The picayune events of the day pass him like flotsam; his hands move by themselves, doing without doing. It doesn’t feel like he should be working. It’s this feeling that eventually draws him inexorably to Melissa Goldman’s lab. There he finds a more muted atmosphere. Only a few hushed whispers float over the maze of cubicles and computers. Atif’s desk has already been cleared. On it is a cardboard box with ATIF written on the side. Inside there is a stack of printed-out documents, a small wrist cast for carpal tunnel syndrome, a number of pens, a set of headphones, a framed picture of an older woman—it must be of Atif’s mother, who is smiling manically with her arm around a younger Atif in a graduation robe, both of them on the long and well-kept lawns of Oxford, romantic Gothic buildings soaring behind them on that bright summer day. Kierk takes one of Atif’s pens from the box.

He’s also extracting the stack of papers when Melissa Goldman, wrapping a scarf around her shoulders as she exits her office, catches sight of Kierk and approaches him with a questioning look on her face. As she does Kierk is thinking about what it must have been like to find the bomb materials outside her house, leering and obscene in her driveway out in the suburban wind.

Kierk gestures to the box. “This for the police?”

“Actually some university employee is going to send it home. They said they’d be down about twenty minutes ago. You’re one of the Crick Scholars, right?”

“Yeah, hi, I’m Kierk Suren.”

“So you knew him?”

“I was one of the last people with him.”

“I’m sorry. I only heard last night, I packed up his effects. I’ve never done anything like this. What a sad thing.”

“Listen, I’m sorry, but I was working with Atif on a project—”

“Oh, the one with Carmen?” Melissa says. Kierk opens his mouth, closes it again. “Because Carmen already looked through this stuff for those notes.”

“Sorry, I should’ve mentioned, I just talked to her, actually, and she wasn’t sure she had gotten everything of relevance. You know, making sure.”

“Well it can’t hurt, go ahead, just don’t actually take anything. I have a meeting to get to.”