The Twisted Heart (17 page)

‘Teeth?' said Kit, looking glumly at her toast.

‘Plus the manure, and then crop rotation. And now, in a similar way, in a way, people are beginning to get plugged in to exactly what elements make up a product, and its packaging, where it all comes from, and what's the consequence of disposing of the constituent parts in one way or another: plastics, batteries, polystyrene, foil. What I mean is, like peasants in the past, we're beginning to pay heed to how we can dispose of every component of what we buy as scrupulously as possible, how we can use it for other things. And why?' she asked triumphantly. ‘To stop the sky falling in on our heads.'

‘Yes,' Kit mumbled, ‘that's an interesting way of approaching it.'

‘You're so lame,' said Michaela.

Once in her room, not long back home, and the whole house inspiringly quiet, the top-floor bell rang. Kit rushed back down the stairs and trembled as she opened the front door, yes!—took a deep breath, felt winded. She quite wanted to hug Joe, but also quite felt like
ending
it, ending it, so that he didn't any longer cloud her mind with—what had Orson said?—didn't fuck up her precious brain space, her quality-goods mental processes, not that—whatever.

‘So,' he said. ‘Hi. How's it going?'

She shrugged, and felt inexplicably deflated as he leant against the porch wall. Even though, on the occasions when they kissed, she would impulsively observe to herself that this implied an intimacy she certainly didn't feel, she would still have liked to be kissed.

Joe frowned. Kit's mind leapt ahead: Friday night. ‘How's Humpty?' she asked.

He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Please don't feel you always have to ask me that,' he said, though he then added, with effort, ‘Actually, Humpty's in Milan. Sorry. Not an unreasonable question.'

Milan? Had she heard right? What, a football game or something?

‘No, no,' she said, catching up with herself, ‘sorry. It's me. I'm a bit out of it. Sorry. I had to teach Orson incredibly early this morning because he had a cold yesterday, or anyway he felt rubbish, and I've been working non-stop all day ever since and I'm—I haven't had a chance to eat lunch yet, and it's getting to be more like supper now and—oh, that's amazing, look, it's beginning to get misty again. That was quick. It was clear just now. Did you see the mist this morning?'

‘Yes,' he replied. There was a withdrawn sense about Joe that bore no relation to what he was saying. ‘Yes, I cycled down the canal path this morning, and it wasn't only that mist was hanging over the trees, but the whole canal itself was steaming. It was beautiful—trees bulking out of nowhere, and these forlorn-looking ducks coming in and out of view.'

‘Clocks go back next week,' said Kit.

‘Yes, so they do.'

There was a pause, during which she couldn't think of anything further to say.

In the end it was Joe who filled the gap. ‘How was the tutorial? All right?'

‘Oh, fine. Step in,' she said, ‘it's chilly. Yes, I love Orson.
I often have no idea what he's on about, but every time we meet, he makes me laugh.' She shut the front door, but they then stayed in the hall. ‘Today he actually asked me to a party. I was saying, you know, “Goodbye”, when, out of the blue, he asked me to this party.'

‘Tonight?'

‘Yes.'

‘Don't let me stop you if you want to go,' said Joe.

‘He's, I mean, five foot four,' she said. ‘
Five foot four
, Joe. To me, the world is made up of men, women and men-who-are-too-short. And, five foot four, Orson's—I mean, let alone any other consideration in the world, of which there happen to be numerous—'

‘You could spit on his head,' said Joe.

‘Yes.'

‘All right.'

‘Bloody hell,' said Kit, aware she had just answered a question she hadn't really been asked. She felt silly. She
was
silly, foolish.

Joe looked perhaps mildly entertained for a moment, then said, ‘Right.'

Right?

‘You're as pale as anything,' he said. ‘If you try and dance in your present state, I should think you'll probably faint within five minutes, so I'm going to take you out to dinner instead.'

Now Kit did hug him. ‘Thank you, thank you,' she said.

Before he could get his hands adequately out of his pockets, she had let go again. ‘Not at all,' he replied. ‘Let's wander into town, try and find somewhere decent, yes?'

‘I'll just zip upstairs a minute and get my bag. You can come, but I'm just going to zip up and zip right down again.'

‘You zip,' he said. ‘I'll wait here.'

‘Thank you,' she shouted as she ran up the stairs.

Dinner out—could he even remotely guess what this meant to her, old-fashioned, no nonsense, take-you-out-to-dinner? As she went into her room she hopped two steps, thinking, this can't be me.

But it was.

‘Can we just agree right now that we'll meet at the dance hall next week, so we know what we're doing?' said Joe, as they strode along. ‘That is, if you want to. Make it a definite plan? I mention it because I'd have to go straight there if we do, because I've got a department thing beforehand. Is that okay?'

‘Yes, fine,' said Kit. ‘Which way round are you going to want to do it?—so I know what I'm in for.'

‘Don't worry, that was a one-off,' he said. ‘I don't want to make you black out again. I was curious once, that's all.'

‘But didn't you like it?'

‘Don't tempt me.'

At this, she thought maybe she should; but she didn't.

‘Do you want to give me your mobile number, in case?' she said.

‘Ah, mobiles,' said Joe, ‘I hate them. But, yes. Remind me when we're sitting down. We can exchange numbers then.'

Apart from her pressing need to eat, Kit felt that she could easily have spent the rest of her life pacing along like this
with Joe. Even as they walked, the mist grew denser around them. They began to speak inconsequentially about poker, dancing, Virginia creepers, the news; until Kit broke the spell by saying, ‘You know that thing where your brain is quietly fizzing away on its own and it makes a connection you completely hadn't thought of, and it's so exciting it makes you want to laugh, or you find that you
do
laugh, or at least exclaim something or something?'

‘You realise how bad a person would feel if you said that to them, and they couldn't say “yes”?' Joe replied. ‘But, I'm happy to say—
yes
. That's what my balcony's for, in good weather.'

‘Well it often seems to happen to me when I'm in libraries, so I'm forced to keep quiet,' said Kit, ‘for some irritating reason; because if you do laugh in the Bodleian, they make you feel like a criminal, speaking from experience. I'd like library notices to say, “No talking, eating or mobile phones, but don't worry, laughing is allowed”. What is number theory, by the way?' she asked. ‘Bear in mind I know nothing. I've decided to ask you for information in small increments.'

‘I see.' Joe glanced briefly upwards. ‘Well,' he said, ‘it's the study of solutions of equations where the answers have to be whole numbers. For example, it's easy to find a solution for x squared plus y squared equals z squared, but once you use integers, it becomes much, much more interesting.'

In her nervousness, Kit was wholly unable to concentrate on this answer; was instead busy thinking, oh God, I'm such a goof, am I
absolutely
sure what an integer is? She passed smoothly on to the next thing. ‘I know you're going to hate
me asking this,' she said, ‘but is there any practical application for what you do?'

‘Hard to predict,' he replied. ‘And it would be disingenuous to pretend that that's why anyone does my kind of maths. It is true that a solution within number theory can have knock-on effects in other areas of maths. I'm playing with the idea—' but whatever he had been about to say, it was lost as they got caught up in town, lights, traffic, people, shops, commerce.

After a couple of attempts, he secured them a table in an Italian place. It was hot in there, or seemed so after the streets. They idled through the menu and made similar orders.

‘I want to explain something,' said Joe, while they waited for their starters. ‘You realise, I think, that Humpty and I have an arrangement to meet at The Forfeit on Friday nights, yes? That's the reason I keep being sort of semi-double-booked. Because, it was because Humpty was supposed to be meeting me at the dance club the evening I first met you, that he picked a place that happened on a Friday, so it would be when we were supposed to connect up anyway. That was the point. And then he didn't make it. And now it's you and me trying to dance on Fridays, when we get over there, and it's a bit of a muddle.'

‘I understand. It's okay. Semi-double isn't what you mean, for a mathematician, by the way,' she said. ‘But yes, I get it.'

It came to her that she should say something about meeting some other night, but she was paralysed by the attendant
thought that perhaps he had a specific night for the quality-goods blonde. Perhaps she was Saturdays, for example. This hadn't occurred to Kit before, but it occurred to her now. Perhaps Kit was Fridays, and the blonde was Saturdays and Tuesdays. How awful.

As the waiter brought them their soup, Joe flicked his napkin out of its folds one-handed. ‘So, you've been doing a shitload of work?' he said.

‘Yes.' Kit immediately began to eat. ‘Oh great,' she said, shoving her unwelcome thoughts aside. ‘Delicious.'

‘I imagine it's pretty simple to make,' said Joe as he tasted it.

‘You think?' Kit felt so restored by a little nourishment, that she began to devour her broth in a manner to rival Oliver Twist himself.

‘Do I take it you had a brainwave in the Bodleian?'

‘No, no,' she said, ‘not this week, sadly; although, I have had a funny thought. Probably daft, but I—Joe, what do you think? There are so many details in common between Nancy's case and Eliza Grimwood's, coincidence, I'm sure, but I can't get rid of this mad idea that whoever killed Eliza was partly inspired by reading Dickens.'

‘That's a bold leap,' said Joe, his expression more sceptical even than he sounded.

‘I know.'

‘What coincidences are you talking about, specifically? I've finished it, by the way.'

‘
Oliver Twist
? You have? Brilliant. Did you enjoy it?'

‘I did, yes. I see what you say about the plot not being well planned out, but it carries you along anyway. There's
things about it that—' He broke off and looked at Kit appraisingly, then said, ‘Tell you what, let's go through it. So you don't bias the argument, I'll list what strike me as the key details of Nancy's murder, and you persuade me that Eliza's killer used them as a primer.'

‘Okay.'

‘Okay?' he said, with a grin. ‘You think you can do it?'

‘I don't know,' she said.

Joe pulled a funny face, then began. ‘Well, obviously they're both prostitutes, killed in their bedrooms by, or possibly by, their pimps, and they are both found dead on the floor in a sea of blood, right? Agreed? Beyond that, Sikes first bashes Nancy in the face with a pistol, then clubs her to death on her knees, and then, if I remember right, gratuitously clubs her some more.'

‘Yes,' said Kit, still hungrily downing her soup. ‘Well, Eliza, I grant you, was, by contrast, killed with a long-bladed knife, probably a switch knife. But she was evidently also killed on her knees, and also fell over backwards, and also continued to be attacked after death—I think worse than Nancy, as it happens. By the way, I say
also
backwards, because Nancy's corpse lands so that she's staring up at the ceiling, right? So she must be on her back? And Eliza was on her back, so it's the identical position.'

‘Different weapon, though.'

‘I know. I said.'

‘And Sikes burns the club to ashes in the fire.'

‘Yes, but this is what I'm thinking. Eliza's killer successfully made his weapon disappear, clearly realising it was necessary and important.'

‘Any murderer would figure that out, surely? No sensible killer is going to walk around with a bloody knife in his pocket.'

‘Okay,' said Kit, ‘fine, but how about the fact that Sikes throws a rug over Nancy's body, then plucks it off again? Remember that? Eliza's body was also semi-covered in bedclothes that had been taken from the bed; and then Hubbard, at the inquest, described how he pulled back the quilt when he discovered the body, hardly knowing what it was, he said, and saw underneath Eliza's blood-drenched face and drastically cut throat.'

‘Really?' Joe appeared to add this detail to a list in his head.

‘Yes.'

‘You're cheating. I'm meant to decide which features are important.'

‘Oh, yes. Okay, go on then.'

‘What do you say about Sikes cutting the blood stains out of his garments and then burning the scraps in the fire?'

‘Yes, but again, one of the troubling points about Eliza's killer was the question of, how did he get away with the fact that in the aftermath of the crime he must have been covered in blood?' Kit clattered the spoon down into her bowl. In her haste, she had already entirely emptied it. Rich pasta would follow; a good thought, a satisfying thought.

‘That, too, though,' said Joe, ‘in the circumstances, any killer would have to deal with, no?'

‘Oh fine,' said Kit, ‘fine. What about the dog?'

‘The dog? Sikes's dog? Bull's-eye?'

‘Yes.'

‘That was a nice touch, I thought. You can have that. Okay, so Bull's-eye walks round the room and gets blood all over his feet. What of it?'