My phone rings. It’s Dawn. I explain about the neighbour. Does she know who it was?
‘Mrs Tang,’ she says. ‘She’s on the second floor. We saw her with this dead bird one day and her son explained she was going to stuff it, for a model. Like taxidermy. Lori did a few conversation classes with her son. I’d no idea she was going to photograph Mrs Tang. But it makes sense.’
‘Do you know which flat it is?’
‘Number three, I think,’ Dawn says.
‘Oliver also talked about one of Lori’s students,’ I say, ‘someone who collects banknotes.’
‘Oh, that’d be Mr Du. Lori said he was a bit of a weirdo.’
My stomach twists. ‘Weirdo?’
‘Lori reckoned he was desperate to get married – he kept asking if she had a boyfriend, that kind of thing.’
‘Do the police know about this?’ My voice is shaky.
Dawn sounds taken aback, when she says, ‘I dunno. Well, they went to see him, didn’t they? His lesson was the Sunday evening.’
‘Did you tell the police about him being weird?’
‘Look, Mrs Maddox, it wasn’t anything really heavy – Lori would’ve sacked him if it had been.’ Her voice is doing that singsong rise at the end of each phrase, making it sound like she’s pleading with me to agree.
‘Did you tell them he had this hobby and Lori wanted to photograph him?’
‘No – I didn’t know he was part of her project. But the police must have talked to him,’ she says.
Maybe they didn’t ask the right questions. I think it’s unclear whether they knew about the project at all.
‘You can check with them, right?’ she says, nervousness in her tone.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘we will.’ I end the call, the taste of bile in the back of my throat.
In the kitchen I find a cup, black and white stripes, wonder where Lori got it and pour myself water from the cooler. It’s warm and tastes of plastic.
In my head I’m replaying Dawn’s words, a weirdo… asking if she had a boyfriend… the Sunday evening.
The last person to see Lori.
The jittery feeling grows. It sends me hurrying down to Tom, frantic to share what I now know.
‘So this guy’s hitting on her and the cops weren’t told?’ Tom jabs at his hair, fingers taut. A line of white edges his lips. ‘He was the last person to see her.’
‘Ring Peter Dunne,’ I say. ‘Get him to talk to Superintendent Yin again.’
Oliver looks away, scratches his chest.
‘Write down exactly what Dawn said,’ Tom tells me.
I close my eyes. It’s too hot to think and my throat is dry again already. ‘Can we get a drink somewhere?’ I say to Anthony. The bottled water we brought is long gone.
