David Rook returned to the library to collect a printout from a business service he’d arranged separately. I recognised him before he reached the desk. He recognised me with the expression people wore when ordinary acquaintance had become a possible conversation about death.
“Any trouble with the machine this time?” I asked.
“Only the usual philosophical objections to paper.”
He waited while another customer finished. Then he asked whether Helen was all right.
“She’s tired of explaining the same facts.”
“I can imagine.”
He looked towards the empty computer desk.
“People have been saying Martin must have had access to the whole account. He didn’t need it for what he asked me.”
I made no attempt to draw him into the staffroom. We stood where we were, speaking quietly, and I told him he needn’t share anything he had been asked to keep private.
“This is about my own invoice,” he said. “I’ve already given the records to the police.”
Martin had been matching sponsor contributions to equipment expenses. One reimbursement copy carried David’s business details, so Martin sent it to him to confirm the hire. David recognised the format but not the transaction.
“The equipment list was wrong for the date. We were hired for a different event, with a different amount. I checked before replying.”
“So you told him?”
“In writing. Sent the genuine invoice too.”
The route was ordinary. Martin did not require a secret password or access to every applicant’s file. A document had crossed the desk of a man who knew the supplier named on it.
“Did you tell anyone else at the fund?” I asked.
David rubbed his jaw.
“Not then. Martin said he’d take it up with the person responsible. I thought it might be a mix-up between events. I expected a corrected copy.”
He did not sound proud of that assumption.
“When there wasn’t one?”
“I followed up. He said he was dealing with it.”
The printer woke with a series of reluctant clicks. David collected his pages without looking at them.
“After he died, I gave the police the exchanges. The original message too. I didn’t want another person telling me they were dealing with it.”
I remembered his earlier visit and the careful way he had described the material. He had not waited for us to become interested.
“You don’t have to tell me what the message said.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
He smiled faintly, relieved perhaps that the boundary had been provided for him.
Before leaving, he said Helen could contact him if she wanted to compare their experiences of reporting supplier discrepancies. I passed on the offer later. Helen said she would think about it. I also notified the officer that David and I had spoken, distinguishing his account from the messages I had not seen.
That evening, Beth came to collect the clothes rail. I told her the limited part David had described: Martin had queried a supplier document through his sponsorship work. I did not suggest I knew what he had then said to Celia.
Beth sat on the arm of the sofa, holding the envelope containing the bolt.
“He liked having something somebody needed him not to know.”
She spoke without drama. I waited.
“At work, he called it leverage. At home, he called it remembering what happened last time.”
“Do you think that’s what this was?”
“I don’t know. I know he wouldn’t necessarily have used a problem to solve it.”
She turned the envelope over in her hands.
“I used to explain him to people. He was tired. He was worried. He didn’t mean it that way. Sometimes he was tired and worried. That didn’t make the rest disappear.”
I thought of Celia saying he had threatened her, without identifying what he had held over her. Several facts were now near one another. They still weren’t permission to invent the missing conversation.
Beth stood up.
“I’ll check the messages I kept. If there’s something relevant, I’ll give it to them.”
“Do you want company?”
“Not while I read them. Afterwards, perhaps.”
I carried the rail to her car. She secured it with a strap she’d brought herself.
As she closed the boot, she said, “There’s one thing I keep coming back to. When Celia said she hadn’t given him my new address.”
I remembered the café, the child in vampire teeth, the carefully narrowed answer.
“She didn’t say she hadn’t given him an address at all,” Beth said.
The rail rattled once as she drove away.
This time, the loose part was not something I could fix with a bolt.