"Halloran," said Bea Calloway down the phone. "Halloran and Daughters. Why."

"Because they're collecting a body from the Medical Examiner at noon, and I'd like to know what they owe us."

"Imani, you're benched."

"I'm standing on a pavement, Bea. It's a public pavement. It has no contract."

A long pause, in which Imani could hear the printer on Cutler Street jam and Bea speak to it with the tender hatred of long marriage. Then a drawer opened. "Halloran and Daughters Funeral Directors. Account in arrears nine months. Twenty-two thousand and some pence, of which eleven is a vehicle lease. We hold a writ on a Daimler hearse, registration ending Kilo Delta, the newer one. The writ's good in any public road in the county, signed off in May by a magistrate with an irritable bowel. I've been sitting on it because I like Odile Halloran and her mother makes a very good cake." Another pause. "Imani. I'm going to say something and I'd like you to remember I said it in the way a person says a thing to a plant."

"Go on."

"The writ is in the second drawer. It is not locked. The bailiff's coat is on the back of my door. I am about to go for a walk." The line clicked.

* * *

At eleven forty-six a black Daimler hearse with a polished chrome grille drew up at the kerb outside the customs house and sat there ticking, two wheels on the pavement, like a very large and well-mannered beetle. The driver, a thin man in a black overcoat with the expression of someone who had never been surprised, stayed behind the wheel. In the passenger seat sat a woman of forty-five or so in a long charcoal coat, with a bun of iron-grey hair and a clipboard on her knee. Imani, who had been waiting on the steps in a borrowed high-visibility vest with CIVIL ENFORCEMENT stencilled across the back, came down to meet her.

"Mrs. Halloran?"

"Miss," said the woman, winding down the window. "Odile. And you'll excuse me, I'm collecting a gentleman. If you're from the council, the permit's in the glove box."

"I'm not from the council." Imani produced the writ from the vest, folded it open, and held it flat against the window so the woman could see the stamp. "My name is Imani Quaye, I work for Tallow and Dray Recovery, and I'm here on behalf of Meridian Motor Finance. I'm not here to shout. I'm here to remind you that you have a vehicle on a lease nine months in arrears, and under Section Four of the writ, as granted by the Karrow Magistrates in May, I am entitled to take possession of that vehicle wherever I find it on a public road."

Odile Halloran looked at the paper. Then she looked at Imani, and then, with the slow dignity of someone who has been dreading something for nine months and is almost relieved, she began to laugh.

"You are *not.*"

"I'm afraid so."

"In front of a *customer.*"

"I'll wait until the customer is on the vehicle," Imani said. "I'll let you load him. And then, I'm sorry, I'll take the hearse."

"With him in it."

"That would be very difficult for everyone."

"It would be bloody impossible." Odile put her head in her hands. The driver, without turning, produced a small tin of mints, offered it sideways, and when she shook her head put it back. "Mr. Pym, did you hear that?"

"I heard," said Mr. Pym, in a voice like cold gravy.

"I've been *burying* the people of this city for twenty-three years. My mother did it before me. We buried the mayor's cat in a proper casket because he asked. I was going to pay it in June, and then the roof." She looked up. "Is it because of him? The one from the tower?"

"Did they tell you who he is?"

"Staff. Poor lamb." Odile frowned. "I took it because they pay double. Eight hundred over rate. It was all done through an assistant. Very polite. A Mr. Hallam? Hallett? She said the family wanted it done quietly. A private cremation, Friday at nine, at the Marl Hill chapel. No service. The ashes to be collected by Security."

Imani felt the pavement shift slightly under her. "Friday," she said.

"Nine o'clock."

"Who booked the slot?"

"The tower did. On Wednesday evening." Odile Halloran lifted her chin, and for an instant the funeral director, the woman of twenty-three years of tact, looked out of her face like a heron. "Miss Quaye. In my trade we do not cremate a man within three days of death unless somebody asks us. And if there's a question about the way he died, we are forbidden. By law. If the Medical Examiner's investigator hasn't signed, I can't touch him. I've got a paper, but it hasn't got his name." She tapped the clipboard. "I was going to ring and tell them. But then I thought: eight hundred."

"And now?"

"Now," said Odile, "I think I'd like to be repossessed."

Imani blinked.

"Properly. With the paper. In the street." Odile folded her hands. "I'll say I was served with notice at ten to twelve and had no choice but to return the vehicle to the finance company. I'll tell the tower the car was taken. Mr. Pym will bear witness, and there'll be a crowd, and I will weep. I do it rather well." She leaned out of the window and lowered her voice. "My mother will kill me. But she'd have done the same."

"I don't want to put you out of business."

"You're the first debt collector I've met who does it politely. I'll take the plan." She held out her hand, and Imani shook it, and the driver in the front seat took out the mint tin again, and this time he did take one.

* * *

Before the hearse came, she had waited beside the reception desk while the cardigan receptionist, whose name tag said NOEL, made her a tea in a mug that read WORLD'S OKAYEST MORTICIAN. He asked no questions. He explained instead, with great gravity, that the building had a rule that nobody talked about the dead while they were still on the premises, "in case they take it personally," and that he had once seen a visitor faint over a fire extinguisher. She had been grateful for him. It was easier to wait with someone who talked about extinguishers.

The sunlight, when it came, was white and brief and gone in a minute. By twelve ten there were nine people on the steps of the customs house, including the cardigan receptionist, a pair of dockers in tabards and two schoolgirls filming on their phones. A black Daimler hearse sat at the kerb with a flatbed tow-truck backing up behind it, and a stout man in a hi-vis jacket was winding a chain. Odile Halloran stood on the pavement with a handkerchief to her mouth and said, loudly, "I've never been so humiliated in my life," and was a triumph.

At twelve fifteen a grey Security van drew up at the corner. Nobody got out. It sat there with its engine idling, for four minutes, in the manner of a person trying to decide whether to be furious or pretend not to exist, and then it pulled off.

At twelve nineteen Imani's phone rang, and the screen said *Idris N.*

"Hello."

"Hello." He sounded as though he had been running. It was a very small difference, but she had begun to hear them. "I'm in the post-mortem suite. I'm told there's a hearse on the pavement that is being towed."

"There was a little mistake in the paperwork."

"I see." A pause. "It was your mistake?"

"I'd call it creative reading."

"I'd call it..." He stopped. When he spoke again his voice was careful, as though he were setting something very fragile on a very small table. "Thank you. I don't suppose I'm allowed to say that. I've started the examination. They've kept their promise, in the sense that no one has stopped me. I think they believe I'll fail to find anything. That makes me a little defiant." Another pause. "Miss Quaye."

"Imani."

"Imani. May I tell you what I've found in his stomach?"

She sat down on the customs-house steps, among the schoolgirls, and shut her eyes. "That's a very romantic opening."

"It's meant as an invitation to be sick, not to be moved. I apologise." He cleared his throat. "He had eaten a meal not more than two hours before he died. Rice, mostly, in quantity. Boiled egg. A little diced onion and some kind of fried plantain, which is easy to identify because it doesn't break down. And an unusual red sauce. A very hot one. I tasted a little under the microscope, which I advise nobody to do." The line crackled. "That isn't tower canteen food. I checked. The canteen doesn't serve rice on Mondays."

Imani had opened her eyes. A ferry horn sounded on the quay, long and flat. In her inside pocket, against her ribs, a phone screen glowed with a delivery order that she had saved as a picture: *a double portion of rice and four bottles of water from the place on Cutler Street.* The name on the order, *Q.* The time, Monday, a few minutes before eleven at night.

"Idris," she said. "When did you say he died?"

"The window I gave you yesterday was wide. This narrows it. Not before eleven on Monday night, and not long after, if I'm honest about the digestion. A little under thirty-four hours before I saw him. Why?"

"Because Piet Lindqvist walked out of the tower at six eleven that evening," Imani said slowly. "On camera. And you're telling me he ate dinner afterward at the east service door."

"I'm telling you someone did," said Idris, "and then died, and then was made to look like another man." He breathed out. "Imani, where did that rice come from?"

She did not answer. She was looking up the pavement, to where, at the far end of the quay, a man in a black Security jacket had just stepped out of a taxi with a paper bag and was walking toward the customs house, head down, a sandwich bulging in his pocket.

Kobi hadn't seen her. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the clock that had stopped at twenty to four.