Nina stood motionless, staring at the door. That T-shape… what was it reminding her of? Something was jumping up and down just beyond memory, and she couldn’t pinpoint it. Nina shivered, and ran on downstairs. It couldn’t be anything important, an old door…
Sam’s documents in the study were all bank-related, apart from receipts for medication that John Moore had bought online. He’d worried about his thinning hair, apparently, and was prone to heartburn. A lump came into Nina’s throat as she leafed through them, sorting the photos into a separate pile. How pitiful it all felt. Poor sick John Moore, with no-one to care.
Now for the photos. She took them to the window where the light was better, dismayed that most were of places, not people. Two she put aside to look at again. One showed a woman and a small boy standing in a doorway, too far away to be recognisable, but maybe a magnifying glass would help with that. The other was a terraced house with a tiny patch of grass in front, the same small boy and a cat sitting on the garden wall.
Nina shrugged – these wouldn’t help solve the mystery. But surely there must be more photos – Sam had been searching the desk, so these were probably floating around the drawers, as photos had a habit of doing. There could be albums somewhere too, and John Moore might have kept more recent images in his computer. According to the receipts there must be one somewhere.
She stared round the study. There was no computer in sight, but between the windows was a rather nice secretaire and when she opened the cupboard part underneath, lo and behold there was a laptop. Great – if she could get on the internet here it would make life much easier. Sending emails with her phone was plain fiddly.
Happier, Nina went to see if the kitchen would reward her find with a hot drink. A rummage through the food cupboard produced a packet of coffee well within its sell-by date, and the two cartons of long-life milk on the bottom shelf were okay too. She rinsed the old-fashioned filter machine and set it brewing.
The smell made the kitchen seem more homelike, and Nina checked the remaining cupboards while she was waiting. There was a large selection of plates and glasses, but no perishables anywhere and the fridge was switched off. John Moore must have known he would never come back here. Did someone help him clear the kitchen, or had he done it himself? Dear God, what a depressing thought that was. She found a roll of bin bags in a drawer and dropped most of the remaining food into one. There was a small supermarket along the road; she would buy a few necessities later, to tide her over the weekend. With any luck she’d be able to go back to Arran on Monday or Tuesday.
Or – no. There would be a funeral, and under the circumstances she would have to stay for that. Come to think of it, she might even have to organise it. Something else to talk to Sam about. Nina’s heart sank. The island with its lush green hills and healthy sea breezes seemed very far away today.
Soberly, she tied the bin bag and took it to the outhouse in the back courtyard where the dustbin was. It was only when she was back inside that the thought struck her – she’d gone straight out to the bin without thinking about it; she’d known where it was. She hadn’t noticed it yesterday – or had she? Of course it was the logical place for a dustbin to be, but hell, how spooky that was.
The doorbell bing-bonged, and Nina hurried to let Sam in. Thank God, another human being. He was wearing jeans and a dark grey T-shirt today, and Nina was startled to see appreciation shining in his eyes as he grinned at her. Help – the last thing she needed here was an appreciative man, nice as he was. And the very fact that she’d thought of him as ‘nice’ said everything, didn’t it? She smiled briefly and led the way into the study.
‘I found John’s laptop, but that’s about all,’ she said, resuming her search in the secretaire.
‘Great. This model is pretty new, a mate of mine has one,’ said Sam, booting the machine up on the desk. ‘Shit, we need a password to get in here.’
Nina scowled at the screen, where the white field was blinking mockingly. There was no way to guess what John Moore’s password was.
‘We’re going to need one of those geeky IT people,’ she said.
Sam closed the laptop. ‘I’ll get onto that on Monday. You can still have guest access to the Internet, might be useful. What do you want to do now?’
Nina glanced round the room. The tall bookshelves housed only ancient paperbacks and travel books. The secretaire was a dead loss, and Sam had been through the desk already.
‘What we need to find is where John Moore kept his birth certificate and so on. Let’s go through the rest of the house. There might be something useful in his bedroom.’
In John Moore’s room the bed was made up, the duvet cover and sheet newly-washed and un-slept-in. Sam opened drawers in the tallboy, and Nina saw piles of folded underwear and jumpers.
She plumped down on the bed, frowning and thinking aloud. ‘This is seriously weird. John Moore was terminally ill. He lived alone, and went into a hospice to die. So why is his bed freshly made up? The kitchen was cleared of anything that might go off, but there were half-empty boxes of rice etcetera. There’s nothing personal lying around, and all his correspondence has either gone, or been put away where we haven’t found it yet. And absolutely everything was unplugged.’
‘You’re right,’ said Sam. ‘You know what I think?’
Nina sat pondering, then nodded. ‘He’s had someone in to clean the place; someone who didn’t know he was never coming back. He was rich, he might have had a regular cleaner. But Sam, that doesn’t explain the lack of bank cards, passport, that kind of thing.’
‘Maybe there’s a safe somewhere,’ said Sam, going back out into the passage. ‘And what about his post? Was it redirected to the hospice? Or somewhere else?’
‘I could ask at the post office,’ said Nina. ‘And hang on – let’s look in the case they gave me at the hospice. There might be something among his stuff there.’
The case revealed a small pile of correspondence consisting of a handful of circulars, a car magazine, and two bills, one of which was from a cleaning company.
‘Bingo,’ said Nina. ‘I’ll call them and see what they can tell us. This says they were here on the eighth.’
Poor John Moore. He’d gone into the hospice and arranged for a cleaner to depersonalise his house. And now she thought about it – where were all his friends? As far as she knew there was no one clamouring for a funeral.
She keyed in the number on the cleaner’s bill while Sam went to fetch more coffee. Fortunately, the company worked Saturdays, and when Sam came back with a fragrantly steaming mug in each hand she waved a page of notes at him.
‘If you ever need cleaners, these are your guys. I spoke to Joanne who was very cooperative but she can’t really help us. The company have been cleaning the house once a week for five years now, but they hardly ever saw John Moore. Joanne said she’d only spoken to him a handful of times since the start. He phoned them a couple of weeks ago and said he was going away, and told them to do the place and then close it up until further notice, and -’ She paused and pulled a face at Sam. ‘There were two large bags of shredded paper to be disposed of. Of course they’re long gone now, and she has no idea what they were.’
Sam handed over her coffee and perched on the edge of the desk.