“You’ve found her,” said Gemma. And although it was what she’d expected, what she’d been all too certain of since she’d first looked at the garden, she felt a rush of grief that caught her by surprise. Sandra Gilles would not come home to her daughter.
“Yes, I think so,” answered Kaleem. He rubbed his arm across his forehead, leaving more streaks. “There is an adult female body beneath the layer of lime. The lime slowed decomposition somewhat, but it’s been a warm summer, so…the clothing is pretty well intact, however, and matches the description of the items Sandra Gilles was wearing the day she disappeared. The hair also fits Sandra Gilles’s description-blond and very curly.”
Gemma decided then that she was not going to look. She had seen Naz Malik’s body. She wanted to keep her image of Sandra Gilles, the vibrant woman she’d seen in the photographs in the Fournier Street house, intact-for Charlotte’s sake as well as her own.
“…we will, of course, be matching DNA and dental records,” Kaleem was saying as she dragged her attention back to him. “The victim was buried facedown, and it looks as though she received a blow to the back of the head. There’s what appears to be matted blood in the hair, and a depression in the skull.”
Kincaid stepped forward and looked down. His face was impassive. “He hit her?”
“Looks that way. I’d say when her back was turned. No guess as to the weapon without a proper examination.”
“But-” Gemma tried to work out what had happened. “If she just came to talk to him, why did he take the risk of killing her, rather than just bluffing it out? Surely he could have covered his tracks up to that point-”
There were voices from the kitchen, and two suited forensics techs came out, followed by a photographer, and then Doug Cullen. Gemma noticed that one of the “lads” was female.
Kincaid and Kaleem moved aside so the techs could go back to work. “We’re just going to remove a bit more fill, Doc,” said the woman, who appeared to be in charge. “It seems to be quite soft beneath the body.”
“I talked to the landscapers this morning,” said Cullen. “The woman next door remembered the name on their van. This”-he waved a hand towards the fountain, now moved to one side-“wasn’t the original plan. He was going to put in a fishpond, quite a deep one. They’d already dug for it, and delivered the pavers to go round it, but they hadn’t taken away the earth that had come out of the hole.
“Then Alexander rang them the morning they were scheduled to concrete the pond and said he’d decided on something else and was going to do the work himself. They thought he’d just got a cheaper bid at the last minute, because he wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty. But then he called them back a few days later and asked them to put in the fountain.”
“So, he found himself with a body on his hands and took advantage of an opportunity,” Kincaid said. “He had a hole, and the materials to fill it, and he needed to do it as quickly as possible-”
“Wait,” interrupted Kaleem. He turned to Cullen. “Did your landscaper say how deep they dug? This body is actually quite close to the surface. If there’s loose soil beneath her-”
Kaleem and the female tech looked at each other, then went to the edge of the pit and knelt, leaning down. The tech eased herself flat onto her stomach, and Kaleem steadied her while she seemed to be probing carefully in the bottom of the hole.
“Shit,” she said, suddenly still. “Get me a damned bucket.”
The other tech hurried forward and eased himself down flat as well, lowering an empty tub.
Kaleem watched intently as the female tech moved again, and Gemma heard the soft sound of earth falling into the plastic tub. Then Kaleem looked up.
“There’s another body, lower down.”
The two techs worked silently, easing soil from around the edges of the upper body. After a quarter of an hour, the woman said, “I think that’s all we can do without disturbing the upper remains. But fortunately the lower body was a bit to one side, so I think you can get some idea of what we’ve got.”
Kaleem knelt down again and peered in. “There’s a hand and forearm visible. From the size, I’d say they belong to a child. And there’s hair. Long and dark. So I would guess, given the suspect’s history, that this victim is female.”
“Oh.” Gemma drew in a breath as an added weight of sorrow descended upon her.
The little girl had stopped appearing in the window, not because she’d been passed on to another man, but because she had died.
“Was the girl there longer than Sandra, do you think?” she asked Kaleem.
“Can’t say for certain without tests, but it looks like decomposition is a little more advanced. There’s no lime over these deeper remains, however, so decomposition might have progressed more rapidly.”
Gemma frowned. “Why no lime over the girl, I wonder?”
“Maybe the girl’s death was an accident,” Melody suggested. “He got too rough with her, or…well, anyway, whatever happened…maybe he just took advantage of the work in progress.” She gestured at the garden.
“And then when it came to Sandra,” continued Gemma, “he must have figured that what had worked once would work again. But he had to put her body closer to the surface, so he risked taking the time to get the lime. It was a Sunday, after all. He could have just driven to a garden center that afternoon. He wouldn’t have buried her until after dark.”
“It must have been backbreaking,” said Kincaid, without the least trace of sympathy. “I’ll bet we find he took a few days off work afterwards.”
“But why didn’t he bury Naz?” asked Gemma.
“He was running out of room. And maybe the lime hadn’t worked as well as he’d thought.” Kincaid shrugged. “Or maybe he just didn’t want to dig up his pavers again. But whatever the reason, it was a bad decision. If Naz Malik had disappeared without a trace, we might never have learned what happened to Naz or Sandra. Or this girl.”
“We found a pair of glasses, guv,” said the female tech. “Almost forgot, in all the excitement. They were under the shrubs, covered with some leaf mold.” She gestured towards the fill buckets, and Gemma saw a small evidence bag pushed to one side. She crossed the garden and picked up the bag, studying it. They looked just like the glasses Naz had been wearing in the photos on Sandra’s corkboard.
“I’m certain these belonged to Naz,” she said. “Do you think”-she hesitated, hating the idea-“do you think he left them deliberately?”
“If Alexander invited him out here for a drink-and I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea appealed to him, the twisted bastard”-Kincaid grimaced-“then kept him here, drugged, until dark, Naz might have had periods when he was conscious enough to realize what was happening.”
Cullen was shaking his head, not in disagreement, but in an expression that bordered on wonder. “Maybe that’s what Alexander was looking for that day in the mortuary, when we thought he might have gone through Naz’s effects,” he said. “He realized he’d slipped up. But, my God, what a nerve.”
The enclosed space of the garden was beginning to bake in the afternoon sun, and the odor rising from the pit was unmistakable. Gemma stepped back until she stood partly in the shade cast by the house. She looked up at the dark brick wall. “What we still don’t understand is what brought Sandra here that day.”
“They found a camera inside,” said the tech. “In the bedroom nearest the bathroom upstairs. There were some girls’ trinkets in a drawer, and a folded sari. The camera was tucked underneath, in the folds of the cloth.”
Gemma imagined Sandra, driven by an impulse they might never understand, perhaps asking to use the loo, then darting across the hall for a quick look in the bedroom. Had she meant to take a photo of the sari, but tucked her camera beneath the silk when she heard Alexander coming?
“Were there any pictures in the camera?” she asked.
“I don’t know, guv,” the woman answered. “But I don’t think they’ve sent it to the lab yet.”
>
“I want to see it,” Gemma said. She turned and went into the house, and Kincaid followed her.
While he went upstairs, she waited in the kitchen, listening to the murmur of his voice as he talked to someone on the upstairs search team.
When he came back, he held a small camera with gloved hands. “There was only one photo on the memory card.” He held the camera up so Gemma could see.
She gazed at the bright square of the view screen. There was an arch of dark brick, and within it, a peeling poster. It was a street artist’s fading work, so damaged that Gemma couldn’t be certain whether it was a painting or a photograph.
It didn’t matter. The young woman in the picture seemed to gaze back at her, unconcerned by her nakedness, her serene face innocent and as ageless as time itself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
In the old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they may look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.
– George Eliot, Silas Marner
“Why don’t you sit down for a minute,” Kincaid had said. “It’s hot, and you look a bit done in.” He’d fetched her a glass of water, then gone back into the garden.
Gemma had emptied the tumbler into the sink, then scrubbed it with soap and hot water before filling it again. It was stupid, she knew, and she was thirsty, but she didn’t want to drink from Alexander’s glass.
When Kincaid came back, she had rinsed it once more.
“I think I know her name,” he said. “Cullen did some digging this morning. According to Immigration’s records, the last girl Alexander brought in from Bangladesh was called Rani. He never divorced her.”
“What about Lucas Ritchie?” asked Gemma. “Did he identify any of the men in the photos?”
“All of them. Cullen will get started on the warrants. Listen.” He came over to her and took the glass from her hands, setting it in the sink. “There’s not much else we can do here at the moment. I think, if we left right now, we might get to Chelsea Town Hall before closing.”
Gemma looked at him blankly. “Chelsea Town Hall?”
“We have a marriage license to apply for, in case you’d forgotten.”
“Oh, so we do.” It seemed a world away from what she had witnessed in the garden-a world she suddenly wanted very much. She turned the ring on her finger. “I think that’s a bloody brilliant idea.”
Melody watched them go from the front step. She’d promised to drive Gemma’s car back to Notting Hill, and had taken the keys.
Feeling a momentary pang of envy, she wondered when Gemma would see the light about Charlotte. Some people had everything, and were blind. But still, it wasn’t her place to say-and it wasn’t like her to be standing round feeling sorry for herself either.
The door opened and Doug Cullen came out.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I understand you’ve been vehicularly abandoned. The super took the pool car. Do you want a lift?”
“Yeah. In a bit, if you don’t mind.” He stood beside her, gazing up the street, and didn’t meet her eyes. “So is this going to show up in tomorrow’s Chronicle?” he asked.
Melody looked at him, startled. “What?”
“You heard me. I did some research, you know. After the leak about Ritchie’s club. It was blindingly obvious, really. It’s just that no one ever thought to look.
“It’s a common enough name,” he continued, “common enough to pass unnoticed for a while, but how could you have thought that your identity wouldn’t eventually come out? And to put Gemma at risk-”
“You’re defending Gemma?” Melody’s anger overcame her shock. “That’s rich, since you’re the one always trying to sabotage her. Admit it, you’re jealous, and you have it in for me because I’m connected with her. So what are you going to do?”
Doug looked at her, his expression mulish. Melody glared back at him. Then, it came to her that the whole business was really stupid, and that she was tired of it.
“You’re right,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “It’s not fair to Gemma, even though I’ve told her the truth. I should resign. I love this job, but I don’t want to go on doing it like this.”
“I’m right?” Cullen sounded surprised. “You’d really quit? What else would you do?”
“I don’t know. I’m good at finding out things. I suppose I’d go to work for the paper. It’s what my father’s always wanted.”
“But you didn’t do what he wanted.”
“No.”
Cullen shifted awkwardly. “Look, I didn’t mean-”
“Are you saying I should stay on, and have you hold the truth over my head?”
“No. Not me. But you should tell the guv’nor.”
“You think I would ever be assigned to a major case again?”
“Well, if they discriminated against you because of who your father is, you could always threaten to take the story to the paper.” He grinned suddenly, but Melody wasn’t sure she found the irony funny.
“Seriously,” Cullen continued, “you are good at what you do. And I suppose you were right. I have been jealous of Gemma, and of you.”
“Doug, why?” she asked, and the use of his first name felt comfortable again. “You’re a good officer, and Kincaid depends on you.”
“Because I don’t seem to have the talent for reading signals.” He shrugged. “I’m good with facts, but I always seem to get things wrong with people. Foot in mouth.” He looked away. “Like that night in front of the Yard. I was an idiot.”
Even now, remembering his rejection made her flush with embarrassment. But she’d only suggested a drink, after all, and maybe he had just felt shy. Had she overreacted? And was it too late to make amends?
“You were,” she agreed, but without rancor. “But that was ages ago. Do you think, if I talked to the super, that I could get on in this job?”
“There are times it might be helpful to have a friendly connection with the press. As long as the press knew where your interests lay.”
“Loyalties, you mean,” she said.
“Yeah. That, too. Do you know?” he asked, with a frankness she’d never heard from him.
“Definitely.”
“Then maybe…” He rocked a little on his feet, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “…if you gave me a lift, we could stop for a drink. Have a chat or something.”
Melody laughed aloud. She felt a bit giddy with liberation. “What would we talk about?”
“I’m thinking of looking for a new flat.”
“Well, that’ll do for a start.”
“You have sixteen days of official freedom,” Duncan said when they left the town hall, having filled out the paperwork required by the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for a marriage license. “In case you change your mind.”
“I’d better not,” she said, teasing. “Your mum and dad have promised to come to Glastonbury for Winnie’s blessing. And Juliet’s promised to come with the kids. Kit should be pleased.” She took his arm. “It’s cooling off. Let’s walk down to the river, to celebrate.
“Winnie’s doing well, by the way,” she added as they strolled down Oakley Street. “I talked to her this morning.” She didn’t want to think about her mum, and whether she would be well enough in a few months to attend. Not today.
“You realize that if we go to Glastonbury for Winnie’s blessing in the church, we’ll be married three times,” Kincaid said.
“Is that for luck, then?” she asked.
“I don’t know about luck, but it should make it stick.”
She punched his arm and he laughed, but when they reached the river, he stopped, his back to the railing, and looked at her soberly.
“Will you mind? About Winnie and Jack’s baby?” he asked.
; “No, of course not,” she answered, but she knew what he meant. “I’m so pleased for them. Really, I’ll be fine.” And she realized, as she said it, that she was fine-that she was, in some indefinable way, healed, and that it was not a baby she wanted.
“But there is-” She struggled with the words. “I don’t want you to think that it’s not important to me to have a child of our own. But Kit and Toby, they’re just as much ours as if we’d had them together. I can’t imagine loving them any more, or any differently.
“And today”-she swallowed and went on-“when I knew what had happened to that little girl…to all those girls, I thought-If we could make a difference to one-”
“I know,” he said, and smiled. “And besides, the boys need someone to keep them in line.”
About the Author
***
DEBORAH CROMBIE is a native Texan who has lived in both England and Scotland. She currently lives north of Dallas in McKinney, Texas, sharing a 102-year-old house with her husband, three cats, and two German shepherds. When not walking dogs or remodeling, she spends a good deal of time in the U.K., researching her Kincaid/James novels.
www.deborahcrombie.com
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