealing a blow with glass sculpture; it made no real sense.