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‘Yes.’
‘Cathbad,’ Nelson leans forward. ‘You might be a nutcase, but you’ve got good instincts. Who do you think killed her?’
Cathbad looks out of the window. Two of the hens are on the roof of the shed. Thing barks at them and then looks enquiringly at his master. Cathbad pats the dog. ‘It’s OK, boy.’ Then he turns back to Nelson. ‘I think it was someone who loved her,’ he says at last.
‘You’ve just told me everyone was in love with her.’
‘Exactly.’
For someone supposedly on an elevated spiritual plane, Cathbad can be very annoying.
Tony’s mother tells him that he’s lost weight, his father that he’s looking more like his grandfather every day. Neither of these things are true but Tony accepts that they are his parents’ way of showing affection. The house on Clapham Common is the same, neat and comfortable, with Tony and Mike’s graduation pictures beaming from the wall. There are no photos of Lily on display, which always makes Tony feel sad. His mother has her picture on her bedside table and Tony often used to sneak in to look at it, Lily in a pink dress holding her favourite toy rabbit. It was taken when she was five, the year she died from meningitis. Tony took a photograph of the framed portrait before he went away to university. He used to worry that he would forget what Lily looked like but now he knows that her image is branded on his heart for ever.
‘I’ve made your favourite supper,’ says Min, Tony’s mother.
‘I bet your mum’s a great cook,’ is one of the less offensive things people say to Tony. But, in truth, Min has never been keen on the labour-intensive dishes of her native Guangdong province. She was quick to embrace convenience foods, especially when she was training to be a nurse. Hao, Tony’s dad, was a better cook and, at weekends, would produce slow-boiled soup and shahe noodles. Tony is interested to learn what his mother considers his favourite dish.
‘Kung pao chicken,’ says Min, in answer to his enquiry. ‘That was always your favourite.’
Tony thinks it was actually Mike’s but he’s very happy to sit down to a home-cooked meal. He’s not a great chef either and mostly exists on Deliveroo.
Min asks about his flat. She doesn’t like Tony living alone and often suggests that he gets a flatmate.
‘It’s a one-bedroom flat,’ Tony explains, not for the first time. ‘But, it’s fine. I’ve got friends. I play in a five-a-side football team.’ It was Clough who introduced him to the team of current and ex-police officers. Tony’s an indifferent player but he always turns up for practice, which makes him Man of the Match most weeks.
‘You were always good at sport,’ says Min.
That was Mike too but Tony isn’t going to argue. His Chinese name is Chongan, which means second brother. Says it all really.
Both parents ask about his work. They hadn’t wanted Tony to join the police. He’d studied economics at university, which seemed the perfect foundation for becoming an accountant, like his father. They hadn’t pushed the matter, though– they aren’t that kind of parents– and always try to show an interest.
‘I’m working on a strange case at the moment,’ says Tony. ‘A skeleton found bricked up in a wall.’
‘That happened to your uncle Wang Lei,’ says Min.
‘Really?’ Unlike his brother, Tony loves stories about the extended family. Wang Lei seems to have done most things but, even so, this one is a surprise.
‘Yes, he found a mummified cat in his garden wall.’
‘That’s not the same thing at all,’ protests Hao.
‘Yes, it is!’ says Min. ‘Wang Lei contacted the previous owner, an old man who’d had to move into a home. He said he mummified the cat because he loved it and wanted it with him always.’
‘He couldn’t have taken a photo?’
Tony allows his parents’ bickering– the soundtrack to his childhood– to wash over him. He is thinking: did someone love Emily so much that they wanted her with them always?
Chapter 11
Tuesday 15 June
‘We know several things that we didn’t know yesterday,’ says Nelson. ‘We know that Leo Ballard drove Emily to the station on Monday twenty-fifth of March 2002. We know that a mysterious masked figure appeared during the last night of the Grime’s Graves dig. We know that Emily used to frequent the Green Child café and go to some weird get-togethers there. . .’
‘Folklore Fridays,’ says Tony helpfully. ‘Apparently Peter Webster, the owner, was very keen on that sort of thing.’ Tony, who had travelled up on the early train, is looking as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. The visit to his parents has obviously done him good. Nelson is always slightly envious of people who still have both parents. Nelson’s father died when he was fifteen.
‘Surely Peter Webster must be our main suspect?’ says Tanya.
‘I think so too,’ says Nelson. ‘According to Tony here, he built the downstairs wall in December 2002.’
