First Born(35)

All I know is that I’d make a useless detective. Pathetic. I try to imagine the risks just here, in the core of the Upper West Side. I pass by an Apple store and a deli. This wouldn’t be a key terrorist target because they’d hit high publicity areas like Wall Street or the Rockefeller Center. But I am aware of men with their hands in their pockets, and of overhead scaffolding that could theoretically buckle and crash on top of me at any second. Before I received that phone call from Mum and Dad in London I read about a man in Berlin who walked down the street minding his own business and stepped on a closed cellar door, the metal doors flush with the pavement. It fell in. He broke his neck. Paralysed.

69th Street. I keep on walking.

I make a pact with myself to work all night tonight. Rereading the emails and reanalysing KT’s social media accounts. I will stay in the diner or in some 24/7 café and I will drink strong coffee and I will make much-needed progress.

Broadway and 72nd Street.

‘Molly!’ yells a voice from across the street. ‘Molly, over here.’

I cross over to them. Violet Roseberry and Scott Sbarra. KT’s best friend and her boyfriend. Violet’s lipstick is smudged, and Scott’s hair is a mess. He nods his greeting and Violet hugs me.

The suspicion that they’ve spent the night together crosses my mind, but I dismiss it. Not these two, surely. Not so soon after.

‘Dogs,’ she says.

I frown.

She points to the shop. ‘Gray’s Papaya. Best hot dogs in the whole of Manhattan.’

‘I dunno,’ says Scott.

‘Cannot resist a dirty water hot dog,’ she says. ‘No one can.’

We walk inside and there’s already a queue at eleven-fifteen. We order three hot dogs with sauerkraut, and three papaya drinks, and we get them to go.

‘We eat them out on the street?’ I say.

‘Few blocks, come on.’

Violet leads us to a playground with trees and a basketball court. A group of young teenagers are skateboarding and flirting and smoking cigarettes. We sit on a low wall and my hot dog is probably the best I have ever eaten. It hasn’t been boiled in filthy water; it’s been cooked properly. Thoroughly.

‘It’s delicious,’ I say.

‘Told you,’ she says.

Scott’s thrown away his bun because he says he wants to stay in ketosis, whatever that is. A scrawny bird pecks at it and we sit three in a line watching the skateboarders and taking whatever sunbeams manage to slice between the buildings.

‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I say.

They both look at me.

‘We’re flying back with KT.’

‘You’re having a funeral back in Nottinghamshire?’

I don’t want to complicate things by telling them about the cremation because I know they’ll want to come, and Mum and Dad want family only, just the three of us, the four of us with KT, so I just nod. ‘We’ll have a service in Nottingham.’

‘I wish I could make it,’ says Violet. ‘I wish I could afford to fly over for it, I really do. Maybe I can write a letter and you can place it in the hole with the casket or something.’

‘Maybe.’

Scott doesn’t say anything.

‘I saw on the news about the pillow,’ says Violet. ‘I’m so sorry, Molly. Katie was such a great person.’

‘Yeah, she was,’ says Scott.

‘It’s on the news already?’

‘Since last night. Caught it on NBC.’

‘The police believe the perpetrator was someone KT trusted,’ I say. ‘They might need to interview you both again, I think. Did either of you have a key to her apartment?’

‘I have a key,’ says Violet. ‘She had a few extras cut when she moved in, said she was terrible for losing them, and how her landlord in London charged her crazy dollars for changing the locks, or withheld her deposit or some bullshit. Wait, I’ve got it here.’

She shows me her keyring.

‘I don’t think I got a key,’ says Scott.

‘You don’t think?’ says Violet. ‘Dude, you know if someone gives you a key to their place. It’s the kind of thing you remember.’

‘OK, OK, then I don’t have one. No big deal. I don’t have it. What about the douchebag living in the basement, the kid who followed her around? He’d have a key – why don’t the cops talk to that guy?’

‘I think they are,’ I say.

‘If he did it, I will kill him with my bare fucking hands,’ says Scott. ‘I will rip him—’

I cut him off. ‘Do either of you guys know about KT’s trips? To Monaco, to Aspen, to St Kitts?’

‘It was through the school, I think,’ says Violet.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ says Scott sucking the last of his papaya juice through his straw. ‘’Cos we argued about it when she went to Aspen that time. It was part of her scholarship programme. They did a bunch of trips each year, her and the other students.’

‘That when you put your fist through her wall, Scott?’ says Violet.

‘It didn’t go through her wall.’

‘What?’ I say.

He crushes his plastic cup in his hand.

‘I thought she came back from Monaco with a hickey. Any guy would freak out if he saw that on his girlfriend’s neck.’