Where Memories Lie

by Deborah Crombie

  Ellen gave Gemma a startled glance, as if she'd forgotten her presence, although Gemma sat near enough to touch. "I-We had a row," she said, haltingly. "There was a company meeting and he didn't want-Dom was always-I told him to get ready whether he wanted to go or not, that he couldn't spend the rest of his life moping over that girl."

  Gemma saw Kincaid's eyes widen, but Ellen didn't seem to realize she'd said anything offensive.

  "I took a shower," she said, "thinking he'd cool off, be reasonable about it, but when I went back upstairs-He was-I couldn't-" She put a hand over her mouth, then wailed, "Oh, dear God. I can't believe it. He can't be dead-Dom-"

  "You did the right thing, ringing for help," Kincaid assured her hurriedly, and Gemma hoped Cullen had called for a family liaison officer. They couldn't leave her on her own when she was this distraught. "Ellen," Kincaid went on. "I know this is difficult, but we need to ask you some things. You said Dominic was upset about Kristin Cahill's death. Did he talk to you about Harry Pevensey?"

  "Who?" Ellen looked bewildered.

  "Harry Pevensey. The man who was killed yesterday. Did Dom not tell you?"

  "I don't understand. Who was he?" She looked utterly bewildered. "What do you mean, he was killed?"

  "Someone ran him down. Just like Kristin Cahill," said Gemma.

  "But-What does that have to do with Dom?"

  Kincaid leaned forward. "That's what we were hoping you could tell us. Harry Pevensey put a brooch up for sale at Harrowby's through Kristin Cahill. And it was Dom who introduced them."

  "A brooch?" Ellen Miller-Scott fastened on the word. "Dom wouldn't-Dom didn't know what a brooch was. He had no interest in art, or collecting"-her gaze strayed to the paintings-"or any of the things our family-my father-had worked so hard to achieve. The business-" She shook her head. "Dom just couldn't seem to learn the simplest things. My father-I'm glad he didn't live to see this-"

  Gemma stared at her, reminding herself that people who were in shock often said things they didn't mean, but that didn't stop her feeling a wave of revulsion for the woman sitting beside her.

  "So Dom never spoke to you about Har-" Kincaid had begun, when the sound of voices came from the front door.

  Doug Cullen came in, saying, "Guv, the pathologist is here. It's Dr. Ling. She's gone straight up. And family liaison's here as well."

  Gemma found herself more ready than usual to leave the bereaved in the competent hands of the family liaison officer. This one, who followed Cullen into the room, was a good-looking man about Gemma's age with curly dark hair.

  As Gemma stood, he gave her a quick smile, then focused on Ellen. "Mrs. Miller-Scott? I'm Mark Lombardi. I'm very sorry for your loss." He glanced at Kincaid, said, "Sir?" and at Kincaid's nod of assent, took Gemma's place. "Mrs. Miller-Scott, can I get you anything? A cup of tea?"

  "But I-" Ellen protested. "My son. What are they doing?"

  As Lombardi said, "Why don't we go into the kitchen, and I'll explain everything to you," Kincaid motioned Gemma into the hallway.

  "Looks like she's in good hands." He nodded towards Lombardi. "And I suspect she does better with men. Let's go see what Kate has to say."

  "I-You go on." Gemma didn't usually willingly leave Kincaid at the mercy of Kate Ling's flirtatious banter, but she suddenly found she was not eager to see Dominic Scott's body again.

  "Are you all right?" Kincaid asked, his brow creasing in instant concern, a habit held over from the days of her precarious pregnancy.

  "I'm fine, really," she reassured him. "Just need a breath of air. Tell Kate I'll say hello when she comes down."

  The crime scene techs arrived right on Kate's heels, and Gemma let them in as she let herself out. She stood for a moment on the steps, imagining the routine going on inside. The sun had come out, but the wind was still cold, and she shivered. Pulling her jacket a bit tighter, she crossed the road again, and when she reached the Embankment, looked down at the sun sparking off the broad curve of the river.

  How, she wondered, could a mother care more for her dead father's opinion than for her son, whose pathetically grotesque body still hung suspended from a beam in her house?

  ***

  Kate Ling stood in the door of Dominic Scott's apartment, white coveralls slung over her arm like a party wrap. "Duncan," she said as she turned to him. "You've made my day."

  "Not my call, I promise. But I'm glad it's you." He was, too, as she was a good friend, and never hard on the eyes. She was perfectly turned out, as always, in tight buff trousers and a crisp white shirt, and her dark, shining hair swung straight as broom bristles round her delicate face.

  Kate nodded at the room as the techs came in and started to work. "Looks to me like something just got up this poor bugger's nose."

  Kincaid had yet to see Kate Ling ruffled by death-she saved her compassion for the living, and had been tactfully kind to them both when Gemma had lost the baby. "I daresay," he answered. "This poor bugger is connected to two homicides."

  "You think he was the perpetrator?" Kate asked, her words punctuated by the repeated flash of the camera.

  "It would explain this." But even as he said it, Kincaid wasn't sure that he believed it. It had taken ruthlessness as well as a capacity for risk to murder Kristin Cahill and Harry Pevensey, and he wasn't sure either of those things squared with the taking of one's own life, whether out of despair, fear, or guilt.

  "Have enough, Joe?" Kate asked the photographer.

  "Couple more, Doc." The photographer shot a few more angles, then gave her a nod of assent. "All yours, then."

  "Okay, let's get him down," Kate called out to the mortuary attendants who had come in with her, and slipped on her coverall.

  They were already suited, and had brought a folding ladder-they looked, Kincaid thought, like painters. And like painters, they efficiently spread a cloth on the floor, and went to work.

  It was a job Kincaid did not envy. One climbed up on the ladder, and while Kate and the other attendant lifted Dom Scott's body enough to take the tension off the makeshift rope, he untied it from the beam. Then Kate and her partner gently eased the body down onto the cloth.

  "Nice-looking lad," she said, studying the congested face. "And nice taste in ties." She touched the silk with a gloved fingertip. "Hermès. One of these would set you back a month's wages."

  Kincaid raised an inquiring eyebrow, wondering at her sartorial knowledge, as well as what she considered his month's wages, but she merely quirked a corner of her mouth. He knew nothing of her personal life, except that she was not married, or at least if she was, she wore no ring.

  Looking back at the ties, Kincaid wondered if their use had been a last bit of rebellion aimed on Dom Scott's part towards his mother-she had told her son to get dressed whether he liked it or not, as if he were a recalcitrant child, and he had made the ultimate refusal.

  "He struggled," said Kate, lifting Dom's hands and examining the fingertips. "They usually do when they strangle themselves rather than breaking the neck. See, there's some bruising and torn nails, and here"-she touched the silk at his throat-"there are some little tears in the fabric."

  Kincaid made an involuntary grimace and Kate shot him a quick look. "Had you met him, then, before this?"

  "Yes. We'd interviewed him a couple of times."

  "Always makes it harder," she said. "Fortunately, I seldom have that problem. At least there doesn't seem to have been any autoerotica involved. He kept his trousers on. But I've certainly seen more determined suicides." She looked up. "That wasn't a very good knot. Or a very big drop. And the neckties were resourceful enough, but if he'd really been determined, he'd have used a length of flex, something like a lamp cord, maybe. If you want my very professional opinion, I'd say it took him a good few minutes to die."

  "His mother was here. He might have had a half-formed hope that she would find him."

  "Well, speculating's your job," said Kate. "Let's see what I can tell you for certain." She pushed back the
cuffs of the unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt, then turned his wrists over. "Ah. Look at this." She traced the faint white lines on the pale, smooth skin on the underside of Dom's wrists. "More on the left than on the right. Was he right-handed?"

  Kincaid thought back, recalling Dom lifting a hand to pick at his shirt, or to push the hair from his forehead. "I think so. Hesitation scars?"

  "Yes. And let's see what else." She pushed the left sleeve up above the elbow. The inside of Dom Scott's arm bore a trail of purple marks, some faded to scars, some fresh bruises, the punctures still visible. "And on the right, too," Kate said, pushing back the other sleeve. "I won't be surprised if we find tracks on the thighs as well, and any other place he could find to stick a needle." She looked up at Kincaid, all humor gone, her face implacable. "This boyo needed help in a big way."

  ***

  Gavin Hoxley was buried the next day in Brompton Cemetery, with full police honors. Erika had found the notice in the Times, and in doing so had learned for the first time his date of birth, the names of the parents who had predeceased him, and the names of his wife and children. His death had, of course, been reported as an accident, and she recalled with bitter irony his superintendent telling her that the department took care of its own.

  The preponderance of mourners, however, allowed Erika to stand back from the crowd, unnoticed. The fine May weather continued unabated, and Gavin Hoxley's widow-Linda, she was called-wore black linen, and a hat that Erika would have admired when she'd worked in the millinery department at Whiteleys, early in the war. The children, a boy and a girl, looked stodgy and dull, as if they had failed to inherit their father's looks as well as the spark that had set him apart.

  At any other time, Erika would have scolded herself for the unkind thought, but on this day she did not care. She watched the grieving widow, supported on either side by an older couple who must be her parents, throw a clod of earth on the coffin, and Erika felt not even a stirring of pity.

  For Linda Hoxley would recover, would marry again, would perhaps even have more children.

  For a moment, as Erika watched Gavin's children follow their mother's example, she felt a wild flare of hope-perhaps she was carrying Gavin's child. But the thought faded as quickly as it had come. She had been too damaged by the things that had happened to her. The doctors had told her so in her first weeks in England, and although she had never been given a chance to test their diagnosis, she'd not doubted the truth of it.

  And tomorrow she had her own husband to bury. The police had released David's body, and she had made arrangements for a service and a burial plot in the Jewish cemetery in Willesden. But tomorrow she would feel no less out of place than she did here, watching a Christian funeral for a man she had loved for a day.

  Her father had not been an observant Jew. He had felt that being perceived as "too Jewish" would damage his prospects-and yet his degree of Jewishness had mattered not one jot in the end.

  And David-David had felt that his God had betrayed him, had betrayed them all-what rational god, after all, would allow six million Jews to die? And David had been a rational man.

  Erika watched as the service drew to a close and the mourners straggled away. She saw the large, ginger-haired Francis Tyrell glance at her, picking her out among the headstones where she stood, but after a moment's hesitation, he turned and followed his fellow officers.

  And when they were all gone, the sextons went about the business of returning the earth they had removed. Erika lowered herself to the grass and began to pull the spring weeds from the grave of a child whose name had been half rubbed from the headstone by weather and time.

  The sun beat down on her head. Her vision blurred, and her fingernails grew caked with crumbly dark soil. Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes. She knew the Anglican litany; she had buried enough friends during the war.

  After a while, she looked up and saw that even the sextons had finished. Slowly, she stood, brushing her green-stained hands against her skirt, and walked across the rough grass.

  There was no headstone, of course, only the raised mound of the grave, which would settle with time as the grass and nettles grew over it. Erika knelt, but could not bring herself to touch. It would bring her no closer.

  What would she do now? David was gone, and the past with him. Whatever he had done, or tried to do, she knew it was not within her power to achieve justice for him, if Gavin had failed.

  And Gavin was gone. There her mind stopped. She could not contemplate the why, or how, or what might have been. She could think only of how she would go on, who she might become. What had she left within the husk of her heart?

  Reason, she told herself. Logic. The intelligence to look after herself, to make a mark in the world. And those things would have to be enough.

  ***

  Gemma was waiting when Kincaid and Cullen came out of Dominic Scott's house. "Kate's not finished, then?" she asked.

  "Not quite," Kincaid told her. He looked tired, she thought, as if the last half hour spent with Dominic Scott's body had drained him. "His mother said he had a problem with prescription drugs. Well, it was a bit more than that. It looks like we guessed right. He was a raging junkie, and had been for a good while. And he was self-harming, at the least."

  "Cutting?" When Kincaid nodded, she said, "Do you think his mother knew?"

  He sighed. "I don't know. I can't gauge her. And parents have an enormous capacity for self-deception."

  "Why does it matter whether she knew or not?" asked Cullen. "It puts him squarely in the frame, and so does his suicide. He needed money to pay off his suppliers. He nicked the diamond brooch, then got his girlfriend to put it up for sale through Pevensey. Then, when you came round saying Erika had claimed it, he got the wind up. Didn't want his name connected, so killed the girlfriend, then Pevensey, then topped himself because he felt guilty."

  "First off," Gemma said sharply, "she wasn't the girlfriend. Her name was Kristin. And it doesn't tell us where he got the brooch, where he got the car, or what Harry Pevensey had to do with it. Or why Dom would think he couldn't bluff it out-we still have no more than circumstantial evidence that he was even connected."

  "Maybe he just didn't want his mum to find out," Cullen shot back.

  Kincaid shook his head. "No. There's something we're missing. We-"

  "David Rosenthal's murder," said Gemma, and they both stared at her. "I've been thinking. Erika's husband was killed a stone's throw from here. In Cheyne Gardens." She pointed east, towards the Albert Bridge. "His murder was never solved."

  "A long stone, that," Cullen said skeptically, but Gemma cut him off.

  "No, listen. The detective who was investigating the case died-accidental drowning, possibly suicide, according to the report-and David Rosenthal's murder was never officially closed."

  "But that was more than fifty years ago," put in Kincaid. "How can that have any bearing on this?"

  "I don't-" Gemma's phone rang. She gave Kincaid an apologetic glance as she pulled it from her bag. When she saw that it was Melody, she answered. "Melody, can I ring you back? There's been-"

  "Boss," Melody interrupted, "you know that issue of the Guardian? I thought I'd have another look. And I found something odd."

  Gemma listened, and when Melody had finished, said, "Can you send it to me? Right. Thanks. I'll ring you back."

  She disconnected and looked at Kincaid and Cullen. "I think I just might be able to tell you."

  CHAPTER 20

  We all underestimate the power of human beings to endure.

  – William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941

  The photo on Gemma's phone was black and white, obviously reproduced from old newsprint, but it was still possible to see that the man in the picture bore a strong resemblance to Ellen Miller-Scott.

  "It's Joss Miller," Gemma told Kincaid and Cullen as she passed the phone across. "Accepting some sort of award for his philanthropic contributions to an art museum."r />
  "Ellen Miller-Scott's father?" said Cullen. "But I don't see what an old photo-"

  "Wait." Gemma grabbed her phone back and tapped the screen. "It's not just an old photo. This picture ran in the Guardian on the day David Rosenthal died. Don't you see? If David Rosenthal was looking through the newspaper for Erika's article, he could have seen this."

  "So he saw-or might have seen," Cullen emphasized, "this photo. What difference-"

  "David Rosenthal never came to Chelsea. According to the detective who investigated his murder, Rosenthal had a very fixed routine. He taught at a Jewish school in North Hampstead. He lived in Notting Hill. And any free time he had, he spent in the Reading Room at the British Museum, working on a book about which he was very secretive.

  "And yet he was found dead here, in Cheyne Gardens, just down the way, with his throat cut and his manuscript missing."

  "The Millers lived here in 1952?" Kincaid asked, beginning to look interested.

  "Since the forties. Melody said Joss Miller prospered after the war. He bought this house, and a country place as well."

  "So you're thinking Rosenthal came across Miller's picture in the paper that day, and that's why he came here, to Chelsea. To see Joss Miller?" He looked up at the town house, frowning. "But what was the connection between them? And why was Rosenthal murdered?"

  "Are you thinking Miller did it?" Cullen asked, with a skeptical expression that would have done Kincaid justice.

  "Why isn't it possible?" The more Cullen argued, the more certain Gemma became. "The detective-Hoxley-came across rumors that David Rosenthal might have been involved with some questionable people. There were offshoots of Jewish terrorist organizations operating in London after the war, as well as in Europe."

  "Vengeance groups?" asked Kincaid.

  Gemma nodded. "According to Hoxley's notes, there were those who felt that the war crime tribunals had not even skimmed the surface. And a man who worked alongside Rosenthal at the British Museum said he thought Rosenthal was working on some sort of exposé."