The Keeper

Nobody on the ninth floor of the Carlisle Building admitted to having a key to 9C, which was strange, because by the end of the first night Detective Ruth Okafor had found four.

The first was in the dead man’s pocket. The second hung on a hook in the doorman’s office, labelled in faded biro. The third was taped to the underside of a drawer in 9A, where Mr and Mrs Pelham insisted they had never seen it before in their lives.

The fourth was in the pot of a dying fern outside 9F, and when Ruth held it up to the light, the young woman who lived there burst into tears.

“I only used it to water his plants,” said Lily Chen. “He travelled. He asked me to. I swear I haven’t been inside since August.”

Ruth made a note. She made a note of everything, even the things she already knew were lies, because the lies were usually more useful than the truth.

Behind her, the door to 9C stood open. The flat was immaculate except for the body on the kitchen floor and a single wine glass on the counter, washed, dried and set upside down on a folded tea towel.

“Whoever did this cleaned up after themselves,” said Sergeant Patel, who was young and still thought that sort of thing was clever.

“No,” said Ruth. “Whoever did this cleaned up after him. Look at the tea towel. That’s a habit. That’s someone who has been in this kitchen a hundred times.”

She turned back to the corridor, where six doors stood in a neat row, and behind each of them, she was fairly sure, someone was listening.