She picked up one of the silk scarves, folded it, and slipped it into her coat pocket. Ruby felt Grace was putting on a show – and sure enough, Grace looked at Ruby, grinned, and raised a finger to her lips. The burnished metal of a time traveller’s watch was fastened round her wrist.
She sauntered through the exit.
‘Are you paying by card?’ the assistant prompted.
Ruby nodded dumbly.
As soon as the transaction was through she ran out into the drizzle. She pushed through the crowds at the riverside, searching vainly for a flash of blue, fearful that Grace was long gone.
‘Ruby!’ a woman shouted. ‘Ruby!’
The voice came from above. Ruby lifted her head to the skyline. Grace was standing on the footbridge over the Thames. And she knew Ruby’s name. Should Ruby have been surprised? Time travellers are privy to all kinds of information we’re yet to provide.
‘Send my love to Barbara!’ Grace called.
Ruby made her way to the bridge steps. But by the time she reached the top Grace had slipped back into the crowds. How unnerving that she knew who Ruby was.
Grace had left the stolen scarf behind – it was knotted round one of the railings, and the tapered ends were snapping like pennants in the wind. Did Grace remember that Bee liked scarves? Ruby untied it. The silk, which had turned translucent with moisture, was printed with a reproduction of Grace’s sampler. Something about it made Ruby uneasy.
She looked at that date again: 2027.
Oh God. She’d been so slow.
If Grace knew she was going to die in 2027 – if she was telling the truth about that – then they wouldn’t hold an inquest into her death in 2018. Ruby felt sick. If Grace’s own death didn’t drive her interest in the case, Granny Bee must be the one who was in danger.
6
FEBRUARY 2018
Odette
Odette was required at the inquest, to give witness testimony. She allowed so much time for her journey she was half an hour early. An arts market lined the street outside the coroner’s court and she occupied herself by looking at paintings and pots. She stopped at a second-hand bookstall. The bookseller was completing a crossword.
‘Back again?’ he said to Odette. His false teeth were a little too large.
She smiled politely. He had confused her with somebody else.
One of the book trays contained foreign language novels. She rifled through the French section, looking for something her mother, Claire, might like to read. Her fingers halted at a tattered paperback, the cover striped in green and cream bands, like an old Penguin crime. La revanche de Peredur. She pulled it out. In the corner, someone had written what looked like O/S in faint pencil. She supposed it could be a zero and a five – a price tag, in old money. She turned the pages. The novel was presented as a parallel text. Half in French. Half in Kreol.
‘How much for this?’ she asked.
*
The inquest room was plainer than Odette had expected. She’d never been to court, and legal dramas had led her to imagine a panelled chamber, rather than magnolia walls and stackable conference chairs. A dozen people were already waiting, scattered like counters on a battleships board. Odette sat at the end of a row. Her nearest neighbour was a man of thirty or so, who was slight, with dark curls. He held a tablet and was frowning at whatever was typed there.
A side door opened to admit the coroner. Earlier in the month Odette had met him for a brief conversation. His name was Stuart Yelland; he was in his sixties, likeable, and he screwed up his left eye when he thought of a question. He took his place behind the table and said a few words about the process to follow.
‘You will have noticed,’ he said, ‘that the inquest announcement didn’t include the deceased’s name. Although DNA, dental and fingerprint profiles were gathered, she could not be matched to a missing person record. Nor were there identifying documents on her person.’
In Odette’s row, the curly haired man sighed and shook his head.
The first person Yelland called to speak was the police officer who had taken statements at the museum. She recounted the police’s initial impressions of the scene, and the body.
‘The deceased was in a basement room, with only one entry point, which had been bolted from the inside. The bolt had been wrenched from the wall, allegedly by the first person on the scene.’
She stared hard at Odette. The memory of the bolt, swinging in the half light, flashed through Odette’s brain. She raised a hand to her mouth.
Returning her gaze to the coroner, the policewoman continued. ‘The deceased was white, female, and of advanced age – in her seventies or a well preserved eighties. At the base of her neck she had a laceration scar, ten centimetres in length, which predated the occasion of her death. She had four fresh gunshot wounds in her stomach, one in her left hand, and one in her head.’
Each detail that the police officer provided made the pictures before Odette’s eyes a little more vivid. Odette’s palms were damp. Her breathing was shallow.
‘The bullets were embedded in the wall behind, indicating she had been shot at the scene. The number of gunshot wounds raises the probability of homicide.’
‘How so?’ Yelland asked.
‘It’s hard to shoot yourself more than once.’
‘Hard – but not impossible?’ Yelland prompted. ‘I’m trying to reconcile how she could have been murdered, then locked the door after her killer’s departure.’
‘Shooting yourself more than once might be possible, but it’s improbable. And in my professional experience, gunshot wounds to the hand are defence injuries.’
To Odette’s relief, that drew the police officer’s testimony to a close. Revisiting the details of the crime scene made Odette nauseous. How on earth was she going to give her own account, if she struggled to hear the police officer’s?
The coroner called the pathologist as the next witness. She enumerated, in slow Yorkshire vowels, the weights and lengths of internal organs, which took some time. Eventually she moved on to the deceased woman’s injuries.
‘Swabs from the wounds revealed some evidence of bacteraemia,’ the pathologist said. ‘The culture was somewhat… unusual.’
‘Unusual how?’
‘We identified two types of bacteria. Deinococcus radiodurans, and a nasty little pathogen called alkalibacterium macromonas. They’re both bacteria that thrive in radioactive environments. Previously I’ve only encountered them in high concentrations at nuclear power stations. My conjecture is that either the deceased had recently visited such a site, or the bullets had been stored in radioactive conditions. The bullets may then have introduced the bacteria to her bloodstream at the point of impact.’
‘Might this woman have died from an infection?’
‘No. Macromonas works quickly, but not as fast as a bullet to the brain.’
Odette twisted the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. She focused and defocused on the dots in the cotton. Anything to root her in the here and now, to prevent her from flying back into that room in the museum cellar.
But she had to return there. Her time to speak arrived.
There was a jug of water waiting, when she took her place at the front. Gratefully, she poured herself a glass and took a sip.