The back seat of Ruth Abelard-Singh's saloon smelled of warm pastry and lavender hand cream. She had waved Imani in first, and then, with a small bow, Pippa, who had refused, loudly and at length, and then climbed in anyway, holding her handbag in her lap like a shield. Ruth took the front passenger seat and turned half round, one arm along the headrest, and the whole car rearranged itself around her tiny, courteous authority, like iron filings around a magnet. The driver, a young man with a clean jaw and no expression, got out to stand by the bins.

"I do apologise for the hour," Ruth said. "I've been awake since four. I find that when something distressing happens in the building, one's mind goes on ahead of one's body, and the only remedy is a croissant." She unwrapped a paper bag on her knee. "Almond or plain? Mrs. Tuilagi, you'll want the plain. You always liked plain."

"I like a great many things," said Pippa, "that I'm not getting."

"Quite right."

They ate. It was perfectly extraordinary: three women in a parked car at six in the morning, passing flaky pastry and a thermos of tea between them in the shadow of a tower, with the polite concentration of a church committee. Imani took the almond because a refusal would have been a fact. She watched Ruth's hands. They were small and clean and very still, the nails short, the wedding ring worn thin. She had held Imani's hand at the committal and kept it for the whole of the psalm.

"Mr. Pillay is a good worker," said Ruth, after a time. "It's a pity about the camera. He sent the file to his mother-in-law before he thought, and she sent it to a social group of retired ladies, and one of the ladies sent it, quite innocently, to a friend who does the Security canteen's accounts. That's the way it goes. A building of this size has no secrets, only delays." She smiled with real gentleness. "I saw it at a quarter past ten last night. I thought, I must speak to Imani before she does anything rash."

"Is the man in the video Teodor Marchetti?"

"Yes."

Imani had not expected the word. It sat in the car like a cup set down on a table.

"He has lived in the tower, as a guest of the Ostrander family, since June," said Ruth, quite evenly. "He is old, and unwell, and was in a very foolish state when he came back to Karrow. The family have always been fond of him. Mr. Winston, in particular. It was thought best that he should be quiet, and private, and that his friends in the south of Portugal should continue to receive his postcards." She turned the paper bag a quarter-turn in her lap. "It is not a crime to give an old friend a room. I do not think it a crime to say he was in Portugal when he was a hundred yards from the Ostrander Pool. There are perfectly decent reasons for discretion."

"Such as?"

"His health. His dignity. The Ostrander name. And your own good, my dear, because I have watched you for six years and you do not love Mr. Marchetti, and I did not want you hurt."

"Hurt," said Pippa, with relish. "How thoughtful."

"Pippa," said Imani.

"I'll be quiet. I'll be as quiet as a floor-button."

"Where is he now?" Imani asked.

"He left the tower at five o'clock on Wednesday morning, before you found Piet, in a car, to a private airstrip at Marl Hill. A friend of the family flew him to Faro." Ruth lifted one hand, as though to forestall an objection. "I have the manifest. I will show it to Mr. Nakagawa this afternoon, if he cares to ask. It's all quite proper. Mr. Marchetti is in Portugal. He will not come back. So you see that the man in the lift, whoever someone arranged him to resemble, cannot have been Mr. Marchetti, and I am very sorry if my insisting on it made you feel foolish. It was a terrible morning."

It was a good speech. It had a beginning, a middle and an end, and nothing in it could be tested in the next ten minutes. Imani set down the croissant on her knee and wiped her fingers carefully, one at a time, on a paper napkin.

"His phone was on the sixty-second floor at two-fourteen on Wednesday morning," she said. "On the guest network."

Ruth's face did not move. "I am not surprised."

"You left at five. He was still there at two."

"Of course. He packed. He was an elderly man. He liked to pack himself." She smiled again. "Who told you about the phone?"

"I'm a collector."

"I know. It's your gift." She nodded, as if she had decided something. "Then you will understand that when I say there is no need for you to spend your considerable talents on this affair, I am speaking as a friend of your father. The young man in the lift was Piet Lindqvist. He died of causes we are investigating. He had been unwell. His sister will be compensated generously. The tower will bury him with honour. The Medical Examiner's office will, after due process, close its file. And Kwabena—"

She stopped. It was a very light stop, like a woman putting down a fork.

"What about Kobi?"

"I did not want to raise it in front of Mrs. Tuilagi."

"I'm sitting *here,*" said Pippa.

"Kwabena was found yesterday afternoon on the steps of the Medical Examiner's office, in the company of his sister, telling an official investigator that I had given him a document." Ruth said the sentences very gently. "I have, of course, looked at that document. It was handed to me by Kwabena himself on Wednesday evening, with a suggestion that it would speed matters. It carries my crest. It does not carry my signature, only my assistant's stamp. I should have looked harder at what I was given. I regret that I did not. But I think you will agree that the real question is why a young man of thirty-six, who has been a loyal officer for eleven years, would put his Director's crest on a form that he had himself drafted."

There was a pause.

"Kobi didn't draft it," said Imani.

"I wonder if you're sure."

"He can't spell *crematorium.*"

"He can use a template. They are very easy to find." Ruth's tone did not change, and her eyes were full of sorrow. "I want to protect him. I do. He has been like a nephew to me. But I'm afraid that as of nine o'clock this morning, Kwabena is suspended from duty pending an inquiry, and unless the inquiry is satisfied, he may face a criminal referral. Forgery of a death document. Perverting an inquest. It would be a terrible thing for your mother's son."

The car was very warm. Imani felt the heat of it behind her eyes. She understood, with perfect clearness, what she was being shown: not a threat, but an invoice, one line at a time, in a lovely hand. *Kobi's job. Bea's contract. Pippa's pension, which is paid by the tower's retirement trust.* Ruth had not mentioned the last. She did not need to.

"What would satisfy the inquiry?" Imani said.

"A quiet end to this," said Ruth. "You will take the file you hold on Mr. Marchetti, and the photograph, and the video, and put them where they will not be found. You will say, if anyone asks, that you were mistaken. And you will go and collect from the bridal shop and the dog man, and be well, and happy, as your father would have wished."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I will do what I must," said Ruth, "and I would so much rather not."

She reached into her jacket and took out a small flat object wrapped in a handkerchief, and laid it on the seat between them. Imani looked at it. It was a ring of keys: thick, dark, heavy, the size of a man's fist, a tarnished brass tag hanging from the bow.

"Kwabena tells me you asked after it," said Ruth. "It does not matter how. I found it this morning in the vault, in the wrong drawer. It should have gone to you six years ago. I can only beg your pardon."

Imani did not touch it. On the brass tag, in her father's hand, were stamped three words and a number.

*CHIEF. OSTRANDER. 001.*

"It's the master set," said Ruth. "Take it."

"Where was it?"

"I've said."

"Who put it in the wrong drawer?"

"I wonder," said Ruth, "if that's a question for today."

Imani picked up the ring. It weighed what her father had weighed. She turned it over, and the keys clinked, and she counted them with her thumb in the silence of the car. A coal hatch key, bright with new oil. A vault key. A long steel key with a plastic head, which she thought opened the plant room. Eleven keys in all. She had learned the ring as a child, on his knee, naming each key by its notch while he pretended to be astonished.

There was a loop of green string at the bottom, between the plant-room key and the brass tag. It was cut. A neat clean snip, a few inches from the knot. On the string, tied tight, hung a little paper label in the hand she knew better than her own.

*E. HOIST. SOIL ONLY. DO NOT LEND TO MR. OSTRANDER.*

There was no key on it.

She looked up. Ruth was watching her with her head slightly on one side, mild, kind, interested, as though waiting for her to appreciate a present.

"It's lost one," Imani said.

"Has it?" Ruth leaned over. "Dear me. Over the years, I suppose. Keys do drift."

"The tag is tied to nothing."

"Then I imagine it's been missing a long time."

"The string was cut this month," said Imani. "Look at the edge. It's still white." She held the loop up to the pale light of the window. "Someone took the key for the soil lift off my father's ring and left the tag, so the ring would look complete. And someone put the ring in a drawer in your vault, in the wrong place, where you'd find it this morning, and bring it to me." She laid it in her lap, and put her hand flat on top of it, the way one covers a bird. "I wonder who does that, Ruth. It would take a person who knew exactly what I'd count."

Ruth's smile did not change. For one small instant, no more, something behind it moved, and was gone. It was the movement of a woman who has walked into a dark room and realised that someone else got there first.

"I wonder," she said, "who indeed."

Pippa made a noise like a kettle starting. In the grey light the Security driver, forty yards off by the bins, lit a cigarette and looked carefully at the sky.