The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (3 page)

“Is that Claire?” she asked, peering down the stairs at me.

“No, it’s Kate, Ethan’s friend.”

“Of course. Sorry, dear, my eyes aren’t so good. Is Ethan with you?” She descended the stairs slowly, one step at a time. “I didn’t hear him come in tonight.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, maybe he’ll be back soon. I’m going to wait for him if that’s okay. I’m sorry if I got you out of bed.”

“Oh I never go to bed. I sleep for an hour here and there in the armchair with Mr. Bubbles.”

“Who?” Of course, Mr. Bubbles, the cat. No one knew what his name had been before he’d been rescued, but Ethan had called him Fred. Appalled, Joyce had re-christened the kitty, and the two of them had become the best of friends.

“I won’t be here long,” I said. “I’ll see you soon. Oh, and I’ll lock the door when I leave. You must have left it open.”

Joyce frowned. “I don’t think so. Anyway, you go ahead. I want to get back to my program.”

She began the climb back up to her flat while I walked down the long hall, my boots clicking on the black and white tiled floor. When I reached Ethan’s flat, I took out the keys, and then paused. There were scratches on the wood around the lock. Had they been there before? I wasn’t sure. Unsure what to do next, I took a step back and dug into my bag for my mobile. I pressed the buttons for 999, but didn’t hit the dial button. With the phone in my hand, I unlocked the door and reached inside to turn on a light. After a few seconds, hearing no sounds inside, I peeked around the door into the living room.

It looked much as it usually did, orderly and immaculate, the way Ethan liked it. A black leather sofa gleamed, devoid of cushions or throws. A bookcase on one wall harbored hundreds of books, mostly to do with political and financial analysis, all arranged alphabetically. I checked the kitchen, which also sparkled, the surfaces clear of any clutter apart from a kettle, toaster and coffee machine. Breathing more easily, I put my phone in my pocket and went back into the living room, where I noticed a copy of
The Economist
lying on the floor under the coffee table. I picked it up, put it with several other magazines on the table and lined up the edges to make a neat pile.

Puzzled by the uncharacteristic placement of the magazine, I took another good look around the room. On the second shelf of the bookcase, one hardback leaned at an angle. On closer inspection, I noticed that several books on that shelf were out of place, with Churchill’s six volumes of
The Second World War
arranged in the wrong order. Odd. There was no way Ethan would have done that. Had someone else been in the flat?

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was time to go home.

“Mr. Bubbles?” I heard Joyce calling out in the corridor. She padded into the room. “He must have sneaked away while I was talking to you just now. He does that whenever he has the chance.”

“I haven’t seen him,” I said.

“Did you open a window?” she asked, pulling her dressing gown tighter around her. “There’s a draft isn’t there? We should shut it again before you leave.”

“I didn’t—” I stopped, not wanting to alarm her. “Let me take a look.”

Joyce followed me into the bedroom, where the windows were closed. In the bathroom, however, a window gaped open, a black rectangle in the white wall. It was small, but it would have been possible for someone to crawl through. I climbed into the bath and stood on tiptoe to peer outside. A short drop to a flower bed below meant it would be easy enough to land there without coming to harm.

“That’s not like Ethan, to leave a window open,” Joyce said.

I agreed. Recalling the unlatched front door to the building, the scratches around the lock on Ethan’s door, and the small but telling disorganization of the books, I was certain now that someone had visited the flat before me. Or maybe at the same time as me. I thought I would have felt the draft when I came into the flat, just as Joyce had. Did someone slip out of the back window when I was in the living room? That thought made me shiver more than the cold air coming through the opening.

I slid the window closed and locked it. “There,” I said to Joyce. “All done. Let me take you back up to your flat and make sure you’re settled in.”

Joyce’s lips trembled. “We can’t go upstairs until I find Mr. Bubbles.”

She hurried back into the hall, calling for the cat, and I followed, my bag over my shoulder. A loud purring sound preceded the appearance of the overweight tabby, which wrapped himself around my legs. Joyce scooped him up and held him close to her chest. “Mr. Bubbles, you naughty boy, scaring Mummy like that. Now you come with me.”

I walked Joyce upstairs and waited until I heard her locks click before heading back down. Careful to turn off all the lights and lock the street door behind me, I walked out into the chill of the night, where the streetlights flickered, wreathed in a lurid orange mist.

Standing in a pool of light from a street lamp, I wondered what to do next. It seemed that I should tell the police about the possible intruder, but when I took my phone out of my pocket, I saw it was out of power. I’d been so distracted today at work that I’d forgotten to charge it. Still, I recalled seeing a police station on this road, less than half a mile away. I’d walk there and take the Tube the rest of the way home.

The walk gave me time to think things through. Ethan wasn’t the most reliable friend in the world. He’d get caught up in something he was working on, or even just thinking about, and forget that the rest of us mere mortals still existed. But this was different. The odd texts, the strange book in his safe, his disappearance. The more I replayed it all in my head, the more convinced I was that I’d seen him getting into that taxi outside his office. And he had an aura. That wasn’t good. He needed help.

When I reached the police station, I told the officer on duty that I needed to report a possible break-in and also a missing person. He took some basic details before telling me that I’d have to wait because they were short-staffed and he was run off his feet. As I seemed to be the only other person in the station, I found it hard to believe, but I took a seat as instructed. The waiting room was chilly and drab. The fluorescent lights made my head ache. And all the time, my thoughts ran in circles like mice in a wheel, making no sense of anything that had happened. Where the hell was Ethan? And what did his aura mean?

I’d started seeing auras not long after my mother died unexpectedly two years ago. Three months after her death, I’d seen her while I was out walking on a country road close to my dad’s house in Italy. She’d spoken to me, trying to comfort me. Needless to say, I’d fallen apart with shock and grief for a while, and then the aura sightings had started. It had taken a while for me to realize that they signified imminent death. For want of a better word, I called them auras. But whatever name I came up with, I wished they weren’t there. I tried to ignore them when I saw them over people I didn’t know, on trains, in shops, on the street. I’d learned early on there was no sensible way to walk up to a stranger and tell them I knew they would die soon.

But when that creepy moving air appeared over friends and family, as it had done on several occasions, I had no choice but to get involved. I’d been successful in diverting catastrophe a few times, but not always. People close to me had died.

“Miss Benedict?” The duty officer beckoned. “Follow me.”

He showed me into an office decorated in shades of tan and beige. A man in a brown suit and taupe tie motioned me to sit down. I sat in a straight-backed chair on the other side of his cluttered laminate desk.

“Sorry for the delay,” he said. “I’m Detective Lake.”

He was a compact man with unremarkable features apart from his eyes, which were large, brown and round. They reminded me of a cow’s, although his were distinctly more alert and intelligent.

“So you want to make a missing person report?” he asked, glancing at the form the duty officer had given him.

“Yes, my friend is missing, and someone broke into his flat.”

“I see.” He wrote something on the form and then looked up at me. “Do you want a coffee or something?”

“No,” I began. Then I nodded. I guessed that he’d like a coffee and I needed his help. I’d be as cooperative as possible.

“Hey, Cooper,” Lake called out. “Let’s get two coffees, please.”

While he waited for the drinks, Lake wrote a few more lines with a cheap ballpoint pen, the tip scratching against the paper. It only took a few minutes for Cooper, the duty officer, to bring two mugs to the desk.

“You’ll like it,” Lake told me. “The chaps here bought me a new-fangled coffee machine for my retirement a year ago. One of those single-serve things that makes tea as well. After one week at home with the missus, I was bored to death and came back to work. Brought the machine with me. Now everyone here’s my best friend.”

I sipped the coffee. It was good.

“All right.” Lake leaned forward over the desk. “Your friend has been missing since when?”

“Early this evening. About three hours,” I said. “I know that’s not long, but I’m quite sure he’s in trouble.”

“And why do you think that?”

I told Lake about Ethan’s empty office with the lights still on, the open window, his briefcase on the credenza and the text message telling me to retrieve a book from his safe.

“I found the book and took it to the restaurant. I waited there for nearly an hour and he never turned up,” I finished. “Here.” I picked up my bag, took out the book and laid it on the desk. Lake glanced at it but didn’t comment.

“You had a reservation at this restaurant?” he asked.

“Yes. We often go there for dinner.”

“You two are dating?”

“No, we’re just friends. I have a boyfriend, but he’s traveling right now.”

Lake lifted an eyebrow a couple of millimeters. “And how long have you known Dr. Hamilton?”

“Years. Ever since primary school. He and my brother were— still are— friends.”

“I see. And Dr. Hamilton works at…” He glanced at the form again. “The Adams Institute?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. “He’s been with the Institute for about a year. He’s a political scientist and he focuses on global economic indicators or something like that.” I looked at the volume lying on the desk. This was no modern textbook. It looked ancient, its leather cover worn at the edges. I touched the soft hide, which felt like velvet. My fingers itched to open it, to see what was inside.

“That was the book you found in his safe?” Lake asked. “What is it?”

I turned the book so he could see the title. “Della Pittura,” he read out loud.

“It means ‘About Painting,’ I think. But I don’t know why it was in Ethan’s safe. He’s not that interested in art, as far as I know.”

Lake pulled a pad of lined paper towards him and wrote the title down on his notepad before pushing the book gently back towards me.

Then he scrawled some more notes. That was a good sign, I thought, that he was taking me seriously. The police station was remarkably quiet. I’d imagined it would be buzzing with activity on a Friday evening, but all I heard was the tick of a large clock on the wall and the low hum of a photocopier sitting on top of a filing cabinet.

“I’d like some information on you, if you don’t mind,” Lake said, with a glance at the piece of paper in front of him. “Kate Benedict, resident of Bayswater, and an architect at Bradley Associates in the City. Is that right?”

“Yes, I went to University College London for my architecture degree, and I’ve been working for Bradley Associates for five years. I can have my boss verify that if you need him to.”

I didn’t bother to mention the six months I’d taken off work after my mother died and my aura sightings had started. I’d thought I was going out of my mind. A gamut of medical tests had indicated that I didn’t have a brain injury or any other physical anomaly that could have caused the sudden onset of aura visions. The doctors found nothing. As my friend Anita often told me, it was all in my head.

“Thank you,” Lake said. “So back to Ethan Hamilton. Has he been behaving unusually in any way? Said or done anything that might suggest he had problems?”

“Like what?”

“Break-up with a girlfriend, money problems, worries about his job? Sometimes those details can be very helpful.”

“Nothing that I’m aware of. Well, yes, his father died six weeks ago. He was killed in a car accident. Ethan was very distressed.”

“Distressed enough to harm himself?”

My head jerked up. “What? No. Of course not.”

And yet there was that aura. It meant Ethan was in serious danger. Could he really be a threat to himself? I thought not. It didn’t fit. Ethan had been upset, but not depressed. When I’d seen him for drinks a couple of weeks ago, he was doing fine. Still grieving, of course, but beginning to focus on his work again.

I shifted on my chair. After all that sitting, my back cried out for relief, and the unforgiving wood dug into my thighs. Detective Lake watched me with the expression of a schoolteacher resigned to dealing with a recalcitrant student.

“I’m positive that Ethan means no harm to himself,” I said, leaning across the desk to make my point.

A sudden racket erupted outside the office, someone shouting and the sound of handcuffs jingling. The air grew ripe with obscenities. While Lake waited for the noise to die down, he rocked back and forth on his chair. When it was quiet again, he came back to level. Seconds later, his door opened and Cooper poked his head in. “Need you when you have a minute, sir.”

Lake nodded. The door closed.

“You said a window was open in Ethan’s office when you arrived?” Lake asked me.

“Just a few inches, but yes, so I shut it because it was letting the rain in.”

“And you saw no one outside when you closed the window?”

“No, but there are no street lights in the alley that runs along the back of the building.”

“And you say there was a break-in at his flat?”

“Yes. I went there to see if he was home. His landlady’s concerned. We think the intruder climbed out through a window. You’ll probably find footprints in the flower bed—”