The police call came while Nora was choosing a photograph which made the room look as if it had already opened.
She had moved the cable, cropped out the paint tins and found an angle where the yellow bowl appeared almost by accident. She had not posted anything. The image waited on her screen, promising her a morning she could still decide to have.
“Ms Vale? Detective Inspector Mercer. I'm leading the enquiries in Essex.”
Nora put the photograph down.
Mercer checked that she could speak privately. Cal had gone for supplies; Mina was in her own workshop. Nora shut the front door and turned the little sign to closed, though it had never officially said anything else.
“Yes.”
“We've been to the property Ms Keene described. There's blood in the garden room. We're trying to establish what happened there.”
Nora sat on the chair by the counter. Its hard edge pressed against the backs of her thighs.
She remembered the floor. Not as an image which came to her for the first time, but as something she had made herself look away from each time it returned. The pale tiles, the black grit under her cheek, the warmth passing out of her arm. A room which would not become empty just because they had left it.
“Is there someone hurt?” she asked.
“That's one of the things we're establishing.”
She could almost have laughed at herself. Here she was, asking after the injured woman while sitting inside her.
“I understand you knew the owner professionally.”
“Dominic Rusk. I worked on his London rooms.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
Nora gave the day of their last telephone conversation. Before the theft, before she had agreed to it. He had wanted an estimate revised without anything removed from the work. She had heard someone speaking near him, a man laughing, and known she had been put on speaker without being asked.
“Have you heard from him since?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he intended to travel?”
“He said he was away. He didn't say where.”
He had said it. Nora could use that much.
Mercer asked how Cal's work was connected to her own. Nora described commissions he had helped install, practical jobs, work he'd done for clients. It sounded almost respectable. It had usually been respectable.
“Does he know Mr Rusk?”
“Through me.”
“We'll need to clarify your injury and the location where it happened. I'd like to arrange to speak to you in person.”
Nora glanced toward the front window, where the reflection of the shelf light ran across the glass.
“You said there's blood. How much?”
“Enough that we can't dismiss the possibility someone was gravely hurt, or died. We need to find out whose it is.”
Mercer didn't offer a picture. Nora had one already.
They arranged another contact. When the call ended, she kept the phone against her ear until the quiet became unbearable. Then she put it face down.
She wrote Cal a message: Police went to the house. Ring me.
Before she could send it, somebody knocked on the window.
A young woman stood outside with her hand still raised. She was in a grey coat, one sleeve pushed up because she'd been looking at the time. Nora recognized Dominic's daughter from a photograph on his London mantelpiece and, after a moment, from a visit when the daughter herself had been less carefully dressed.
Nora opened the door.
“Hannah?”
“You remember.”
“Of course.”
She remembered the father saying Hannah would want the blue room, and Hannah, on a video call that Christmas, saying she didn't want a blue room or any other room because she lived somewhere else. Dominic had laughed in a way which made it clear her refusal pleased him less than he wanted Nora to think.
“Come in.”
Hannah looked past her, then stepped inside.
“Sorry. I tried the number on your website. It went to a message.”
“My phone's been busy.”
“The police gave me your name. I said I knew who you were.”
Nora heard the scrape of her own shoe as she stepped back.
“They've been looking for your father?”
Hannah nodded. Her mouth tightened, then she took a breath as if she had practiced getting the next sentence out without crying.
“I thought you might know where he was going.”
“I'm afraid I don't.”
“He told you he was going, though.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Nora told her. Hannah checked the date on her phone, comparing it with something there. Nora watched the neat movements of her fingers, the clean edge of a dark painted nail. Daughter of a man who owned more than he needed. Nora had wanted so badly to be able to pay the next ordinary bill without first making something beautiful for somebody richer than herself.
“Would you like coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
She regretted offering it when she reached the back sink and saw the unopened packet, the kettle pushed behind a box and one clean mug. Hannah followed her.
“I can do it.”
“It's all right.”
“Your arm.”
“An accident. It's getting better.”
Hannah moved the box. “I don't mind.”
Nora let her fill the kettle. Help from a near stranger made it suddenly difficult to stand comfortably in her own space.
“Is this your new place?” Hannah asked.
“Nearly.”
“It's lovely.”
Nora thanked her. The praise did not become less desirable because she should have been thinking about something else.
“Dad said you had good taste. He didn't say that about many people.”
“He had opinions.”
Hannah smiled. “Mostly about people's prices.”
The kettle began its low, struggling noise. Nora reached for the mugs and realized she had a second one after all, behind the packet. Cal's, a chipped white mug which he claimed made tea taste better. She set it beside the first.
“His car's at the house,” Hannah said. “The police found it there. He takes the train sometimes. They're checking that.”
She watched the kettle. “He sent a message. After he left. Away a few days. Don't fuss. Something like that. I didn't fuss. I had a deadline, and he does go off.”
“Then he's probably still away.”
It came out too promptly. Hannah looked at her.
“He answers me.”
“He might not have his phone.”
“He sent the message from it.”
Nora put a spoon beside each mug.
“I meant he might have lost it afterwards.”
“Yes. He could have.”
Hannah said it without reassurance. Possibility wasn't what she had come for.
“The police asked about Iris,” she said.
Nora touched the kettle handle too soon and took her hand away.
“Did you know her?”
“I knew who she was. He pretended she was just the housekeeper for about a year. Then he pretended I ought to have known all along. They're both quite irritating things for a father to do.”
She was looking at the kettle, not at Nora.
“Was she still there?” Nora asked.
“I don't think so. When I last went, he was eating something straight from a saucepan. He offered me some and then couldn't find another fork.”
Nora could see him. A rich man telling a funny story about being helpless, waiting for someone to admire the helplessness enough to fix it.
“Did you stay?”
“For dinner. I had work.”
“What do you do?”
Hannah looked faintly surprised by the question.
“Graphics. Mostly things for other people's businesses. Labels. Menus. A website when someone assures me it will be simple.”
“It's never simple.”
“Exactly.”
“Your father didn't mention that.”
“He doesn't entirely understand why I'm doing it.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I should work with him. When he thinks about it. The rest of the time he thinks I do.”
There was a small, unwilling laugh. Nora poured the water, steadying the mug with the heel of her good hand. She had imagined a daughter whose problem was choosing whether to inherit. Here was a woman trying to get a client to approve a label before the printer closed.
“He asked me to make him a card once,” Hannah said. “A proper one, he said, not the little things people have now. I made him a proper one. Then he rang to ask how to send it to somebody.”
“Did he pay you?”
“No. But he took me for lunch and asked for a discount on a chair, so I suppose somebody lost money.”
They smiled at each other. Nora had disliked him. She had also enjoyed being able to meet him on equal terms, make him laugh, tell him something about a room he didn't know. Taking his money had been easier when she made him nothing but a man who could afford to lose it.
Hannah carried her coffee to the cabinet. She stopped in front of it without pretending she was there to shop.
“Did he leave anything with you?”
“No.”
“Any drawings? Plans? Sometimes he talks as if he's told everyone everything, and he hasn't told anyone anything.”
“I have the London drawings.”
“Could you send them? Not all of them. Anything recent with a date on it.”
Nora wanted to ask why. Asking would suggest there was an answer she feared.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“I don't think you need to be worried.”
Hannah's gaze came up from the cabinet.
“You don't know where he is.”
“No, but—”
“That's what everyone keeps saying. Don't worry. But none of them know.”
She held her mug with both hands. The sleeve of the grey coat had slipped down again. Nora wanted to touch her, the small consolation of a hand on an arm, but she had already given more than she knew.
“I'll send the drawings,” she said.
Hannah nodded. When she left, she took Nora's card and entered her own number into Nora's phone. Neither of them said there was probably a simple explanation again.
Nora watched her walk away, stopping at the corner to answer a call. She had the quick apologetic expression of someone being asked for work she had promised before she knew her father might be missing.
The message to Cal was still unsent. Nora added a second line.
Hannah came here. She's worried.
He rang before the phone had settled in her hand.
“What did she say?”
“She can't reach him.”
“He's away.”
“She knows that. Or she thinks she does. She had a message.”
“Then what's the problem?”
Nora looked at Hannah's mug, a little coffee left at the bottom.
“She's his daughter.”
Cal was quiet for a moment. Then he said he'd be round that evening. He'd bring something for dinner. She wouldn't have to cook.
Nora said yes. After they ended the call she found the dated drawings, attached them to an email and sent them to Hannah. It was a small thing she had agreed to do, and she did it properly.
Then she went back to the photograph of the showroom and closed it without posting.