First Born(32)

‘She said you went inside with her. Into her bedroom.’

‘Well,’ he says, coughing slightly on his food, ‘I’m not sure that’s strictly correct.’

I think back to his email.

‘She said you helped her get rid of her neighbour? Some guy harassing her?’

‘Ah,’ he says, looking relieved. ‘Of course. How could I forget? Yes, there was one time when I helped remove a young man from her property. Glad to be of assistance. That was it.’

‘Was he acting suspiciously? Violently?’

‘He was borderline stalking your sister, as I recall.’

‘Her neighbour? How do you stalk from the same building?’

‘Harassing, then. Bagby, his name was. I’ve already shared this with the police. From what I can recall, he was obsessed with her. She shrugged it off, but he seemed to me to be dangerously obsessed.’

The cheeseboard arrives and he pours another glass of Nuits-Saint-Georges.

I don’t want to confront him too directly about the affair. I can get more from this man with honey than with vinegar.

‘KT mentioned a hotel in Chicago. Bumping into you, I guess. The Hilton, was it? The Park Hyatt?’

Groot looks me up and down.

‘What happened between you and my sister, professor?’

The volume in the room is loud. Conversations and laughter.

Groot scratches his beard and leans towards me and says, ‘You really are identical, aren’t you?’

I nod.

‘Physically, I mean.’ His eyes scan my body. ‘In all aspects. Physically identical.’





Chapter 17


The walk back to my hotel is a detox: the washing away of Eugene Groot. The rain is heavy and it gusts with the wind, especially through the crosswalks where narrow streets meet broad avenues. I see a woman carrying a skeleton costume in see-through plastic wrap. It’s almost Halloween and I’m relieved. I’ll be back in London by then.

I understand how a young woman might have found Professor Groot attractive in the cold stone sober light of day at Columbia. He’s esteemed in his field, a world-renowned expert within his niche, and he’s handsome in a tweedy, self-knowing kind of way. But for him to proposition me . . . I mean, he didn’t exactly do that, but he might as well have, his body language was unmistakable – and all when my sister’s body is barely cold. It’s unthinkable. What else could he be capable of?

I walk past the diner on the way to my hotel and pause for a moment. The windows are steamy and a family of four is sitting, the two girls drinking milkshakes, not twins, just standard sisters, and their parents look relaxed. They look like they’re having a good trip. I open the door and walk inside.

‘Welcome back,’ says the waitress. ‘Let me seat you.’

She does.

Corner table. She can probably tell I like to be seated here, a position where I can oversee the whole room and predict threats before they materialise. I’m safer here than I am in the hostel room. Plus this place serves toasted bagels with Nova Scotia lox and cream cheese.

I write notes on my phone, trying to remember exactly what Groot said, because I want to hand over a complete set of intel to both Detective Martinez and Bogart DeLuca before I fly home. In an ideal world I’ll give them some concrete evidence, something only a monozygotic twin could glean, but this isn’t an ideal world.

Not even close.

The waitress tears off three sheets from her order pad and puts it down on my table complete with a biro.

‘Oh, thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. You writing a novel, sweetheart?’

I can’t think of a witty retort. I’m too tired and I have seen too many things this week so I just shake my head and she smiles and walks away.

I scroll through KT’s Instagram feed and Facebook page and make a note of every location she’s checked into in the past twelve months. Mostly it’s all Brooklyn vegan restaurants and some place called Wu + Nussbaum near Columbia, but also two yoga studios. Sporadically she’d visit locations further afield, just as Groot said she did. There’s a trip last month to St Kitts and one in May to Monaco for the Grand Prix.

I dig deeper into the comments under her posts. If someone wanted to steal your identity I guess public profiles like hers is where they would start. You’d have her name, Katie Raven, and then her profile photo – does that give up valuable biometric retina data? Plus you have her birthday. Our birthday. Why would you want everyone to have access to all that sensitive information?

There’s a guy tagged in one post, a post from Aspen last winter, and he has ninety-four thousand followers. He follows ten people. His profile photo is a man sitting in a sports car on the top of some mountain. His profile says he’s a philanthropist and negroni enthusiast. His photos are mainly of vintage cars, old houses, him skiing, him kite-surfing, him in Japan. There are photos of a school he’s involved with in Tanzania, and photos of him on safari. There’s a picture of him at a Phillips vintage watch auction. There’s a photo of him as a boy next to a propeller plane. His name is James Kandee.

I order a cup of camomile tea. Mum texts me asking where I am, so I tell her.

From their social media feeds I can see that KT and this Kandee guy were in the same place in the world at least five times during the past twelve months. They were in St Kitts, they were in Aspen, they were in Monaco, they were in Malibu, and they were in some place called Turbach, although the caption says Gstaad, Switzerland.