Mourn Not Your Dead (30 page)

Glancing at his watch, he said, “Look, Gemma, I have an idea. We can’t talk to Claire until she comes back from Dorking. I’ve just checked in with the Yard when I ran Nick back to Guildford and there’s no word on Ogilvie’s whereabouts, so we’ve reached a standstill on both fronts for the moment.” He squinted up at the sun. “Come for a walk with me.”

“Walk?”

“You know”—he mimed walking with his fingers on the tabletop—“locomotion with two legs. I think we have time before the light goes. We could climb Leith Hill. It’s the highest point in southern England.”

“I don’t have any boots,” she protested. “And I’m not dressed for—”

“Live dangerously. I’ll bet you’ve got trainers in your overnight bag in the boot, and I’ll loan you my anorak. It’s warm enough—I don’t need it. What have you got to lose?”

And so Gemma found herself striding along the road beside him, the nylon of his anorak swishing as she swung her arms. They left the road just past a tidy place called Bulmer Farm, and shortly they were climbing on the signposted path. At first, the land fell away on their right, the slope carpeted with russet leaves and punctuated by the skeletal trunks of pale-barked trees. Soon, however, the banks began to rise steeply on either side, and the path became a muddy rut.

Gemma hopped from dry spot to dry spot, rabbitlike, grabbing vegetation to steady herself and cursing Kincaid for his longer legs. “This is your idea of fun?” she panted, but before he could answer they heard a humming noise behind them. It was a mountain biker, kitted out in helmet and goggles, barreling full tilt along the path towards them. Gemma sprang to one side and scrambled up the bank, clutching a tree root as the biker whizzed by, splattering them with mud.

“Bloody bastard,” she seethed. “We ought to report him.”

“To whom?” asked Kincaid, eyeing the mud on his trousers. “The traffic police?”

“He’d no right—” Gemma said as she let go of the tree root and began a gingerly descent towards level ground. Then her feet shot out from under her. She twisted violently in midair and landed hard on one hip and one palm. Her hand stung like fire, and she snatched it up, swearing viciously.

Kincaid came and knelt beside her. “Are you all right?” The expression on his face told her he was biting back laughter, and that made her more furious.

“Don’t you know better than to touch a nettle?” he asked, taking her hand and examining her palm. He rubbed a smear of mud from her finger with his thumb, and his touch made her skin burn almost as fiercely as the nettle.

She withdrew her hand and pulled herself up, balancing carefully, then stepped for the next spot of dry ground.

“Look for a dock leaf,” Kincaid said from behind her, amusement still coloring his voice.

“Whatever for?” Gemma asked crossly.

“To stop the stinging, of course. Didn’t you ever have holidays in the country as a child?”

“My mum and dad worked seven-day weeks,” she said, standing on her injured dignity. Then after a moment she relented. “Sometimes we went to the seaside.”

It came back to her with the smell of salt air and candy floss—the bite of the water, always too cold for anyone sensible to bathe in, the feel of wet bathing dress and sand against her skin, the squabbling with her sister on the train home. But afterwards had come hot baths and soup and drowsing before the fire, and for a moment she felt a stab of longing for the unquestioned simplicity of it all.

When they reached the summit a half hour later, she sat gratefully on a bench at the base of the brick observation tower and let Kincaid fetch tea from the refreshment kiosk. Her thighs ached from the climb and her hip from her fall, but as she looked out across the hills she felt exhilarated, as if she’d reached the top of the world. By the time he returned with steaming polystyrene cups, she’d caught her breath and she looked up at him and smiled. “I’m glad I came now. Thanks.”

He sat on the bench beside her and handed her a cup. “They say that on a clear day you can see Holland from the top of the tower. Are you game?”

She shook her head. “I’m not very good with heights. This will do well enough.”

They sat for a while in silence, sipping the steaming tea and looking at the hazy smudge of London sprawling across the plain to the north. Then Gemma brought her knees up and swiveled around on the bench, tilting her face up to the sun.

Kincaid followed suit, shading his eyes with his hand. “Do you suppose that’s the Channel, just on the horizon?” he asked.

Gemma felt the tears smart behind her lids and leak from the corners of her eyes. She found she couldn’t speak.

Looking at her, Kincaid said anxiously, “Gemma, what is it? I didn’t mean—”

“Jackie …” she managed, then gulped and tried again. “I’ve just remembered. Jackie told me she meant to go there her next holiday. She’d always wanted to see Paris. She and Susan were going to the Chunnel train across to France. If I hadn’t—”

Kincaid took the cup from her shaking hands and set it on the bench. He put the flat of his hand against her back and began to rub in slow circles. “Gemma, it’s right to grieve, but you can’t go on blaming yourself for Jackie’s death. In the first place, we’re still not positive there’s a connection. And even if there is, Jackie was an adult and responsible for her own decisions. She helped you because she wanted to, not because you made her, and she went further than you’d asked because
she
was curious. Don’t you see?”

She shook her head mutely, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, but after a few minutes she relaxed against his hand and the tightness in her chest began to subside. Opening her eyes, she glanced at his face. His concern for her was evident in the crease between his brows, and it seemed to her that he’d acquired new lines around his eyes. She thought of him driving up from Surrey so that she wouldn’t receive the news of

Jackie’s death from an impersonal phone call. Such consideration deserved better treatment than she’d given him lately.

“The sun’s starting to sink,” he said. “Dusk will come on fast. We’d better start down while we can see where we’re going.”

They managed the last few hundred yards of the trail in gathering gloom, and by the time they reached the village, lights had begun to glow in a few of the houses.

Kincaid looked at Gemma hugging his anorak tighter around her as they faced into the wind. She hadn’t spoken on the way back from the tower, but he sensed no hostility towards him in her silence, only a withdrawing into herself. She had smiled at him and taken his hand willingly in the rough spots.

“Claire should be well back by now,” he said. “Let’s try the house first.”

“Like this?” Gemma gestured at her mud-spattered trousers and shoes.

“Why not? It will give us an air of country authenticity.”

The gate creaked as they let themselves into the Gilberts’ garden, and the shrubbery assumed shapes of unexpected menace in the dim light. Kincaid stopped when they rounded the corner into the back garden, not sure at first what felt odd. He held up a hand to halt Gemma and peered towards the dog’s run. Was that a shadow or a still, dark shape?

“Lewis?” he said softly, but the shape didn’t stir. Kincaid’s heart lurched in his chest. “Stay here,” he hissed at Gemma, but he felt her at his heels as he sprinted across towards the enclosure.

The dark shadow coalesced as he drew closer, became a sleek, black dog splayed on its side. Kneeling, Kincaid thrust a hand through the octagonal space in the wire, scraping the skin from his knuckles. His straining fingers touched the dog. The coat felt warm, and under his hand the flank rose gently.

“Is he …” Gemma didn’t finish her sentence.

“He’s breathing.” He saw a smudge on the concrete near
the dog’s head. Kincaid looked up at the dark windows of the house. “Something’s wrong, Gemma. You stay—”

“I’m bloody not letting you go in on your own,” she whispered. “So don’t even think it.”

They crossed the lawn together. When they reached the kitchen door, Kincaid eased it open and they moved through the mudroom as silently as wraiths. In the kitchen they stood in the dark, just touching. Kincaid turned full circle, willing his eyes to adjust, willing his ears to pick up a sound over the thumping of his heart.

After a long moment his pulse began to slow, and beside him he felt some of the tension drain from Gemma’s body. The noise came just as she drew breath to speak. His arm shot around her and he clamped his hand over her mouth, feeling the bite of her teeth against his palm as she gasped in surprise.

He heard it again, the faintest suggestion of a creak. The hair on the back of his neck rose. “The mobile phone,” he breathed at Gemma. “In my jacket, in the car. Go—”

The voice came from the darker oblong of the doorway into the hall. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

“DCI Ogilvie, I presume?” Kincaid’s voice sounded easily conversational, but Gemma could feel the tension in the hand across her mouth. She reached up carefully and tapped his hand, letting him know she understood, and it dropped away. He took a small step away from her and continued, “You’ve saved us a lot of trouble looking for you.”

“Don’t move.” The man said sharply. A click, and the light came on in the hall behind him, silhouetting his body but leaving his face in shadow. The light sparked from an object in his hand—flat and compact, it looked like a toy. A gun. Gemma thought desperately of the firearms chapter in her criminal investigation text, trying to place the gun—semiautomatic, a Walther, maybe—while at the same time a small detached part of her mind wondered what difference it made. She couldn’t judge the caliber. From where she stood the opening at the end of the barrel looked big enough to swallow her.

He moved another step into the room, throwing the gun into darkness again, but Gemma kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she knew it must be. “The pair of you are too clever by half,” he said, mocking them. “Now, the question is, what do I do with you?”

“Why not slip out the front as we came in the back?” asked Kincaid. He might have been inquiring about tomorrow’s weather.

“I tried.” There was a trace of humor in Ogilvie’s voice, for Gemma had no doubt now that it was he. “Damn Alastair and his paranoia. The front door has to be opened with a key, and I don’t happen to have it. And the windows seem to be stuck shut. So you can see my predicament. You two are all that stand between me and a tidy exit.”

Gemma’s tongue felt as if it had been glued to the roof of her mouth, but she tried to match Kincaid’s matter-of-fact tone. “There’s no point in killing us, you know. We’ve turned everything we know over to C&D.”

“Oh, but there is, Sergeant. I’d intended to brazen it out, come up with some plausible excuse for my sudden absence. They’ll not find anything concrete on me. But now that you’ve seen me here—”

“Why are you here?” asked Kincaid. “Satisfy my curiosity.”

Ogilvie gave an audible sigh. “Bloody Alastair managed to acquire some rather damaging evidence of my activities. I thought it prudent to get it back, but unfortunately he seems to have been more devious than I gave him credit for, and I’ve run out of time.”

Gemma’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light well enough so that she could see the planes of Ogilvie’s face and the glint of teeth as he spoke. He’d traded his usual Bond Street attire for nondescript jeans and anorak, and he looked even more dangerous without the civilized veneer. The gun made a small arcing movement as he shifted his aim from her to Kincaid and back again.

Kincaid moved a step nearer and put his arm around her, his fingers resting lightly on her shoulder. He meant more than comfort, she was sure, but what did he want her to do? All the should haves ran through her mind. They should have called for backup when they found the dog. She should have stayed outside, but would she have known Kincaid was in trouble before it was too late?

She felt Kincaid’s hand tense, then freeze as Ogilvie
drawled, “However, I’ve had a good run, and I have a considerable bit of money tucked away on the Continent. I think I might prefer to retire DCI Ogilvie and start afresh, rather than pop holes in you two. It makes such an unpleasant mess, and while I may have walked the other side of the line a few times, I haven’t resorted to murder. But I can’t have you raising the alarm too soon, can I? Sergeant—”

“What about Jackie?” Gemma burst out. “Doesn’t having her gunned down in the street count? Or was that all right because you didn’t get your hands dirty?”

“I had nothing to do with that,” said Ogilvie, sounding irritated for the first time.

“And Gilbert?” asked Kincaid. “Did you come here looking for the evidence before, and he surprised—”

There came the unmistakable sound of car tires on gravel, then the slamming of a door. Ogilvie swore, then laughed softly. “Well, I suppose we might as well turn on the lights and have a party. The more, the merrier.” Stepping forwards, he flipped the light switch, and Gemma blinked as Claire’s copper-shaded lamps came on. “Move!” he barked at them, motioning towards the far side of the kitchen with the gun. “Away from the door.” He smiled then, and Gemma shivered, for the light in his eyes reminded her of drawings she’d seen of Celtic warriors going into battle. David Ogilvie was enjoying himself.

Voices, then footsteps. The mudroom door opened. Claire Gilbert came through into the kitchen, saying, “What’s going—” She stopped as she took in the tableau before her. “David?” Her voice rose into a squeak of surprise.

“Hello, Claire.”

“But what… I don’t understand.” Claire looked from Ogilvie to Gemma and Kincaid, her face slack with incomprehension.

“I’d say ‘long time no see,’ but it’s not exactly true on my part.” Ogilvie shook his head regretfully. “You know you made the wrong decision all those years ago, don’t you, love? It would have cost me my promotion either way—Alastair
was vindictive as well as jealous—but at least I might have had you to console—”

“Mummy!” Lucy burst into the room with a wail of distress. “Something’s wrong with Lewis. I can’t wake—” She skidded to a stop beside her mother. “What—”