The Knowledge

by Martha Grimes

  “I would have thought that’s obvious.”

  “Only to you.” Jury started to hang up, came back. “Listen, ask this Kione if they’ve been able to locate the missing girl.”

  “What missing girl?”

  “A kid who wound up in Nairobi. Kione will know.”

  Melrose was uncomfortable. “He will, but I don’t.”

  “A kid who was on the flight with Banerjee.”

  “Jesus. Kidnapped?”

  “No, apparently she attached herself to him. She’s the one person who can identify him, so we are, naturally, worried.”

  “Worried? Worried? Surely that’s the understatement of the year. And she’s in Kenya?”

  “Nairobi, far as we know.”

  Melrose took a deep breath. “Her name wouldn’t be Patty Haigh, would it?”

  It was Jury’s turn to draw in breath. “You’ve come across her?”

  “You could say that.”

  Melrose couldn’t believe it. Not knowing where to begin, he said, “Not taking notes? Presumably, that says you don’t mind my talking to you.”

  “About what?”

  Nothing. Astonishment had blotted out perfectly sensible questions. He looked at her and thought for a few moments and finally said, “Okay, tell me the real story. No, don’t give me that ‘Huh?’ look. You know what I’m talking about: what are you doing in Nairobi?”

  She shrugged. “I already told you.”

  “No, you didn’t. You told me about your thirteen relations—”

  “Twelve. I was number thirteen.”

  “—and about your foster parents, and the two cabs you needed, and so forth. That was all an elaborate lie. And will you just stop messing with those wigs and sit down!”

  She’d picked a washed-out blond wig from her backpack and was trying it on. She sat down.

  “Please take that thing off. You look absurd.”

  “The police never seem to think so.” But she removed it and tossed it on the bed.

  “Back to this elaborate lie—”

  “What was I supposed to do if you wouldn’t believe the truth?” With gestures terribly adult and composed, she crossed her small legs and locked her hands around her knees. And stared.

  Melrose stared back until that Tuesday night episode rearranged itself in his mind. When they’d been sitting at the table, she having her dinner and talking, he’d got so caught up in the details of her story about her lost family that he’d forgotten the first thing she’d said. About following a killer.

  “All right. So tell me again.”

  She told him, in greater detail than he certainly needed. After the essential details about her following B.B., she went into the nonessential. “He said he really liked this airline, but wouldn’t have picked it himself because it was so pricey and someone else bought him his ticket, but of course he bought mine. He said the food was really good for airline food and that he didn’t like to cook and how he liked cafés and restaurants to eat in. He gave me his shower time, too.”

  Melrose said nothing for a few moments. He knew what he should do was stuff this child onto a flight for London straightaway, but he simply hadn’t the energy at this point to argue with her, and argue she would. So he said, “We’re going into Nairobi.”

  “What about a car? You don’t have one.”

  “No, but I’m sure Nairobi has car-hire firms.”

  “How do we get to Nairobi, then?”

  “I expect they’ll bring it to us; if not, the lodge personnel can give us a lift. Someone’s always going into the city.”

  * * *

  Trish Van der Moot said that certainly they could arrange for a car. “There’s a car-hire firm that we do business with quite often. I’ll call for you. Have you a preference?”

  Melrose was confused. “For the firm?”

  She laughed. “For the car.”

  Melrose shrugged. “You?” he said to Patty.

  “Porsche,” she said.

  The Porsche showed up less than an hour later and ferried them to the car-hire firm in Nairobi. Melrose picked up a map in the office and headed for the police station.

  The streets of Nairobi were full of plugged-up traffic, and every once in a while somebody pulled the plug and a small flood of cars rushed forward. The central police station was, as Trish had told him, near the university.

  Chief Inspector Kato Kione extended his hand to Melrose, and did not seem to think Melrose’s appearing with a small girl was at all surprising, as if the police were used to ten-year-olds taking over their wing chairs. The chair Patty had claimed had such a tall back, wide seat, and high arms that she was lost in it.

  On the corner of the desk in an untidy heap sat a collection of books. Melrose’s attention was called to it by Patty’s leaning toward it and pulling one of the books from the pile. It was a collection of Beano comic strips.

  Melrose reprimanded her: “Patty! You don’t take things from the chief inspector’s desk.”

  She turned her head, her mouth slightly open in a leftover Beano smile.

  Kione laughed. “Quite all right, Lord Ardry. I keep books here for my grandson, who enjoys sitting at my desk, pretending to be the police commissioner. But that gets boring quickly, and he wants a book to read.”

  Kione nodded at Melrose, who was sitting in the other, plainer office chair. “You are a friend of this Scotland Yard detective. Superintendent Jury?” When Melrose nodded, he went on: “I fear we were not much help to him in his investigation of a homicide. That was a most peculiar incident. Brazen. Although I must say brazen crimes are quite common in this city.”

  Although Melrose thought he probably shouldn’t be wedging himself into the case, he said, “This man Banerjee, the name suggests he’s at least partly Indian? That doesn’t make him easier to find?”

  Kione laughed. “Lord Ardry, Nairobi has a very large Indian population—”

  “Not all named Banerjee, though. And the subject is Kenyan.”

  “Bushiri,” said Patty, more to her comic book than to the room. When Melrose gave her foot a little shut-up kick, she turned Beano around for them to see—not much, for her finger was over the space she was indicating. “I mean Bushy, Gnasher’s friend.”

  Neither being familiar with Gnasher or his friend, the two men returned to the business at hand. Or Kione did, supplying more information: “This Bushiri Banerjee was the person we went to. He’s a wealthy industrialist living in the Riverside district. Really above suspicion—”

  “Ha!” said Patty, and coughed loudly when Melrose kicked her dangling foot again, making it appear as if the “Ha!” had been part of the cough. Still, this earned her a suspicious look from Kione, who went on: “Mr. Banerjee’s passport seemed in order, his movements accounted for.”

  “He had an alibi for the time in question? The Friday night and Saturday?”

  “He did, yes. He was at home with Mrs. Banerjee.”

  “For the entire time?”

  Kione pursed his lips. “He did go to his office, where he stayed for several hours. But aside from that …” Kione shrugged, dismissing suspicion. “There were two other men who shared that name, but they were completely in the clear as one was in jail and the other at an all-night casino where a number of players vouched for his presence for the entire evening. He plays there often. And that’s about all I can tell you, Lord Ardry. I’m sorry I could not be of more help to the superintendent.”

  “He appreciates whatever you have been able to do. And I expect you have plenty to contend with here in your own city without taking on London.”

  “That is certainly true. The crime rate in Nairobi keeps rising every year. It is the highest of any city on the continent, and we do not have enough police to cover all of the sections of the city.” He sighed and went on: “This Mr. Jury. It was about photos he wired.” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a manila envelope. “These were sent here to the station.” Kione thrust the envelope toward Melrose.r />
  “Thank you.” Melrose pulled three pictures from the envelope. He had seen a similar photo in the Times, but he bet the picture was not a patch on the person herself. You could just tell. A camera couldn’t replicate the fineness of the skin, the silkiness of the light hair. Rebecca Moffit was beautiful. The second photo was of the Abasi painting. A woman by a lagoon; behind her crouched a lion. The third was the gallery photo.

  Melrose pulled the book from Patty’s hands and shoved it back in among the others, one of which, he was surprised to see, was City of Glass. “You’re a fan of Paul Auster?” he said to Kione.

  “Ah! Mr. Auster! A great writer. His mysterious depictions of New York fascinate me. I love New York, though I’ve never been, alas.” He was leafing through City of Glass as if he intended to settle down and read it. “What a wondrous city it must be. It’s strange, but despite its size and all of those boroughs, it has always struck me as all of a piece, organic.”

  “Not everyone would—” Melrose started to say, but was interrupted.

  Just then the door behind them opened, after a brief knock that wouldn’t have given anyone time to put away the gin, and someone entered, not approaching the desk but stopping at the back of the room. Melrose turned to see a tall, uniformed man who looked to outrank Kione, given all of the insignia and gold braid on shoulders and chest.

  “Ah, Inspector.” Kione did not introduce him to Melrose.

  “Chief Inspector Kione, I will need two more men for Longido, if you can spare them. Only for a few days.”

  He had a very pleasant voice, undemanding, which lent him even more authority, to judge from the reaction of Kione.

  “Certainly. Right away.”

  The policeman left.

  Said Kione, “Tanzanian police sometimes enlist our aid.” This pronouncement sounded rather smug.

  Melrose said, “Chief Inspector Kione, I wonder if you’re familiar with a painter here named Masego Abasi? This is one of his paintings.” Melrose held up the photo.

  Kione looked at the photo, shook his head. “No, I don’t believe I am.”

  “If you could perhaps provide me with an address? He has a studio in Nairobi.”

  Kione clicked the button on his intercom and gave the address request to whoever was on the other end. In another minute he had the answer and hung up. Then he tore a map from a pad of them sitting on his desk. He turned it to face Melrose and unhesitatingly trailed a ballpoint pen through the thicket of streets in the center and out of it. He did this without once lifting his pen or his eyes from the map, as if he’d been giving exactly the same directions to people who asked for them continuously.

  “Have you questions?” he said, finally looking at Melrose and Patty.

  “Nary a one. Thank you.”

  “This is a very difficult city to find your way about in. If you like I can have someone escort you, or drive you to this man’s house. Nairobi’s quite a shambles, really. I call it ‘city of broken glass.’”

  Outside in the car, Melrose studied the map. Patty, he noticed, was un-Patty-like silent.

  “What’s up, kiddo?”

  She was chewing her lip. “We should go to this Riverside section.”

  “You want to check the industrialist’s passport?”

  “Well, that police inspector said he was gone for hours.”

  “He’d have to have been gone for longer than that, for God’s sake. Come on, will you? Our charge is to go to this artist’s studio, and that’s where we’re going.”

  Nairobi, Kenya

  Nov. 6, Wednesday afternoon

  23

  Were there no narrow streets in Nairobi? No cobbled twisty little lanes with houses all cramped together? If this was what Kione thought of as a hard-to-find street, the city must be full of more boulevards than Paris.

  The street was another quarter-mile-wide one with space on either side for flourishing open-air businesses. Most of them seemed to have to do with furniture—making it, restoring it, selling it, exporting it, leaving it out by the curb for passersby to sit on it.

  Masego Abasi’s studio was located behind one of these furniture purveyors in a little two-room cottage. Abasi himself was a small, compact man who looked as if he might have been carved from mahogany. The large front room was heated by a wood-burning fireplace and had a huge skylight. The artist’s studio was so vivid with color Melrose thought it might have erupted in flames and the pictures done the heating.

  Even Patty seemed fascinated by the paintings. After the introductions had been made, she stood in front of one and said, “These are really good. I really like them.”

  “Well, thank you, Patricia—”

  She didn’t correct him.

  “And why do you like them?”

  “Because they’re real. The people in them—like her—” She pointed to a woman kneeling by a river, scrubbing clothes. “She’s using a washboard and you can tell she’s really scrubbing. I used to have a washboard.”

  Abasi was enthralled. “And you feel like you’re her?”

  “No, I feel like she’s me.”

  Abasi and, certainly, Melrose were taken aback not just by the distinction but by the person making it.

  Patty plowed on. “Look at her face.” As if the artist hadn’t. “She’s not happy. She has to scrub clothes all the time. There’s nothing happy in this. You see it, don’t you?”

  Abasi braced his hands on his knees and squatted down to Patty’s eye level and looked intently at his painting, which depicted the washerwoman against a backdrop of hot sun and dry grass and burned-looking trees. “Yes, you are right. She does not look happy. But consider that what she is doing may be necessary. Her husband or father or brothers might not be able to go to work without the clean clothes. And if they do not work, there will be no money for food. The family might fall apart completely if the clothes are not washed.”

  Patty stood there with her arms crossed, scratching her elbows and looking doubtful.

  Abasi started to say something, but Melrose stepped in: “I really need to conduct the business I came on.”

  For a moment they both gave him a look that said interloper.

  And then Abasi’s brow cleared as he apparently remembered why Melrose had come. “Ah, yes. You wanted to show me some photographs.”

  From the manila envelope, Melrose pulled the photo of the painting. “Is this one of your paintings, Mr. Abasi?”

  Abasi took it and nodded. “Yes, this one I called Woman and Moon. An early one. Why?”

  “Do you remember the person to whom you sold it?”

  “You understand, I’m under contract to the Zane Gallery in London.”

  “I know that. But that doesn’t prevent your selling works from your studio here, does it?”

  “That’s true. And you think that might be the case with this painting?” He tapped the photo.

  “I don’t think anything, Mr. Abasi. That’s why I’m asking.” Perhaps the man was protecting himself; maybe he thought Leonard Zane had sent Melrose to check up on him. Melrose then took out the photo of Rebecca Moffit. “Does this woman look familiar to you?”

  The artist moved with the photo over to a brightly lit lamp. “She does … yes… . and yet … no. I don’t know.” He shook his head as he handed back the photo.

  Melrose had the feeling Abasi was telling the truth; he might have seen Rebecca Moffit, but he couldn’t be certain. “But you can’t say if she was here? It could have been before you signed a contract with the Zane Gallery.” He thought that was smooth, in case Abasi was still worried about Leonard Zane. “Have a look at this, will you?” Melrose showed him the other picture, the one of the gallery. “It’s not the two women here I’m interested in, but the gallery itself. Do you recognize it?”

  At first Abasi shook his head, but after further study of the photo he smiled. “Little Rita,” he said.

  Melrose frowned. “Rita?”

  Here Abasi put his finger on the dark-haired woman. “
Reminds me of Little Rita.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A little girl who would come here with her nanny. It was the nanny who was my friend. She said Little Rita—”

  My God, thought Melrose, as long as it wasn’t Little Mitchell.

  “—loved to come here. Her nursemaid said she loved the paints and brushes. She was a sweet child.” Abasi turned to Patty Haigh. “You remind me of her, too.”

  When he reached out his hand, Melrose was afraid the artist was about to make the unforgivable mistake of putting it on Patty Haigh’s head.

  But Abasi didn’t. He had closed his eyes and was thinking. “Wait a moment. I do remember someone came here to my studio and I did sell this painting perhaps two years ago. But …” He shrugged.

  “The important thing is that it did not go to the Zane Gallery.”

  “It did not, no. Someone definitely purchased it here, in the studio.” He closed his eyes, frowning. “Yes, it was a woman. But I do not know if it was this woman.” He tapped the photo of Rebecca Moffit. “Why is this important?”

  “Because she got murdered,” said Patty helpfully.

  After she slammed herself into the car, Patty said, “Okay, this Riverside district.”

  Melrose sighed. “Patty, the police checked Banerjee’s alibi.”

  “It sounded pretty iffy to me.” She clicked her seat belt and drew it tight.

  “‘Iffy?’”

  “Like, if he was on a business trip, there are plenty of ways he could’ve ducked out of sight and people would think he was still around.”

  Melrose stepped on the gas. “Not for twenty-four hours, and his absence would more likely have been two days. From Nairobi to London, kill two people, then a wild cab ride, then back to Nairobi. He would have to have been gone longer than just a few hours.”

  “Aero was gone for a whole weekend once and we thought he was still there.”

  Melrose did not want to visit the subject of Aero as the steering wheel jumped in his hands and he nearly ran down a goat. What was a goat doing on a street in one of Nairobi’s most urban districts? “From what you’ve said about Aero, that doesn’t surprise me. But we’re not all Aero.”