Her dad had meant to hurt her. He had always been sharp with her, and critical, and she had assumed it was because she was the eldest and he expected more. But this-she hadn't seen this. When had her father's feelings towards her changed into something more than impatience?
Sensing a change in her mum's breathing, she looked up and found her mum awake and watching her.
"I'm so sorry, Mummy," she whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"I'm just glad to see you, love." Vi lifted a hand towards Gemma's wet cheek, but the IV line hampered her and she let it fall back to the bed. "You've not been crying, have you?"
"No, I-" Gemma wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks and blurted out, "Mum, why does Dad hate me?"
"Hate you? Don't be silly, love," Vi said, with a hint of her usual briskness. But even that seemed to tire her, and she sank back into her pillows, adding more quietly, "Of course your dad doesn't hate you. Whatever gave you that idea?" She searched Gemma's face and sighed. "Don't pay him any mind. He's worried, and he's taking it out on you."
"But why me? I always wanted him to be proud of me." She thought of Hugh Kincaid, Duncan's father, and of how surprised she had been when he'd treated her immediately with liking and respect.
"Oh, your dad is proud of you, in his way. But he's more frightened by you."
Gemma frowned, not understanding. "Frightened? Why?"
"Because…" Vi seemed to search for words. "Because he sees you, and what you've accomplished, as making a mockery of who he is and what he's done with his life."
"But I haven't-Cyn always stands up to him, and he doesn't-"
"But your sister has stayed safely in her pigeonhole," said Vi. "She's no threat to him."
Gemma sat back, trying to get her mind round a different view of the man who had always seemed to her so certain of himself that he measured everyone else's aspirations by his own.
"But what can I do?" she asked, bewildered.
"Nothing, lovey." Vi sighed. "Nothing but go on being yourself. But you might try"-her mother smiled-"as hard as it is, you might try being a bit more patient with him."
***
"Doesn't look too flash to me," said Cullen, looking at Giles Oliver's building with a grimace of distaste.
"I wouldn't be too sure," Kincaid replied. His curiosity roused by what Khan had told them, he was eager for another look at the inside of Oliver's flat.
They had struggled to park in Fulham, as they had in Wands-worth, and had at last settled for a spot in the Waitrose car park near Fulham Broadway, walking the few streets to the flat. Kincaid thought Cullen looked hot and irritable, just the thing for a good interview. And likely to be more irritable yet, he thought as they opened the building door and the smell of nicely warmed cat urine met them like a noxious cloud.
"What the-" Cullen gulped. "No wonder there's no security. No burglar worth his salt would come in here."
"That's not why Oliver doesn't need security," Kincaid said as they mounted the stairs, and he managed not to jump when the first bark shook the walls of the top landing.
Cullen, however, stopped dead in his tracks, and Kincaid grinned. "He's harmless, really. You'll be best friends before you know it."
Looking not the least bit reassured, Cullen stepped behind him. The dog's barks rose in pitch as Kincaid rapped on the door. "Giles, it's Duncan Kincaid."
After a moment there came the same sound of scuffling and swearing he and Gemma had heard before, and Giles Oliver opened the door. He'd managed to get the mastiff into a sitting position behind him, but on seeing Kincaid the dog charged forward, tail wagging like a metronome gone berserk.
Kincaid gave Cullen points for having held his ground. "Hullo, Mo," he said as the dog sniffed him thoroughly and drooled on his trouser leg. "We'd like a word, Giles."
"Again?" Giles Oliver sounded aggrieved. He'd changed from work clothes into jeans and a T-shirt that revealed the bulge of his belly and did nothing to improve his appearance. "I don't know what else I can tell you, and I was busy-"
"What happened to all your concern about Kristin?" Kincaid said, moving the dog forward so that Cullen could get in the door. The flat was hot, even with the windows open, and Oliver's limp hair was plastered to his forehead. "I thought you wanted to help."
"I didn't mean-Of course, I want to help. I was just-" A tub of ice cream sat on the coffee table, and having thoroughly examined Kincaid and a rigid Cullen, the dog wandered over and plunged his nose in. "Mo, damn it." Oliver grabbed the dog by his collar and dragged him off.
"I expect you can scrape off the top layer," Kincaid said sympathetically. "No harm done. But I'd get it back in the freezer if I were you."
Oliver gave him a dirty look but retrieved the tub and took it into the kitchen, sliding it lidless into the small freezer. The tub had left a wet ring on the polished wood finish of the table.
Kincaid took a seat, uninvited, and Mo came to him and laid his massive head across his lap, this time leaving a trail of slobbery ice cream. A trip to the dry cleaners was definitely in the offing.
Cullen had stayed by the door, looking like he might bolt any second. Oliver came back into the sitting room, wiping his hands on his jeans. Scratching the dog behind his ears, Kincaid smiled at him. "Now that we're off to a good start, Giles, why don't you tell us about the phantom bidding?"
Oliver's eyes widened and he swayed, as if he couldn't quite manage his body without the dog as a prop. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he managed to croak.
"Oh, yes, you do," Kincaid said. "That's where you make an agreement with the auctioneer to invent bids before a sale starts. It keeps the bids going up, creates a bit of excitement, and both the seller and the house make more money. The only person who loses out is the buyer, but then they should know what they're getting into, shouldn't they?"
"I don't know what-"
"I imagine it works particularly well when you're handling a phone line, as those bidders on the floor have no way of knowing whether the phone-in bid is genuine. Clever, isn't it? And not even illegal," Kincaid added cheerfully.
Oliver had flushed an unbecoming red that made his spots stand out. "If Khan told you that, it's a lie. He'd say anything to make me look bad."
"What if Khan didn't tell us that? Is it still a lie? And why should Khan have some sort of personal vendetta against you, Giles? Have you been spreading rumors about him?"
"I-You're deliberately trying to confuse me. And I don't see what any of this has to do with Kristin." He shot a distracted glance at Cullen, who had relaxed enough to come all the way into the room and was examining Oliver's audio equipment with interest.
"Well," Kincaid said, stroking the top of the dog's head. Mo groaned and rested more of his weight against Kincaid's knee. "It's not just about Kristin anymore," Kincaid continued, ignoring the damp patch spreading towards his crotch. "The man who gave Kristin the Goldshtein brooch to sell was killed last night. Did she tell you his name? A sort of quid pro quo for your bragging to her about your profits on your bidding scheme? And if she told you about him, maybe it occurred to you that she might have told him about you."
"You are totally fucking mad." Giles Oliver licked his lips as if they had suddenly gone dry.
Kincaid knew he was spinning it, but if it was getting Oliver rattled he wasn't going to stop. "Or maybe you thought she'd told Harry Pevensey that you were harassing her, spying on her, and that put you square in the frame for her murder-"
"Holy shit." Cullen was peering at one of the two speakers flanking Oliver's audio setup. He jabbed a finger at the speaker. "Do you know how much one of these things costs? These are B and W's. Five thousand pounds apiece. Five thousand pounds for just one of these, and you've got two. You could buy a bloody car for what these things are worth."
Kincaid wasn't sure if he sounded more outraged or envious. "B and W's?" he asked.
"Bowers and Wilkins. Based in Worthing. They make the best high-end loudspeakers this si
de of the Atlantic."
Oliver backed up a step, as if looking for a bolt-hole. "No, man, you don't understand." He shook his head. "I got them secondhand. I never paid that much for them."
"Yeah, right." Cullen rolled his eyes. "I get the catalogs. These are new."
Cullen, a secret audiophile? Kincaid logged the fact for future reference, then said, "My, my, Doug. You have big aspirations on a policeman's salary." He turned to Oliver. "And, Giles, when you add in the rest of this equipment, I suspect you seem to have even bigger ones for someone making a salesclerk's wages. That must be some fiddle you've got going, if you can afford equipment like that. Maybe there's a bit more to it than the odd percentage on a phantom bid. Did Kristin find out you had your finger in more than one pie?"
"You have no business questioning how I spend my money." Oliver drew himself up, but Kincaid could see that he was shaking. "I have an allowance from my parents, if you must know. And none of this has anything to do with Kristin. She never came here. She never saw any of this."
Thoughtfully, Kincaid said, "That brings us very nicely back to where we started, doesn't it, Giles? Rejection. Jealousy. Kristin turned you down flat that night, and not very nicely, either, according to her mum."
"Just because you don't have a driving license doesn't mean you can't drive," chimed in Cullen. "And with all this equipment, I'd be willing to bet that hot-wiring a car is not beyond your skills. One was stolen just a few streets from here the night Kristin Cahill was killed. It was found abandoned the next day-the police assumed it was joyriders. But maybe you took it, Giles, and left it after you ran Kristin down."
"I never hurt Kristin," protested Giles, sounding near tears. "I loved her."
"That's obsession, Giles. Not love," Kincaid said. "She didn't even like you." The dog lifted his head at the change in his voice, then settled back down with a grunt. "Did you get Harry Pevensey's name from the files?" Kincaid went on. "Did you think he was Kristin's secret lover? The one who sent her the roses?"
"I'd never heard of him until you said his name a few minutes ago." Oliver looked round wildly, as if help might appear out of thin air, but even his dog had abandoned him. "I'm not talking to you anymore. I don't care what you say."
Kincaid sighed and, slipping the dog's head from his knee, stood. "Then I think we'd better take you into the Yard. We'll see if your prints match any of those found on the stolen car."
"But-You can't." Oliver sounded more shocked than belligerent. "What about Mo?"
"Surely you have a friend or a neighbor who could look after your dog."
"No. There's no one. There's this daft woman with cats downstairs, but she can't stand him. I don't know anyone else."
"Your parents?"
"They're in Hampshire."
Kincaid glanced at his watch. "Too late for the RSPCA. I suppose we'll have to have him impounded."
"No!"
"They won't put him down for twenty-four hours," Kincaid said, disliking himself for the deliberate cruelty, but willing to use it. "Doug, ring the animal warden-"
"No, wait." Oliver looked as though he might imitate Dominic Scott and faint on them. "I'll tell you everything."
***
They made love the first time with the ferocity of starvation, abandoning clothes in an awkward stumble to the bedroom, desperate to touch skin to skin.
The second time they had been tender, gentle in discovery, laughing a little at the wonder of it.
And much later, once more, with a lazy, sated pleasure that turned suddenly to urgency, leaving them gasping and shaken.
And in between, they had talked. He told her about his childhood in Chelsea, about his fascination with the ever-present river and his love of the Albert Bridge, about life in London before the war. She told him about a Berlin that had seemed to her enchanted in those years before the war, about her writing, and about continuing her studies, a secret she had not shared with anyone, even David.
Easily, they traded favorite foods, and books, and music, and places they had seen. And all the while they navigated around the boulders beneath the surface of the stream-David, and David's death, and Gavin's wife and children, as if by doing so they could make a world that contained nothing but the two of them, and they said nothing, nothing at all, about the morrow.
Erika knew now that the way she and Gavin had come together was the way it was meant to be between two people, and that for David sex with her had been little more than a duty. Her husband had been her first lover, and she had thought herself somehow lacking, or her desires unnatural.
And the other-the other didn't bear thinking of, especially not here, not now.
Gavin had left her at dawn, even though she'd begged him to stay. "I don't want your neighbors talking," he said, and she'd reluctantly let him ease his warm body from hers.
When he'd dressed, he'd bent to kiss her once more, whispering, "This is too fine a thing to spoil," and when she'd heard the latch of the door click behind him and his footsteps fade away in the quiet street, she had hugged her joy to herself like a pearl, and fallen instantly into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER 17
April 1945
Thursday, 5th
No more bombs for more than a week. No one knows what it means to us to go to bed in peace, and not take leave of all our possessions, and wonder if we shall wake up in pieces, or with the roof collapsing on our heads, unless they have lived with it.
– Vere Hodgson, Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson, 1940-1945
"You're right. I was jealous," admitted Giles. "But I can't drive. I failed my bloody test three times before I came up to London, and there's really not much point here." He sat in the chair with the curved wood arms, and the dog went to him and collapsed at his feet with a sigh.
"So is that your excuse for running Kristin down?" asked Cullen. "Bad driving?"
"Don't be stupid. I'm telling you that I wasn't driving. But I knew where Kristin lived. We'd talked about it-about how she wanted to get out from under her parents-and it wasn't that far from here.
"So that night, I wanted to see who she was meeting. I didn't think I could hang about outside the Gate without her noticing, but I thought if I waited for her to come home, I'd see who dropped her off, and there are plenty of places along the King's Road where you can fade into the shadows."
"And you knew this because you'd done it before?" Kincaid asked.
Oliver scowled at him. "What do you think I am? Some sort of pervert? No, I hadn't waited for her at night before, but I knew where her building was. I mean, if you go down the King's Road, you can't help but notice." When Kincaid merely raised an eyebrow, he swallowed and went on. "But it was a stupid thing to do. It was getting cold, and I'd walked up and down enough that I thought people would start to notice me. There was a woman out with her dog who looked at me like-well, never mind. So I'd just about decided to go home when I saw her."
"You saw Kristin?"
"Walking down the King's Road, like she'd come from the bus stop. I wasn't close. I'd started walking west, but I'd turned to look back. The light turned at Edith Grove, and then, just as she stepped out into the street-" Giles slid from the chair to the floor, ducking his head and wrapping his arms round the dog.
"Giles," Kincaid prompted, and Oliver lifted his head. "What happened then?"
Giles swallowed hard. "A car pulled away from the curb in front of her building. And it just-it just-it sped up, instead of stopping at the light. And it just-hit her. She-Kristin-bounced, like she wasn't even human, and hit the street. The car just kept going."
Making an effort to keep the disbelief from his voice, Kincaid said, "Giles, what did you do?"
"I was-I was going to-but a man came out of one of the flats. And then I-I couldn't-"
Cullen had no such compunction. "You mean you just left her? You just left her lying there?"
"I wasn't-She had help." Giles looked up, his face tear-streaked. "I couldn't-there was nothin
g I could do. So I went home. And then I waited to hear. There was no one I could call. I didn't know where they'd taken her. So I had to-I had to go in to work, knowing-"
"You little tosser," said Cullen, not disguising his disgust. "How could you? How could you just go off and leave her?"
"I thought she'd be all right," Giles shot back. "And then I'd have to explain what I was doing there. And she-she would think-she would never-"
"Understand," Kincaid finished for him. If it was true, Giles Oliver had been an idiot and a coward, but he was also a witness-at this point their only witness. "The car, Giles. What was it?"
Giles shook his head. "I don't know. I'm not very good with cars."
"You don't know?" Cullen's voice rose in outrage, and the dog lifted his head.
"Okay, let's go back a bit," said Kincaid, attempting to ratchet the tension down. "You said you walked back and forth for a bit. Did you see the car before it pulled away from the curb?"
"I-I don't remember."
"Think, man."
Giles screwed up his face in concentration. "I was on the opposite side of the street. There were cars parked all along. I didn't notice. I'm sorry."
"Let's go at it a different way, then. You're accustomed to looking at things. You saw the car pull out from the curb. You must have had some impression, even if you didn't recognize the make. Was it light colored or dark?"
"Dark," Giles said without hesitation.
"Okay, good. Large or small?"
"It was big. And sort of square."
"A coupe?" Kincaid asked, deliberately leading.
Giles frowned. "No. I remember the back end looked big. It was an SUV, I think. A country sort of car. A Land Rover, maybe."
***
"Anyone home?" Gemma called out as she let herself in the front door. The dogs came running to her, sniffing her legs and jumping up in excitement as if she'd been gone a week rather than most of the day.
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