Entry Island

She turned back to the ceiling, reaching up with her tweezers to invade the embers of the bonfire with the tip of them. The stones around the glow appeared to be tiny moulded pieces of Blu-tack. She worked the tweezers, trying to catch hold of something hidden beneath the Blu-tack. Finally she found what she was looking for and moved the tweezers gently back and forth, to pull away the red glow at the heart of the fire. Revealing something much larger than the circle of it which had been exposed. An oval of semiprecious stone set in gold, its coiled-up chain concealed beneath the Plasticine. She turned, and with her free hand took hold of Sime’s right hand so that the pendant and his signet ring could be viewed side by side. The arm and sword engraved in each stone were identical. Sime felt a shiver run through him.

III

He emptied the contents of the plastic bag on to the glass tabletop in the summerhouse and looked up to see her reaction. It was clear that Kirsty was shocked. And it was evident to Sime that she was sleeping as little as he was. She seemed to have aged in just three days. The hollows of her face a little deeper, the shadows a little darker. Even the startling blue of her eyes seemed to have lost its lustre.

He leaned over to angle one of the interview cameras down to focus on the items scattered across the table. ‘Do you recognise these?’

She went straight to the pendant, lifting it up to run delicate fingers over the engraving of the arm and sword. ‘I told you it was identical. Let me see?’ And she reached for his hand and his signet ring to make the comparison. ‘Where did you get these?’

‘Are they all yours?’ Along with the pendant there were two pairs of earrings, the four hair clasps used to make the fence, a necklace of paste diamonds that Norman had set along the centre of a road like cat’s eyes, a bracelet used to contain a small lake.

She nodded. ‘Where were they?’

‘Did you ever see Norman Morrison’s little universe on his bedroom ceiling?’

‘Not personally, no. But everyone knew about it. I think a lot of people went to see it, just out of curiosity.’ She frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with my things?’

‘They were all embedded in the Plasticine, a part of his little universe, Mrs Cowell. Unrecognisable for what they were, but performing one kind of landscape function or another.’ He paused. ‘Do you have any idea how they came to be in his possession?’

Her consternation was evident. She was at a complete loss. ‘I... I don’t know. He must have taken them from the house.’

‘When we talked about the missing photograph you said he’d never been in the house.’

‘He hadn’t.’ She caught herself, frustrated by the contradict ion. ‘At least, not to my knowledge.’

‘You think he broke in one night when your husband was away on business and you were sleeping over here?’

‘He wouldn’t have had to break in. The door’s never locked. And he couldn’t have taken them all at once. I’d have noticed. He must have been in the house several times over a period.’ Her voice caught in her throat, and she fought to hold back tears. ‘Poor Norman.’ She looked up. ‘What on earth was he doing over here on the night of the storm?’

‘His mother said he was worried about you.’

She put her hand on her chest and closed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘I never realised the obsession ran so deep.’ She looked at Sime. ‘What happened to him, do you think?’

Sime shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe he came over here to see that you were okay. Maybe he didn’t realise there was a cop in the big house. Maybe he got spooked and lost his way in the dark. It was quite a storm. Well, you know that. And he must have been walking blind in it.’

She let her head fall forward to stare in some distress at the items on the table that he had stolen from her to be a part of his secret world. ‘So sad.’

Sime reset the camera to focus on Kirsty once more and sat down facing her in what had become his usual seat. It was raining outside now, and though not dark yet, there was very little light left in the day.

She looked up with a weary expression of resignation on her face. ‘More questions?’

He nodded and plunged straight in. ‘Why didn’t you tell us that you had paid a visit to the Briand home the night before the murder?’

Colour rose on her cheeks and she took a moment to answer. ‘Because I knew it would influence your interpretation of events on the night of the murder itself.’

‘Your version of events.’

She half-lifted an eyebrow. ‘See what I mean?’

‘And you didn’t think we would find out?’

‘I wasn’t exactly thinking straight about anything. To be honest it seemed irrelevant to me. All that mattered was what happened that night. Whatever had unravelled, or been said the night before, was beside the point.’

‘Unravelled?’ Sime frowned. ‘That seems a strange word to use.’

‘Does it?’ And she thought about it herself. ‘Maybe that’s because it describes the way I felt. Like I was unravelling.’