The Whole Truth

When I park up, Asante’s on the other side of the road, leaning against a wall, apparently scrolling through his phone. He’s chosen a position out of direct sight of the house, but even if someone was watching they wouldn’t pay him particular attention. In his white T-shirt and Ray-Bans he could be anything – tourist, postgrad. CIA.

He’s not as absorbed by the phone as he’s feigning though: he’s at the car before I open the door.

‘Afternoon, sir.’

I wonder if he got changed before he came out – it’s so bloody hot I can’t move without sweating, but Asante looks like he just stepped out of a cold shower. There are still laundry folds in his T-shirt.

He gestures back towards the house. ‘I haven’t seen anyone go in or out since I got here, but the windows are open, so I assume someone’s in.’

‘You’re up to speed?’

‘DC Everett emailed me the IIR. Though there wasn’t much by way of detail.’

‘She and Quinn are taking Morgan to the SARC now, so we’ll know more later.’

He nods. ‘So, shall we?’

We ring and wait, and ring again, and the door is opened, eventually, by a small boy. Marina Fisher’s son, evidently. If he’s eight going on nine he’s small for his age. Red shorts and a Winnie-the-Pooh top, and soft blond hair that, personally, I think needs a cut. He stares up at us.

‘Who are you?’

I notice, now, that there’s a woman in the corridor behind him. She’s slender and rather beautiful but she looks tentative, as if she doesn’t really belong. Then she moves slightly and I see she has a duster in one hand.

I smile at the boy and show him my warrant card. ‘We’re from the police. We wanted to have a quick chat with your mummy.’

He shakes his head, over-vigorously, the way small children do.

‘She’s not here.’

‘I see. Do you know where she went?’

He turns to the woman, who taps out something on a mobile phone and holds it out to me. It’s a Google translate page. Faculdade is evidently Portuguese for ‘college’.

I try my best this-is-just-routine smile. ‘I assume she won’t be very long in that case. Do you mind if we come in and wait – is that OK?’

The woman hesitates, then nods, and we follow the two of them up the stairs to the first floor. There are black-and-white framed pictures all the way. It’s like those documentaries about 10 Downing Street, with a full deck of prime ministers going up the stairs. Only here, the pictures are all of the same person. Marina Fisher doesn’t just blow her own trumpet, she toots a whole brass section. There are two portraits of her in doctoral robes (I’m assuming one of those must be honorary, but hey, what do I know), one shot of a Newsnight panel, one that looks like her doing a TED Talk and another on stage with the Vice-Chancellor and Theresa May. With each picture I pass the stakes inch up. And not just for her.

The sitting room spans the whole depth of the house. Tall front sashes with long muslin curtains shifting gently in the rising heat. Stripped floors, deep ochre velvet sofas and, on one wall, a huge canvas of swirling koi carp that’s halfway to abstract – flickering blues and oranges and eddying yellows. You can almost see the water churning. To the rear, the windows look over a small but immaculate courtyard garden, with flowering shrubs elegantly arranged in terracotta pots. The boy must have a playroom somewhere else because there isn’t a toy or a mess in sight. The house whispers calm and grace and order. And screams money. Lots and lots of money.

Asante, meanwhile, is still staring at the painting.

‘Alan Hydes,’ he says, gesturing at the signature. ‘I know him. Well, not know, exactly – my parents have one of his. They met him in Mallorca – he has a studio in the same village.’

He looks embarrassed suddenly and turns away, as if he’s said too much. Perhaps it was that ‘same’ that did it, with its implied second home. He goes over to the table under the window and starts sifting through the pile of magazines. I clocked those myself – given the surroundings, you might have expected Homes & Gardens or House Beautiful, but these all have navy-blue covers and grown-up titles like Journal of AI Research and Neural Transfer Learning for Natural Language Processing.

‘It’s a fascinating area, don’t you think?’ he says, leafing one of them. ‘Apparently IBM think they’ll be able to replicate a fully functioning human brain by 2023.’

I glance at him. ‘Trust me, there are some things machines will never be able to do.’

He looks up. ‘You say that, but this technology is moving so fast – apparently eighty per cent of office jobs could eventually be automated. Eighty per cent. Whole armies of employees who’ll work 24/7, don’t need to be paid, never make a mistake, never complain to HR. And when you add in speech recognition, visual perception, the capacity for decision-making and planning –’

I raise an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, right.’