Mourn Not Your Dead

by Deborah Crombie

  “He worked with your stepfather and was a friend of your mother’s after your dad died.” He’d leave it to Claire to explain the intricacies of that relationship, if she wished.

  “I couldn’t help but notice your C. S. Lewis books. Did you know they’re quite valuable?”

  “They were my dad’s. He named me for Lucy in the stories.” She gazed past Kincaid, and the hand stroking the dog’s head went still. “I always wanted to be like her. Brave, courageous, cheerful. The other children were tempted, but never Lucy. She was good, really good, all the way through. But I’m not.” She turned to Kincaid, and it seemed to him that her eyes held a sadness beyond her years.

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “that was an unreasonable expectation.”

  “Looks like we’ve got this one nailed,” said Nick Deveney to Kincaid. They sat in the Guildford Police Station canteen, having a quick sandwich and coffee while David Ogilvie waited in Interview Room A.

  “He hasn’t admitted to anything,” Kincaid answered through a squishy bite of cheese and tomato. “And I don’t think we’re going to rattle him by making him wait. He’s been on the other side of the table too often.”

  “No way he can wiggle out of Gilbert, after what he’s done. Jackie Temple may be a bit more difficult, if he can prove he was lecturing that evening.” Deveney grimaced. “God, I hate to see a copper go bad. And shooting another officer-” Finding no words to express his disgust, he shook his head.

  “He wouldn’t have known Will was a cop,” Kincaid said reasonably, then wondered why he was defending Ogilvie, and why Ogilvie’s ignorance should make what he’d done any less reprehensible. “Any news of Will?”

  “He’s in surgery. Fractured femur, they think, and ruptured femoral vein.”

  Finishing his sandwich, Kincaid rolled the cling film into a tiny ball. “He was fast. Faster than I was. If I’d got out and called for backup, none of it might have happened.”

  Deveney nodded, not bothering to excuse him. “You get slow in CID. You lose your edge. You spend too much time writing bloody reports, sitting on your backside at a desk.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find that David Ogilvie’s gone soft at all,” said Kincaid.

  Ogilvie looked none the worse for wear. He’d hung his anorak neatly over the back of his chair, and his white cotton shirt looked as crisp as if it had just come from the laundry. He smiled at Kincaid and Deveney as they came in and sat opposite him. “This should be an interesting experience,” he said as Deveney turned on the tape recorder.

  “I should think you’re about to have quite a few new experiences,” said Kincaid, “including a very long stay in one of Her Majesty’s finer accommodations.”

  “I’ve been intending to catch up on my reading,” countered Ogilvie. “And I have an exceptionally good solicitor, who is on his way here, by the way. I could refuse to say anything until he arrives.”

  And why doesn’t he? Kincaid wondered as he tried to read the expression in Ogilvie’s dark eyes. David Ogilvie was highly intelligent as well as experienced in the rules of interviews. Did he want to talk, perhaps even need to talk?

  Kincaid cast a warning glance at Nick Deveney-this was definitely an occasion when aggression wouldn’t get them anywhere. “Tell us about Claire,” he said to Ogilvie, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.

  “Have you any idea how lovely she was ten years ago? I could never fathom what she saw in him.” Ogilvie sounded incredulous, as if the years had not dimmed his amazement. “It can’t have been sex-she always came to me starved, and I think she must have kept up her ice-queen façade until after they were married. Maybe she sensed that was what he wanted… I don’t know.”

  So that had been the way of it, thought Kincaid. “I take it he didn’t know she was sleeping with you?”

  Ogilvie shook his head. “I certainly didn’t tell him.”

  “Not even after she told you she meant to marry him?”

  “Don’t insult me, Superintendent. I’d not stoop to that.”

  “Even though it might have botched things for Gilbert?”

  “To what end? Claire would have despised me for betraying her. And I think by that time he was so determined to have her that it wouldn’t have stopped him. She was his porcelain prize, to be shown off as his latest accomplishment. The phrase ‘trophy wife’ might have been invented for Gilbert and Claire, but he underestimated her. I’ve often wondered how long it took for him to realize he’d got a real person.” Ogilvie’s face had relaxed as he talked about Claire, and for the first time Kincaid could imagine what she might have seen in him.

  “You had no contact with her?”

  “Not until tonight.” Ogilvie sipped from the cup of water on the table.

  Kincaid sat forwards, hands on the table. “What evidence did Gilbert have against you?”

  “Trying to take me by surprise, Superintendent?” The mocking wariness returned to Ogilvie’s mouth. “I think that’s something I’d prefer to discuss with my solicitor.”

  “And the nature of the activities in which you were involved?”

  “That as well.”

  “Jackie Temple believed you were taking protection money from the big-time drug dealers. Is that why you had her killed?”

  “I told you before. I had nothing to do with PC Temple’s death, and that’s all I intend to say on the matter.” Ogilvie’s mouth was set in a stubborn line.

  Deveney moved restively in his chair. “Tell us about the day Commander Gilbert died,” he said. “What happened after you went to the bank?”

  “The bank?” Ogilvie repeated, sounding unsure of himself for the first time.

  Sweat, goddammit, thought Kincaid, and smiled at him. “The bank. The bank where you conned the manager into letting you see Claire’s file.”

  “How in bloody hell…” Ogilvie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose.” He sipped at his water again and seemed to collect himself before continuing. “The problem with following Claire was that I couldn’t take a chance on her recognizing me, so I could never get too close. I’d seen her make stops at that bank several times, and I knew they did their personal banking at the Midlands in Guildford. For all I knew she was simply running errands for Gilbert’s mother, but I noticed that she always came from work and returned there, and that made me wonder. By that time the game had grown a bit stale, and I was intrigued.

  “Oh, it was a game at first, I admit, a chance to use old skills, feel the edge of things again. And it was a challenge-give Alastair enough to keep him off my back, yet not enough to compromise Claire too badly. He should have blackmailed a less biased snoop.”

  Deveney rubbed one thumb with the other. “I should think you’d have relished the opportunity to get even with her, after she threw you over for him.”

  “And satisfy bloody Alastair Gilbert in the process? He wanted me to tell him his wife was cheating on him. He seemed to get some sort of perverse satisfaction out of it.”

  Kincaid leaned forwards. “Was she?”

  “I don’t intend to tell you that, either. What Claire did was her business.”

  “But you told Gilbert about the bank account.”

  “It seemed harmless enough. I called him that afternoon, told him I wanted to talk to him and that I’d meet his train in Dorking. I gave him the information and told him I was finished. In months of watching Claire, that was the only thing I’d come up with, and for all I knew she was saving up to buy him a bloody birthday present. I’d had enough.”

  “And that was that?” Kincaid raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “He agreed,” said Ogilvie, his eyes shuttered.

  Kincaid leaned forwards and thumped his fist on the table. “Bollocks! Gilbert would never have agreed. I know that for a fact, and I didn’t know him half as well as you. I think he laughed at you, told you he’d never let you off. And you believed him, didn’t you?” Kincaid sat back again and stared at Ogilvie, playing out the scenario in his head
. “I think you followed him home from Dorking that evening, hoping for an opportunity. You left your car in the pub car park, where it would be unremarkable, or up at the end of the lane. You rang the doorbell and made an excuse, told him there was something you’d forgotten to mention, while you saw that no one else was home.

  “And I think it was you Gilbert underestimated. He turned his back on you, and that was the end of it.”

  The silence in the room grew thick. Kincaid imagined he heard their hearts beating in opposition and the sound of the blood pumping through their veins. Sweat stood out now on Ogilvie’s brow, glistening like oil.

  Ogilvie moved, wiping his hand across his face impatiently. “No. I did not kill Alastair Gilbert. And I can prove it. I drove straight back to London, as I had an evening appointment with a painter to discuss the decorating of my flat.” He smiled. “An alibi from an unbiased witness, Superintendent. You’ll find it stands up.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Deveney. “Anyone is susceptible to a payoff. As you should know.”

  “A dirty blow,” said Ogilvie. “Touché, Chief Inspector. But if we’re trading points here, I must say that in my old nick we at least gave the accused a cup of coffee. Do you think you could manage that?”

  Deveney glanced at Kincaid, grimaced. “I suppose so.” He spoke into the tape recorder, giving the time and noting that they would take a brief recess, then switched it off.

  When the door had closed behind him, Ogilvie gave Kincaid a considering look. “Off the record, Superintendent?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  Ogilvie shrugged. “I’m not about to make a grand confession. I have nothing to confess, except that I’m tired. You seem like a sensible man. Let me give you a bit of advice, Duncan. It’s Duncan, isn’t it?” When Kincaid nodded, he went on. “Don’t let bitterness damage your judgment. I should have had Gilbert’s job. I was the better qualified, but he was better at sucking up to the powers that be, and he sabotaged me.

  “After that I started to feel I deserved more, that the system owed it to me, and that was how I excused the little infractions. Then you begin to justify it in other ways-the stuff goes on no matter what we do, you say, so why not benefit from it?” Ogilvie paused and drained his water glass, then wiped his mouth. “After a while it wears on you, though, like a sickness. I knew I needed to get out, but I kept putting it off. I never meant for anyone to get hurt. That constable-how is he?”

  “They say he’s in surgery, but it sounds as though he’ll be all right.” How easy it was to fall from grace by increments. Kincaid looked at Ogilvie, wished he’d met him a dozen years ago, untarnished. “But that doesn’t excuse what you did. And Jackie Temple-you may not have ordered her death, but she was killed because she asked questions about you. In my book that makes you guilty as hell.”

  Ogilvie met his eyes. “I’ll have to live with that, won’t I?”

  No matter how hard they tried to make the waiting room look comfortable and homelike, they couldn’t disguise a hospital. The smell crept under the doors and through the ventilation system, as pervasive as smoke. Gemma sat alone in the corner of the sofa, waiting. She felt very odd. Time seemed fluid, erratically arbitrary Her eyes trained on the pattern in the wallpaper, she heard the gunshot and saw Will fall, again and again, as if a film were looping inside her head.

  She remembered a kind-faced sister ordering her down to the cafeteria for a supper she hadn’t been able to eat, but she had no idea how long ago that had been. Surely Will must be out of the theater soon, and someone would come.

  Her trousers were splattered with mud and streaked with blood across the knees and thighs. Still huddled in Kincaid’s anorak, she was grateful for its warmth, but she kept fingering the stiff, stained cuffs, a voice in her head repeating Will’s blood, Will’s blood, like an incantation.

  Her head jerked up. Had she been asleep? The voices and footsteps were real; she hadn’t been dreaming. She stood up, her heart racing, as Kincaid and Nick Deveney came through the door.

  “Gemma, are you all right?” Kincaid asked. “It’s not bad news about Will, is it?”

  Weak-kneed, she sat again, and Kincaid took the chair beside her. She shook her head. “No. It’s just… I thought it must be the doctor… Sorry. You didn’t see anyone as you came in?”

  “No, love.” Kincaid glanced around the empty room. “Doesn’t Will have family?”

  “He told me his parents died,” said Gemma.

  Deveney made a face. “He won’t have told you how.” When Gemma and Kincaid looked at him expectantly, he sighed and examined his fingernails. “They were devoted to each other, his parents. And to Will. They took it hard when he was posted to Ulster. Just after Will came home his mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and a few months later, his dad with terminal cancer.

  “His dad shot his mother, then himself. Will found them, curled up on the bed like lovers.” Deveney cleared his throat and looked away.

  Kincaid said, “Oh, Christ,” but Gemma found herself unable to speak at all. Poor Will. And now this. It wasn’t fair. The door opened and her heart jerked again. This time she couldn’t stand.

  The doctor still wore his pale green scrubs, and he’d pulled his mask down below his chin like a bib. Tubby and balding, with spectacles that glinted in the light, he smiled at them. “It was quite a job patching your boy up. He lost a lot of blood, but I think we’ve got him stabilized. I’m afraid it will be tomorrow before you can see him.”

  The wave of weakness that washed through her made Gemma feel faint. She let Kincaid and Deveney thank the doctor and guide her, unresisting, towards the hall.

  “Ogilvie’s solicitor showed up,” Deveney said to Gemma as they walked. “Slick as an American politician, and probably as rich. He shut Ogilvie up in a hurry, but we’ll get him for this. And for Gilbert, no matter what he says about an alibi.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Kincaid said slowly, and they stopped, looking at him. “You remember, Nick, Ogilvie saying that Gilbert underestimated Claire? I think perhaps we have, too.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Gemma woke before daybreak. For a moment she felt disoriented, and then the patch of light beside the strange bed solidified into a net-curtained window, lit by a street lamp. The hotel on the High Street in Guildford, of course. The events of the previous day began to click into place. Will, lying in hospital. David Ogilvie had shot him.

  She lay in bed, watching the window pale to pearl gray. Getting up, she washed, then dressed in the change of clothes she carried in her bag. Slipping a note under Kincaid’s door, she left the hotel and started walking down the High towards the bus station. No cars passed, no pedestrians peered into the windows of the shut-up shops, and Gemma felt eerily alone, as though she were the last person in the world.

  Then she passed a greengrocer’s van unloading, and the driver called out a cheerful greeting. Turning into Friary Street, she looked up and saw a brilliant rose stain spreading across the sky from the east. Her spirits lifted, her step quickened, and soon she reached the station and found a taxi to take her across the mist-shrouded river and up the hill to the hospital.

  “You’re too early, love,” the sister said kindly. “We haven’t finished our morning routine yet. Just have a seat and I’ll fetch you when you can see him. Or better yet, go downstairs and get yourself some breakfast.”

  Gemma hadn’t realized until the sister spoke that she was starving. She took the advice, eating bacon and eggs and fried bread without a twinge of guilt, and when she went back upstairs the sister took her into the ward. “Not too long, now,” the sister cautioned. “He’s lost quite a bit of blood, and he’ll tire easily.”

  Will’s bed stood at the end of the ward, the curtains half drawn. He appeared to be asleep, pale and vulnerable beneath the white sheet. Slipping quietly into the chair beside the bed, Gemma found herself feeling unexpectedly awkward.

  He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Gemma.
”

  “How are you feeling, Will?”

  “I’ll not be able to get through airport security without a medical card-they put a pin in my leg.” The smile widened almost to a grin, then he sobered. “They haven’t let anyone tell me anything. That was Ogilvie, wasn’t it, Gemma? Will they get him for Gilbert and your friend, too?”

  “I don’t know. They’re checking his statement now.”

  “Is Claire all right?” He shook his head in admiration. “Wasn’t she a cracker, the way she stood up to him?”

  “You were the brave one, Will. I’m glad you’re all right. I should have-”

  “Gemma.” He raised his hand from the sheet to halt her. “Bits of last night are fuzzy, but I remember what you did. The doctor said you saved my life.”

  “Will, I only-”

  “Don’t argue. I owe you, and I won’t forget it. Now, tell me everything from the beginning, blow by blow.”

  She hadn’t reached his own part in the drama when his eyelids drooped, fluttered, drooped again. Leaning over, she kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I’ll be back, Will.”

  “How is he?” Kincaid asked as they left Guildford Police Station. Gemma had met him there after her visit to hospital, looking considerably brighter than the evening before. For a moment he felt jealous of her concern for Will, then he chided himself for such small-mindedness, wondering if he were not compensating for his own sense of failure.

  “Game enough, even if a bit thin around the edges,” answered Gemma, smiling. “But the sister told me afterwards it’ll be a slow job, mending that leg.”

  “You mean to visit him,” Kincaid said as he opened the Rover’s door, making every effort to sound casually unconcerned.

  “As often as I can”-she glanced at him as she buckled herself into the passenger seat-“once this case is finished.”

  Ogilvie’s painter had been found and interviewed first thing that morning, and he had, indeed, confirmed Ogilvie’s alibi. Deveney was now digging with bulldog determination, trying to find a hole in the man’s story or a connection between the two men. A second futile search of Gilbert’s study had been made after Ogilvie had been taken into custody, and they could only hope that C &D would have better luck turning up Gilbert’s evidence of Ogilvie’s corruption.