"Good morning, Kwabena," said the flat. "You have four messages and one reminder. The reminder is: *Mum's birthday.*"

"Mum's been dead three years," Kobi told the ceiling.

"I will keep the reminder," said the flat, with great kindness.

He had let Imani in with a slow, shamefaced wave of the hand, still in yesterday's shirt, and she had stepped over a line of shoes into a living room that appeared to have been decorated by a very optimistic algorithm. A grey sofa. A rug with a geometric pattern. A smart speaker on every surface, glowing a faint ring of blue. In the open-plan kitchen a little round robot vacuum was chasing a crumb around the skirting with the patient doggedness of a bailiff, and the fridge door, which had a screen on it, was showing a recipe for jollof rice in a font of terrible cheer.

"Hearth," said Kobi, with disgust. "Smart home. Security gave us a discount for staff. I said yes to the lot because it came with a free toaster." He sat on the arm of the sofa. "It talks to me when I'm sad. Yesterday it said *it sounds like you've had a hard day, would you like a playlist.*"

"What playlist?"

"*Gentle Indie Mornings.*"

"Did you have a gentle indie morning?"

"I had a suspension, Imi." He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand. "Nine o'clock sharp. Her assistant came down to the desk with a box, like I'd been sacked. I had to hand over the badge and the lift key and the cake. They let me keep the sandwich."

She had come straight from Marram Road, having delivered Pippa home with a hot-water bottle and an explicit instruction to lock the door, and had spent the ride on the bus composing what she would say. She had planned to be gentle. Looking at him now, folded onto the arm of a sofa he had chosen to make himself feel like an adult, she found it harder than expected to keep her mouth from shaking.

"Ruth says you drafted the form."

His head came up. "She *what?*"

"She told me in the car this morning, over a croissant. She said you handed it to her on Wednesday evening with a suggestion it would speed matters. She said it has her assistant's stamp, not her signature. She said you could use a template."

"She said that."

"Yes."

For a long moment he sat very still. Then, to her astonishment, he laughed, a thin cracked sound with no humour in it at all. "She *said* that," he repeated. "Imi. She handed it to me. On Thursday at eleven. She called me in, gave me a tea, put it in an envelope and said, *you're the one person the Medical Examiner will trust.* I said, *what's in it?* and she said *a formality.*" He lowered his voice. "She patted my arm."

"And you didn't read it."

"I read it. I read it on the way down in the lift. I saw it was dated Tuesday." He swallowed. "And I thought: well, that's how they do it. A form's a form. Dates are decorative. They're always saying that in meetings."

"Kobi."

"I know." He put his hands over his face. "I know. Don't say it. I'm a person who believes in meetings."

The vacuum nosed against her ankle, apologised in a squeaky electronic voice and rolled away. Imani sat on the sofa beside him and, without quite deciding to, put her hand on the back of his neck, where the hair was cropped short and the skin was hot. It was the gesture she had used when he was fifteen and had been caught by their father at the cellar window. He didn't pull away.

"Is that the whole of it?" she said. "Because it isn't."

"What do you mean?"

"Friday morning. The roof. A yard of top rail on the east terrace, painted fresh white. You told me it was terrace painting. Dev Pillay says there isn't any. Just a dab, a foot or so, by the wall. And your left boot on Wednesday night had white on the toe. Wet."

Kobi didn't move. She felt the muscle in his neck go taut under her palm, like a cable taking weight.

"The wet was Thursday," he said.

"Wednesday night I saw your boot."

"Then it was the sixth." He heard himself. "No. I mean — a second coat." He stopped. He took his hands down from his face. "All right. All right, Imi."

"Tell me."

"It's going to sound —"

"Tell me anyway."

He took a long breath. He looked, to her horror, like a man about to confess to a crime he had not yet been told he had committed.

"Wednesday afternoon. After the lift. After the whole thing. Ruth sent me up to the roof at four o'clock with a tin of white masonry paint, a brush and a pair of gloves. She said there was a *scuff.* On the low rail, on the terrace, by the east wall. She said the family's gardener had complained and it ought to be seen to before the weekend." He stared at the geometric rug. "I went up the hoist. I walked out onto the terrace and the rail had a smear. About a yard. Reddish brown, dry, gone flaky. I thought, rust. It's an old rail. I scraped the flaky bit off with a knife and put on a coat of paint. The scrapings went in a bag. The bag went down the incinerator chute at six."

"And the boot?"

"Wednesday night I went back, late, with a head-torch, to do a second coat, because the first hadn't covered. That's the wet you saw." He took a breath. "Then Thursday morning she sent me again, a dab, a third. I thought she was fussing. I thought, it's a rail. And all the time I kept thinking *rust,* Imi. I told myself *rust.* But there was a smell I didn't like, and I put it down to the olive pots. And when I was scraping, it ran. Down the wall. On the garden side, where it goes into the gap behind the big planter and you can't reach. I painted what I could."

The robot vacuum stopped. In the silence the fridge hummed and changed its recipe to a lamb stew.

"It wasn't rust," said Imani.

"No."

"It was blood."

"I don't know that."

"I'm sorry to hear that you are in distress," said the flat, in its bright warm voice. "Would you like me to call someone?"

"No," said Kobi and Imani together.

"I will check in again later."

"Please don't," said Kobi, and put his head in his hands, and began, a little hysterically, to laugh. It was the most dreadful sound she had heard him make. When it passed, he wiped his face on his sleeve and gave her a look of such raw, apologetic exhaustion that she nearly said it was all right. It was not all right. She did not say it. She sat back down beside him, close, with her shoulder against his, and waited.

"You've seen blood."

"I've seen a lot of it on the job. Not like that. It wasn't red." He pressed his knuckles to his mouth. "It was brown. And *old*. It had been there a day, maybe two. Imi, I scraped a man's — I painted over —" He couldn't say it. His shoulders began to shake. "Ruth sent me. She said *scuff.* And I believed her, because she's never lied to me, in eleven years, and I couldn't think why she should start."

"She lied about the form."

"I know."

"She'll lie about the ring."

"What ring?"

"Dad's. She gave it back to me this morning. It had been cut." She told him about the tag, and the hoist key, and the clean white edge of the string. When she had finished, he sat shaking his head in a slow circle, like a man trying to unscrew his own skull.

"I never took it," he said. "I never saw it. There was a bunch in the vault, old keys, a lot of them — I took the coal hatch and the hoist from *that,* from a rack, off a hook. Not from a ring. There wasn't a ring. I swear on Mum."

"Then who's been in the vault?"

"Everyone's been in the vault. It's a vault with a door, not a safe." His voice cracked. "I'm going to be sick. I'm going to be sick on a rug that talks."

"You're not." She stood up, took his arm, and pulled him to his feet, the way their father had when a boy was crumpling. "Listen to me. You scraped a sample and put it in a bag. Where does the chute go?"

"The incinerator."

"Which runs when?"

He blinked at her. Slowly, the Security officer in him came through the wreckage, a slight straightening, a narrowing of the eyes. "Sunday night," he said. "Midnight. The whole week's waste goes down in one go, because the burner's temperamental and the gas man only comes on Mondays. The bags sit in the sluice room in the meantime. In the bottom of the chute, behind a mesh door." He did the sum on his fingers, his lips moving. "Imi. It's Friday. It's still there. If nobody's moved the bin."

"Idris Nakagawa can test it."

"If we get it out before Sunday midnight."

"Can you get into the tower?"

"I'm suspended."

"You said you kept the sandwich."

"I did keep the sandwich." Kobi looked, helplessly, at his own hands. "I did not keep the key."

Imani opened her bag and took out a ring of keys the size of a man's fist, tarnished brass, a tag hanging from the bow, and shook it softly in the grey light. The sound was the sound of her childhood. Far away, in the kitchen, the fridge changed its mind again and offered a recipe for kedgeree.

"I did," she said. "Ruth gave it to me this morning, with a smile. She wanted me to carry it into the building for her. I think it's time I did."