The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  “But—” Seeing Tim’s grin, Hazel stopped. They’d never told Holly she couldn’t have a Barbie, on the theory that the forbidden became more desirable, but they’d never bought her one, either. “Okay, sweetie,” she amended, trying not to grimace at the doll’s deformed body and feet. “Go play with her, then.” She ruffled her daughter’s dark curls.

  When Holly had run happily off, Tim touched his glass to hers and said, “Good call.”

  “Not tackling gender and body stereotyping during cocktail hour?”

  “Ooh,” he said, laughing, “I like it when you talk like a therapist.”

  Hazel smacked him on the arm. “Shut up.”

  “Seriously, she’ll get tired of her, and Barbie will be so over.”

  Holly’s singsong voice drifted to them from the bottom of the garden. When Hazel looked, she saw that Holly had managed to loop one of Barbie’s feet in the swing rope, and was now hanging the doll by one leg, upside down. She and Tim both started to laugh. “Sooner rather than later, I think,” Hazel managed through giggles. “You’re right, as usual.”

  “I try to live with it,” he said, still teasing, but Hazel went quiet, gazing out over the garden, and thinking they should put a light on a timer in the garage flat.

  She and Tim had both been family therapists, with separate practices. But when she’d come back to London after their separation, she hadn’t felt she had any business counseling others. “Physician, heal thyself,” she murmured.

  Tim gave her a sharp look.

  “I was thinking I could use a therapist’s advice,” she said, grasping for a logical change of subject.

  She saw the sudden tension as his fingers tightened on his glass. “What about?” he asked, so levelly that she knew the effort had cost him. He was afraid she was going to drop some kind of bombshell on him.

  “It’s about Melody Talbot.” She touched his arm lightly in assurance and felt him relax. “I saw her yesterday. It was very strange and it’s been nagging me since.” She told him about running into Melody in Kensington Square. “She seemed frantic, and almost . . . I don’t know . . . disassociated. The only reason she gave was she had been to her parents’ Sunday lunch and wasn’t feeling well.”

  “That sounds reasonable. Especially if her family is difficult.”

  “But it wasn’t reasonable,” Hazel insisted. “You know how it is when something is really wrong—you can feel it.”

  Tim was silent for a moment, watching Holly, then he said, “Melody had a bad time with that fire in St. Pancras, didn’t she? She could be dealing with some degree of posttraumatic stress.”

  Hazel nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. But I wondered—do you think I should say something to Gemma? As a friend?”

  “Melody’s friend, or Gemma’s friend?” Tim asked, frowning. “You may not be practicing, but you’re still a therapist, and that feels a bit like tale-telling to me.”

  “Damn.” Hazel leaned back and sipped at her wine. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “I think that you should have more faith in your own judgment. You’ll think of something.”

  Hazel considered this. “The first thing is to get her to talk to me. I’ll ask her to lunch.”

  “So what happened with the dishy detective constable?” Kincaid asked.

  DCI Ronnie Babcock snorted into his beer so forcefully that he had to wipe his face with the back of his hand. “Dishy? Jesus, Duncan, are you even living in the last century, much less this one? And she better not hear that you ever uttered that, or she’ll probably take out a contract on you.”

  Kincaid and his old schoolmate had retired to the Bowling Green, the comfortable pub in the shadow of St. Mary’s Church in the center of Nantwich, and just a short walk from Kincaid’s sister Juliet’s house. Rosemary had rung to say that Hugh was resting well and Kincaid had promised to help her get him settled at home in the morning.

  The constable in question was Detective Constable Sheila Larkin of the Cheshire Constabulary, who had been Babcock’s very capable assistant in the case Kincaid and Gemma had become involved in Christmas before last. “I thought you fancied her,” Kincaid said, unperturbed.

  “Not everyone can carry off going out with a coworker. And besides,” Babcock said, a little bashfully, “I had a better offer.”

  Kincaid raised his glass and clinked it against his friend’s. “I’ll drink to that.” While Babcock might have flirted with DC Larkin, he’d shown real concern for Juliet’s welfare when she was going through a difficult time. It was obvious that concern had blossomed into considerably more. “So do you have any, um, plans?” he asked.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going all brotherly and asking what my intentions are towards your sister?” Ronnie sounded only half mocking.

  Kincaid shrugged. When Kincaid had shown up for dinner at Juliet’s, Ronnie’s presence had merely confirmed what Kincaid already knew. “Just curious. You two seem well suited. And Juliet deserves some joy in her life.” Kincaid felt awkward, afraid he’d crossed the line into maudlin.

  But Ronnie said, quite seriously, “We’re just taking things slowly. We’ve both been through hard divorces and Juliet’s been through worse than that. The kids don’t need any big changes for a while, either.” He grinned. “Just getting to the point where I could officially spend the night was milestone enough.”

  “That’s probably more than I want to know,” Kincaid said, laughing.

  “How’s your Gemma, then?” asked Babcock.

  Gemma, Kincaid remembered, had been so taken with Ronnie Babcock that he’d felt a spark of jealousy. “She’s fine. Busy.” He’d rung her from Juliet’s before dinner, and while she’d obviously been relieved to hear that Hugh was doing well, she was just as obviously unhappy with him for not telling her sooner. He’d try her again that night, but first he wanted to talk to Ronnie. The problem was, he didn’t know where to start.

  “Are you okay?” asked Ronnie, frowning at him. “You’re not having an affair, are you?”

  “Bloody hell, Ronnie.” Kincaid stared back, horrified. “Of course not. What made you think that?”

  “You’ve had that distracted look all night. Checking your watch, checking your phone.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that,” Kincaid said, shaking his head. “My boss—my former boss—is in hospital. I was hoping for news.”

  “He’s ill, then?” Ronnie had relaxed, his expression sympathetic again.

  “No. Well, not exactly.” Kincaid told Ronnie first about the attack on Denis, then about Denis’s odd behavior since the autumn. “The investigation into the murder of a female senior officer—a rower—led us to uncover years’ worth of wrongdoing by a recently retired deputy assistant commissioner, Angus Craig. Then, we found that the DAC had raped and killed another senior female police officer.

  “My guv’nor, Denis, had us hold off overnight making the arrest.” Kincaid could feel himself beginning to sweat, although the evening was cool and the pub windows were open to the breeze. He cleared his throat. “In the early hours of the next morning, Craig, and his wife, were found dead, shot, their house burned around them.”

  “Murder/suicide?” asked Ronnie.

  “All the hallmarks. I felt Denis was culpable because he held off on the arrest.”

  Kincaid was suddenly aware of the sounds in the pub, the murmur of conversation, the clink of glasses. Had he been speaking too loudly? No one at the nearby tables seemed to have taken any notice. But Ronnie Babcock was watching him intently, a slight frown on his prematurely creased face.

  “And then what happened?” Ronnie asked.

  “That was my last case before I took leave to look after Charlotte.” They had talked about Charlotte at dinner with the children. He’d shown them photos, and Juliet had made him promise to bring the whole family for a visit when the boys started their summer break. He drank a little of his beer and went on. “When I came back to the Yard, my office had been cl
eared out and there was a transfer letter on my desk, signed by Denis. I was reassigned to the murder team at Holborn Station. And Denis was unreachable. There was no explanation. I thought”—he grimaced—“I thought it was a punishment for questioning his judgment. I was furious. But . . .” He’d got to the part that no one but Gemma knew, and he was reluctant, now that he’d come to it, to go on.

  But Ronnie just watched him steadily, and in some small part of his mind Kincaid thought, Good copper. Silence was the unfailing interview technique, and in the face of it he at last went on.

  “On Saturday, I found out Denis was back at the Yard. I tried to see him. Then he texted me, asking me to meet him at a pub in Holborn that night. He said he’d been away for health reasons, and that there were certain people in the Yard who wished him ill. He said he transferred me for my own good, so that I’d have less association with him. And he told me to keep my nose out of things if I knew what was good for me.”

  “A bit dramatic,” Ronnie ventured, but his expression didn’t display skepticism.

  “So I thought. But a few minutes after he left me that night, he was attacked and left for dead.” Kincaid grasped his pint in both hands. “I haven’t told anyone except Gemma that I met him that night.”

  “And he’s—”

  “Unconscious. Induced coma. They’re not sure if he’ll recover.”

  “But you don’t think it was random?”

  “No, I don’t believe it was a random mugging. Nothing was taken. If some schoolgirls hadn’t happened upon him, he’d have died.”

  “Coincidence, then?” Ronnie asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But if it wasn’t, and someone saw him meeting me . . .” Looking down, Kincaid realized his pint was empty. But when Ronnie mimed a refill, he shook his head, wanting his wits about him.

  “A wee bit paranoid, perhaps,” said Ronnie. “Unless”—he gave Kincaid his most intense blue gaze—“there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “I—there was—” Suddenly, Kincaid changed his mind about another round. He wasn’t going to get through this without a little Dutch courage. Without a word, he took Ronnie’s glass as well as his own to the bar. He came back, not with beer, but with two double measures of the pub’s best whisky.

  He took a swallow. When his eyes stopped watering and he could get his breath, he told Ronnie everything he could remember about Ryan Marsh, ending with the night Ryan Marsh died. “I found him. I didn’t tell anyone that I was there. Not even Gemma. And I hope to God none of the duty officers recognized me.”

  Ronnie sat quietly, sipping his whisky, his gaze unfocused. Drained, Kincaid closed his eyes, so that he was startled when Ronnie said softly, “You don’t think it was suicide, do you, mate?”

  “No. I don’t believe it. I never did. I’ve asked a pathologist friend to double-check the postmortem results.”

  Ronnie considered for a moment, then tapped his forefinger on the table. “So. Let me get this straight. You have two cops who seemed to be afraid of someone within the force. You suspect one was murdered—although you have no proof—and that one was the victim of a murder attempt—although you have no proof. You also think that you might be connected by the perpetrator—or perpetrators—with one or both of these men.”

  Kincaid nodded, reluctantly. “You think I’m bonkers.”

  “You’ve always been bonkers, at least according to your sister,” Ronnie said with an unexpected grin. Sobering again, he added, “However, in this case, I think maybe you are . . . not.”

  “What?” Kincaid frowned. “You’re telling me I’m not crazy?”

  “First of all, unless you’ve suddenly taken leave of your senses, you have good instincts, and good judgment. You should trust both.” Ronnie looked Kincaid in the eyes. “And there’s something else. There was a cop coming in here for a while. Early retirement from the Met, he said, moved back here to his home county for his health—although I got the impression that his health problems included drinking large amounts of alcohol on a regular basis. He was a DCI, he said, and when he’d had a good deal of booze, he muttered things about knowing too much and being turfed out because of it. I haven’t seen him lately. Maybe I should look him up. His name’s Frank Fletcher. Ring any bells?”

  When Kincaid shook his head, Ronnie went on. “Coincidence, probably. Alcohol-induced paranoia, a drunkard making excuses for his failures. But, when we talked about the job, I’d have sworn he was a good cop.” Ronnie shrugged. “There are always rumors about corruption within the Met—and any other force, for that matter. Mostly bunk, but—”

  “No smoke without fire?” The words had slipped out, but the adage brought unpleasant memories to Kincaid’s mind. He took another sip of his whisky, trying to vanquish the taste of ash.

  “So.” Ronnie tapped the table again. “If your pathologist friend says he thinks your undercover cop did not commit suicide, what exactly do you intend to do about it?”

  Kincaid blinked. “I don’t know.”

  Ronnie shook his head. He leaned towards Kincaid, elbows on the table. “You’re shooting in the dark. I don’t like it. You don’t know enough about either of these men. You don’t even know if your undercover cop was rogue or still on the Met’s payroll. Is there any connection between these two, Childs and Marsh?”

  “No. Not that I know—” Kincaid stopped, thinking furiously. “Wait. Ryan Marsh was inserted into the antidevelopment protest group in Camden months before Denis arranged my transfer there. That night, when we met, Denis said he sent me to Holborn because he trusted DCS Faith. But what if—what if he knew Ryan Marsh would be on my patch? But then he’d have to either have known Marsh, or known something about the group—” He stopped, rubbing his face. “That really is bonkers. You’re right. I’m running blind. I’d never go into a case this way.”

  Ronnie was so close now that Kincaid could feel his breath on his face and smell the tang of whisky. “You need to learn every single thing you can about this Marsh, and about your guv’nor,” Ronnie said, jabbing him in the chest with a forefinger. “And, listen, mate, you have got to tell Gemma. Now. Or you are going to be in a world of trouble.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gemma woke on Tuesday morning no less cross than she had gone to bed the night before. When Kincaid had rung for the second time, the children had been in bed and she’d been taking the dogs out. She had, of course, left her mobile on the kitchen table, so had missed his call by minutes. When she listened to his message, he said he was staying the night on Juliet’s sofa rather than going to his parents’ farm. He’d sounded a bit slurred.

  She hadn’t rung him back.

  She slept fitfully, tossing and turning and waking to look at the clock. In spite of the cocker spaniel and the two kittens curled on her feet, the bed felt empty and cold.

  When the sun rose, she was glad of an excuse to get up. As she got herself and the children ready for the day, she found herself looking forward to morning coffee and a chat with Melody. Then she realized she wasn’t going to Brixton, wasn’t seeing Melody. She had a different agenda.

  After MacKenzie had given her Hugo Gold’s name and phone number the night before, Gemma had rung Kerry Boatman with the information. Kerry had rung back a few minutes later, saying that Gold had agreed to see them at nine that morning, at Bill’s in Kensington.

  She and Kerry decided to meet at the entrance to the Kensington High Street tube a few minutes beforehand, as the café was in the tube station arcade.

  It was another bright day and Gemma’s temper improved as she stood outside the station, watching the bustle of Kensington High Street and enjoying the sun that—for the moment at least—felt pleasant. When Kerry appeared, coming from the direction of Earl’s Court Road, she looked more relaxed than Gemma had seen her.

  “I walked,” Kerry explained when Gemma told her she looked well. “Clears the cobwebs.” She slipped back into the navy suit jacket she’d slung over her shoulder. “And a
t least we have a place to start this morning, thanks to you.”

  “This seems an odd choice for an interview.” Gemma gestured at the arcade.

  “His suggestion. He said he lives in Holland Park and would be on the way to his university classes. Sounded quite cut up about the girl’s death.”

  “He knew about Reagan?”

  “Not until your friend Mrs. Williams rang him last night—or so he says, anyway. Let’s see what he has to say.”

  “Do you know this café?” Gemma asked, gesturing at the arcade.

  “I stop there sometimes on my way home for a latte. It’s a nice place to sit for a bit and think—between one fray and the next, if you know what I mean.”

  “Where do you live?” Gemma asked.

  “Peckham Rye. The heart of suburbia, I know. But my husband works for Lambeth Council and it gives him an easy commute.” Kerry glanced at her watch. “Let’s see if they’re here.”

  Gemma followed Kerry through the door and breathed in the smell of coffee and bacon.

  It was a comfortable space, done in wood and brick and leatherette banquettes, with a spiraling iron staircase to an upper level. There were colorful enamel teapots, empty biscuit and oatmeal tins holding cutlery, and overall a cheerful hum. Gemma thought it would be a pleasant place to meet friends for a meal or a cup of tea, or to come for a bit of a think. She could understand why Kerry liked it.

  She recognized Hugo Gold immediately, sitting on a banquette near the back. He looked older and thinner than he had in the photos on Reagan’s corkboard, and Gemma wondered if the hollows under his eyes were chronic, or due to a sleepless night. Still, with his blond hair in its slightly feminine cut and his regular features, he was striking. A young man and a young woman sat at the table with him.

  “That him?” Kerry murmured as she waved off the seating host. When Gemma nodded, she said, “Recognized him from your description. Looks like he brought reinforcements.”

  They crossed the room, weaving past tables. Hugo Gold looked up at them blankly, then, when he realized they were heading for him—Kerry’s navy suit screamed cop—Gemma saw him stiffen. The young man, who had been speaking to him earnestly, stopped and turned to look.