Leave the Grave Green (14 page)

Placing his mug carefully on the tray, Kincaid said, “Thank you, Vicar. You’ve been very kind.”

Mead stood, tray balanced in his hands, gazing out the window at the churchyard. “I don’t profess to understand the workings of fate. Sometimes it’s best not to, in my business,” he added, the twinkle surfacing again, “but I’ve always wondered. The children usually took the bus home from school, but they were late that day and had to walk instead. What kept them?”

Kincaid reshuffled the files on his desk and ran a hand through his hair until it stood up like a cockscomb. The late Sunday afternoon lull at the Yard usually provided the perfect time to catch up on paperwork, but today concentration eluded him. He stretched and glanced at his watch—past teatime, and the sudden hollow sensation in his stomach reminded him he’d missed lunch altogether. Tossing the reports he’d managed to finish into the out tray, he stood up and grabbed his jacket from the peg.

He’d go home, look after Sid, repack his bag, perhaps grab a Chinese take-away. Ordinarily the prospect would have contented him, but today it didn’t ease the restlessness that had dogged him since he left the vicarage and caught the train back to London. The image of Julia rose again in his mind. Her face was younger, softer, but pale against the darkness of her fever-matted hair, and she tossed in her white-sheeted bed, uncomforted.

He wondered just how much political clout the Ashertons wielded, and how carefully he need tread.

It was not until he’d exited the Yard garage into Caxton Street that he thought of phoning Gemma again. He’d rung periodically during the afternoon without reaching her, although she must have been finished with her interview at the ENO hours ago. He eyed the cellular phone but didn’t pick it up, and as he rounded St. James Park he found himself heading toward Islington rather than Hampstead. It had been weeks since Gemma moved into the new flat, and her rather embarrassed delight when she spoke of it
intrigued him. He’d just pop by on the off-chance he’d catch her at home.

When he remembered how carefully she had avoided inviting him to her house in Leyton, he pushed it to the back of his mind.

He pulled up in front of the address Gemma had given, studying the house before him. A detached Victorian built of smooth honey-colored stone, it was one of a hodgepodge of houses lying rather incongruously between two of Islington’s Georgian crescents. Its two bow-fronted windows caught the late afternoon sun, and an iron fence surrounded the well-tended garden. From the front steps two large black dogs of indeterminate breed regarded him alertly, ready to protest if he should cross the bounds of the gate. Remembering Gemma’s description, he left the car in the nearest space and walked around the corner, following the garden wall.

The garage doors were painted a cheerful daffodil yellow, as was the smaller door to their left. Above it a discreet, black number
2
satisfied him that he had indeed found the right place. He knocked, and when no one answered, he sat down on the step leading up to the garden, eased his back into a comfortable position against the bars of the narrow gate and prepared to wait.

He heard her car before he saw it. “You’ll get a ticket, parking on the double-yellows,” he said as she opened the door.

“Not when it’s my own garage I’m blocking. What are you doing here, guv?”

She unbuckled Toby’s seat belt and he clambered across her, shouting with excitement.

“Nice to be appreciated,” Kincaid said, slapping Toby’s palm, then lifting him up and tousling the straight, fair hair. “Your engine’s developing a bit of a knock,” he continued to Gemma as she locked the Escort.

She grimaced. “Don’t remind me. Not just yet, anyway.” They stood awkwardly for a moment, Gemma clutching a bouquet of pink roses to her chest, and as the silence lengthened he grew ever more uncomfortable.

Why had he thought he could breach her carefully maintained barriers without consequence? His invasion seemed to stand between them, tangible as stone. He said, “I’m sorry. I’ll not come in. It’s just that I couldn’t reach you, and I thought we should connect.” Feeling more apologetic by the second, he added, “I could take you and Toby for something to eat.”

“Don’t be daft.” She dug in her handbag for her keys. “Do come in, please.” Smiling at him, she unlocked the door and stood back. Toby darted between them with a whoop. “This is it,” she said as she entered behind him.

Her clothes hung on an open rack beside the door. Brushing against a dress, he smelled for an instant the floral scent of the perfume she usually wore. He took his time, looking around with pleasure, considering. The simplicity surprised him, yet in some way it did not. “It suits you,” he said finally. “I like it.”

Gemma moved as if released, crossing the room to the tiny closet of a kitchen, filling a vase with water for the roses. “So do I. So does Toby, I think,” she said, nodding at her son, who was busily yanking out drawers from the bank beneath the garden windows. “But I’ve had a particularly severe thrashing from my mum this afternoon. She doesn’t think it a suitable place for a child.”

“On the contrary,” he said, wandering about the room on a closer tour of inspection. “There’s something rather childlike about it, like a playhouse. Or a ship’s cabin, where everything has its place.”

Gemma laughed. “I told her my granddad would have loved it. He was in the navy.” She placed the roses on the small coffee table, the splash of pink the single accent in the black and gray room.

“Red would have been the obvious choice,” he said, smiling.

“Too boring.” Two pairs of cotton knickers, a bit faded and frayed about the elastic, hung suspended in front of the radiator. Flushing, Gemma snatched them down and tucked them away in a drawer beside the bed. She lit lamps and closed the blinds, shutting out the twilit garden. “I’ll just get changed.”

“Let me take you out.” He still felt he needed to make amends. “If you don’t already have plans,” he added, giving her an easy out. “Or we’ll have a quick drink and catch up, and I’ll be on my way.”

She stood for a moment, jacket in one hand and hanger in the other, looking around the room as if assessing the possibilities. “No. There’s a Europa just around the corner. We’ll pick up a few things and cook.” She hung the jacket up decisively, then pulled jeans and a sweater from a chest beneath the rack.

“Here?” he asked, eyeing the kitchen dubiously.

“Coward. All it takes is a bit of practice. You’ll see.”

“It does have its limitations,” Gemma admitted as they pulled chairs up to the half-moon table. “But you learn to adapt. And it’s I not as though I have time to do much fancy cooking.” She looked pointedly at Kincaid as she filled his wineglass.

“Copper’s life. You’ll get no sympathy from me,” he said with a grin, but in truth he admired her determination. With its long, unpredictable hours and heavy caseload, CID was a tough proposition for a single mother, and he thought Gemma managed remarkably well. It didn’t do to let his compassion show, however, as she bristled at anything she could construe as special treatment.

“Cheers.” He lifted his glass. “I’ll drink to your adaptability anytime.” They’d cooked pasta on the gas ring and served it with ready-made sauce, a green salad, a loaf of freshly baked French bread and a bottle of fairly respectable red wine—not bad fare from a kitchen the size of a broom closet.

“Oh, wait. I almost forgot.” Gemma slipped out of her chair and rummaged in her handbag, retrieving a cassette tape. She popped the tape into the player on the shelf above the bed and brought the case to Kincaid. “It’s Caroline Stowe, singing Violetta in
Traviata
. It’s the last recording she made.”

Kincaid listened to the gentle, almost melancholy strains of the overture. As they shopped, he had told Gemma about his encounter with Sharon Doyle and his visits with Trevor Simons and the vicar, and Gemma had related her interviews at the Coliseum. She’d given her usual attention to detail, but there had
been an added element in her recital, an interest which stretched beyond the bounds of the case.

“This is the drinking song,” she said as the music changed. “Alfredo sings about his carefree life, before he meets Violetta.” Toby banged his cup enthusiastically on the table in time to the rollicking music. “Listen, now,” Gemma said softly. “That’s Violetta.”

The voice was darker, richer than he’d expected, and even in the first few phrases he could hear its emotional power. He looked at Gemma’s rapt face. “You’re fascinated by all this, aren’t you?”

Gemma sipped her wine, then said slowly, “I suppose I am. I never would have thought it. But there’s something…” She looked away from him and busied herself cutting Toby’s pasta into smaller pieces.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words, Gemma,” Kincaid said, a little amused. “You’re more likely to be guilty of the opposite sin. What is it?”

She looked up at him, pushing a stray copper hair from her cheek. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it,” she said, but her hand went to her chest in a gesture more eloquent than words.

“Did you buy this today?” he asked, tapping the cassette case. A younger Caroline Stowe looked back at him, her delicate beauty accented by the nineteenth-century costume she wore.

“At the ENO shop.”

He grinned at her. “You’re converted, aren’t you? A proselyte. I’ll tell you what—you interview Caroline Stowe tomorrow. We still need a more detailed account of her movements on Thursday evening. And you can satisfy your curiosity.”

“What about the autopsy?” she asked, wiping Toby’s hands with a cloth. “I’d expected to go with you.” She patted Toby on the bottom as she scooted him out of his chair with a whispered, “Jammy time, love.”

Watching her, Kincaid said, “I’ll manage it myself this time. You stay in town until you manage to see Tommy Godwin, then drive to Badger’s End and tackle Dame Caroline.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again after a moment and returned to collecting salad on her fork. Attending autopsies was a particular point of honor with her, and Kincaid felt surprised she hadn’t offered more of an objection.

“I’ve put Thames Valley onto tracing Kenneth Hicks,” he said,” pouring a little more wine into his glass.

“The bookie’s runner? Why would he want to get rid of his source of cash? They’ll never collect anything from Connor Swann now.”

Kincaid shrugged. “Maybe they wanted to make an example of him, start a few rumors among the big gamblers—this is what’s in store if you don’t pay up, mate.”

Gemma finished her pasta and pushed her plate away, then picked up another piece of bread and buttered it in an absent minded way. “But he did pay up, regularly. A bookie’s dream, I should think.”

“They could have had an argument over a payment. Maybe Connor found Kenneth was skimming off the top, threatened to tell the boss.”

“We don’t know that he was.” Gemma stood up and began clearing their dishes. “We don’t know much of anything, for that matter.” Setting down the stack of plates again, she ticked off on her fingers, “We need to map out Connor’s day. We know he had lunch at Badger’s End, and that he was meeting someone, but we don’t know who. Why did he go to London? Who did he see at the Coliseum? Where did he go that night, after he came back from London? Who did he see then?”

Kincaid grinned at her. “Well, that at least gives us someplace to start,” he said, viewing a return of her usual combativeness with relief.

After Gemma had put Toby to bed, he tried to help with the washing up, but the kitchen would not hold more than one at a time. “Sardines?” Kincaid suggested as he squeezed in behind her to put away the bread. The top of her head fit just under his chin, and he was suddenly aware of the curves of her body, aware of how easy it would be to put his hands on her shoulders and hold
her against him. Her hair tickled his nose and he stepped back to sneeze.

Gemma turned and gave him a look he couldn’t read, then said brightly, “Try the chair, why don’t you, while I finish up.”

Eyeing the curving chrome-and-black leather article dubiously, Kincaid said, “Are you sure it’s not an instrument of torture? Or a sculpture?” But when he lowered himself gingerly into it, he found it enormously comfortable.

His expression must have given him away, because Gemma laughed and said, “You didn’t trust me.”

She pulled a dining chair near him and they chatted amiably, finishing their wine. He felt at peace, free of the restless tension that had disturbed him earlier, reluctant to maneuver himself out of the chair and go home. But when he saw her smother a yawn, he said, “Early start for both of us. I’d better be off.” She didn’t demur.

It was only as he drove home that he realized he hadn’t told her of Sharon Doyle’s accusations that Julia Swann had killed her husband. Hysteria, he thought, shrugging. Not worth recounting.

A small voice reminded him that neither had he told her of Julia’s illness after her brother’s death, and his only excuse for this omission was that telling the vicar’s story smacked of betrayal in a way he couldn’t explain.

Backstage at the Coliseum should have prepared Gemma for Lilian Baylis House, but Alison’s description had misled her. “A big, old house, a bit difficult to get to. Used to be a recording studio for Decca Records.” From that Gemma envisioned a genteel place, set back in a large garden, populated by ghosts of rock stars.

“Bit difficult to get to” had proved to be more than an understatement. Not even her well-thumbed
London A to Z
prevented her from arriving a half-hour late for her appointment with Tommy Godwin, flustered, her hair escaping from its clip and her breath coming hard after a three-block sprint from the only available parking space. She felt the beginnings of a blister where her new shoe rubbed her heel.

The dark blue sign with its white ENO legend identified the
house easily enough, which was just as well, as it bore no resemblance whatsoever to Gemma’s fantasy. A square, heavy house with soot-darkened red brick, it stood sandwiched between a dry cleaners and an auto-parts shop in a busy shopping street just off the Finchley Road.