Nkata said, “You got a copy of the receipt and all that?”
“Oh absolutely,” Gigi told him. “He paid cash and the oil was the only thing he bought. I’ve got the till copy right here.” And she rang up something on the till to open it, whereupon she pulled up the tray that held the notes separate from one another, and from beneath this, she took a slip of paper which she handed over to Nkata. She’d written “Rob Kilfoyle’s purchase of parsley oil” on this. She’d underlined “parsley oil” twice.
Nkata wondered how they could possibly make use of the fact that one of their suspects had purchased parsley oil, but he took the receipt from Gigi and folded it inside his leather notebook. He thanked the young woman for her vigilance and told her to be in touch with him should Robbie Kilfoyle-or anyone else-stop in for ambergris oil.
He was about to leave when the thought struck him, so he paused in the doorway to ask her a final question. “Any chance he nicked the ambergris oil while he was in here?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him once, she assured Nkata. There was no way he’d taken anything that he’d not presented to her and paid for. No way at all.
Nkata nodded thoughtfully at this, but he wondered all the same. He left the shop and stood outside, casting a look towards Mr. Sandwich, where the two aproned women were still at work. A “closed” sign now hung in the window. He took out his police identification and went to the door. There was one possibility for the parsley oil that he needed to check out.
When he knocked, they looked up. The plumper of the two women was the one who opened the door to him. He asked her if he could have a word, and she said yes, of course, do come in, officer. They were just about to go home for the day and he was lucky to catch them still at it.
He stepped inside. At once he saw the large yellow cart parked in a corner. “Mr. Sandwich” was painted neatly on it, along with a cartoon figure of a filled baguette with crusty face, top hat, spindly arms, and legs. This would be Robbie Kilfoyle’s delivery cart. Kilfoyle himself, along with his bicycle, would be long gone for the day.
Nkata introduced himself to the two women who told him in turn they were Clara Maxwell and daughter Val. This bit of information was something of a surprise, since the two looked more like sisters than they did parent and child, a circumstance caused not so much by Clara’s youthful looks-of which there were none to speak of-as by Val’s dowdy dress sense and drooping figure. Nkata adjusted to the information and nodded in a friendly fashion. In return, Val kept her distance behind the counter, where she did as much lurking as she did cleaning. Her glance kept shifting from Nkata to her mother and back again, while Clara established herself as spokeswoman for the two.
“C’n I have a word with you ’bout Robbie Kilfoyle?” Nkata asked. “He works for you, right?”
Clara said, “He’s not in trouble,” as a statement of fact and cast a look at Val, who nodded in apparent agreement with this remark.
“He delivers your sandwiches, i’n’t that the case?”
“Yes. Has done for…what is it, Val? Three years? Four?”
Val nodded again. Her eyebrows knotted, as if in a display of concern. She turned away and went to a cupboard from which she took a broom and dustpan. She began using this on the floor behind the counter.
“Must be nearly four years, then,” Clara said. “Lovely young man. He carries the sandwiches round to our clients-we do crisps, pickles, and pasta salads as well-and he returns with the cash. He’s never been out by so much as ten pence.”
Val looked up suddenly.
Her mother said, “Oh yes, I’d forgotten. Thank you, Val. There was that one time, wasn’t there?”
“What time?”
“Shortly before his mum died. This would have been December, year before this last one. We were ten pounds short one day. Turned out he’d borrowed them to buy Mum flowers. She was in a home, you know.” Clara tapped her skull. “Alzheimer’s, poor soul. He took her…I don’t know…tulips? Would there’ve been tulips at that time of year? Perhaps something else? Anyway, Val’s right. I’d forgotten about that. But he confessed straightaway when I asked him about it, didn’t he, and I had the money in my hand the very next day. After that, nothing. He’s been good as gold. We couldn’t run the business without him because mainly what we do is delivery, and there’s no one but Rob to do it.”
Val looked up from her sweeping once again. She brushed a lank lock of hair from her face.
“Now, you know that’s the truth,” Clara chided her gently. “You couldn’t make those deliveries, no matter what you think, dear.”
“Does he buy supplies for you as well?” Nkata asked.
“What kind of supplies? Paper bags and such? Mustard? Wrapping for the sandwiches? No, we mostly have all that delivered.”
“I had in mind…p’rhaps ingredients,” Nkata said. “He ever get parsley oil for you?”
“Parsley?” Clara looked at Val as if to register her level of incredulity. “Parsley oil, you say? I never knew there was such a thing. Of course, I suppose there must be, mustn’t there? Walnut oil, sesame oil, olive oil, peanut oil. Why not parsley oil as well? But no, he’s never bought it for Mr. Sandwich. I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Val made a sound, something like gurgling. Her mother, hearing this, leaned over the counter and spoke directly into her face. Did she know something about parsley oil and Robbie? Clara inquired. If she did, dearest, then she needed to tell the policeman straightaway.
Val’s glance went to Nkata. She said, “Nuffink,” which was the extent of her intelligible comments during the entire interview.
Nkata said, “I s’pose he could be using it for cooking. Or for his breath. How’s his breath?”
Clara laughed. “It’s nothing I’ve ever noticed, but I daresay our Val’s got close enough for a whiff now and then. How is it, darling? Nice? Bad? What?”
Val scowled at her mother and skulked off into what seemed to be a storeroom. Clara said to Nkata that her daughter had “a bit of a crush.” Not that anything could come of it, naturally. The sergeant had probably noticed that Val had a few problems with her social skills.
“I’d thought Robbie Kilfoyle might be just the ticket to bring her out of herself,” Clara confided in a lower voice, “which is part of the reason I hired him. He’d never had much of an employment record-that’s owing to the mum being ill for so long-but I rather saw that as something of an advantage in the romance department. Wouldn’t have his sights set so high, I thought. Not like other lads for whom Val, let’s face it, poor love, wouldn’t exactly be a prize. But nothing came of it. No spark between them, you see. Then when his mum passed on, I thought he’d come round a little bit. But he never did. The life just went out of the lad.” She glanced back in the direction of the storage room and then added quietly, “Depression. It will do you in if you aren’t careful. I felt it myself when Val’s dad died. It wasn’t sudden, of course, so at least I had some time to prepare. But you feel it all the same when someone’s gone, don’t you? There’s that void, and there’s no getting round it. You’re staring into it all day long. Val and I opened this shop because of it.”
“Because of…?”
“Her dad’s dying. He left us well enough off, I mean with enough to get by on. But one can’t sit home and stare at the walls. One has to keep living.” She paused and untied her apron. As she folded it carefully and laid it on the top of the counter, she nodded as if she’d just revealed something to herself. “You know, I think I’ll have a word with our Robbie about that very subject. Life must go on.” She cast a last, furtive look at the storage room. “And she’s a good cook, our Val. That’s not something a young man of marriageable age ought to turn his nose up at. Just because she’s the quiet type…After all, what’s more important at the end of the day? Conversation or good food? Good food, correct?”