Charlie tensed as she saw a door open: a McElwee Winery door. Two men in suits walked out of the building. One of them was Nikhil Gulati. Without stopping to think, Charlie got out of her car. ‘Hey!’ she shouted, walking briskly towards him. ‘Wait!’

The two men heard her and stopped.

Running over to them with the wind blowing her hair across her face, she said, ‘Am I in the right place for Missingham’s, the printers?’ It was the only name-business combination she remembered from the twelve or so signs at the entrance to the industrial estate.

She nodded and made grateful noises as Nikhil Gulati’s balding, bearded colleague directed her back the way she’d come. Then she turned to Nikhil and said, ‘This is going to sound weird, but … I swear I’ve seen you before. Recently, too.’ She pretended to make an effort to summon the memory. ‘Oh, I know! You weren’t by any chance in the Punter pub in Cambridge last week, were you? During the day?’

‘The pub, during the day?’ Nikhil’s colleague tutted and laughed. ‘Naughty, naughty.’

Nikhil looked surprised. ‘Yes. Yes, I was.’

‘I was too!’ Charlie smiled. ‘Wow – what a coincidence.’

‘You must have an exceptional memory,’ said Nikhil.

‘I do. Everyone’s always saying that. See something once, I remember it forever. Actually, I remembered you especially because you were with two women, weren’t you?’

‘Two women!’ Beardy pounced on the cue Charlie had offered him. ‘Have you been up to no good, Nik?’

‘Oh, no, it was nothing like that,’ Charlie said. ‘They were having what looked like a very complicated discussion, but all above board, I’d say.’ She followed up with a giggle.

Nikhil smiled politely but unenthusiastically. ‘We need to make a move, so – you know where you’re going now, for Missingham’s?’

‘Yes. Yes, thanks, both of you. Sorry for accosting you.’

Charlie returned to her car feeling riled and embarrassed. Had she made it too obvious that she was up to something?

All the way home, she replayed the scene in her mind to try and work out if Nikhil had reacted like a man with something to hide, or like a person who, quite understandably, saw no reason to account for his behaviour to a complete stranger.

By the time she arrived in Spilling two hours later, she still wasn’t sure.

Chapter 10

10

from Origami by Kim Tribbeck

Monday, 12 January 2015

‘Murdered? My grandmother?’ I laugh and can’t stop. In my head, my giggles look like barbed wire. ‘Don’t be silly. People don’t murder terminal cancer patients. I mean, what the fuck’s the point of that? Murdered how?’

‘We believe something, perhaps a poison, was injected,’ says Gibbs. ‘We’ll know more soon.’

Thank God Drew’s not here. Thank God.