‘Since you’re Japanese,’ she said as she squinted at the screen and began clicking the mouse, ‘you should be able to make a decent cup of green tea. Why don’t you rustle some up while I look at this? Red and black caddy in the kitchen.’

‘Is it Japanese tea?’ Wada asked before she could stop herself.

Morrisette glanced up at her over the frames of her glasses. ‘Rather than that Chinese crap, you mean? Yeah. Organic Sencha. From a tea garden near Kyoto. Good enough?’

‘Good enough.’

Boiling water and brewing the tea took Wada about five minutes. During that time she heard several exclamations from the dining room. ‘What the fuck?’ seemed to be Morrisette’s favourite.

She was still immersed in the Emergence files when Wada delivered the tea. Wada sat with her cup at one end of the table and watched Morrisette at the other, glaring and grimacing at the screen while she fiddled with the mouse and took occasional loud slurps of tea.

There was an overfilled bookcase behind her. Almost all of the titles Wada could see were scientific in nature, with a bias towards climatology. There were bound runs of various journals as well: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Scientific American; International Journal of Climatology.

Five minutes passed, then another five. Wada said nothing. And Morrisette spoke only to herself, in muttered expressions of disbelief. Her brow was set in a permanent frown. The glasses were so far down her nose they seemed perpetually about to slip off.

Then, at last, she sat back in her chair and looked down the table at Wada.

‘You’ve read this?’

Wada shook her head. ‘No. I have been travelling without a computer. And … you are the expert, not me.’

‘Yeah. I’m the expert. Supposed to be.’

‘There is something wrong?’

Morrisette exhaled explosively. ‘You could say that. But tell me, this is all framed as a catalogue of lots to be auctioned on April seventeenth. That’s five days ago. As far as you know, the auction went ahead?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Yeah. Of course it did. The fuckers.’

‘What is wrong, Dr Morrisette?’

‘This isn’t the list I signed off on. You get it, Wada? The doctor’s list has been doctored.’

‘How?’

‘That NDA I mentioned probably prohibits me from saying.’

‘Surely not, if this is not the list as you authorized it.’

‘Interesting argument.’ Morrisette fell silent for a moment. Then she jumped up and hurried out into the kitchen.

By the time Wada had caught up, Morrisette was punching a number into her phone. ‘Who are you calling?’ Wada asked, but only got a go-away-or-shut-up gesture in reply. She opted for shutting up.