"Then let us go. The Yard is on the way," she bluffed. "You know they've traced your history. I only came along first because I thought we were friends. Talk to me, Marc. Let me help you."
"We'll talk," Marc agreed pleasantly. "But first let's make Bryony a bit more comfortable. Come over here." He gestured towards a ball of brown kitchen twine on the table. "Tie her up, hands behind her back." In a mockery of a lover's embrace, he turned Bryony towards him so that Gemma could reach her hands.
With a wary eye on the knife, Gemma did as he asked. Gemma could feel Bryony trembling.
"Now her feet," Marc commanded, and when Gemma had finished he pushed Bryony up against the wall next to the cooker. Released from his grip, Bryony slid limply down into a sitting position, knees drawn up to her chin, eyes dark with terror.
Marc stood between them, still holding the knife firmly. "You make one wrong move," he told Gemma, "and I can reach her in an instant."
"Why are you doing this?" Gemma asked softly. "I know you don't want to hurt Bryony, or me."
"Then you can listen to the truth. Someone needs to know what Karl Arrowood did. He took my parents away from me- he murdered them. And she let him do it. That's not right, is it?"
"She? Who do you mean, Marc?"
"Angel, of course. Or Marianne, if you prefer. She said that was our secret, her name, because I was special to her. She said she loved me- and I loved her, until my grandmother told me what she'd done."
"Angel couldn't have prevented Karl doing what he did. She was just as much his victim as your parents, and she suffered, too-"
"Not enough. All the time I was growing up, my grandmother told me that God would punish them, Angel and Karl. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. My grandmother died without seeing retribution."
"But surely she didn't mean for you-"
"You know what the irony of it was?" His lips curled in a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Two days after I buried her, I saw Karl on the telly. Getting an award for his humanitarian efforts. He and some political bigwig friends had raised money to benefit the homeless. 'The less fortunate,' he called them." He shook his head. "Do you know that it took my grandmother fifteen years to pay off my parents' legal fees? There were months we lived on porridge, months when she couldn't pay the electricity. Do you think Karl would have considered us less fortunate?"
"But Angel- Marianne- Why-"
"I had to sell my grandmother's bits and pieces to pay off the last of the debts, so I took her jewelry to the little shop in Camden Passage, near our flat. When I saw her, I knew God had spoken to me directly."
"You recognized Angel?"
"I thought she seemed familiar at first. Then she bent over, and I saw her locket." He touched his chest, and Gemma saw he wore a silver chain that vanished beneath his shirt. "She always wore a heart-shaped silver locket. She put my picture in it. It was still there." There was a note of wonder in his voice. "But then, I didn't know that until after I'd killed her."
He is utterly mad. Gemma put a hand on the worktop to steady herself, trying frantically to think of something within reach she could use for a weapon. If she could only distract him long enough to switch on her phone and dial 999, the open connection would lead the police to her. But how could she do so without him hurting Bryony, or her?
"Are you telling me God chose you as his means of retribution?" She willed him to keep talking. "Did you kill Marianne to punish her?"
"And Karl. He must have cared about her, once. But I had no way of making sure that he knew, and understood, what had happened. So then I thought of his wife. I saw her on the telly with him- so young, so blond, and I knew he must love her, if he were capable of loving anyone."
"But Dawn Arrowood had never hurt anyone! How could you take such an innocent life?"
"I was sorry about that." Marc spoke with chilling sincerity. "She was so beautiful- a little like my mother. But then my mother died gasping for breath, her lungs filled with fluid. Dawn was a lamb, a necessary sacrifice. I'm sure she would have understood."
"That's why you pierced the victims' lungs- because of your mother?" A horrid fascination gripped Gemma.
"And their throats-"
"My father hanged himself."
"And Karl? You had to make Karl suffer first."
Marc smiled at her, as if pleased with a bright pupil. "I sensed you were perceptive."
"Did he know who you were, when you killed him?"
"I told him. He had to know. Then he fought me, but it didn't matter in the end."
Bryony moaned, as if the flat assurance of Marc's words had pushed her past the bounds of endurance.
As Marc's eyes flicked towards Bryony, Gemma lunged at him. If she had any conscious thought, it was that she might knock him down, giving her a chance to use the phone before he could recover.
But in a flash of movement, his hands grabbed her, swinging her round. Her hip hit the steel table, hard, and the impact loosened his grip. As she fell to the floor she felt a tearing pain.
Had the knife caught her? Pushing herself up, she grabbed for Marc's ankles, but the pain bit again, fierce and insistent. She cried out, and Bryony scooted towards her along the floor.
"Gemma! What is it? Are you okay?"
"Get back," Marc hissed at Bryony.
Bryony stopped, her face very white. "Gemma, you're bleeding."
Gemma felt a wet, spreading warmth. When she touched the floor beneath her, her hand came away red and sticky.
"Marc," she whispered. He had knelt beside her, looking suddenly as bewildered as a child. "Something's wrong. You have to get someone- an ambulance-"
"I didn't mean- I never wanted to hurt you, Gemma," he whispered. "Let me help you. I can make it better." He lifted her shoulders, cradling her in his arms, and gently began to rock her.
***
The tires screeched as Cullen pulled into the curb, and Kincaid leapt out before the car had stopped rolling. Kincaid had ordered Melody to dispatch officers to the address on Portobello Road, but he and Cullen arrived first. The lights were out in the front of the soup kitchen, but the door swung open to his touch.
"Gemma!" he called out. There was no point in stealth- Mitchell would have heard the car, and the door.
"Here! Back here!" came an answering voice, high with panic. Not Gemma- but it struck a faint chord of recognition. Bryony.
He ran for the back.
The scene that met his eyes seemed drawn from hell. Gemma lay on the floor, cradled tenderly in Marc Mitchell's arms. A few feet away, Bryony, bound hand and foot, tried to push herself upright. The harsh light gleamed from the blade of an abandoned knife near Mitchell's side.
For an instant, Kincaid thought Mitchell held Gemma by force, then the hot-iron stench of blood reached his nostrils. She's hurt, dear God. How badly? Her face was paper-white; her eyelids fluttered as she tried to focus on his face. "Duncan," she whispered. "I can't…"
He's stabbed her, he thought. The bastard's stabbed her. Then, where her coat had fallen open, he saw the bright stain of fresh blood soaking through her trousers. With a cold and terrifying certainty, he knew what was happening. Gemma was hemorrhaging.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Notting Hill has changed further and faster than almost anywhere else you can name in London. The impetus for that change came from the Caribbean immigrants in the sixties and by the richest of ironies, the same changes made it impossible for them to hold on to the ground which had been gained at such cost. On the other hand, change is fundamental to the nature of city life. People ebb and flow like the tides, buildings decay, are rebuilt and renovated, turned to other uses. The big wheel turns.
– Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,
from Notting Hill in the Sixties
Later, Gemma would remember the events of that night only in snatches. Kincaid's voice, jerking her back into consciousness. Opening her eyes, feeling Marc's muscles tense beneath her… A flash of light from the blade of the knife
as Kincaid scooped it up from the floor… His voice again, steady and confi-dent. "Ease her down, Marc. Good man. Gently, gently…" Then the warmth of Marc's body slipping away from her. Cold… She was so cold… The dimness began to steal over her again, but she forced her eyes open once more.
Marc stood in the doorway, Cullen on one side, a uniformed officer on the other. Resisting them, he turned back to look at her, and the yearning despair she saw on his face would stay etched in her memory forever.
***
After that came a darkness filled with pain and jostling, punctuated with a loud wailing her fogged brain only gradually identified as sirens. Then words jumped out at her from a blur of bright lights and gurneys… Placental abruption… Fetal distress… Internal bleeding… Cesarean…
"No, please," she had tried to protest. "It's too soon." But her body would not respond, and she knew now that her plea would not have mattered.
After the delivery, they held their tiny son in their arms as his respiration failed.
A priest came and said kind and comforting words. None of them penetrated Gemma's anguish. Then they took her child away.
***
After the first two days of Gemma's stay in hospital, Kincaid sent Toby to Hazel's, hoping that the familiar environment and Holly's company would ease the child's distress. Toby missed his mother terribly, and neither Kincaid nor Kit seemed to be able to comfort him.
The house seemed echoingly empty without her presence, a constant reminder to Kincaid that he had almost lost her. And now, although she seemed to be recovering well enough physically, she had refused to talk about the baby at all.
Hazel, when consulted, had told him, "You can't rush her. You're going to have to let her do this in her own way, in her own time. There's more than grief over the baby's death here- she's blaming herself for what happened, and no one else can absolve her of that burden."
He knew Hazel was right, yet he also knew that he must be ready to support Gemma in any way he could- and that he must put aside his own grief for the moment. Later, he would think about his son, so perfect, so still… and of what might have been.
But now he must concentrate on Toby, and Kit, and on providing the foundation that would hold their family together.
Wanting to spend as much time with Gemma and the children as possible, he rearranged his schedule, going into the Yard only to finish up the most essential paperwork on the Arrowood case. So it was that he was at home with Kit on an afternoon later in the week when Wesley Howard came to see them.
"I hope you don't mind me coming round," Wesley said hesitantly. "I wanted to ask about Gemma… and to say how sorry I was."
Kincaid invited him into the kitchen, where Kit made them all coffee. "It's just that I feel responsible," Wesley continued, gazing morosely into his cup. "If I hadn't told Marc what I'd learned, none of this would have happened."
"It's not your fault, Wes," said Kit. "I should have told someone I'd seen Marc hanging about-"
"Stop right there, Kit," interrupted Kincaid. "We'd have thought nothing of it if you had. The doctors say it's likely Gemma would have lost the baby anyway. And as for what happened in the soup kitchen- that's no one's fault but Marc Mitchell's."
But how true was that, Kincaid wondered?
How much blame lay with the parents who had let themselves become involved in something illegal and dangerous, how much with the grandmother who had poisoned an already damaged child, and how much with Karl Arrowood, whose ruthless ambition and disregard for others had begun the tragic chain of events?
According to the police psychologist, Mitchell's already unstable personality had begun to disintegrate on his grandmother's death. Then, his mission accomplished with Karl Arrowood's murder, he had been desperate for some purpose in his life, as well as some sense of justification for the things he'd done. It seemed likely that he'd have sought out Gemma as a confidant, had she not gone to him.
"What I don't understand," said Wesley, "is how Marc could have done such terrible things. I saw him help people all the time and he seemed to genuinely care for them. I can't believe that his charity was simply a sham, a blind for tracking down his victims."
"No. Perhaps he saw the homeless as fellow lost souls. I don't know." Had the grief that twisted Marc's psyche left some small portion undamaged? And if so, was it that kernel of wholeness that had led him to reach out to Gemma? Kincaid found the irony too painful to contemplate.
"There is at least one good thing that's come of all this," he said aloud. "Wes, I've spoken to your cousin Eliza in Bedford. She's asked me to give you her phone number. It would mean a good deal to her to get to know her family."
***
Flowers filled every spare inch of space in Gemma's hospital room, and when she returned to it after her enforced walks in the corridor, the hothouse scent seemed overpowering.
She had a stream of visitors as well, including Hazel and Kate Ling, Doug Cullen, and an unexpected and gruff Gerry Franks. She managed to nod when they extended their condolences, and then to carry on ordinary conversations as if the content mattered to her.
But when her parents came, she found she could not talk to them at all, and simply turned her face away while her mother sat beside her and patted her hand.
***
Bryony hesitated outside the door of the hospital room, not at all sure she could bring herself to go in. She thought of Gemma as she'd seen her last, and felt a wave of terror so intense she clutched at the wall for support. Breathing deeply, she let the familiar, faintly antiseptic hospital odors soothe her.
She realized her fear was mixed with shame- shame for not having done more to help her friend, shame that she had been so blindly deceived by Marc- and shame that within those emotions lay a small knot of resentment. Why had it been Gemma Marc confessed to, and not her?
Furious with herself for even entertaining such a thought, Bryony squared her shoulders and entered the room.
"Bryony!" Gemma looked pale and oddly defenseless, with her coppery hair spread out against the pillow like a fan, but her smile was warm and welcoming.
"I'm so glad you're all right," Bryony told her. She pulled up a chair beside the bed. "And I'm sorry about-"
"Thanks. And what about you?" Gemma asked quickly, forestalling any further conversation about the baby. "Are you okay?"
"I quit the surgery. Somehow I couldn't see going in to work with Gavin every day, wondering what he was up to…"
"I can't say that I blame you. But what will you do?"
"At first I thought I'd pack it in, leave London altogether. I even looked at job adverts up north. But then Alex and Fern and Wesley came to see me. They said I should keep on with what I'd started, that they'd help me find funding for the clinic. And I realized…" She rubbed at the healing dog bite on her finger. "…I realized that I didn't want to leave my home, my neighborhood, my friends. I won't let him take those things away from me!"
"How are you… about Marc, I mean?" Gemma asked, her hand clenching on the coverlet. "Will you go to see him?"
Bryony stood and went to the window, looking out over the grimy spires of the hospital rooftops. "I-" She swallowed convulsively, tried again. "No. I don't think I could bear that." Turning back to Gemma, she asked, "Do you think he started the soup kitchen just because Karl got that award for helping the homeless? A sort of sick one-upmanship?"
Gemma frowned, then answered slowly, "No… I think he had an honest desire to help. And a genuine connection with those in need, however convoluted its inception-"
"And what about me? Was I ever anything more than a convenience to him? A means of access to… things he needed?" Bryony heard the bitterness flood her voice, and despised herself for it.
"I'm sure he cared for you," Gemma answered, just a little too quickly.
Bryony smiled and came back to the bedside. "It doesn't matter. But I'll never be quite certain, will I?"
***
One day, as Gemma's hospital sta
y drew to an end, Alex Dunn came to see her. He carried a gift bag, which he handed to her.
"I've brought you a little something."
Reaching into the nested tissue, Gemma felt a cold, hard object, which she gently lifted out. It was the Clarice Cliff teapot she had so admired in his flat.
"Alex! You can't- I can't accept this. It's worth a fortune, and besides…"
"I want you to have it. It suits you. I've decided I don't need a daily reminder of what might have been- or of what I imagined might have been, to put it more accurately."
Gemma glanced again at the vibrant red-roofed houses dancing across the pot. "But Alex- I hardly-"
"You can begin your own collection. And there's another reason I want you to have it. It's a reminder, from me to you, that we have choices in how we deal with things… and that we're capable of more than we think." He smiled at her and changed the subject, forestalling any more argument on her part. "Fern says hello, by the way."
"How is she? Did she- Have you-"
"We're working on being friends. For the moment, that's enough."
***
She took the baby and fled north. It was only a name on the railway schedule, and a half-remembered comment by one of the father's friends, that made her decide to stop in York. "A good place for antiques," she had heard, "full of tourists with money to spend." But what mattered most to her was that it was far away from Karl.
With the money Ronnie had saved for his own business, she rented a tiny shop near the city wall and stocked it with whatever antiques and bits of jewelry she could find at a decent price. She went back to using her maiden name, and her father's things took pride of place in the display case.
The shop had living quarters upstairs, a blessing, as she had no money left for a flat. The single room was small and shabby, but sufficient for her and the baby.
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