"You found him?" said Kincaid, remembering the name the local station had given him.
"Christ," said Andy Monahan again, blanching so that the dark smudges under his eyes were more pronounced.
Kincaid crossed the room in a swift stride and, taking Monahan firmly by the arm, guided him to a chair. "Here, sit." To Cullen he added, "Get him some water." It was a distraction, but often a successful one, and he didn't want anyone sicking up in Pevensey's flat.
Monahan took the glass Cullen brought and drank it steadily down, then leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. "Sorry. It's just that I think I'll see that-see him-for the rest of my life."
"Why don't you tell us what happened," Kincaid suggested, perching on the arm of the other chair. "Start at the beginning. Were you and Harry friends?"
"Not exactly. But he was all right. He'd feed my cat for me when I was away on a gig. He liked to talk, when he was into the gin, about the times he'd acted with Hugh Laurie, and Nigel Havers, and oh, he even said he'd done a play once with Emma Thompson and Ken Branagh. It was probably bollocks, but I didn't mind."
"Harry was an actor?"
"Yeah. But not a very lucky one, obviously." Monahan gestured round the flat. "I mean, I'm one to talk, but he was like, old. Fifties. I'm just starting out."
"You're a musician?" Kincaid asked.
"Guitarist. Been playing since I was twelve. Band's called Snogging Maggie, but it's not, honestly, as good as it could be."
Snogging Maggie? Kincaid thought. He didn't even want to go there. A closer look had made him revise his estimate of Andy Monahan's age. He might be in his late twenties-it was the blond hair and the prettiness that made him seem younger. And he suspected that it was shock that had prompted the confessional state.
"So tell us about last night."
Andy gripped the frayed knees of his jeans. "We had a gig in Guildford. Total shit. By the time we got back to town, it must have been going on two. The guys dropped me off at the top of the street-you can't get the van through if there's anyone parked.
"We were drinking a bit. Nick and me. Not George, who was driving," he assured them, as if he thought they would run his friend in. "So I was a bit pissed, you know, and when I saw-I thought it was some old bit of rubbish-I thought he was-I pushed at him with my toe-" Andy covered his face with his hands, rubbing at his cheekbones to ease what Kincaid suspected was the ache of tears. "Puked all over my fricking Strat case, didn't I?" he said through his fingers. "Jesus Christ. Harry."
"You called the police?"
"Dropped my mobile in the gutter, in God knows what. Couldn't punch the fricking keys." He dropped his hands and looked up at Kincaid. "I couldn't watch. When they put him in the bag. I thought that was only on the telly."
Kincaid glanced at Cullen, saw that he was listening alertly. It was do-or-die time. "Andy, did Harry ever say anything to you about antiques?"
"Antiques? You mean like this stuff?" Andy gestured at the furnishings.
"No. Like jewelry. Did he say anything to you about an antique brooch?"
Andy looked from Kincaid to Cullen. "What the fuck is a brooch?"
Kincaid had to suppress a smile. "A pin. This one was diamond. Art Deco. Made in Germany just before the war."
"Where the hell would Harry get something like that?" said Andy, his voice rising in incredulity.
"That's what we were wondering. Have-"
"Wait a minute." Wariness returned to Andy Monahan's face. "You said you were cops, right? But you're in plainclothes. You're detectives, aren't you? Why are you asking about a traffic accident?"
The accident investigators had given Kincaid an initial confirmation on his guess that the car had pulled out from the bay at the jog in the street. It looked from the tire marks, the officer in charge had added, as if the car had gone up on the curb in order to hit Harry Pevensey before he reached his door. "Because," Kincaid said, "we think someone deliberately ran Harry down, and we want you to help us find out who did it."
"You're saying someone wanted to kill Harry?" Andy's face hardened, and he suddenly looked his age. "You couldn't find a more harmless sod than Harry. Vain, maybe, but there was no meanness in it. What do you want to know?"
"If Harry didn't say anything to you about the brooch, did anything else happen lately that was unusual?"
"Harry didn't exactly lead the most exciting life. He was usually resting, as he liked to call it, but the last few weeks he'd had a part in a play. Some community theater. He said it was a load of pretentious bollocks, but he got a check. I can't-Wait." Andy frowned. "Yesterday morning. We both liked a lie-in, Harry and me, because we work late. But yesterday morning some git comes pounding on Harry's door. I got up and looked out-thought the fucking building was on fire. But Harry got up and let him in, and a few minutes later I heard them shouting, then the door slammed.
"I've seen him round once or twice before, this bloke. Not Harry's usual-he goes for blond actress wannabes, for the most part, with fake tits." Andy shrugged. "What they see in him, I don't know."
"Did you hear what they were arguing about, Harry and the bloke who came yesterday?" asked Cullen.
"No. Sorry."
"What did he look like, then, this bloke?"
"Young. Dark hair, dark eyes. The kind of looks that girls start heavy breathing over. And dripping with it." When Kincaid raised an eyebrow, Andy elaborated. "Money. Clothes. Shoes. Haircut. Probably fucking manicure to boot. But-" He stopped, eyeing them with caution.
"But what?" Kincaid asked.
"Look. I'm in a band. I know shit when I see it, and this guy was into something, big-time."
"Drugs?" asked Cullen.
Andy gave him a quelling look. "No. Sweeties. What do you think?"
"Any idea what Harry's connection with him was?" put in Kincaid.
"No. I didn't ask. Harry didn't tell. We didn't talk about personal stuff, Harry and me."
"Andy." Cullen was quivering like a bloodhound. With studied casualness he pulled a photo from his inside pocket and handed it across. "Have you ever seen this man?"
Andy Monahan gazed at the photo, then looked from Cullen to Kincaid, as wide-eyed as if they'd just pulled a rabbit from a hat. "Bloody hell," he said. "That's the pretty boy. Who is he, then?"
"His name," Cullen said, glancing at Kincaid with ill-concealed satisfaction, "is Dominic Scott."
CHAPTER 14
But [Tim] Llewellyn's main point, to which he returned several times, was that Sotheby's was not a police force. "We have a right to protect the anonymity of our clients. We avoid breaking the laws in the countries where we operate. Our clients seek anonymity for a variety of reasons, but it is not our job to police our clients."
– Peter Watson, Sotheby's: Inside Story
Gemma's first impulse, when she had dropped the boys at their respective schools, was to confront Erika about her husband's murder.
But then, Gemma considered a little more calmly, maybe Erika had not thought it relevant, and perhaps David Rosenthal's death had no connection at all with Kristin Cahill's.
But Gemma wouldn't know until she had the facts, and so decided she should start with the case itself, and talk to Erika when she knew enough to ask useful questions.
Kit had said that David Rosenthal had been murdered in a garden near the Albert Bridge. It would have been Chelsea's patch, then. So for the second time that week, Gemma found herself heading for Lucan Place, and an interview with Detective Inspector Kerry Boatman.
***
"Dominic Scott knew Harry Pevensey and Kristin Cahill. And it was Kristin who took the brooch in for sale," Cullen said as they got back into the car, sounding exultant. "And he had rows with both of them on the days they were murdered. That puts him square in the frame, alibi or no alibi, if you ask me."
Kincaid didn't like it when things seemed too pat, nor could he dismiss alibis so easily. And it didn't tell them where Harry had got the brooch, or why Amir Khan had had a row with Kristin, or why he had
been so reluctant at first to cooperate with the police.
"Let's talk to Dom Scott again before we start jumping to conclusions. Does he have a job, do you think, or will we find him at home?"
"Melody said something about him being on the board of his grandfather's company," Cullen said a bit grudgingly.
"Having met him, I can't quite see him turning up for work on the dot every day in some City office. And Andy Monahan said he was sure Dom Scott was using drugs. That fits in with what the barmaid told you about his dodgy friends, but how does that fit in with Harry Pevensey, who liked his gin? And what on earth brought the two of them together?"
Kristin Cahill, and now Harry Pevensey, dead on his watch, two people perhaps not blameless, but certainly not deserving of ruthless and brutal murder. He would find out who had done this, but not by jumping the gun. When he got there, he would make sure it would stick.
***
Dominic Scott answered the door. This morning, however, he wore a slightly less ratty version of jeans and T-shirt than Andy Monahan, and looked infinitely more exhausted. He stared at them, recognition of Kincaid only slowly dawning in his eyes.
"You came about Kristin," he said. "Is there-have you-"
"No, we haven't any news about Kristin. We wanted to talk to you about something else. Can we come in?" Kincaid sensed Cullen's impatience, but he didn't want a repeat of yesterday's rather bizarre fainting spell, and he meant to take on Dom Scott at his own pace.
"Oh, right." Dom Scott held the door for them, then hesitated in the hall. "We can talk upstairs," he said, with a grimace at his mother's living room. "Not exactly my idea of comfort, the barrage of great art in the arctic space." He turned instead towards the stairs, and they followed, Kincaid looking round with interest.
In the stairwell, Ellen Scott-Miller had abandoned the snowy expanse and gone for a dark, cool green, against which small landscape oils glowed like little jewels.
They climbed all the way to the top floor, Dom Scott taking a surprisingly quick lead considering the lassitude with which he'd greeted them.
A door stood ajar on the top landing, and when Dom pushed it wide, Kincaid saw that it was not a room, but a flat with a small kitchen and separate bedroom and, he assumed, a bath.
There was no evidence of Dom's mother's hand in the decorating. The furniture seemed to be odds and ends collected from other parts of the house; the gray walls displayed framed posters featuring current bands and comedy acts, a few from the Edinburgh festival.
Clothes were strewn across sofa and floor, the coffee table was littered with glasses and mugs, and the room had a slightly unwashed aroma.
"Didn't seem much point in tidying," said Dom, with a shrug of apology, but he swept the sofa clean and tossed the bundle of clothing in the direction of the bedroom. He motioned them to the sofa and sat on the edge of a scuffed leather Morris chair, seemingly unaware of the crushed suit jacket beneath him. "So what did you want to talk about?" he asked, and Kincaid saw that his eyes were more focused than the previous day.
"Harry Pevensey."
"Harry?" Dom looked at them blankly, but his hands twitched. "What about him?"
"How do you know Harry, Dom?"
"He's just a bloke I met in a bar." Dom's fingers moved to his T-shirt, began to pick at the fabric. "What does Harry have to do with anything?"
"Why did you go to see Harry yesterday?" Kincaid asked, his voice still casual.
"What? But I-How could you-" Visibly rattled now, Dom clutched at his shirt with one hand and rubbed at his nose with the other.
"What do you know about a diamond brooch that Harry Pevensey put up for auction through your girlfriend, Kristin Cahill?"
"I don't-"
"Oh, come on, Dom." Kincaid leaned forward, holding Dom's gaze, and said quietly, "I don't believe you. Were you Harry Pevensey's connection with Kristin?"
Dom let go of his shirt and seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. "So what if I was? Look, I told you. I met Harry one night in a bar, the French House, in Soho, when I went with some friends. It's an actors' bar. Harry liked to hang out there. We talked, and sometimes I'd pop in when I was in the West End. It was…comfortable…you know. Not like most of the places I go. And no one knew me.
"Harry was always hard up. I'd buy him a drink, but he never asked anything of me." There was a plaintive sort of innocence in the words, as if Dom Scott didn't have many interactions with people who didn't want something from him.
"Until a couple of weeks ago," Dom went on, his voice going flat. "He rang me. He said he had this brooch. He said he'd found it in an estate sale, but he thought it might be really valuable. So I introduced him to Kristin. I thought that if it was true, it might be a good thing for her, too, to bring in something.
"But then the police came round asking questions about it, and Kristin got into trouble with her boss. So yesterday I went round to ask Harry to take it out of the sale. I told him that the bloody thing was jeopardizing Kristin's job, and that was never part of the agreement. But he said he wouldn't do it, and I couldn't change his mind, so I left.
"And then-then you came, and said Kristin was dead." He sagged into the chair, his eyes dull again.
Kincaid didn't mean to let him off so easily. "Dom," he said sharply. "Did Kristin tell you why Mr. Khan was angry about the brooch?"
He frowned, as if thinking were an effort. "She said there was some woman claiming it was stolen from her during the war. It was that part that pissed him off. Mr. Khan said they would take items of unknown provenance, but they didn't want the kind of investigation that would ensue from claims that might involve war looting. Like it was Kristin's fault."
"And that's why you had a row with Harry?"
"That's what Harry told you? I wouldn't exactly call it a row, but Harry likes his bit of drama-What?" He had caught some telltale flicker in their faces. "What aren't you telling me?"
"Harry's dead, Dom," answered Kincaid. "Just like Kristin. Where were you last night between midnight and two?"
***
Kerry Boatman greeted Gemma with a warm smile as she ushered her into her office. "I didn't expect to see you back so soon. Is it the Cahill case?"
"It's actually not about that at all," admitted Gemma, taking a seat. "Or only in a very odd and roundabout way. My friend who claims the brooch Kristin Cahill put into the sale at Harrowby's…well, I've just learned from another source that her husband was murdered here in Chelsea, after the war. I don't see any obvious connection, but I thought I should know more before I spoke to my friend. Don't want to put my foot in it." She smiled, feeling an idiot. "I wondered if I might look through your files. His name was David Rosenthal."
"And the year?"
"I don't exactly know. Say within ten years after the war?"
Boatman raised both brows and peered at Gemma over the tops of the reading glasses she'd perched on her nose. "Good God, Inspector, have you any idea of the state of our records?"
"Well, if they're anything like ours…" Gemma looked down at the pretty skirt and top she'd put on that morning, and shrugged.
Boatman grinned. "You'll find them in the basement. Enjoy."
***
"So what did you think?" Kincaid asked Cullen when they were back in the car.
Cullen gave a snort of disgust. "Total bollocks."
Dom had not repeated his dramatic faint, but he had gone white as a Victorian damsel and said he refused to believe Harry was dead. When Kincaid had told him that the police didn't usually lie about things like that, Dom had just shaken his head like an obstinate child.
"I'm afraid it's true, and I am sorry," Kincaid had said. "And we still need to know where you were last night."
"I was here. What would I be doing, with Kristin dead?"
"Did you drive your mother's car?"
Dom looked as horrified as when they'd told him Harry was dead. "Are you out of your mind? And even if I were that daft, her car's been in the garage for tw
o weeks, waiting on a part from Germany."
Cullen had got the name of the garage. Now he said, "Want me to check out the car, guv?"
"Yes, and see if you can find any mobile records for Harry Pevensey. There was no mobile phone on his body and we didn't see one in the flat." To Kincaid's astonishment, the phone in Pevensey's flat had been rotary dial. No wonder Cullen hadn't reached an answering machine.
"What about Amir Khan?" asked Cullen. "I talked to my mate in Fraud. He said the salesroom has skirted the law a number of times, falsifying imports, documentation, and so on. What if Khan knew more about the brooch than he let on? Could he have recognized it as stolen and allowed it in the sale anyway? I could have sworn he looked worried this morning."
"I'm not sure Erika ever reported it as stolen." Kincaid glanced at his watch. "I need to check with Gemma, and before we tackle Mr. Khan again, I'd like to know a little more about Harry Pevensey. I think I'd like to check out the bar where Dom Scott said they met, the French House."
***
By the time Gemma found David Rosenthal's case file, her back hurt, her fingers were grimy, and the smell of old dust seemed permanently embedded in her nostrils.
"Why the hell couldn't the Met pay some low-grade clerk to sit in the dungeon all day and transfer the bloody things to computer?" she'd groused when she first began searching the boxed files.
But when she had taken the box to the table, sat down in the utilitarian chair provided, and finally held David Rosenthal's file in her hands, she changed her mind. Slowly she shuffled through the pages. Typed reports, with the occasional uncorrected error. Handwritten notes by the senior detective in charge of the case, an inspector named Gavin Hoxley. It all felt suddenly, undeniably, real.
David Rosenthal, she read, had been found lying on the ground beside a bench in Cheyne Gardens, on a Saturday night in May 1952. He had apparently been robbed of all his belongings, so that he had not been identified until his wife reported him missing.
Where Memories Lie Page 17