The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  “Christ,” said Kerry, coming up behind Gemma, just as Gemma saw that towel was stained with blood.

  “Miss Ford!” Gemma ran to her. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Asia Ford started to shake her head, then winced. “I was just going into the greenhouse for something. I don’t remember now what it was. And, then, the next thing I knew, my face was on the bricks, and when I tried to move, my head hurt like bloody hell. Did I fall?”

  “Let’s have a look, shall we?” Gemma said. Mrs. Armitage, who’d been hovering, handed Gemma a clean tea towel and Gemma smiled her thanks. First, she looked right into Asia’s eyes, and saw to her relief that the pupils were not dilated. Then, she moved round behind the chair and very gently lifted the stained towel. Asia’s fine, light brown hair was matted around the wound with drying blood, but even so, Gemma could see the gash in the scalp. It was below the crown, and just a bit to the right of center. The wound was still seeping and its edges were ragged.

  “Ouch,” she said, folding the clean towel into a pad and placing it carefully over the injury. “You’ve got quite a cut there. Do you remember feeling faint? Hitting your head on something as you fell?”

  “No. I rang you, though, didn’t I? I remember taking the phone with me out to the greenhouse, in case you rang me back. I must have dropped it, mustn’t I?”

  “We’ll have a look. I’m sure we’ll find it,” Gemma reassured her.

  “Was that you? At the door?” Asia still sounded muzzy. “I heard the bell but I couldn’t quite manage to get up . . .” Asia wrinkled her brow in puzzlement. “I don’t understand. How did you get in the house if I didn’t let you in?”

  “Mrs. Armitage brought us through the garden. Miss Ford, you’re going to need some stitches in that cut, I’m afraid. And the medics will want to give you a good going-over.” She glanced at Kerry, who already had her mobile out and was speaking quietly into it.

  “But I’m fine, really. I—” Asia made as if to stand, but fell back into the wicker chair with a thump.

  Kerry was giving the ambulance service the house number.

  “I’ll go with you to hospital, dear,” said Mrs. Armitage, sitting down beside Asia and patting her free hand.

  Gemma took the opportunity to slip out onto the patio. The smell of the wisteria eddied round her as a breeze blew through the garden, and pale purple petals drifted down from the canopy like confetti. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light after the brightness of the kitchen.

  She stood in the doorway, studying the scene, wishing they’d not tramped through the space like a herd of cattle. The only way she could visualize Asia having inflicted that injury on herself was if she had fallen backwards, catching her head a glancing blow on something as she fell. But Asia said she’d come to with her face on the bricks. She’d fallen forward.

  Popping her head back in the kitchen, she asked, “Asia—Miss Ford—can you tell me exactly where you were when you fell? No, don’t get up,” she added, seeing Asia’s muscles tense. “Just tell us.”

  “I was half in the greenhouse and half out. I must have looked a sight.” Asia’s color was returning, Gemma saw with relief.

  “But it was your head in the greenhouse, and you’re quite certain you were facedown?”

  “Yes, but—I don’t see how—I wish I could remember what happened. I feel so stupid.” Asia touched her cheek, and for the first time, Gemma noticed a small graze. “Did you find my phone?” Asia asked, a little fretfully.

  “Not just yet. But I promise we will.”

  Turning, Gemma walked carefully a few steps forward into the patio.

  It was easy enough to spot, she thought, once you knew what you were looking for. It was a brick, a few feet from the stack Asia had been using to pave the greenhouse floor. Taking the little pocket torch from her bag, she took a step closer and squatted, playing the light over the brick. Bright flecks of blood winked back at her.

  She stood and went back to the door. “Kerry,” she said softly, “we’re going to need the uniforms here as well.”

  Kincaid climbed back into the car, still thinking about the end of his conversation with Doug. Angus and Edie Craig were dead, as were Ryan Marsh and Michael Stanton. But someone else had seen the Craigs—or at least Angus—that night. Denis Childs.

  What time had Denis gone to the house? Had he seen anyone, or anything? What had he said to Angus Craig, and vice versa?

  Denis had not contradicted the murder/suicide assumption the next morning, when they’d stood gazing at the ruins, but he had been quietly furious—and something more. Now, Kincaid wondered if he’d been frightened.

  He needed more than ever to talk to Denis, damn him. As soon as he was back in London, he’d ring Diane Childs. At least he could check on Denis’s progress without going through channels.

  Having made that small decision, he started the car. His mobile immediately pinged with a text message. Swearing, he took his mobile out of his pocket once more.

  The text was from Simon Gikas, and read, “Found Stanton flat. Requesting warrant.” He had added an address in Hackney that was, Kincaid thought, in the same estate as the false address on Stanton’s driving license.

  “Meet you there in an hour,” he texted back.

  He’d actually managed to get the car in reverse when the damned mobile rang. “Bloody hell,” he said aloud. He was tempted not to answer, but then he saw that the caller was Ronnie Babcock.

  “Duncan,” Ronnie said when he picked up. “Bad news, I’m afraid. You know that retired copper I told you about? Frank Fletcher? He’s dead. That’s why I hadn’t seen him in the pub.”

  “Dead, how? Was it suicide?”

  “Um, not exactly. Accident cleaning his gun. Blood alcohol sky high, which doesn’t surprise me, the way he drank in the pub. I had a look at the postmortem report. It seemed pretty straightforward.”

  Bugger straightforward, Kincaid thought. “At the moment, I’m not inclined to trust a postmortem report as far as I could throw it,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I could talk to the investigating officer,” suggested Ronnie.

  “No, don’t,” Kincaid said sharply. He didn’t believe in gun cleaning accidents, and he didn’t want Ronnie going round asking questions of the wrong people. “Keep your nose clean, mate. But is there anything else you can tell me about Fletcher? Did he ever hint about working undercover, for instance?”

  Kincaid heard the sound of a door closing, shutting off the muted voices he’d been hearing in the background. “Sorry,” said Ronnie. “Can’t think with all that racket. So you still think there might be some connection with your undercover cop? Small world.”

  “Too small for comfort,” Kincaid said. “And I don’t know. I’m pulling at threads. Anything would help.”

  “Well, I’ve been trying to remember. It’s too bad, really. I liked Frank. I’d hate to think— Well, neither option is pretty, is it?”

  “Ronnie—”

  “Hold your horses,” Ronnie said, in his strongest Cheshire drawl. “I’m thinking. I told you Frank did lots of muttering about people not believing the things the Met got up to. I thought it was conspiracy bunk. But maybe that’s what he was getting at.”

  “And he never said exactly who he worked for?”

  “No. I did ask one time, I remember, and that shut him up completely. He even left an unfinished drink.”

  Kincaid was about to thank him when Ronnie added, “Oh, and I could never make any sense of it, but sometimes, when he was completely pissed, he’d mumble something like, ‘Follow the money. You always have to follow the money.’” Kincaid could almost see Ronnie shrug over the phone. “I thought he was going on about The Wizard of Oz. Bonkers, if you ask me.”

  October 1994

  He knew he wasn’t going to be able to avoid the group meetings in the Earl’s Court flat forever. So when he had a particularly nasty message from Red Craig
telling him that he was failing to bond with his fellow officers, he pulled himself together and started for Earl’s Court. At least now he had a purpose.

  It was a crisp autumn evening and he got off the bus at Kensington High Street.

  But the closer he got to Earl’s Court station, the queasier he felt. Psychosomatic, he told himself. Get a grip, Den. He’d never seen the purpose of these little get-togethers, except to remind them of who they were and where their loyalties lay. And to make certain that they knew there was always somebody watching.

  Reaching the flat, he fought a wave of dizziness as he climbed the stairs. It was the smell, he thought, stale smoke and stale alcohol, and urine where someone had pissed in the landing. He hated this shithole.

  The queasiness grew worse as he entered the flat. They were all there, the usual suspects, except Lynn, whom he’d come to think of as his only ally among them.

  He avoided meeting Mickey’s eyes. He knew Mickey would take it for cowardice, but he was afraid that if he looked at the vicious little bastard, he’d kill him. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the look on Mickey’s face as he’d thrown the bottle at the man in Westbourne Park Road.

  Sheila gave him a big smile and tottered over with an open bottle of wine. “Long time, no see, big fella.” She kissed his cheek and the smell of the wine on her breath made his stomach turn over. “Come on, join the party,” she urged, grabbing a dirty china cup off a nearby table. He knew she’d been drinking more and more over the summer, but tonight she was downright blotto.

  “I’ll pass,” he said, as easily as he could, giving her arm a squeeze.

  It was Mickey who started the jeering. “What’s the matter, big fella, can’t handle the booze? Pansy,” he added, as if that were the height of insults. “Or are you just missing your girlfriend?” Watching Denis’s face, he laughed. “Oh, I know all about the girlfriend. No secrets here, brother.” He emphasized the last word, his little private joke.

  “Well, you can’t have it both ways, can you?” Denis replied, trying to make a joke of the childish insults.

  Sheila had lurched back into Mickey’s orbit. Reaching out, he yanked her to him and cupped her short-skirted buttock in his hand. She twitched away from him, looking annoyed, but he pulled her back, this time throwing an arm round her so that his hand rested on her breast.

  “Bugger off, Mick.” Sheila jabbed him with her elbow, hard enough to make him drop his arm and swear, and Denis wondered if she was really as drunk as she seemed. “I can do better than you in my sleep. Keep your hands off or it’ll be your goolies next.”

  Dylan West laughed, smirking at Mickey’s discomfort. Jim Evans looked uneasy. And on Mickey’s face was a flash of the rage Denis had seen at Carnival.

  “Leave her alone, Mickey,” he managed to croak.

  “What are you going to do about it, Mr. Goody-Goody?” Mickey gave a high-pitched giggle and Denis realized he was drunk as well.

  Someone had lit the cheap electric fire and the room was stifling. Denis’s nausea grew so intense that he could feel himself beginning to drool. Then, his bowels cramped, almost doubling him over.

  Jesus, he thought. What was this? Some kind of monster bug? He had to get out before he was sick all over himself. Humiliating himself in front of Mickey was more than he could bear, and he wasn’t going into that hellhole of a toilet where everyone in the room could hear him puke. He turned and clattered back down the stairs, out where he could take gulps of fresh air.

  He managed to walk, then, back towards the lights of the main road. He must have looked a fright because passersby detoured around him, but he didn’t care. The first pub he came to on Earl’s Court Road looked like salvation, and he made it all the way to the gents’ without disgracing himself.

  A half hour later, he emerged from the toilet, feeling weak and empty, but a little steadier and more clearheaded.

  He had to go back. He had to confront Mickey, or he would never live it down. Not with the others, and not with himself. He’d washed his face and washed out his mouth, slicking his hair back with his wet hands. When he stepped out into the chill night, he began to shiver. By the time he’d walked back to the flat, he was shaking all over. But there was nothing for it but to go on.

  He let himself in the downstairs door and began to climb. There was no sound from above, and the stairs seemed to be moving beneath his feet. He wondered if he was delirious. Blinking back the sweat that had begun trickling from his brow, he reached the landing and walked in the door to the flat.

  Sheila was lying on the floor. Why, he wondered, dazed, was she lying on the floor? Lynn was crouched beside her, smoothing down her friend’s tiny skirt.

  Then, Lynn looked up at him, and he saw that she was sobbing.

  And then he realized that Sheila was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Taking Jean Armitage’s chair, Gemma explained to Asia that she thought she had been attacked.

  Asia looked almost as stunned as she had from the blow to her head. “No,” she protested. “How could—why would anyone want to hurt me?”

  “Did you see or hear anyone before your fall?” Gemma asked.

  “No. I was in here. But, I remember now, I was worrying about the alcohol, wondering if I could possibly have made a mistake. I had two full bottles of grain alcohol, for the next batch of limoncello, and one is missing. I suppose I shouldn’t have kept it in the greenhouse, but I never thought . . .”

  “Was it visible from outside the greenhouse?” Gemma asked.

  “No, there’s a closed cupboard under the potting bench. The alcohol and lemon zest have to infuse in a cool, dark place for about six weeks before you add the sugar and water. There’s not much room in the kitchen cupboards, so I just keep it all out there together.” Asia was beginning to sound exhausted, although she’d put down the cloth and her head no longer seemed to be bleeding.

  Kerry had gone up to the door with Mrs. Armitage, and Gemma could hear sirens in the distance. Her time to get answers was running out.

  “Asia, when you rang me, you said you were worried about ‘the boy.’ What did you mean?”

  Asia looked reluctant. “I don’t think I should have mentioned it. It wasn’t fair of me . . .”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about that. I’ll sort it out, I promise. Did you mean Jess Cusick?”

  Asia nodded. “I saw him in the garden this morning. When he should have been at school. And, then, when I saw the bottle was missing . . .”

  “But why would you think Jess would do something like that?”

  “Because he knew where it was, and what it was. He was here when his mother helped me mix the finished batch for the garden party. And, because, well, you know what kids are like . . .” Asia sighed. “Or at least that’s the sort of trouble we got into when I was at school. I was worried about him, you know, after what happened to poor Reagan.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  Gemma patted her hand. The sirens had stopped and she could hear voices from upstairs. “I’m sure he’s fine,” she said, although she felt a jolt of worry. “Asia, did you tell anyone else about the missing alcohol? Or about seeing Jess?”

  “Well, I told his mother, of course.”

  Like Ryan Marsh’s, Michael Stanton’s flat was on the ground floor of an ordinary estate. Kincaid thought that for someone maintaining a false identity, the ability to come and go without alerting all the neighbors would have been important. It was the neighbors, however, that had led Sidana’s team to the flat. Although the flat number on Stanton’s driving license had not corresponded with an existing address, Sidana had organized a house to house, starting at one end of the estate and systematically working across it. Eventually, a resident had identified Stanton’s photo as, “That unfriendly bloke two doors down.”

  Other neighbors and the property records had confirmed it. Sidana had got her warrant and a locksmith, and she and Sweeney had just got the door open when Kincaid arrived.

 
It was an unremarkable flat in an unremarkable estate—not too posh, not too poor, fairly well kept, some of the renovated flats obviously bought from the council, the parked cars relatively new models.

  “Sir,” said Sidana, giving him that look of grave concern he’d come to expect in the last few days. He wanted to reassure her that he was fine, but he couldn’t.

  The locksmith, packing up his kit, said, “Nice lock for a council flat. What’s this bloke got in here? Gold?”

  It seemed, however, that Michael Stanton—or Michael Stanley as he once was—hadn’t much at all. The flat had a sitting room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. It might have been a hotel. The furniture was anonymous and, although not cheap, looked as if it been bought en masse. There was a very large new flat-screen television on one wall, with a gaming system. Most of the games, from Kincaid’s quick perusal, were of the latest and most realistic first-person-shooter type. Sweeney examined the system with a covetous expression.

  There were no pictures on the walls, and no reading material on the tables or chairs—not even a newspaper.

  Sidana did a quick look through the kitchen. “Looks like the guy lived on baked beans and frozen ready meals,” she said. “There’s nothing fresh at all.” She wrinkled her nose, her disapproval evident.

  “There’s no computer,” Sweeney called from the bedroom. “Nothing but a phone charger on the bedside table.”

  Kincaid joined him. There was a depression in the duvet, and the pillows were bunched together on one side of the bed—so far the only sign of actual human presence in this place. He checked the drawers in the single chest—socks, Y-fronts, sweaters, and T-shirts—then the wardrobe. One decent suit, not cheap, but not expensive. Shirts, casual wear, a few ties.

  Then, he stood in the middle of the room, looking around, thinking. He didn’t believe that any person lived without a few possessions that expressed their identity and history. Even the homeless carried about odds and ends of things that mattered to them in their trolleys. He thought of Ryan’s cache. If Stanton had been undercover, rogue or not, he must have had something similar.