The Old Enemy Henry Porter (best black authors txt) 📖

and meant him to find her, but somehow he doubted that. She would have put a note in with the map reference if she had. But Zoe had gone there for a reason and that, surely, was to find something. He began a thorough search of the main room, where Harland and Ulrike had lived those last months. He opened the drawers, felt along the tops of shelves and under the table, chairs and sofa. He pulled back the old kelim rug, tested the floorboards and felt the wooden panels of the walls to see if there was any give or movement. In the bedroom he conducted a similar search, noticing black marks made by oil lamps and candles on the ceiling and above the bed. There were clothes in the wardrobe, a few books on the bedside table, but very little else.

He returned to the main room and sat down at the table where Harland had worked and scraped his chair round and stared out to sea with a drink – the table’s surface was patterned by ring marks. The Harlands’ presence was very strong, their happiness and love, too. He began to look at the art materials. There were books full of sketches in charcoal and watercolour, quick and vivid. Samson thought he’d love to own one.

He moved the chair and saw that a canvas had been propped against the wall beside a pile of stuff covered with a cloth. He lifted the cloth – an open box of oil paints, tubes without their tops, a couple of sketchpads, a collapsible easel and chair, rags, bottles of drying medium. The whole lot just dumped, and Samson knew why. These had been retrieved from the murder scene and probably handed to Ulrike by the police. Or perhaps she had gathered them together herself and covered them up so she wouldn’t have to look. He turned the oil canvas – still wet to the touch – and put it on the table leaning against the wall, stepped back, and knew its significance immediately. The rapid summary in greys and dull greens of a fleeting burst of light out to sea was what Harland had been working on when he was killed. It was dazzling. He must have been pleased with it.

One of two sketchpads in the pile became dislodged and slid to the floor near his feet. Samson’s eyes came to rest on the words ‘Berlin blue’ written on the back. He snatched it up. Close by, in the same desperate scrawl, but in capitals, was ‘LOVE YOU’. He leafed through the pages but found nothing else. Harland’s last moments had been spent identifying his killer, or the person who ordered his murder, and conveying his love to Ulrike, but she hadn’t noticed and had left the sketchbook with the other things. And the police, if they had been struck by the words ‘Berlin blue’, must have assumed that it simply had something to do with his art. And clearly Zoe, who knew what ‘Berlin blue’ stood for, hadn’t seen it either. He took a photograph and sent it to Ulrike’s phone with the caption, ‘Did you see this on the back of his sketchbook?’

Her response came quickly: ‘No, bring it to me, please.’

‘And the painting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will do. Can you talk?’

Pause.

‘I’m with someone. Later.’

‘Who is Berlin Blue?’

No answer came.

Then, quite a while after he’d assumed the exchange was over, came the message: ‘Will you cook with Mother’s recipe?’

He sent three question marks, and wondered if it had been meant for someone else. He went through to the kitchen, where he noticed that Zoe had left the best part of a litre of milk, together with an unopened pot of yogurt. It might indicate that they were coming back – he hoped they would, because he had a lot of questions for Zoe – but it also meant that he could make tea. He put the kettle on the gas ring and found an old enamel cup with a dried thumbprint on the handle – Harland’s cup – located some tea bags and sat down on a wicker chair to wait. The sun had swung round to the west, filling the cabin with afternoon light. His gaze wandered to an enclosed space below the kitchen counter, to four volumes of recipe books, one German, two Estonian and a large old burgundy-coloured book entitled Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. He was familiar with this book, because his mother always cited the Victorian household goddess as the reason the English didn’t know how to eat well. He pulled it from the shelf and felt its weight. On the title page was a name and a date – Mary Harland, Christmas 1948. Harland’s mother, presumably.

‘Will you cook Mother’s recipe?’ Ulrike had texted. He turned the pages, wondering at the illustrations of flans and jelly moulds, which his own mother would certainly have mocked, but what about Harland’s? This post-war edition of the book had 1,700 pages and he was sure Ulrike didn’t mean him to go through all of it. He removed the remaining cookery books and leafed through them, but found nothing. He felt inside the space where the books were stored, tapping the sides and bottom with his fingertips. It all seemed solid enough, until he reached the part where Mrs Beeton had stood alone in her dust. He drew back and saw that the plywood base would slide forward. Working a kitchen knife into the crack at the far end, he pulled with the flat of his hand and the section of plywood came out smoothly, revealing a shallow cavity where another book was lying flat. He lifted out the turquoise-bound modern edition of Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, the online version of which he’d already studied.

The kettle boiled. He made tea and sat down with Harland’s book and his mug. The book was organised simply, from whites, greys, blacks and blues through to browns. Under the entry ‘Berlin Blue’ was written a name, Mila Daus, and an IBAN number – not