Tess sat down hard in front of the log, tilting her head to one side and staring at him as if he’d gone completely daft. The expression on her face was so comical that he couldn’t help laughing, but he was determined to go on nonetheless. Positioning himself on the far side of the log, he tightened the tension on the lead so that she couldn’t go round, then held up a dog biscuit. “All right, girl, you want the biscuit, you come and get it. Come on! Jump!” He whistled coaxingly, and after a few aborted attempts to go round the sides, Tess jumped effortlessly over the log.
Kit whooped with delight as he fed her the biscuit, then flopped flat on his back in the grass while Tess tried to lick his face, one of their favorite games.
Suddenly, he had the odd sensation that he was being watched. He sat up, holding his squirming dog by the collar, and looked round the garden. It took a moment to make out the man standing by the gate, in the deep shadow of the yew hedge. His heart gave a thump of fear, then he realized there was something familiar about the figure.
The man lifted a hand to the latch and stepped through the gate, and as he moved into the sunlight, Kit saw his face clearly. Swallowing against the constriction in his throat, he said tentatively, “Dad?”
• • •
“I
T’S NOT IN THE BEST OF
taste, is it?” Kincaid said to Gemma as he stared up at Reg Mortimer’s building.
His meeting with Chief Superintendent Childs had left him distinctly out of sorts. Childs had just fielded a call from Sir Peter Mortimer, demanding to know why the police were badgering his son rather than making progress in finding Annabelle Hammond’s murderer, and he had transferred his irritation to Kincaid with instructions to get somewhere bloody quick—and to go easy on Mortimer.
When Kincaid had suggested that the two things might not be synonymous, considering the fact that Mortimer had apparently lied to them from the beginning, Childs had warned him against making any allegations he couldn’t back up.
Gemma shaded her eyes against the glare as she examined the building’s little rounded balconies and portholes. Funnel-like structures rose from its top, while one side of the building cascaded downwards in a stepping-stone series of penthouse terraces. “I think it’s jolly. A child’s fantasy of living in an ocean liner, rather than a tree house. Looks a bit posh, though.”
As he watched her, he thought she seemed remarkably unwilted for having slogged about in the heat most of the day. She’d been waiting for him at Limehouse Station and had soon caught him up on what had happened in his absence.
After her visit with Jo Lowell’s neighbor, she’d rung Martin Lowell’s bank, only to be informed that he was away at a meeting for the afternoon. But she’d at least finagled his home address.
While waiting for Lowell to get home, they had decided to try Reg Mortimer’s flat, even though Mortimer hadn’t answered his phone.
Only in passing had she mentioned to Kincaid that she’d seen Gordon Finch again, and that Finch had claimed he
hadn’t known of a connection between his family and Annabelle’s or of his father’s relationship with her.
It had been on the tip of his tongue to ask her why she hadn’t pressed Finch harder, but he’d bitten back his comment, realizing he didn’t trust his own motivations.
Following her now as she made her way round the building to the entrance, he wondered if the difficulty lay with him or with her. He was ordinarily comfortable with Gemma’s interviewing skills, so why was he letting the matter of Gordon Finch get his nose out of joint?
As she reached the main doors, Gemma looked back and smiled at him, and he was glad he’d resisted his earlier impulse to snap at her. “Care for a cruise, mate?”
“Just as long as the ship stays firmly on dry land,” he replied, holding the door for her.
Inside the building, a speedy lift whisked them up to the level of Reg Mortimer’s flat. Kincaid knocked on his door, then they waited in the hush of the corridor. Gemma stood inches from him, and he could smell the sweet and distinctive scent of her skin. After a moment, he knocked again, looking at her with a shrug. “Where do you suppose—”
He stopped as the click of the dead bolt came clearly through the door. “It seems we’re in luck, after all.”
The door swung open. Reg Mortimer had discarded his tie; his pink shirt was rumpled and the tail had come partially untucked. He shoved back the brown hair that had fallen over his forehead in an unruly wave and groaned. “What is it this time?” he demanded.
Kincaid smiled. “People are always so happy to see us—I think we must be more popular than the dentist.”
“At least the dentist doesn’t bother you at home,” Reg retorted. Then he stepped back reluctantly, adding, “I suppose you’d better come in.”
The door opened directly into a large sitting room and Kincaid looked round with interest. The place struck him as faintly tropical. Two white, cotton-covered sofas faced each other across a round sisal rug. Table and bookcases were of pale, clean-lined oak, and the windows were dressed only in
white linen shades pulled to half-mast. Light from riverside windows flooded the space. The room’s color came from the lime and tangerine cushions tossed on the sofas and the contemporary paintings adorning the walls. The only immediate signs of human occupation were provided by a vase of wilted day lilies on the coffee table and a jumble of papers spread out on the gateleg table that stood half open against one wall.
“Nice flat,” Kincaid said admiringly, taking a seat on one of the white sofas. “Hiding out from work, are you?”
Reg sank down onto the edge of the opposite sofa. “I kept thinking that Annabelle was just away for a bit, on a buying trip, maybe … expecting her to walk through the door.… It still doesn’t seem real, somehow.” He glanced at Gemma, who had moved behind him and was surveying the paintings with her hands clasped behind her back, as if visiting a gallery. “Is that usual?” he went on. “What I mean is, you deal with this sort of thing all the time.… I’ve never experienced …”
“People find various ways of dealing with violent death. Perhaps that’s why you’ve been less than truthful with us, Mr. Mortimer.”
“What—what are you talking about?” Mortimer’s eyes widened, and in the bright light Kincaid saw the sudden dilation of his pupils. There was no doubt the man was frightened of something.
“Did you think that Jo Lowell wouldn’t tell us what really happened at that dinner party?” Kincaid asked, giving him a last chance.
“But I told you—”
“You can’t have imagined we wouldn’t check your story.”
“You thought Jo would protect her sister, didn’t you?” said Gemma, pulling up the chair that had sat in front of the gateleg table. “Was that the way it always was, Jo protecting Annabelle?”
“Yes—No—I mean … I can’t think anymore.”
“Then I’ll help you, shall I?” said Kincaid. “You didn’t
know that Annabelle had had an affair with Martin Lowell until Harry blurted it out that night. But their affair happened before you and Annabelle became involved, so why were you so furious? Were you afraid she’d kept seeing him after she took up with you? Or was it because she hadn’t told you the truth?”
“She said it wasn’t anyone else’s business—” Abruptly realizing his admission, Mortimer stopped and looked from Kincaid to Gemma.
“You argued about it after you left Jo’s, didn’t you?” asked Gemma. “You must have wondered what else she hadn’t told you.”
For a moment, Mortimer tensed as if he might deny it. Then his shoulders sagged. “How could Annabelle have betrayed Jo and the children that way? And if she could do such a thing to Jo …”
“Then she could betray anyone,” Gemma finished for him. “Even you.”
“It was too humiliating—I couldn’t bear it. How could I tell you? And I didn’t see how it could possibly matter—”
“You can’t know what matters,” Kincaid interjected sharply. “An investigation fits together like a puzzle—you can’t know how your piece falls in with someone else’s.” He scowled at Mortimer and added, “Unless, of course, your piece is the only one that counts. Let’s say that Annabelle added insult to injury. You were enraged with her already, angrier than you had ever been. You accused her of sleeping with someone else—” A look at Mortimer’s stricken face told him he’d hit home, and he felt a pulse of excitement. “You demanded to know who it was. And she told you—didn’t she, Reg?”
Through the flat’s open windows came the hoot of a tug’s horn, then the amplified voice of the tour guide on the Thames Ferry, extolling the architectural features of the riverside buildings in an exaggerated Cockney accent.
Reg Mortimer gaped at Kincaid like a rabbit mesmerized by a car’s headlamps, his eyes wide and dilated, his
breathing shallow. Then he clamped a hand over his mouth and bolted from the room.
A moment later they heard the sound of retching coming from the bathroom. Kincaid made a grimace of distaste.
“You certainly got a reaction,” Gemma said softly. “The guv’nor is going to love you.” She nodded towards the walls. “Have a look at those while we’ve got a moment.”
The toilet flushed, then water ran. Kincaid stood and went to examine the paintings he’d only glanced at from a distance. Two of them echoed the limes and tangerines of the sofa cushions in more muted tones. The images were surreal, a bit jarring, but fascinating. Silvers and golds were predominant in the third canvas, an abstract study of amoeba-like shapes. When Kincaid saw the signature, his eyes narrowed. He went back and looked more carefully at the first two paintings. Again, the artist’s name was one he recognized. If these canvases were original, he thought, they must have cost a pretty penny indeed.
Just as he moved to the gateleg table, he heard the water shut off in the bathroom. He only managed a swift look at the papers spread out on the tabletop before Mortimer came back into the room.
“I’m sorry,” Mortimer said. His face glistened with perspiration. “I think I must be ill. Since Annabelle … I can’t seem to keep anything down.”
“It’s very stressful, keeping things to yourself, Reg,” Gemma said softly. “Why don’t you tell us what Annabelle said that night?”
Reg sat down, clutching his middle protectively, then with a grimace he sat up straight and clasped his hands between his knees. “All right. She said she’d been trying to make up her mind to tell me for months. She’d fallen in love with someone else. She hadn’t known, until she met him, what it was like to feel that way about someone—and she’d realized that even if he wouldn’t have her, she could never be satisfied with less.
“And then she stopped, in the tunnel, with an astonished look on her face—you’d have thought she’d seen the Second Coming. She told me to go, but I said no, we had to talk, so she said she’d meet me at the Ferry House in half an hour, if I would just leave her for a bit. So I walked away, and it was just like I told you—when I looked back I saw her talking to the busker. But I’d no idea she even knew him, much less … Was it him she meant? Gordon Finch?”
“We can’t be certain, but Finch says he broke off their relationship several months ago, and in the tunnel that night she pleaded with him to resume things. He says he refused her.”
“Refused her? But why?”
Gemma didn’t answer his question. “Did Annabelle tell you she wanted to end your engagement?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I suppose that’s what she meant—I thought if I just gave her time to calm down, she’d change her mind.”
“Did you wait for her?”
“No. I just walked for a bit, and the more I thought, the more it seemed that she couldn’t really have meant those things she said. When I got to the pub I thought she’d be waiting to tell me it was all a mistake.”
“And when she didn’t come?”
“I’ve told you.” Mortimer drew a breath. “I rang her, then went to her flat, but she wasn’t there.”
Kincaid regarded him with irritation. They knew Mortimer had gone to the pub, had rung Annabelle from there, just as he said. Forensics had not yet found any evidence that Annabelle’s body had been moved in her car, Reg didn’t own an automobile, and Kincaid couldn’t come up with any believable scenario in which Reg had persuaded Annabelle to go with him to the park, then strangled her.
“Reg,” said Gemma thoughtfully, “you knew Annabelle better than anyone, except perhaps her family—you’d
been friends since you were children. She was very upset—shattered, even. What do you think she might have done when she left the tunnel?”
“Do you think I haven’t asked myself that a thousand times?” Mortimer demanded. Then he frowned. “But … when she needed a refuge, she went to the warehouse.”
“H
OLD UP A BIT.”
G
EMMA CLASPED
Kincaid’s elbow to steady herself as she slipped off her sandal and rubbed at her heel.
“Blister?”
She grimaced. “From the bloody tunnel, I think. I’d give anything for a plaster.” After leaving Reg Mortimer’s, they had walked from Island Gardens through the foot tunnel to Greenwich once again, avoiding rush-hour automobile traffic in the Blackwall Tunnel, and Gemma heartily regretted having worn new shoes.
“Not much further now,” Kincaid said sympathetically. They’d reached the entrance to Martin Lowell’s block of flats, not far from Greenwich center and the riverfront. The buildings here were redbrick, dark as dried blood, and showing signs of shabbiness. Rubbish had accumulated in corners of the courtyard, and the few shrubs looked stunted and neglected. “That looks like the flat number, straight across the court. A far cry from Emerald Crescent, I’d say.”
Gemma slid her shoe back on and straightened up. “Right, then. Let’s pay a call on Prince Charming.”
Martin Lowell yanked the door open before Gemma had even rung the bell. “What the—”
“We’d like another word, Mr. Lowell,” said Kincaid.
“I thought we’d done all that already. Look, I’m meeting someone—”
“It seems you left out a few things when we talked yesterday. Why don’t we go inside, unless you prefer we
tell your neighbors about your affair with your sister-in-law.”
A door had opened two flats along and a woman with curlers in her hair was watching them with unabashed inquisitiveness.