‘Chair of physics at Exeter will look good on my CV,’ Diamond said as he tried the seat. ‘Who’s first up?’
‘It seems to be decided,’ the department secretary said. ‘We asked them both to be here at the time you stated. Miss Kihara is waiting outside, but the man is late.’
‘The man?’
‘Mr. Nambu.’
‘Funny. I assumed they were both female, being friends of Mari. Not obvious from the names.’
‘Unless you’re Japanese,’ Ingeborg said.
‘Ask Miss Kihara to step in, will you?’
The student was small and nervous, with powerful glasses that magnified her eyes into a permanent startled look. Being interviewed in the professor’s office must have been daunting. She might have been more relaxed in the place Diamond had originally planned to use: the union bar.
‘May we call you Taki?’
‘Please do.’ At once it was clear there would be no problem over the language.
‘You knew Mari Hitomi, I believe, and you’ll have heard the sad news of her death.’
‘It’s incredible. A horrible shock.’
‘We spoke to her father and he understood she was planning to visit Exeter to see you and Mr. Nambu.’
‘That’s right. She called me after she arrived in London.’
‘Did she fix the visit?’
‘She didn’t put a date on it. She was going to text us nearer the time. I said she was welcome to stay a few days if she wanted. She could sleep at my place. So we left it flexible.’
‘And you didn’t receive the text?’
‘I wasn’t worried. It was a casual arrangement and when weeks went by I thought she must have made other plans. The next thing I heard was when her father phoned. He seemed to believe she’d been coming straight to Exeter. He was very upset when I told him she wasn’t with us.’
‘It seems she planned a visit to Bath without telling him. Do you know if she had friends there?’
‘Nobody I heard of. If they were friends from Yokohama, I’d know. We all keep in touch. There are three in Sheffield, two in Bangor, one in Cambridge.’
‘Do you visit any of them yourself?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s too far on a bike. That’s my transport.’
‘You don’t drive?’
‘No.’
If this was true – and it was an instant response, spoken without sign of evasion – one crucial question was settled. She hadn’t driven to Bath with a body in the back. ‘You’ve known Mari a long time?’
‘We went through school together in Yokohama.’
‘What was she like?’
‘Very good company. She was open and truthful. Laughed a lot. I was looking forward to seeing her again.’
‘We need to get a picture of her as a personality, likes and dislikes, that kind of thing.’
‘There was the music, of course,’ Taki said. ‘She was passionate about that. Serious music. She didn’t have time for modern pop.’
‘When you say passionate …?’
‘I mean it. She’d travel to concerts in other cities. Her bedroom was full of posters of famous musicians, just like some girls go crazy over rock stars. She had a really top-class sound system and hundreds of CDs. Music was her main thing when we were going through school.’
‘Did she play an instrument?’
‘I never heard that she did. Her mother was a professional violinist and maybe that put Mari off, thinking she could never live up to that standard. She could read music, I know that. She’d buy the score and follow it.’
‘She studied maths, her father told me.’
‘Sure, in Yokohama University. There’s some kind of link between music and maths, isn’t there?’
‘Do you know if she had boyfriends?’
‘I expect so. I haven’t seen her for some time.’
‘At school, I mean.’
‘We all went out with boys. Mari was no exception.’
‘Was Mikio a particular friend?’
‘Of Mari’s?’ She blushed a little. ‘You mean Mikio at this university? They were seeing each other at one time. You’d better ask him.’
‘Are you and he …?’ Diamond asked, picking up on the blush.
‘Absolutely not.’ Her voice shook a little. ‘Just because we went through school together it doesn’t mean a thing. We happen to be studying in the same department in the same university, that’s all.’
The charged quality in her response alerted Diamond. ‘Is something the matter between you?’
‘This has nothing to do with Mari.’
‘But …?’