‘That woman,’ said Friday. ‘Why is she wearing sunglasses inside an airplane?’

  ‘Perhaps she wants to be prepared in case the pilot falls ill and she needs to take over,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Passengers taking over from flight crew happens much less in real life than it does in the movies,’ said Friday.

  ‘It’s good to be prepared for all eventualities,’ said Melanie.

  ‘But why the fur coat?’ said Friday. ‘And do you think it’s real? I thought they went out of fashion because of animal rights activism in the 80s.’

  ‘Well, Italians are very fashion orientated,’ said Melanie. ‘And most people lock in their fashion style when they are young. So, if you were young before the 80s you may not have updated.’

  ‘How do you even get a fur coat through border control?’ asked Friday. ‘It must be a haven for bacteria and disease.’

  ‘You wear leather shoes,’ said Melanie. ‘That’s animal hide.’

  ‘Yes, and shoes are a haven for bacteria and disease too,’ said Friday.

  The woman did not appear to be in the least self-conscious. She flirted outrageously with Vance, the flight attendant, as he showed her to her seat.

  ‘Is there anything I can get you, signora?’ asked Vance.

  ‘Yourself and a bottle of prosecco,’ said the woman.

  ‘I’m not allowed to drink on duty,’ said Vance.

  ‘I will drink for both of us,’ said the woman.

  The woman’s husband followed behind her. He was talking loudly on his mobile phone in Italian. He even waved his hands wildly in the clichéd Italian fashion.

  ‘You’d think her husband would mind,’ said Friday.

  ‘Mind what?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘The flirting,’ said Friday.

  ‘Maybe she does it to make her husband jealous,’ said Melanie. ‘Some people enjoy having tempestuous relationships.’

  Melanie pulled her first class extra plush mask down over her eyes and was asleep in seconds.

  Friday continued to mentally catalogue details about all the passengers in the first class cabin. The man who kept sniffing. He had cat hair on his suit pants. Friday suspected he had been staying with relatives and he was allergic to their cat. She considered offering him an antihistamine, but experience had taught her that people do not like it when you diagnose their illnesses without being asked.

  The woman across the aisle was pretending to read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. She hadn’t turned a page in seven minutes. Friday suspected she was only pretending to read to avoid conversation with the man in the seat next to her, who kept shifting in his seat and sighing loudly. Clearly an extrovert who wanted someone to tell his life story to. Friday felt bad for the woman. Money could buy you a seat in first class, but it couldn’t spare you from boring people.

  This made Friday wonder if airlines would consider seating passengers based on their mutual interests. Introverts could sit at the front, in a partitioned area where no-one would talk to them. People who wanted to show off their holiday photos could sit in another section. People who wanted to flirt with someone could go right down the back where they wouldn’t nauseate anyone else and put them off their food.

  Friday took out her copy of The Iliad and a notepad. One of the great things about having Melanie as a best friend was there was always lots of quiet time to work. Friday was soon concentrating so hard she barely noticed the plane take off.

  As the North wind descend from Thrace,

  blasting cold air in his face,

  Achilles did suddenly feel

  A prescient pain within his heel

  So many men had lost their lives

  To the Trojans’ sharpened knives . . .

  With thoughts of Ancient Greeks and rhyming couplets Friday drifted off to sleep herself.

  BING.

  It took a moment for Friday to work out where she was. The sound made her think she was on an airplane, but the surroundings were so luxurious that didn’t fit. Then she remembered she was sitting in first class. The sound had been the signal to get the passengers’ attention. It hadn’t worked. Everyone but her was still fast asleep. Behind them, in the galley, Friday could hear the sound of people arguing. They were attempting to do it quietly but they were failing.

  BING.

  It was the attention signal again. Still no-one else roused. The woman across the aisle stirred in her sleep, slumped sideways onto the shoulder of the man next to her. But they both kept on sleeping.

  A voice came over the PA system. The voice was soothing and perfectly enunciated, the way no-one really speaks unless trained to do so. It was the voice of someone trained to exude calm.

  ‘Is there anybody in the cabin who is . . .’

  Friday’s mind immediately focused. This was like something out of a movie. They were going to ask for someone who was a doctor. Someone must be having a heart attack. But the announcement did not continue as she imagined it would.

  ‘. . . a law enforcement officer?’

  Now Friday was really intrigued. Why would anybody want a law enforcement officer? Had a crime been committed?

  There was a pause. The muffled arguing became more animated.

  BING.

  The announcement came again. This time it was slightly less calm. ‘Is anybody on the plane a law enforcement officer, or detective? Kindly make yourself known to the cabin crew.’

  Friday felt a nudge in her ribs. It was Melanie. She hadn’t noticed her wake up.

  ‘That’s you,’ said Melanie. ‘You should step up.’

  ‘I’m just a kid,’ said Friday.

  Melanie rolled her eyes. ‘Come on, don’t be lame. They need help.’

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ said Friday. ‘I’m not a detective anymore.’ She pulled her eye mask down, slouched in her seat and attempted to go back to sleep.

  The yelling broke through any pretence of being quiet now. ‘NO! You can’t make me. It’s a violation of my privacy!’

  Friday recognised that voice. It was Vance, the nice attendant who had taken care of her hat. There was some agitated response from a woman. Friday couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  ‘This is bullying,’ accused Vance. ‘Don’t touch me, that’s assault!’

  ‘Are you going to help him, or not?’ asked Melanie. ‘He was nice to you.’

  Friday felt bad.

  ‘You can’t do this to me!’ pleaded Vance.

  It was the tone of his voice that got her. Friday had heard that tone in her own voice when the police had come for her and she couldn’t believe what they were accusing her of.

  Friday unclicked her seatbelt and stood up.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Melanie, approvingly. She got up too. She knew she couldn’t be much help herself, but being the daughter of the man who owned the airline would no doubt affect the way people treated Friday.

  Friday pushed aside a curtain and stepped into the galley. It was a tiny space. She didn’t like tiny spaces. It seemed incredibly bright after the dimly lit cabin. And everything was stainless steel. It felt surgical. Friday blinked several times to get her eyes to adjust. The nice flight attendant was there, just inside the curtained partition. He was being confronted by two women flight attendants – one older, her hair in a stern bun. And a younger one who looked acutely embarrassed by the situation. She was on the diagonally opposite side of the space, right up against the far curtain. She looked like she wanted to burst through and hide in the economy section.

  As soon as the flight attendants saw Friday, all three of them transformed into their professional masks.

  ‘Can we help you, ma’am?’ asked the older lady. ‘Would you like a drink or a snack? We can bring it to you in a moment.’

  ‘You asked for a detective,’ said Friday. While she spoke, Friday pressed her palm against the stainless steel, to check it wasn’t squeezing in on her. ‘I am, or rather was, a private detective.’

  The older attendant frowned. In first class you weren’t allowed to accuse passengers of being liars.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Melanie, pushing through the curtains. ‘If you don’t believe me you can call Daddy and ask. He loves Friday. She got my older brother Binky out of any number of scrapes. Although, actually, Daddy probably wouldn’t be happy if you called him.’ Melanie glanced at her watch. ‘It is 3 o’clock in the morning in Aspen and he doesn’t like being disturbed when he’s on holiday.’

  Vance quickly took in the situation and evidently decided that Friday was his best chance.

  ‘I’ve been falsely accused,’ he said.

  ‘Of what?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Theft,’ said Vance.

  ‘It’s really no concern of yours,’ said the older attendant. ‘We can sort this out. Why don’t you go back to your seats?’

  ‘It’s unethical to deny a staff member help when they’ve asked for it,’ said Friday. ‘Just because we’re thirty thousand feet in the air does not mean that Vance is any less entitled to his procedural rights.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ said the flight attendant. ‘A plane is like a ship. The captain has absolute authority.’

  ‘Within reason,’ said Friday. ‘That’s only in situations where someone is behaving dangerously. But Vance isn’t behaving dangerously. He’s staying very calm, you’ve got no justification for breaching his Miranda rights.’

  ‘They say I stole a chocolate-covered macadamia nut,’ said Vance.

  ‘Really?’ said Friday.

  ‘Oh, they are very good,’ said Melanie. ‘That is understandable.’

  ‘But I didn’t do it!’ said Vance.

  ‘Then how do you explain the bulge in your waistcoat pocket?’ demanded the older attendant.

  They all glanced down. There was a macadamia-sized lump in his pocket.

  ‘I don’t have to explain myself,’ said Vance. ‘I didn’t steal anything. I don’t have to prove anything.’

  ‘Empty out your pockets then,’ said the older attendant.

  ‘No, don’t,’ said Friday. She turned on the senior attendant. ‘You can’t search him without a warrant. For a warrant you’d need probable cause.’

  ‘The lump is probable cause,’ said the older attendant. She’d watched a lot of TV cop shows so she knew her terminology.

  ‘You’ve had it in for me ever since I started on this route,’ accused Vance. ‘It’s because the passengers like me more.’

  ‘They only like you more because you flirt with them all outrageously,’ said the older attendant.

  ‘It’s called customer service,’ said Vance. ‘It’s part of the job.’

  ‘It’s embarrassing,’ accused the older attendant.

  ‘I’ve seen you serve drinks to the older businessmen,’ said Vance. ‘The way you raise your eyebrows and lower your voice when you offer them nuts. You’re just as bad as I am.’

  Friday had tuned out the bickering. She even forgot about the walls of the galley crushing in on her. She was staring at the bulge in the waistcoat pocket.

  Melanie clapped her hands twice to silence the arguing attendants. ‘Friday is investigating the crime,’ said Melanie. ‘She can’t do that with you two squabbling. What do you think, Friday?’

  ‘Well, the evidence is this,’ said Friday. ‘That lump is precisely the size of a chocolate-covered macadamia. I’ve mentally catalogued all the things within this cabin and I can’t think of anything else the same size or shape that it could be. A golf ball is bigger. A eucalyptus drop is smaller. So, it is most likely a chocolate-covered macadamia.

  Vance’s face fell.

  The older lady smirked. ‘I knew it.’

  ‘But . . .’ continued Friday. ‘We don’t know how it came to be there. Every passenger in the first class cabin was given one. Then they all promptly fell asleep. We could wake everyone up and ask them to account for their individual nut to work out exactly which nut that is.’

  ‘We can’t do that!’ exclaimed the older attendant. ‘It would distress the customers.’

  ‘I ate mine,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Me too,’ said Friday. ‘And I saw the man across the aisle from me eat his and the one belonging to the lady next to him when she wasn’t looking. That only leaves eight nuts unaccounted for.’

  ‘The couple in row A are allergic to nuts,’ said the younger flight attendant. ‘That’s on the special dietary needs list. They didn’t get one.’

  ‘That leaves six,’ said Friday.

  ‘The businessmen in A ate theirs straightaway,’ said the young attendant. ‘Before they even had dinner.’

  ‘Four to go,’ said Friday, as she counted them off on her fingers. Obviously she did not need to use her fingers to count, but it was always helpful to use a visual aid for the benefit of others.

  ‘I didn’t give one to the man in row C,’ confessed Vance.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘He made me put his suitcase in the overhead locker three times,’ said Vance. ‘It was revenge.’

  ‘So, there’s the missing one,’ said the older woman.

  ‘No,’ said Vance. ‘I gave his to the woman in row C because she said “thank you” nicely when I gave her a bottle of water.’

  ‘Well then, that only leaves the woman in the fur coat and her husband,’ said Friday.

  ‘Signore and Signora Rambaldi?!’ said the senior flight attendant. ‘That’s ridiculous! They’re platinum customers. They’re from one of the richest families in Italy. What possible motive could anyone have for putting a macadamia nut in someone else’s pocket?’

  ‘The coat is the clue,’ said Friday.

  ‘You only don’t like her because she’s wearing fur,’ said Melanie.

  ‘That is a perfectly valid reason not to like someone,’ said Friday. ‘But that’s not it. It is 22 degrees centigrade on this airplane. Not hot, but definitely not cold enough to warrant a fur coat. What type of person gets cold at such a mild temperature?’

  No-one answered her question, assuming it was rhetorical.

  ‘A skinny person,’ said Friday. ‘A person with no body fat feels cold temperature quickly. She wore the coat on the flight so she would be comfortable. She is rich. She flies all the time. She knows 22 degrees makes her feel cold. So, she wore the coat.’

  ‘So what?’ demanded the senior flight attendant. ‘This is all irrelevant.’

  ‘Just listen,’ urged Melanie. ‘Friday will explain it all eventually. At least, she usually does.’

  ‘Macadamias are full of fat. And chocolate is full of fat and sugar,’ said Friday. ‘No-one who is trying to stay skinny would eat a chocolate-covered macadamia.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ said Melanie. ‘They don’t know what they’re missing out on.’

  ‘Perhaps she does know,’ said Friday. ‘She knows they are delicious and luxurious and expensive. She isn’t going to eat it herself, so she decides to use it for – seduction!’

  ‘What?’ said Vance.

  ‘Show me the lump from your pocket,’ said Friday.

  ‘You’re supposed to be helping me,’ said Vance.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Friday. ‘That is a macadamia in your pocket. But I will be able to prove that you did not put it there.’

  Vance didn’t move.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Friday.

  ‘You should,’ urged Melanie. ‘She’s never wrong. Not about this sort of thing. She’s wrong about fashion decisions and human emotions all the time. But you should be good in this situation.’

  Vance slowly and reluctantly withdrew the lump from his pocket. It was a macadamia in a bright red packet.

  ‘Ahah!’ said the senior attendant. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Friday, taking the nut from Vance’s hand. ‘Let’s have a closer look. She held the wrapper under one of the strong galley lights. There was handwriting on the wrapper written in marker pen.

  ‘What does that say?’ asked Melanie.

  ‘Meet me in the bathroom at midnight,’ read Friday.

  ‘But I’m happily married,’ protested Vance.

  ‘So is she,’ said Friday. ‘She’s merely trying to irritate her husband.’

  ‘Why would she do that if she was happily married?’ asked the young flight attendant.

  ‘Apparently, some people enjoy having tempestuous relationships,’ said Friday. ‘I don’t understand it myself, but Melanie assures me it is the case.’

  ‘What’s the time?’ asked Melanie.

  All five of them looked at their watches.

  ‘Oh my gosh!’ said Vance. ‘It’s five to midnight. What am I going to do?’

  ‘I hope you don’t need to use the bathroom,’ said Melanie.

  ‘You can hide in the crew section in the undercarriage until she goes back to sleep,’ said the senior attendant. ‘If she asks, I’ll tell her you have food poisoning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Vance.

  The senior attendant nodded. This was her way of apologising. ‘And I’ll make sure she gets the worst choice for breakfast too. No-one entraps a member of my team and gets away with it.’

  Rome airport was like all airports. There were long lines, a confusing array of signs, and lots of police and customs officers dressed in impressively immaculate uniforms. But the first most-noticeable difference was that everyone was speaking Italian. It sounds obvious. They had just landed in Italy. Of course everyone would speak Italian. But there was a difference between expecting it and experiencing it.

  Friday had been to Switzerland before, so she knew what it was like to be surrounded by people not speaking English. But in Switzerland, the cadence sounded the same. The words were different, but the sound of people talking had the same tenor as English. This was not true of Italian. In Italy the babble of Italian voices had rhythm and gesticulation. Conversations took on an almost balletic level of drama.

  For someone who loved observing details, there was too much to observe. It was overwhelming. Combine that with Friday’s anxiety about confined spaces and nervousness of people in uniform, and she was a basket case by the time she got through the immigration procedures and poured out into the arrivals hall with the other passengers.