“All right. Anything else?”

“We have collected a fair bit but it may not all be relevant. It really is hard to say at this point. No reliable footprints and we’re not sure if there were any fingerprints on the knife, we still have to clean it up a bit. That will all take time.”

Typical. There was a flurry of updates with absolutely nothing updated. He wasn’t closer to finding a motive to this senseless homicide. With all the information he gathered, all he had was that some person walked up to an old man in the street early in the morning and stabbed him then disappeared into thin air.

No one just stabs a person, not in this neighborhood, not like this. He was missing something and he really hoped that the upstairs flat contained a wealth of information he could use. Sadly, he doubted it. But, random, senseless violence was not what he wanted to write down in the report. That would be running backward and why would he want to run backward? He’d vomit.

“Boss,” Dorland yelled behind him. “Found them.” When Theo turned, Dorland jangled the keys in front of his face.

“Wonderful.” He walked up to Dorland and handed him the note. Dorland read it a few times just to make sure he had read it right and shrugged his shoulders.

“Doctor’s note?” Dorland hazarded a guess.

“Obviously,” Theo said, “and with such wise advice, it is only natural one would want to laminate it and keep it in their pocket in case a one-legged man would have the desire. Then he could easily pull out the note and read it and remember, that not only could he not run forward without vomiting, that yes, he could also not run backward without vomiting either. It’s clear to me why you’re a detective.”

“Funny. Shall we?” Dorland rattled the key in front of Theo’s face again.

“Ladies first,” Theo replied.

“So did SOCO or the other officers find anything? Any other witnesses?”

“A menagerie of responses from a menagerie of people,” Theo replied. “One, in a group of women, insists she saw a large scary man walk by her house but didn’t know when. That started the group on a tirade of similar stories, each thinking they saw the man but each time the story became a bit scarier and a bit more far-fetched. One man thought it was a woman; two others didn’t know whom it was that lived in the house. And all the children interviewed apparently thought the one-legged man was creepy.”

Theo followed Dorland into the front hall, where there was a door leading upstairs to the first floor. Theo pushed the key in and turned the handle. The door opened easily, and the musky smell of a flat that hadn’t been occupied, hit them immediately. Dorland took the stairs two at a time.

Poking his head around the door frame, Dorland looked back at Theo, and said, “I think you’re going to find this interesting.”

“Does it answer some of our questions?” No reply. Theo bounded up the stairs after him. The entire first floor was one room with a sink and some cupboards in one corner. The room obviously belonged to the deceased. It was incredibly neat. More paintings lined the walls, the same as on the main floor, and one table filled the length of the room. Laid out in ten separate bins were small colored tiles: white, black, red, purple, brown, blue, green, yellow, orange, and gray. Bags of white mortar with a thick layer of dust lay neatly piled below the table.

“This is obviously where he does his artistic carpentry.” Theo ran his fingers through a tray of red half-inch tiles. “He really is an odd person. One-legged artist. I wonder what will happen to all his art?”

“Perhaps it is stated in his will. He may have had relatives.”

“Do you think they’re worth something?”

“This art?” Dorland laughed. “Although you never know. There are artists I do not like and they make money. Some may actually like what this artist had to offer. Who can say?”

“We may have to do some further digging to find the answer.”

The nurse was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when they descended. “Was there anything interesting up there?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to see what he kept up there.”

“That was his studio, where he created his art. We are looking for any reason he might have been killed this morning. I know you told us that he had no enemies, but did he ever disclose to you what his Last Will and Testament contained or anything that may have been on his mind lately?”

“No, but I have only been with him for about four months. I try with all my patients to find out as much as I can about their family or past. It makes spending the day with them easier, but Mr. Tipring, he was quiet. Never spoke about his family or friends, ever. No, that is not true. When I asked about the earrings he told me they belonged to his mother. How fond he must have been of her. I’ve never known a man to keep earrings like that. But then again, I’ve never known a man to keep art like that.”

Ignoring her question, Theo went on, “What about a solicitor? Did he have a solicitor or anyone that handled his personal matters?”

“I don’t know,” the nurse answered in barely a whisper. “Maybe his last nurse could tell you more.”

“Do you know her name?”

“No, but she may have worked at the same agency I work for. A placement agency that matches home care needs with patients. He may have chosen the same agency for his last nurse. I don’t know.” She reached into her purse and handed them a very old card crumpled up in hundreds of tiny folds until it was almost the consistency of toilet tissue. “You can try ringing them at that number.”

“He did not seem worried to you, nothing unusual over the last couple of days?”

“Nothing. In fact, he seemed happier. I don’t know what it was but he actually seemed cheerier. If he knew today was the day he was going to die, he never showed it, not once. In fact, he was planning a trip, not an extravagant excursion, but he wanted to go to the place where he was born. A trip of about a hundred miles but for one who never leaves his house, quite a conquest. One morning when I arrived, he informed me of his plans. I wonder what could be so important there . . .”

Chapter Nine

By noon, Sophia was ready to strangle someone and she kicked the radiator again. Damn heat, or rather lack of it. Although it wasn’t raining, a nippy wind whistled in from the poorly insulated windows. She buttoned up her double-breasted cardigan and began to pace the dingy East End flat. Either she would die of boredom or freeze to death. She lighted the gas hob for a few minutes but with strict orders not to open the windows, she shut it off for fear she would suffocate.

The music didn’t help either. She spent ten minutes trying to imagine what it would take for the roof to topple down on her. Would it be the ear-splitting electro funk or the karaoke dancer accompaniment? Could she run to the doorway in time? She tried the run—if only to keep herself warm—and managed to get herself sweaty and colder. Though tempted to run upstairs and bang on the door, it was one of Liam’s strict instructions for her to stay in the flat. Someone had to be watching the monitors, though Sophia didn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t like the camera’s didn’t record bloody everything. Some days, she wanted to kill that man.

The other task, which involved scanning the previous night’s footage, only took forty-five minutes to review because the woman only awoke six times during the night. Once for the loo, and the other five to push her cat off her face. As far as Sophia was concerned, the woman in house 412 was the most uninteresting person on the planet . . . or perhaps the second most, after herself. Why the hell was she so important? Perhaps it was Liam’s way to slowly wear her down so that when he finally asked her for dinner, she wouldn’t refuse, not for the hundredth time.