She thumbed through the annual reviews, skimming the familiar police jargon. Then her breath caught in her throat and she stared at the page before her. She reread it once, twice more, then she slowly set the folder aside and pulled her mobile phone from her bag.
***
It was the early hours of the morning before Erika slept, and then she dreamed, not of Gavin or of David, but of her father, in fleeting glimpses that left her aching with loss. She woke with a little sob of longing, then lay in the faint gray predawn light, watching the hands of her bedside clock tick the minutes until it was time to rise.
She forced herself to eat a few bites of toast-it wouldn't do to faint-then she bathed and dressed with more than usual care. Her dress was the same she had worn yesterday, her best pale blue poplin, but to it she added white gloves, and a little hat she had bought in the spring sale at Whiteleys, an eon ago, when it had seemed that such things mattered.
And all the while she heard her mother's voice, whenever they had dressed to go out when she was a child, telling her that they were Jews, and so must never allow people to think the less of them.
Sometime in the long hours of the night, she had realized she knew nothing of Gavin except that he worked from the Chelsea Police Station, and so when she was ready she got out her London A-Z and found the station, in Lucan Place, near the Victoria and Albert.
And then she walked, because although she knew she must go, she wished she could put off arriving forever.
She crossed Hyde Park by the Broad Walk. The trees were in full leaf, the grass an impossible green. The air felt mild as a caress against her skin, and it seemed to her that even nature had betrayed her. The pinching of her best shoes against heel and toe became an anchor, a bright pinpoint of pain that kept her moving, one step after another.
The bustle of Knightsbridge came as a relief after the almost unbearable beauty of the park, and then she had reached Cromwell Road. Her steps slowed further. In front of the Natural History Museum, she stopped, her nerve deserting her. But the thought of going home, and waiting, was worse than going on, and so she walked slowly past the South Kensington tube station and crossed the Brompton Road, and then she had reached Lucan Place and there was no turning back.
Erika straightened her spine and entered the reception area of the station. The officer at the little window glanced up, his attention sharpening as he looked her over.
"Can I help you, miss?"
"It's Mrs.," said Erika. "Mrs. David Rosenthal. And I'd like to speak to the officer in charge of my husband's murder."
She saw the flicker in his face, the change she had never seen in Gavin's when he realized she was a Jew. "Just have a seat," he told her. "Someone will be with you." And then he didn't meet her eyes again.
After a few moments, a young woman opened the door leading to the interior of the station and said, "Mrs. Rosenthal? If you'll follow me?" She was plump and overly made up, with crimped hair, and she didn't meet Erika's eyes, either.
The certainty that Erika had been courting settled in her chest like a fist. She followed the woman through the door and up a worn flight of steps. Uniformed officers passed them, but they were faceless, like ghosts. The woman stopped at a door with a frosted glass pane in the upper half, gave a quick knock, then ushered Erika in and backed out, closing the door behind her.
Erika found herself facing a large, florid ginger-haired man who rose ponderously from his chair.
"Mrs. Rosenthal, is it? Do sit down." His brief smile showed yellowed teeth, and there was no warmth in it. Erika sat obediently in the hard chair he indicated, but did not trust herself to speak.
"I'm Superintendent Tyrell," he said, taking his own chair again, as if standing had been an inconvenience. "You said you wanted to see Inspector Hoxley. Is there something I can help you with?"
Erika swallowed and found her voice. "No, I-Inspector Hoxley said he'd learned something about my husband's murder. And then he didn't-I thought perhaps there was news. If I could just-"
"I think Inspector Hoxley must have been mistaken, I'm sorry to say, Mrs. Rosenthal." He didn't sound sorry at all. "And Inspector Hoxley won't be able to help you."
"But I-"
"There's been an accident. Inspector Hoxley's body was found washed up on the bank of the Thames this morning." Tyrell shook his large head and gave a little tut-tut of disapproval. "Very unfortunate. Of course, it won't go on his record, but it looks very much as if Hoxley took his own life."
***
When Kincaid walked into his office, he found Cullen sitting at his computer, scowling. "Maybe I don't want my desk, after all," he said, by way of good morning.
Glancing up, Cullen included him in the frown. "I doubt you do. And you look happier than anyone has a right to be."
Kincaid merely raised an eyebrow. "No joy, I take it."
"None. Bloody eff-all. No trace on Khan's Volvo. Nothing in the house. His journalist friend confirms his story, and refused to let us see any of the paperwork without a warrant, which I'm processing now." He shrugged. "Not that I think we'll come up with anything. Khan's far too careful."
"Well, he would have to be, if he's done what he said." Kincaid gave Cullen a move it nod, then sat at his desk while Cullen took the straight-backed visitor's chair. "What about Giles Oliver?"
"No match on the prints. No trace on the stolen car. Do you think we can at least charge him on the phantom bidding scam?"
"He didn't actually admit it," Kincaid reminded him. "And even if he had, we'd have a tough time proving anything. If it makes you feel any better," he added, "I think that if Giles Oliver can't resist easy money, he'll screw up in a big way eventually. But it won't be our problem. So." Kincaid stretched his legs out, in order to think more comfortably. "If Oliver and Khan look like nonstarters, where does that leave us?"
"We know-or at least we think we know-that Harry Pevensey gave Kristin Cahill the brooch to sell. So far that's the only connection we've found between the two victims-"
"Except for Dominic Scott," put in Kincaid, frowning. "Dom Scott's relationship with Kristin may have been pretty straightforward-rich bloke meets pretty girl in bar and decides to slum it. But if we assume the bartender at the French House is reliable, Dom didn't tell us the truth about how he knew Harry Pevensey. So there's something we've missed there, but I still can't see Dominic Scott as a killer, no matter the motive. And none of this explains where Harry Pevensey got the brooch, unless he really did pick it up at an estate sale, as Khan suggested."
Cullen shrugged. "If Amir Khan is such a good actor-and I'm still not entirely convinced-maybe Dominic Scott isn't the useless twit he seems. Could he have stolen it? He does have access to homes of the rich and famous, I'd assume."
"You sound like a telly series," Kincaid said, grinning. "But you could be right. Say Dom Scott has a nasty drug habit and desperately needs money to pay off his suppliers. He realizes he has a ready-made opportunity in having a girlfriend who works for an auction house. So he steals the brooch, perhaps from some friend of the family, then recruits Harry, however they may be connected, to put the piece up for sale, because he wouldn't want his name associated with stolen goods-"
"But Kristin would have known, because he would have had to introduce her to Harry. And then when the brooch's provenance was called into question by Gemma, he tried to make sure he wouldn't be linked to the brooch, by killing them."
"Still doesn't solve the problem of the car. But, like Oliver, he could have stolen one or borrowed one." Kincaid ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit when thinking that he had never been quite able to conquer.
"And," he went on, "if we start assuming that Scott is not a complete twit and could have planned a theft and two premeditated and risky murders, we have to wonder if he really did meet Kristin by chance."
"Time to put him on the hot plate again?" asked Cullen.
"I think-" Kincaid's mobile rang, and when he saw that it was Gemma, he answered.
Before he could speak, she said, "Duncan, we need to talk."
"We're just going to have another word with Dom Scott in Cheyne Walk. Meet us there, why don't you?"
***
"No." Erika stared at the superintendent, who seemed to be receding to a great distance. "I don't-" Her voice came out a whisper. She tried again. "I don't believe it. He can't be dead." If she didn't believe, it wouldn't be true. "I just spoke with him. Two days ago. He said he had a-a lead. And he was going to follow-"
"Mrs. Rosenthal, he was doing his job," Superintendent Tyrell said with a great show of patience. "That doesn't mean that all was well. In confidence," he added, lowering his voice, "there were domestic…difficulties. And the war. He served, you know, and for some men, it only takes a small thing to tip the balance-"
A rush of anger filled the void within her. "I do not believe for one minute that Gavin Hoxley was the sort of man who would commit suicide." She stood so that she could look down at Tyrell. "There must be some other explanation."
Tyrell laced his fingers across his paunch and looked at her with a sudden speculation that made her feel unclean. "Mrs. Rosenthal. You do realize that if it ever were to come out that Gavin Hoxley had crossed the line with a witness, it would ruin his reputation. I'm sure you wouldn't want that. Nor would you want to cause more grief to his family. His wife and children have suffered enough as it is, don't you think?" He fixed her with pale blue eyes that made her think of the dead fish on the market stall.
It was blackmail, no matter how politely it was couched. And she was helpless against it. Gavin was lost to her. Even in death she could not touch him, could not help him.
Everything that had mattered to her was slipping away, dissolving like mist when she clutched at it. Erika made a last desperate effort. "But my husband-what about my husband's murder?"
Tyrell smiled. "Someone else will look into it, Mrs. Rosenthal. I promise you."
***
Gemma hailed a cab and within minutes was standing on the Embankment across from Cheyne Walk. She stared out at the river, framed between the Albert and Battersea bridges. The day was still overcast, and the water looked dull and impenetrable.
The report on Gavin Hoxley's death said his body had washed ashore farther downstream, near Chelsea Bridge. That didn't mean that was where it had gone in, however, but there would have been no way of calculating tide and current unless one knew when he had gone in.
She looked east. According to his personnel file, Hoxley had lived in Tedworth Square, near the top of the Royal Hospital Gardens. Had he, as the report inferred, simply walked down Tite Street and jumped in the river? The report said there had been no marks on his body to suggest an altercation, and that the balance of his mind may have been disturbed due to domestic problems. No postmortem had been ordered.
It seemed to Gemma a very cavalier judgment, even for a time when procedures may not have been as stringent-and if that was the case, Gavin Hoxley had been an anomaly. If his work on David Rosenthal's murder had been anything to go by, she couldn't have done a better job herself.
She watched a number 11 bus trundle down the Embankment, and suddenly felt a weird sense of displacement, as if time had rippled. Gavin Hoxley had surely stood here, watching the buses go past, admiring the delicate tracery of the Albert Bridge, puzzling over a crime he couldn't solve. In the hours spent reading his notes, she'd come to feel she knew him, and now she experienced a sharp and personal sense of loss.
Silly, Gemma told herself. Gavin Hoxley had been dead for more than fifty years. But somehow that made no difference.
And because Gavin Hoxley had died, she thought, David Rosenthal's murder investigation had been shelved. Or…had it perhaps been the other way round?
Hearing a shout, Gemma turned and saw Kincaid and Doug Cullen getting out of a car in Cheyne Walk. She waved, then walked back to the crossing and waited for the light.
When she reached them, she said, "Anything new?"
"More a lack of anything new," Kincaid answered. "We keep coming back to the fact that Dom Scott and the brooch are the only two links between the victims. We thought maybe Dom stole the brooch and used Harry to sell it so he wouldn't be connected. Then when Erika came forward he had to cover his tracks."
"So you're just stirring it?"
"Basically, yeah." He shrugged. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"
Gemma hesitated, looking up at the house. "It's complicated. I'll tell you after." She mounted the steps and pushed the bell.
The door flew open before Gemma's finger left the buzzer.
Ellen Miller-Scott stared out at them. Gone was the salon polish they had seen before. Her blond hair was disheveled, her face bare of makeup and tear-streaked. "But I just called," she said on a sob. "How did you-You've got to help me-He-I can't-"
"Where?" Kincaid barked at her. "Show us."
She turned and started up the stairs, stumbling and grabbing the banister for support. As soon as Kincaid saw where she was going, he shot past her, and Gemma followed, taking the steps two at a time, leaving Cullen to help the woman.
But Kincaid came to a dead stop at the door of Dominic Scott's apartment, and Gemma almost cannoned into his back.
"Oh, Christ," he said, stepping slowly into the room, and without his body as a shield, Gemma saw what he had seen.
Dominic Scott hung from the beam in his sitting-room ceiling. A rope made of neckties was knotted round his neck, and a chair lay on its side beneath him. He wore jeans and a dress shirt, unbuttoned, and his feet were bare. His handsome face was purple, suffused with congestion, and his open eyes had the opaque flatness that belonged only to the dead.
There was a terrible smell, and urine dripped from inside the leg of his jeans onto the carpet.
"Can't you do something?" wailed Ellen Miller-Scott, and Gemma realized that she had come in behind them, and that Cullen was trying to restrain her and dial his mobile at the same time. Gemma put her arm round the woman so that Doug could release her.
Dominic's mother turned to her, pleading, "Can't you get him down? Please? I tried, but I couldn't-"
Gemma met Kincaid's eyes and tightened her hold. "Mrs. Miller-Scott. Ellen. I'm sorry, but I'm very much afraid it's too late."
CHAPTER 19
January 1945
Wednesday, 17th
Oranges in Notting Hill today.
– Vere Hodgson, Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson, 1940-1945
While Gemma restrained Ellen Miller-Scott, Kincaid took Cullen aside and asked him to ring for the pathologist and SOCOs.
"Right, guv," said Cullen. Then he added in a whisper that carried, nodding in the direction of Dom Scott's body, "But how likely is it that someone did that to him?"
Kincaid gave him a quelling glance and shook his head, but Gemma knew what he was thinking. It wouldn't be the first time they'd seen it happen, someone strangled, then strung up to make it look like a suicide.
Ellen Miller-Scott pulled away from Gemma. "What do you mean, a crime scene? You can't think-Dom-" She looked at her son's body and took a heaving breath.
"Mrs. Miller-Scott, let's get you downstairs." Ellen Miller-Scott was definitely not going to fail a hearing test, Kincaid thought. "Doug, will you wait for reinforcements?"
Gemma didn't think Cullen looked terribly thrilled at the prospect, but he nodded and pulled out his phone.
But it wasn't until the ambulance team had arrived, shaken their heads and said, "Not our job, guv'nor," that Gemma and Kincaid managed to get a protesting Ellen Miller-Scott downstairs and into her white sitting room.
The bold splashes of color in the paintings on the white walls seemed garish and somehow indecent after what they had seen upstairs. "I don't want to leave him," Ellen said again, looking back towards the stairs.
Gemma guided her to a spot on the sofa, deliberately positioning her so that the front hall was out of her view, while Kincaid pulled up an occasional chair so he could lo
ok at her directly.
"Mrs. Miller-Scott-Ellen-I know your son was upset over Kristin Cahill's death," he said. "But was there anything else troubling him?"
Ellen Miller-Scott rubbed hard at the fingers of her left hand with her right, as if she might peel the skin off. Shock and distress had left her looking her age, and Gemma could see the imperfections in her skin that makeup had covered on their first meeting.
"He-There were men, wanting money," Ellen said. "Dom had had some problems with drugs since, oh, since school. Prescription stuff, mostly. You know, he injured his knee at football, and then it was difficult for him to stop the pills. I'm sure it happens all the time." Even now, it sounded as if it were hard for her to admit. "And I-I didn't like people threatening him, but this time I decided that it had to stop, that he would never get better if I helped him. But I never thought-What if-" Her face contorted in a sob, and turned, looking again at the doorway.
It seemed to Gemma that the human need to keep watch over the dead was beyond reason-rooted in the knowledge that once the loved ones left your sight, they were lost to you forever. She couldn't imagine how she would feel if it were Kit or Toby.
Just as quickly as that thought flickered across her mind, she tried to shut it out-you couldn't do the job if you saw your own family in every victim. But because she had known Dom Scott, she was more vulnerable. Her mind strayed to her own mum. How hard must it be for her mother, who worried about her, not to tell her so? And now that their roles were reversed, could she do as well?
Kincaid's gentle voice drew Gemma's attention back to Ellen. "You can't think that your decision had any bearing on your son's actions," he said. "You did what any parent might have done."
"But-What if-" Ellen went back to rubbing at her fingers, her eyes blank.
"What about this morning, Ellen?" asked Gemma. "Did you talk to Dom this morning?"
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