Mallory knew Harry Kipling was watching her. She could see his dark hair in peripheral vision and saw his head turn as she crossed the room with Betty Hyde. She turned back to look at Kipling’s wife, who was following her husband’s every move. There was an expression of bitterness in the woman’s eyes. Now, all things flashed across the woman’s face – hate, anger, suspicion and hurt.

Not a happy marriage.

‘I know the lawyer who drew up their prenuptial agreement,’ said Betty Hyde, nodding to the Kiplings. ‘They have one child. The estate passes over the mother and goes to the son when he comes of age. I’ve only seen the boy once.’

‘I haven’t seen many children today.’

‘Most of the year, you won’t see any children at all. Children from this building are a new class of wealthy homeless people. They only come home from boarding school during the holidays. But if you really dislike your children, you can pay the school extra to keep them away from you for the entire year.’

‘Do the Hearts have children?’

‘Judge Heart has one child by another marriage, a daughter. I’ve never seen her in the flesh – only in publicity photos that ran in the Sunday supplement before the Senate hearings. I suspect they rented the girl for the photo sessions.’

‘Is there anything wrong with her?’

‘Like drug addiction, shoplifting? Oh, Mallory, that’s so common among this group, I wouldn’t stoop to writing about it.’

‘Could there be another reason why you never see her – something radically wrong with her?’

‘You mean something like a lockaway child, an embarrassment in the public eye? That’s an interesting angle. Leave it to me, dear. I’ll get back to you. It’s something you can only dig out of the right people. You won’t find it on any records, not with the money behind the judge.’

‘And the blind man? Eric…?’

‘Eric Franz? No, he and Annie never had any children, unless you count the guide dog. And the dog is such a sweet animal, it would be hard to believe it was Annie’s natural offspring.’

‘A bad marriage?’

‘It was no great love affair. Her idea of sport was to rearrange the furniture so he’d trip over it. And Eric used to tell their friends that Annie was feeding him dog food. Now that was his idea of a joke, but she probably did. She had a great sense of humor.’

He was a late visitor to the kitchen, and alone. He pounded his hand on the cutting board, and a bowl of fruit jumped and tilted over, rocking its apples to the table.

That bitch.

She knew what he had done and what he was. She knew things.

An apple was still rolling on the board, red as her lips were red. He held the ripe fruit in one hand and fumbled in the drawer for a paring knife. He stabbed the skin and watched the juice flow out. He stabbed it again and again. And now he sliced off the skin in slow peels, imagining the screams emanating from the mutilated fruit in his hand.

Bitch.

All women were bitches.

She was sitting in the Rosens’ library, facing her computer screen. It had taken five minutes to break into the guts of the building computer system – so much for security. Now she scrolled through the files on the tenants and made notes on access routes to bypass all but three computers.

She set up a dummy screen, and in the area of PERSONAL MESSAGES, she typed her own message, tailored only by the three different names, and otherwise the same. If her suspects didn’t check the bulletin board tonight, they would do so in the morning. Once the computer was accessed again, the fake board would disappear with no trace of tampering.

She picked through the building’s list of fax numbers. Two of the suspects had fax machines. That would come in handy. After a glance at the building schematic for the best route to the basement room where the phone lines were located, she picked up her flashlight and telephone kit.

Thirty minutes later, the elevator operator was carrying her up and out of the basement. The iron cage stopped at the lobby floor. A boy got on the elevator. He might be fourteen years old.

If Harry Kipling had played around, his wife had not. The boy had the same blue eyes and black hair, the same stocky build as the father. And now the boy was looking her up and down. His slow, widening smile was more of a leer.

She stared at the boy in the wordless disbelief of, You’re kidding, right?

The boy’s face went to a high red color, and he got off on the next floor, though it was not where he lived.

She wondered if womanizing might be genetic.

She continued on, watching the floors drop away. Looking up through the iron grille of the doors, she saw the tip of the white cane at the blind man’s feet. Eric Franz was standing by the elevator when the doors opened on the Rosens’ floor. As she stepped out of the elevator, he inclined his head. ‘Miss Mallory? I’ve been looking for you. Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just Mallory, right?’

‘Right,’ she said, after a hesitation.

‘It was your perfume,’ said Eric Franz in response to the question she was about to ask. He shrugged and smiled. ‘When you lose your sight, Nature gives you another gift, a heightened sense of awareness. Betty Hyde tells me you have an interest in the judge. So do I.’

‘Also professional? I work for a research group. I assume she told you that too.’

‘Yes, she did. But my interest in the judge is personal. I’m curious about an old incident. Being blind has its drawbacks, you know. There’s always missing information on some level. Take the day the medical examiner’s people showed up for the death of old Mrs Heart, the judge’s mother.’

‘Are you saying it wasn’t a natural death?’

‘Supposedly, it was a heart attack. Maybe it was, but I did wonder when the police detective came a half hour later. I was in the lobby when he said to the doorman -just the one word – “Homicide”.’

‘That wouldn’t make sense if she died of a heart attack.’

‘It is interesting, isn’t it? And now I expect you’ll want me to describe the police officer?’

Mallory smiled. Yeah, right.

‘He was tall and thin,’ and as though Franz had read the expression on her face, he hurried on to answer her next unasked question. ‘He made long strides. He knocked into me. I remember saying to him, “What are you – blind?” I never miss an opportunity to use that line. When he knocked into me there wasn’t much bulk to him. He apologized and, judging by his accent, he was originally from Brooklyn. Oh, and he wore too much aftershave. It was a very expensive brand. And his coat was made of leather.’

‘You mentioned the ME investigator.’

‘Oh, that man was already up there in the judge’s apartment. The Hearts’ family doctor was there, too. I was sitting in the lobby waiting for a friend who was detained in traffic. All of them trooped past me.’

The detective could only be Palanski. Palanski again. He was the closest thing NYPD had to an ambulance chaser.

The mouse crept silendy across the kitchen floor, mindful of the giant’s blue pajama legs. Its small eyes were filled with the reflected crumbs of a golden croissant. It snatched up the bread and scurried back to its hiding place beneath the refrigerator, where it sat feeding in the dark, insanely pleased with itself.

Charles watched the cream bubble over a blue gas flame and wondered how many days the mouse might have left in this world. Mrs Ortega had tried repeatedly to murder it with traps, to break its back with a broom, and to poison it. So far, the savvy city mouse had eluded her with supernatural skill, and gained Charles’s respect. But Mrs Ortega was also a mythic creature in her own right. However quick the mouse might be, Mrs Ortega was sure to be close behind it, broom held high.