Mourn Not Your Dead (20 page)

“He even looked after Lucy for me until she was old enough to stay alone in the house. Of course, when Geoff left school and took that job in Wimbledon they drifted apart a bit, but since he’s come back they’ve seemed closer than ever.”

Kincaid wondered if they were sleeping together—Lucy was certainly over the age of consent—but his instinct told him no. There had been something almost monastic in the atmosphere of Geoff’s room. “It must have been hard for Lucy when he went to prison.”

“They wrote to each other. It was a difficult time, but she
never talked about it. Lucy’s always been a bit of a loner. She gets along with kids at school and in the village well enough; she just never forms close attachments. Geoff seems to be her anchor.” She looked towards the pub. Dusk had crept upon them, and light shone visibly from the back window. “Look, I must see if there is anything I can do for Brian. He’ll be frantic with worry.” She stepped forwards, but Kincaid touched her arm.

“There’s nothing you can do here. Brian’s gone to headquarters with Geoff They’ll make him cool his heels in reception, but he insisted on it.”

“He would.” In the light spilling from the pub, her shirt flared white between the lapels of her jacket. Kincaid saw it rise and fall as she sighed. “And you’re right, of course. I need to deal with my own child.”

Kincaid sat with his hand on the key for a moment, started the car, then turned it off and reached for his pocket phone instead. When he had Deveney on the line, he said, “Don’t start without me, Nick. I’ll be along in a bit.”

The first customer’s car pulled into the pub car park as he pulled out, but the houses clustered around the green looked dark and silent, as did the shop when he reached it. He could just make out the
CLOSED
sign, but yellow light filtered through the curtain chinks in the upstairs windows.

The stairs were inky, invisible but for the white rail under his hand, but he persevered to the top and knocked smartly on Madeleine Wade’s door. “You really should do something about a light,” he said when she answered.

“Sorry,” she said, frowning at the fixture. “Must have just burned out.” She motioned him inside and shut the door. “Should I assume this is a social call, Superintendent, since you are unaccompanied by minions?”

He gave a snort of laughter as he followed her into the kitchen. “Minions?”

“Such a nice word, isn’t it? I do like words with descriptive power.” As she spoke she rummaged in various cupboards. “Most people’s vocabularies are dismally bland, don’t you think? Ah, success,” she added as she fished a corkscrew triumphantly from a drawer. “Will you have some wine with me, Mr. Kincaid? Sainsbury’s is remarkably up-market these days. You can actually get something quite decent.”

Madeleine filled two slender glasses with a pale gold chardonnay, then led the way back to the sitting room. Candles burned, adding their flickering light to that of two shaded table lamps, and the music he’d admired before played softly in the background. “Expecting a client, Miss Wade?” he asked as he accepted a glass and sat down.

“This is just for me, I’m afraid.” Slipping out of her shoes, she tucked her feet up on the settee, and the marmalade cat jumped up beside her. “I try to practice what I preach,” she said with a chuckle as she rubbed the cat under its chin. “Stress reduction.”

“I could do with a bit of that.” Kincaid sipped his wine, holding it for a moment in his mouth. The flavors exploded on his tongue—buttery rich, with a touch of the oak found in good whiskey, and beneath that a hint of flowers. The sensation was so intense that he wondered if he were suffering from some sort of perceptual enhancement.

“Lovely, volatile molecules.” Madeleine closed her eyes as she sipped, then gazed at him directly. In the candlelight her eyes looked green as river moss. “How can I help you, Mr. Kincaid?”

It occurred to him that in the few minutes he’d been in the flat, he had ceased to regard her as homely. It was not that her features had altered but rather that the normal parameters of judging physical beauty seemed to have become meaningless. He felt light-headed, although he’d barely touched his wine. “Are you a witch, Miss Wade?” he asked, surprising himself, then he smiled, making a joke of it.

She returned the smile with her characteristic wry amusement. “No, but I’ve considered it quite seriously. I know several, and I incorporate some aspects of their rituals into my practice.”

“Such as?”

“Blessings, protective spells, that sort of thing. All quite harmless, I assure you.”

“People keep assuring me of a lot of things, Miss Wade, and quite frankly, I’m getting a bit fed up.” He set his glass on the table and leaned forwards. “There’s a conspiracy of silence in this village. A conspiracy of protection, even. You all must have known Geoff Genovase’s history, must have considered the possibility that he might be responsible for your thefts. Yet no one said a word. In fact, you were reluctant to talk about the thefts at all. Were there others that went unreported, once the word got out?”

He sat back and retrieved his glass, then said more slowly, “Someone murdered Alastair Gilbert. If the truth goes undiscovered, that knowledge will eat away at this village like a cancer. Each person will wonder if his friend or neighbor deserves his loyalty, then wonder if the friend or neighbor suspects him. The snake is in the garden, Miss Wade, and ignoring it won’t make it go away. Help me.”

The music tinkled in the silence that followed his words. For the first time, Madeleine didn’t meet his eyes but stared into her glass as she swirled the liquid slowly around. At last, she looked up and said, “I suppose you’re right. But none of us wanted the responsibility for harming an innocent.”

“Things are never quite that simple, and you are perceptive enough to be aware of that.”

She nodded slowly, acquiescing. “I’m still not sure what you want me to do.”

“Tell me about Geoff Genovase. Claire Gilbert described him as childlike. Is he simple, a bit slow?”.

“Just the opposite, I’d say. Highly intelligent, but there is something a bit childlike about him.”

“How so? Describe it for me.”

Madeleine sipped her wine and thought for a moment, then said, “In the positive sense I’d say that he has a very well-developed imagination and that he still has the capacity to enjoy the small things in life. On the negative side, I think that he may not always face things in an emotionally adult way … that he retreats to his fantasy life rather than face unpleasantness. But then most of us have been guilty of that at one time or another.”

Especially lately, thought Kincaid, then wondered if she could read his flicker of embarrassment. “Madeleine,” he said, deliberately dropping the formality of “Miss Wade,” “can you see the potential for violence?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been presented with a clear before and after example. I can sense chronic anger, as I told you yesterday, but I have no way of knowing when, or if, it will explode.”

He said casually, swirling his wine as Madeleine had done, watching its legs make ribbon patterns on the inside of the glass, “And is Geoff angry?”

She shook her head. “Geoff is
frightened
, always. Being here seems to ease him—sometimes he just comes and sits for an hour or so, not speaking.”

“But you don’t know why?”

“No. Only that’s he’s been that way as long as I’ve known him. They came to the village some years before I did. Brian gave up a job as a commercial traveler and bought the Moon.” She shifted a little in her seat, and the cat stood up, giving her an affronted look before jumping to the floor. “Look,” Madeleine said abruptly, “if I don’t tell you this, that nasty Percy Bainbridge probably will, and I’d rather you heard it from me.

“You might say that Geoff had good reason to hate Alastair Gilbert. When Geoff got into trouble, Brian begged Alastair to help him. He explained about the blackmail and Geoff’s illness, explained that Geoff would never have participated
voluntarily. Just a good word in the magistrate’s ear might have lightened Geoff’s sentence, perhaps even got him off on probation. But Alastair refused. He went on about the sanctity of the law, but we all knew that was just an excuse.” Her lips twisted in a grimace. “Alastair Gilbert was a self-righteous prig who enjoyed playing god, and Geoff’s trouble gave him an opportunity to exercise his power.”

They went into the interview room together, Kincaid and Gemma and Nick Deveney. Kincaid had asked Deveney to let Gemma conduct the interrogation and had briefed her on the results of their search. “I’ll be prepared to play bad cop if necessary,” he’d told her, “but terrified as he is already, I’m not sure that would be a very effective strategy.”

Geoff Genovase sat huddled on the hard wooden chair, looking defenseless and uncomfortable in faded jeans and a thin cotton T-shirt. The room’s uncompromising light gave Kincaid his first opportunity to study him closely. High, flat cheekbones gave the young man’s face a slightly Slavic cast, and his eyes, though wary, were large, dark-lashed, and a true, clear gray. It was an honest, guileless visage, with no hint of meanness. Kincaid wondered, as he often did, at how easily one’s perception of others was influenced by the simple combination of genes that made up a human face.

“Hullo, Geoff.” Gemma sat directly opposite him, elbows on the table. “I’m sorry about all this.”

He nodded and gave her a shaky smile.

“I’d like to get this business sorted as quickly as possible, so that you can go home.”

Kincaid and Deveney had flanked her but sat back a bit, allowing Geoff to focus on her.

“I’m sure this must be difficult for you,” Gemma continued, “but I need you to tell me about the things we found in your room.”

“I never meant to—” Geoff cleared his throat and started
again. “I never intending keeping them. It was just a game, something to—” He stopped, shaking his head. “You won’t understand.”

“A game you played with Lucy?”

This brought a nod. “Yes, but how did you—” Beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip. “Lucy didn’t know,” he said, his voice rising. “Honestly, I never told her the t-truth about where the talismans came from. Sh-she would have been really angry with me.”

“Lucy told us a little bit about the game. She also told us she thought you collected the things from jumble sales.” A hint of disapproval crept into Gemma’s voice. “She trusted you.”

“Lucy knows about … this?” Geoff whispered, ashen. When Gemma nodded confirmation, he closed his eyes for a moment, clenching his fists in a gesture of despair.

Gemma leaned even nearer, until her face was a mere foot from his. “Listen, Geoff, I understand that you meant to help Lucy. But how could you play with things that were tainted by dishonesty—lying
and
stealing?”

A pulse ticked in the hollow of Geoff’s throat, and the rise and fall of his collarbone were sharply visible beneath the black-and-white dragon painted on his T-shirt. Gemma, pale and tired but resolutely caring, held his gaze transfixed.

She had a rare and instinctive talent for forming a connection and getting right at the emotional heart of things, and when Geoff’s eyes filled with tears and he covered his face with his hands, Kincaid knew she had done it once again.

“You’re right,” he said, voice muffled. “I hated taking things from my friends, but I couldn’t seem to help it. And the game wasn’t working. I told myself I didn’t know why, but I was just too ashamed to admit it. I kept telling Lucy she wasn’t trying hard enough.”

“Trying hard enough at what?”

Geoff lifted his head. “Becoming the character. Transcending the game.”

“And what would happen then?” asked Gemma, sounding only reasonably curious.

Shrugging, he said, “We’d live
this
life on a different level, be more engaged, more dedicated—I can’t explain. But then that’s only my idea, and it’s probably total bullshit, anyway.” He sat back in his chair, looking tired and defeated.

“Maybe,” said Gemma softly, “and maybe not.” She pushed a wisp of hair back into her plait and took a breath. “Geoff, did you take anything for the game from Lucy’s house?”

He shook his head. “I don’t go there if I can help it. Alastair doesn’t—didn’t approve of me.”

Kincaid had no trouble imagining how Alastair Gilbert would have felt about Geoff or what he might have said.

“Maybe Wednesday night was an exception,” persisted Gemma. “Maybe there was something you needed, and Lucy wasn’t home. You’ve slipped in and out of other people’s houses easily enough—we have the evidence of that—maybe you thought you’d just nip in for a minute and no one would be the wiser. Except Alastair came home unexpectedly and caught you. Did he threaten to send you to jail again?”

Geoff shook his head, more vehemently this time. “No! I never went near there, I swear, Gemma. I didn’t know anything had happened until Brian saw the police cars, and then I was frantic because I thought something must have happened to Lucy or Claire.”

“Why?” asked Gemma. “Why not assume that the commander, a middle-aged man in a high-stress job, had dropped dead of a massive coronary?”

“I don’t know.” Geoff wound a finger in his hair and tugged at it, a curiously feminine gesture. “I just didn’t think about him, I suppose because he’s not often home that time of day.”

“Really?” Gemma sounded puzzled. “It was almost half past seven when the nine-nine-nine call came through.”

“Was it?” Shifting in his chair, Geoff rubbed a thumb against his bare wrist. “I didn’t realize. I haven’t worn a watch
since I bid Her Majesty’s hospitality farewell,” he said with an unexpected trace of humor.

“You know I have to ask you this—” Gemma gave him an answering smile. “Where were you between six o’clock and half past seven on that Wednesday evening?”

Geoff dropped his laced fingers into his lap. “I’d finished in Becca’s garden—about five, I’d say it was—then I came in and had a bath to get the muck off.”

He’s on firm ground now, thought Kincaid, watching Geoff’s relaxed posture.

“And after that?” asked Gemma, settling a bit more comfortably into her chair.

“I got on-line. I’d been looking for some communications software that might perform a little better than what I’ve been using. Brian stopped by for a word at one point, but I’m not sure when.”