A rush of anger made Kincaid fight to keep his voice level. “Yes. One of the best. And he will continue to be so.”
Tom Faith gave a quick nod of agreement. “We all know Denis Childs is too stubborn to give up.”
Had Denis been too stubborn for his own good? Kincaid suddenly felt he couldn’t stay in the claustrophobic waiting room a moment longer. He apologized to Diane Childs, who said, “Of course, you must go. Denis will appreciate your taking so much time from your family on a Sunday.” She, too, emphasized the present tense, and her smile was almost conspiratorial. Realizing that he liked her very much, Kincaid gave her a quick hug, then took his leave of the senior officers.
Once he was out of the building he found it easier to breathe. As he walked to the hospital car park, he went round and round the same series of events.
Denis Childs had been worried enough about something—or someone—that he had sent Kincaid an anonymous text on what must have been a burner phone, setting up a meeting in a place where neither of them was known. Once there, he’d been his usual cagey self, but had warned Kincaid against some shadowy people within the force and told him not to meddle in things he didn’t understand. A few minutes later, he had been brutally assaulted.
It was wrong, all wrong, just like Ryan Marsh’s death.
A roaring noise he’d been half ignoring grew louder. Looking up, his saw the distinctive red of the air ambulance as the helicopter descended towards the rooftop landing pad. Perhaps at that very moment someone else’s life hung in the balance. Denis Childs had been given a chance. Ryan Marsh had had none.
Kincaid stopped, watching the helicopter set down, his mind only half engaged with the scene before him. One death, one attack that might yet prove fatal. What would happen next? Was he at risk? Was Gemma?
He had to get to the bottom of this, and he was beginning to believe that he had to start with the death of Ryan Marsh. But he needed help, and he didn’t know where to turn or who he could trust.
The helicopter settled like a great brooding bird, its blades still. Kincaid wondered if whoever had arrived from the air would leave via the morgue.
The morgue.
Of course. He was an idiot not to have seen it.
He knew exactly who could help him, and exactly what he would ask.
Chapter Seven
May 1994
Someone was smoking a joint. That was always a ticklish situation at these little get-togethers. Most of them smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, and no one wanted to play the narc and give it the “So, who is it, then?” But the May night was unseasonably warm and the windows of the first-floor flat in Earl’s Court were open to catch any breath of breeze. All they needed was for a neighbor or a passerby to report them.
While it was certainly not condoned, a blind eye was turned to minor drug use—they were, after all, supposed to stay in character, even here. But the lot of them getting arrested for something as petty as possession of a little weed would not go over well with the brass.
Not that any of them were drug dealers, mind you, that wasn’t the mission. But they were rebels—anarchists, some of them—and a little of this and a little of that came with the territory. Most of them didn’t let it go further. At least as far as he knew.
He wondered if there was a snitch among them tonight. There was something about Mickey, the newest recruit, that rubbed him up the wrong way. The man had a bland, freckled face and hair like a puff of duck’s down, and he was always bloody smiling.
They were an odd bunch, no doubt about it. Less than a dozen men—and at the moment, two women, although Sheila and Lynn hadn’t shown up yet tonight—scruffy and earnest, they were Special Branch’s darlings. And they were professional liars, the lot of them. They grew their hair—or shaved it, if their targets were skinhead groups. Thank God he hadn’t had to do that—he’d look like André the Giant.
They changed their names. They spent one night a week at home with their families, and the rest living their cover lives, invented with histories and exit strategies that would have done Tolstoy proud.
But every Wednesday night they met in this run-down flat behind Earl’s Court tube station, where the floor vibrated with the rumble of the trains beneath them. It was “An opportunity to share and de-stress,” supposedly, but they were expected to stay in persona, even with their fellow undercover officers. It made for some strange conversations, and was anything but de-stressing. Nor was it comfortable. The ratty sofa and chairs had once been brown, the tiny kitchen didn’t bear thinking about, and someone had hung a biohazard sign on the door to the toilet, which wasn’t far from the truth. It might be safe but it wasn’t much of a house, he thought, and smiled a little at his own lame humor.
“What’s so funny, mate?” asked Mickey. “Want to share it with us?”
So he was watching, the little bugger, but for whom? His handler? If that were the case it would mean that somebody, somewhere up the ranks, didn’t trust him. Not good news. “Not anything you’d understand, Mickey, lad,” he said easily, and saw the man’s painful flush.
“Fuck you,” Mickey countered, with his usual originality.
The exchange drew a few looks. Jim Evans, a big, bald bloke from Essex, laughed and said to Mickey, “Have another beer, man. Chill, you know?” The talk went back to murmurs, and Jim pulled another Carlsberg out of a paper sack, passing it to the man beside him, Dylan West.
Dylan West, a poser if ever there was one. Tall and thin, with dark, brooding eyes that made women think he was deep, and an ingrained air of superiority. They’d been at the academy together. He hadn’t liked him then and he liked him even less now. Trust the wanker to pick a name straight out of a bodice ripper.
There was a jaunty rap at the door and Jim jumped up to open it. “Sorry we’re late to the party, boys,” said Sheila, holding up a bottle of wine in each hand. “But I’m sure we’ll make up for it,” she added, grinning as she sashayed into the room, followed by Lynn.
Sheila was always in the lead. With her combat boots, short skirt, and the T-shirt hugging her small but obviously bra-less breasts, she fit the part, except that no one knew exactly what part that was. If they all walked a fine line between staying in character but not talking about their specific assignments, Sheila never crossed it. He sometimes wondered if she was playing a part at all. If so, it was as natural for her as breathing. And he wondered if Lynn minded.
He knew Lynn’s brief because they’d begun at the same time and she’d confided in him. She’d been given a secretarial job at British Gas, then instructed to hang about on the fringes of a back-to-the-earth eco group, voicing timid doubts about the morality of her employer. He didn’t think that in reality there was anything mousy about Lynn at all, but she managed to inhabit her character just as convincingly as Sheila did hers.
“It’s about time things got interesting around here,” said Mickey with an obvious leer, and someone else gave a wolf whistle. The temperature seemed to have gone up in the room right along with the level of testosterone. The atmosphere in the room had changed—he could feel it.
This whole thing was a very bad idea, he thought, looking round the room as wine was poured into paper cups and more cigarettes were lit. Someone turned up the sound on the cheap boom box on the coffee table and Aerosmith’s “Livin’ on the Edge” blared out.
He wondered that no one else could sense disaster in the air.
Monday morning, Melody was awakened by the light from the flat’s east windows. She opened her eyes, squinted at the brightness, and closed them again. She lay still for a moment, trying to hold on to snatches of a pleasant dream, but it was gone. Oh, well, it had been nice while it lasted . . . There had been dancing in it somewhere, something she never did. With a little sigh of regret, she stretched and opened her eyes again, scooping her mobile from the coffee table to check the time. It was 6 a.m. She’d slept for twelve hours. And if she’d stayed on the sofa again, at least this time she’d had a pillow and a duvet, and there wa
s an empty cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table rather than an empty bottle of wine.
Having left the café yesterday with a mumbled excuse to Hazel, she’d blindly set off walking, taking great gulps of air like a winded runner. She couldn’t let herself think about Ryan. She couldn’t let herself picture his blue eyes the way she’d first seen them in his smoke-smudged face. They’d gone into the fire at St. Pancras together, three months ago, and they’d both survived. And now he was gone.
Walking faster, she fought the nausea, concentrating on breathe in, breathe out. Slowing at last, she’d found herself outside High Street Kensington tube station. What the hell was wrong with her? She rubbed her palms against her cheeks.
She needed to get to Oxford Street. She’d promised Andy, before he left, that she’d look in on the cat, but she still felt too shaky to drive. Not to mention that it nearly required an act of God to find a parking spot near Andy’s flat in Hanway Place. The tube, then, she’d decided, glad it was Sunday because she knew she couldn’t have borne the weekday crush.
Bert, Andy’s big ginger cat, had been happy to see her, butting against her ankles and purring madly. After checking his food, water, and litter tray, she sat down on the futon and lifted him into her lap. But the cat soon tired of the attention and stalked to the other end of the futon, settling down to groom his paws with great deliberation. Melody hadn’t grown up with cats and it had taken some adjustment for her to learn that Bert’s sudden rebuffs weren’t personal.
They’d had dogs in the country house, a succession of spaniels and retrievers, but cats had been strictly relegated to the stables. “I should think you’d be glad of the company,” she said aloud, but Bert flicked his tail and gave her a glint from his golden eyes.
Restless, she stood and roamed the flat, touching Andy’s guitars, straightening posters, brushing the dust from the top of the turntable cover. She’d stayed here often when Andy was just out and about, but now she felt awkward, out of place. She’d slept here, too, for a few months more often than she did at home. A glance at the futon made her think of it open, the covers rumpled, and she felt hollow with sudden, fierce desire. Time to go.
Scribbling a note for the neighbor who was looking after Bert, she let herself out with a last long look round the flat, wondering if she would see it quite that way again.
Back in Kensington, she’d hurried past her parents’ town house to retrieve her car, then driven the short distance to her flat just north of Notting Hill Gate. Her father owned this flat in the 1930s mansion block. Her living here had been their compromise when she took the job—a job her parents didn’t approve of—with the police. They’d wanted to feel that she was at least living someplace safe. Melody had never particularly liked the flat, never invited anyone there, and had done nothing to make it seem as if it belonged to her. But suddenly she’d wanted nothing more than to shut herself in and lock out everything and everyone else . . .
Enough, she thought now. What good had running away done, other than getting her a decent night’s sleep? She sat up and threw off the duvet. How humiliated would she be if anyone learned how she’d behaved yesterday? Hopefully Hazel wouldn’t have said anything to Gemma.
She was fine, just fine. She’d only needed a rest, and a fresh start.
A run and a shower later, she put on her best red skirt and red silk blouse. No dark suits today. She was going to start as she meant to go on. Bold. No nonsense.
But before putting her mobile in her bag she checked for missed calls. She was early, but that didn’t mean that something important couldn’t have come in from work. There were no new calls. Nor had there been anything last night from Andy, or Doug, or Gemma. Shrugging, she popped the phone in her bag and let herself out of the flat. Why had she thought she needed any of them?
Melody walked out of the building with a deliberate attitude to her step, then stopped short. A late-model, gun-metal-gray Mercedes sedan idled against the curb. Through the tinted windows she made out her father, using the steering wheel as a prop for a folded newspaper. He was working the Times crossword. As he did every morning, in ink. He timed himself. He was bloody fast and seldom wrong. She’d always thought it odd that Ivan didn’t play chess, but he claimed he had no patience waiting for someone else to make a move.
Glancing up, he saw her, put down the paper, opened the door, and stepped out. Ivan Talbot was dressed for work, early as it was, in a perfectly tailored Saville Row suit a shade lighter than his car. His well-barbered fair hair gleamed in the sun and Melody noticed that the silver was definitely overtaking the blond. An elegant man, her father, and a powerful one. Certainly a man not to be taken lightly when he had a mission.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Melody eyed him warily.
Ivan kissed her on the cheek and she caught the spicy scent of his cologne. “You look bright as a poppy this morning.”
She stepped back. “Dad.”
“Considerably better than yesterday, I must say. You worried your mother. She asked me to check on you.”
Worrying her mother was a cardinal sin in her father’s eyes. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t . . . feeling well. A bug or something. I’ll ring her today.”
Ivan regarded her, his face unreadable. Passersby parted around them and fleetingly Melody wondered what they must think. The well-off older man, the car, the younger woman. But Londoners were not a curious lot as a rule, and no one gave them a second glance.
Nodding as if that were settled, Ivan said, “You’d best do that. But I thought you might like an update on your chief super.”
“He’s not my—” she began, but the automatic protest died on her lips. “What? Is he—”
“Stable. But not conscious. And a little bird said that his wallet and phone were on him when he was found.”
“How do you—” Melody stopped. There was no point in asking. Her father had more snitches than the Met.
“So if he was mugged, they were interrupted,” Ivan continued.
“You don’t think so.” Melody frowned. “You think he was . . . attacked? But why?”
Ivan shrugged. “Random viciousness, maybe. But there have been rumors about Denis Childs for years.”
“What rumors?” Melody managed to say around the cold knot that was forming in her chest.
“Oh, a checkered past. Friends in the wrong places. You know the sort of thing.” He paused, as if considering his words. “I’m just wondering if maybe something caught up with the elusive Detective Chief Superintendent Childs.”
Charlotte tugged hard on Gemma’s hand and came to a dead stop in the middle of the pavement. “Mummy, I don’t want Oliver to go live with somebody else.”
“Lovey, Oliver isn’t going anywhere. Remember, we talked about that?” That was an understatement, as they’d had the same conversation a dozen times since yesterday, and Gemma was struggling to hold on to her patience. She was late getting Charlotte to her school near Pembridge Gardens because all the kids had been cranky and uncooperative that morning, and Duncan, whose day it was to do the school runs, had announced he wanted to go into Holborn early. “You’re going to see Oliver in just a minute, if we hurry,” she said, determinedly cheerful.
But Charlotte was not going to be jollied. She tucked her head into Gemma’s shoulder and wrapped her legs around Gemma’s waist, clinging like a limpet and beginning to sniffle. “I don’t want to go to school.”
“I’m sorry, love, but sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do,” said Gemma, and instantly hated herself for it. Of course it was true, but no one knew that better than Charlotte.
Charlotte had come home from the Williamses’ distraught, and Gemma knew she couldn’t have helped overhearing talk about Reagan Keating’s death. For Charlotte, her parents’ deaths had meant the end of everything that was familiar, and a new home, a new family. She’d obviously translated that into worry over losing Oliver.
“I don’t want to,” Charlotte wailed, the sniffles threa
tening to turn into sobs. “I want to go home. With you.”
Just then, the town house door opened and the headmistress herself stood there waiting for them with a smile. “Now, Miss Charlotte,” she said briskly, taking Charlotte from Gemma’s arms. “We have some special treats this morning you don’t want to miss. You can’t have a treat if you’re crying, can you?” Over Charlotte’s head, she mouthed, “I heard. Go.” She made a walking motion with her fingers. “Wave at Mummy, now,” she instructed Charlotte, and as soon as Charlotte had given Gemma a teary salute, she stepped inside and closed the door smartly behind them.
Gemma stood for a moment, feeling ridiculously bereft, then shook her head and started back to the car. Of course Charlotte would be fine, and maybe if she was in charge of hordes of under fives every day, she’d have Miss Jane’s knack with them. She pulled up her shoulder bag and started for the car.
But the removal of one problem allowed her mind to go back to the other, nagging worry—Duncan. When he’d come home from the London yesterday afternoon he’d only given her the bare details of his visit, then he’d been silent as a tomb the rest of the evening. She’d have put that down to simple distress over the condition of a friend, except that he’d admitted that he hadn’t mentioned that he’d met with Denis.
“You haven’t told anyone?” he’d said sharply when she’d brought it up.
“No. Why didn’t you tell Chief Superintendent Faith?” she’d asked, frowning.
“Let’s just keep it to ourselves for the moment, okay?” had been his oblique answer.
She hadn’t pushed him. She knew he was keeping secrets, and she intended to make him level with her. But she needed some time alone with him, away from the kids.
Her phone rang. Juggling her keys, she pulled her mobile from her bag and glanced at the screen. It was Marc Lamb, her former boss at Notting Hill nick. And he was calling on his personal phone.
The Garden of Lamentations Page 9