Pippa came out of the coal chute like a cork leaving a bottle.

"Kwabena Quaye," she said. "I changed your nappies."

"Auntie Pip." Kobi shut his eyes. "Please don't."

"I carried you up to the thirty-first floor in my arms on your first day of school because you were frightened of the stairs. And now you are standing in a cage at one in the morning making your sister look at you like that." She waved the rolling-pin torch. "Explain yourself."

"I could ask the same."

"You could *not.*"

It was ridiculous, and it broke the air in the store, and for one moment Imani nearly laughed. It took an effort to stop. She stood by the brass dial with the freezer bag buttoned into her inside pocket, and watched her brother's face do what it always did: arrange the jokes in front of it like furniture in front of a door.

"All right," said Kobi. "Look. Fine. I'll go first. Ruth sent me." He held up both hands, the sandwich pocket bulging. "Your man in the raincoat said there was a route that doesn't log. Ruth said there wasn't. Then she went away and thought about it for two hours, and at half past eleven she called me into her office and said, *Kwabena, your father was fond of the east side, wasn't he.* And I thought, oh." He rubbed his neck. "So I took the other key."

"What other key?"

"There's a master set in the vault. The old maintenance keys. Dad's drawer." He said it in the light fast voice of a man describing a favour. "It's got a coal hatch on it, a soil hoist, the lot. I came in from the roof end because the roof door was easier, and rode it down to see if it still worked. And it does, so now Ruth knows, and tomorrow they'll wire it. Probably. I'd say it was a good thing, Imi, I'd say it was the sort of thing that might help."

"Which key?"

"Sorry?"

"Which key from the vault. What did it look like?"

"Brass," said Kobi. "Small. Why?"

"Did it have a tag?"

A flicker. A very small one, as of a candle in a draught. "I don't remember. It was a bunch."

"It was a bunch." She nodded slowly. "Kobi. Our father's ring was never returned to us. It wasn't in the effects. I'm trying to work out how it came to be in a drawer in the vault."

"It's the tower's property, isn't it? Chief's ring. They'd have kept it."

"So I thought, for six years. And you've had a look at it tonight."

"I've had a look at *a* ring."

"Good," said Imani. "Then you'll have no trouble telling me what number was on the tag."

He stared at her. She saw him decide to be amused, and saw it fail halfway; then he laughed, a real one, helpless and cracked, and put his hand over his face. "You're appalling. You're a terrible person. Do you know that? You'd have made a wonderful interrogator."

"I'd have made a wonderful sister if anyone would answer my questions."

"There's no number on the tag."

"Then it's the wrong ring."

"There might be," said Kobi, from behind his hand, "more than one."

Nobody spoke. The hoist ticked as the cables settled. Pippa's torch had drifted to the floor, and the beam lay across the concrete between the three of them like a line that no one was ready to step over.

Kobi lowered his hand. His eyes were red-rimmed, and he looked all at once like their father in the last year, tired in the middle of his face.

"Imi, I'm going to ask you something," he said. He said it quietly, and precisely, in the card-reading voice. "I'd like you to walk out of that hatch with Auntie Pip and go home and have a bath. I'd like you to forget you were here. I will tell Ruth I found it empty. I will say the hatch was already open and nobody's been near it, and tomorrow I'll bring you a cake, a proper one, with a face on it. And I'd like you not to go to the roof."

"Why?"

"Because there's nothing there."

"Then why shouldn't I go?"

"Because it's wet," said Kobi, "and you'll slip."

It was the stupidest sentence she had ever heard him say, and she could not tell whether he knew it. She looked at his boots. Black Security-issue, with the thick treads. On the left toe, a smear of something pale: not soil, not oil. Wet white paint.

"You've been on the roof," she said. "It's been painted."

"Everything's been painted. They're doing the terrace."

"Since when?"

"Imi."

"Say it was Piet," she said. "In the bay. Say it again. Say it as you did before. And I want to hear the part of you that's *not* being brave."

Kobi went grey. For a long moment she thought he would. His mouth opened. Then a sound came from the shaft above them, far off and metallic, a door shut on a high floor, and he flinched, quite visibly, and when he looked back at her the thing had gone out of his face and left behind a polite blank.

"Out," he said. "Both of you. Please. I'm asking."

"Kobi —"

"I'm asking *nicely.*"

Pippa took Imani's sleeve. "Darling. Not now."

It was the *darling* that did it. She heard in it that the old woman was frightened, not for herself. She let herself be turned. Kobi stood aside as they climbed back through the chute, a narrow brick throat that stank of coal dust and rain, and in the last second before she dropped into the alley she looked back and saw him by the hoist, one hand on the lever, looking up the black shaft like a man waiting for a verdict.

* * *

The cat was gone. The drizzle had thickened to a proper rain. Pippa hissed as she straightened her hip and said something to the wall in her own language, and Imani took her arm and steered her toward the mouth of the alley, where the road lights made yellow pools on the wet.

"He's lying," Pippa said.

"Yes."

"He's lying to protect something."

"Yes."

"Your brother has never lied to protect himself in his life. It's a dreadful quality in a person. Like a dog that brings you the neighbour's shoes." She stopped. "Imani. What is on the roof?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to?"

Imani looked up. Somewhere up there, past the dead windows of the offices and the lit slits of the floors where the cleaners were, under the glass of the garden terrace and the olive trees, was a place where a man named Kobi Quaye had stood tonight and come back with white paint on his boot. She thought of a Wi-Fi network that said *62-A*. She thought of a corpse shaved in a box. She thought of her father's brass ring and the number that was not on its tag.

"Yes," she said.

"Hey," said a voice from the dark.

Both women turned. A scooter sat at the kerb, dripping, its lights off, with a rider on it in a rain jacket and a helmet pushed back on a braid. A phone glowed in her hand, the screen cracked across the corner. It was not the phone that had been taken. This one had fewer stickers.

"I figured you'd come for the hatch," said Wren Okpara. "Everybody says the maintenance guy's daughter knows the building. I've been sitting here an hour. My bum is wet."

"Go home," said Imani.

"I will. After." She held out the phone, screen outward, and thumbed it awake. A delivery app opened, the orange Hopper logo smeared with rain, and a list of jobs scrolled up, grey and green. She stopped at one near the bottom. "Monday night. You know how riders can see the notes people write? Customer notes? Mostly it's 'ring twice' or 'dog bites'. This one said *Leave at east service door, B1. Knock three. Don't come up.* The tip was two hundred. Nobody tips two hundred." She looked up. "I took it. Collected a double portion of rice and four bottles of water from the place on Cutler Street. East door, knocked three. A man opened it from inside. He took the bag and gave me the tip in cash in an envelope."

"What man?"

"Big. Quiet. Security jacket. He had a sandwich in his pocket, I thought that was funny." She shrugged. "The name on the order was *Q.* Just Q. I saw him in the bay this morning when they took my phone. He called you Imi."

Imani did not move. In the alley behind her the rain was loud on the bins, and a long way up, thin and sweet, a ferry horn sounded once and fell silent.

"You're sure," she said.

"I'm a courier," said Wren. "I'm sure about faces and doors." She pulled down her helmet visor and thumbed the ignition. "I didn't send that to the group chat. Only the clip. This I'm giving you. You owe me." She grinned, quick and wicked, and was gone down the wet street in a hiss of spray.

Pippa let out a long breath. Her hand had found Imani's arm.

"Q," she said. "For Quaye."

"For quiet," said Imani. "For Kobi."

She stood in the rain until her coat was wet through. Then she took out her phone, and opened the note called Shopping List, and looked for a long time at the nine lines, and at the empty space beneath them. She did not type her brother's name.