Mercer was smaller than Nora had expected. It was an absurd thing to notice about a woman who had come to discuss blood, but she had built an image from the telephone voice and now had to remove it.
They met at Nora's apartment that afternoon. Another officer came with her, a man who introduced himself, carried what they needed and waited while Mercer asked where they could sit. Nora put them at the table. She had moved the scarf back to the bathroom before they arrived.
Mercer saw the card Bell had left, still near the fruit bowl.
“You've spoken to him again?”
“No.”
“All right.”
Nora had decided she would correct the smaller lie. She wanted the correction to sound unprompted; waiting for the right moment already made it less so.
“I did know Iris,” she said.
Mercer looked at her, then opened her notebook.
“Tell me about that.”
“She worked for Dominic. She needed somewhere to stay. I let her stay here.”
“When?”
Nora gave the weeks. She knew them because they had been wanted weeks, not a fog she could reasonably claim to have forgotten.
“And when did she leave?”
The evening of the theft. Nora gave the date, choosing accuracy where it could be tested.
“Did she leave from here?”
“Her things were here.”
Mercer waited.
“She took them.”
Iris had collected the main bags before they went to Essex. She'd said she had somewhere lined up, a place to sleep for a while, and Nora had not asked enough because asking would have exposed how much she wanted her to remain.
“Where did she go?”
“I don't know.”
“Were you friends?”
“I thought we were.”
“What changed?”
Nora looked at the other officer. He wasn't watching her with any particular expression; that made his presence harder to ignore. He was another person who might hear something she had never said properly herself.
“We fell out.”
“About?”
“Money. Personal things.”
“What money?”
“She wanted to get away from Dominic.”
“Was that money you owed her?”
“No.”
“Money he owed her?”
“You'd have to ask her.”
“We are asking her.”
Mercer said it plainly. Nora heard how foolish the evasion had been, how quickly she'd tried to give the woman a task she was already doing.
“When you spoke to the officers on the first morning, you said you'd never met Ms Keene.”
“I was frightened.”
“Of her?”
Nora could say yes. It would be almost true. Iris had hurt her; she was afraid of the account she might give now.
“Of what was happening.”
Mercer wrote something. Nora wanted to see whether frightened made it onto the page or only the weeks and the date.
“Thank you for telling me,” Mercer said. “I do need you to be accurate from here.”
“I'm trying.”
“Then let's talk about the injury.”
Nora repeated the accident account. She felt it growing worse as she said it. Old materials. A door. Helping Cal. No address she could supply. Mercer asked who else had been there.
“No one I remember.”
“Did you lose consciousness?”
“For a while. I don't know how long.”
“Before your brother took you to hospital?”
“Yes.”
“And Ms Keene wasn't there?”
“Not at the accident.”
Nora said it with more firmness than she could afford. Mercer's pen stopped.
“She's given a very specific account of the garden room. The door. Where you fell. We need to compare the blood found there with a reference sample from you.”
“If I'm alive, what does that prove?”
“It can help establish whose blood it is. It doesn't tell us everything that happened.”
“It can't tell you I died.”
“You're here.”
For the first time Mercer sounded slightly impatient. Nora had made a defence against an accusation the woman wasn't giving her.
“We're investigating how somebody was seriously injured,” Mercer said. “And Mr Rusk's whereabouts. One answer hasn't resolved the others.”
Nora looked toward the window. She could hear a car going slowly past, music turned up inside. The apartment was two floors above the street, safely removed from it until people began asking about what she'd brought home.
The other officer explained the reference sample and the consent being sought. Nora listened carefully, asking him to repeat one part. She did not want to pretend she hadn't understood. Refusing would not make the blood someone else's; it would make her fear more visible.
She agreed.
The small procedure was awkward only because she had expected it to be dramatic. She sat still, did what she was asked, and then it was finished. Mercer asked about treatment and gave Nora a chance to explain the difference between her memory and Cal's account. Nora gave the hospital, the care she remembered, the things she had actually seen him do. She did not insist again that he'd been there every minute.
“Is Cal in trouble?” she asked.
“We've taken his account. We're checking it.”
“He saved me.”
“That can be true.”
Nora disliked the answer. It didn't contradict her, which would have let her defend him. It left room for something she didn't want.
“Will you tell Iris I said I knew her?”
Mercer looked up.
“Is there something you want us to pass on?”
There was. It was not something Nora could say at a kitchen table with an officer listening.
“No.”
Mercer closed the notebook. She asked Nora to keep her phone available, told her how to contact her and said they would speak again. They did not promise there was nothing to worry about. When they left, Nora felt briefly relieved by the apartment being hers, then frightened by how much the two people had taken away without carrying anything she could see.
She went to the bathroom and looked at herself. There was a small mark from the sample inside her mouth, more sensation than pain. It seemed extraordinary that the police could now compare part of her with something she had left ten days ago.
Her phone lit up with a message from Cal.
Done with the police?
She had told him about the appointment, not the correction she meant to make.
Yes.
All right?
Nora typed I told them Iris stayed and watched the sentence on the screen. He would tell her what to do next, which was exactly why she'd waited until now to say it.
She sent it.
The reply took longer than she expected.
You should have told me first.
She held the phone in her good hand, staring at the sentence until it stopped looking like concern.