She looked very young, Sandy thought, lying there naked in the centre of the double bed, the white quilt tangled round her knees. Her face was tilted up, eyes open, Japanese lids drawn back in that characteristic look of inquiry she had, as if doubting if the older men around her understood what she was saying. It was a look that her husband Charles had once adored, but which Sandy Clarke had found rather irritating. The symmetry of her slender figure was spoiled by the steel hilt embedded in her left side, immediately below her small breast. In death, her colouring had changed to a waxy yellow.

‘What is that?’ Jennifer Mathieson pointed an unsteady finger, her voice a mixture of panic and outrage.

‘It looks like the handle of one of those rather beautiful carving knives that Miki and Charles brought back from Tokyo on their last visit.’ Now that he had seen it, he felt very calm. ‘Have you spoken to anyone yet, Jennifer?’

‘No, I…I thought I should wait until the visitors had gone. She is dead, isn’t she?’

‘Oh yes. No sign of Charles?’

‘No. God, this is so awful…’ She looked as if she might pass out.

Sandy Clarke put an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the room. ‘Look, this is what I want you to do. Take the lift down to the street and wait by the private apartment entrance for the police to arrive. I’ll phone them now. Will you be all right? You’ll feel much better for a breath of fresh air.’

After he’d seen her into the lift and made the call, he returned to the bedroom and stood for a long while, just staring at Miki. He had a disturbing sense that, dead as she surely was, she was still capable of explaining what had happened, that when the police arrived they would find the truth right there in her face. His eyes slid away from her, across the bedside cabinet to the chair, to the phone and flatscreen TV.