His eyes still locked with Kincaid’s, Lowell muttered, “Nosy bitch.” But he stepped back, calling out as he allowed them into the flat, “It’s all right, Mrs. Mulrooney, nothing to worry about.”
Gemma looked round, thinking of the one time she’d visited her ex-husband’s flat after they’d divorced. Apparently there were some men incapable of making a dwelling into a home on their own—Rob had been one, and it looked as though Martin Lowell was another. This flat looked clean, at least, which was more than she could have said for Rob’s, but that was its only saving grace. The walls were the color of old putty, unadorned in any manner, and the sofa and matching armchair of a worn and undistinguished brown corduroy.
The obvious focal point of the room was a large new telly on a laminated stand. There was little else to speak of, other than a stack of financial magazines on the cheap coffee table, lined up neatly beside the remote control. The heavy mustard-colored drapes were pulled three-quarters of the way against the late afternoon sun.
“Why didn’t you tell us it was your affair with Annabelle that broke up your marriage?” Kincaid asked, moving about the room as he spoke, touching the magazines, examining the television. He stopped by the sofa as if assessing its welcome, then continued with his wandering.
Martin watched Kincaid uneasily, but didn’t invite them to sit. “I didn’t see why I should. I hadn’t seen Annabelle in a couple of years.”
“Not since she broke things off with you, in fact?” Kincaid stopped his pacing to peer into the small kitchen.
“That’s right. Was it Jo who told you?”
“Does it matter?” asked Gemma. “Were you expecting her to shield you?”
He gave her a bitter smile. “I see you’ve bought the Hammond sisters’ story lock, stock, and barrel, and I’m the villain of the piece.”
“Is it not true, then?”
“That I slept with Annabelle? Oh, that’s true enough. But it would have been all right, if Annabelle hadn’t told Jo.”
Gemma stared at him in repelled fascination, wondering just how covering up an affair with your sister-in-law made it okay.
“I suppose Jo told you Annabelle was just trying to make amends? Set wrongs right, or some such righteous crap?” Martin continued. “The truth is, Annabelle liked to stir things. She discarded men like a snake sheds skin, and once she’d no use for you, she liked to amuse herself by shredding your life to bits.”
“Are you saying Annabelle broke things off with you before she told Jo?”
“She’d set her sights on Peter Mortimer’s son—more socially advantageous for a girl going places. I suppose she thought the match would benefit her new position as managing director.”
“Perhaps she genuinely cared for him,” suggested Gemma. “Or felt comfortable with him. They’d been friends since childhood, after all.”
“If you think Annabelle did anything without an ulterior motive, you’re as stupid as all the rest of the poor suckers she sank her fangs into,” Martin said dismissively. “I even feel a bit sorry for Reg Mortimer—but not sorry enough.”
“How can you be so bloody callous?” Gemma felt the telltale flush of anger staining her cheeks, but she didn’t care. “You slept with this woman. She was your wife’s sister. She loved your children. Don’t you feel anything for her?”
For a moment she thought he would snarl back at her,
but instead, he said with unexpected tenderness, “You’ve no idea what it was like to love her.… And then to be discarded with no more remorse than if she’d given an old pair of shoes to the jumble. To lose your home, and your children.” He jabbed a finger at her. “If I were you, Sergeant, I’d look very carefully at anyone Annabelle came in contact with. Because I promise you there’ll be others like me. Others whose lives she destroyed without a backwards glance. Do you think Mortimer killed her?”
“I’m more interested in where you were last Friday night, Mr. Lowell,” said Gemma, keeping herself in check. “Because Annabelle had reason to search you out. She’d learned what sort of poison you’d been feeding your son. Did she come here to have it out with you?”
“I told you, I hadn’t seen her in years. There was a time … just afterwards … but she wouldn’t see me, wouldn’t take my calls.”
“There’s still the little matter of the shares,” said Kincaid. “Annabelle must have drawn up that will before anything happened between you. Did she tell you she’d never changed it, but that she meant to now? You could use the money, couldn’t you?” He gestured round the flat. “It must be hard, paying support for two kids, and all because of her. The temptation would be tremendous.”
Lowell stared at Kincaid, his face blank. “That’s daft. I told you I had no idea about the will. And I didn’t see Annabelle on Friday night.”
“Then you won’t mind telling us your movements.”
“That’s easy enough,” said Lowell, and Gemma thought she detected a hint of relief in his voice. “I was with someone all of Friday evening. I spent the night at her flat.”
“And she’ll vouch for you … this friend?” Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Is she married?”
“Of course she’ll vouch for me. She just lives round the corner. And no, she’s not married, or I wouldn’t have spent the night with her, would I?” Lowell answered reasonably.
There was a soft tap at the door, then it opened a few inches and, as if on cue, a woman’s voice called, “Marty?”
“Your alibi, by any chance?” guessed Kincaid.
“You might as well speak to her now,” Martin said with a shrug as the woman pushed the door wider and stepped into the sitting room. “This is Brandy.”
Martin’s visitor couldn’t have been more than nineteen. Her bleached hair was curled in a mass of long, tight ringlets, she wore a mini so skimpy Gemma felt sure her knickers would show when she sat down, and her halter top exposed a pierced navel.
“Marty?” the girl said again, looking at them curiously. “I got worried when you didn’t come at six, like you said. You know you promised you’d set up my tanning lamp.”
The corner of Kincaid’s mouth twitched as he glanced at Gemma. He said, “Some guys have all the luck.”
“J
ANICE IS SENDING A CONSTABLE ROUND
to take a formal statement from Martin Lowell’s girlfriend,” Kincaid said as he returned from using the phone and sank gratefully back into his chair on Hazel’s patio. “Too bloody bad we don’t have enough evidence to search his flat—or Reg Mortimer’s, for that matter,” he added, retrieving his beer from the flagstone.
Gemma sat beside him, her legs stretched out in front of her, a bottle of cold cider cradled on her chest. She’d changed from her trousers into shorts and tank top, and had pulled her hair up off her neck with a flower-patterned scrunchy.
Hazel had invited them to stay for tabouli and a green salad, insisting that it was too hot for a cooked meal, or for Gemma to attempt preparing anything in her flat’s tiny kitchen, and she’d sent them out to the patio with cool drinks while she finished putting things together.
The children were running in circles on the square of lawn, seemingly oblivious to the heat, their half-naked bodies lit in flashes by the long, low shafts of sunlight streaking through the trees.
Sipping her cider, Gemma said, “I think it’s generous of
you to elevate Brandy to the status of girlfriend. Martin Lowell should be ashamed of himself—and so should you for ogling her.”
“I didn’t ogle.”
“You did so. But I suppose you should get some dispensation, as she might as well have been going about in her bra and knickers.”
“You’d have thought Lowell would be more discriminating, after Jo and Annabelle,” Kincaid said, hoping to redeem himself in the matter of Brandy. “But how does a thirty-something banker manage to pull half-naked teenaged birds, tasteful or not?”
“I thought surely Martin Lowell couldn’t be as bad as Jo made him sound, but he’s a forty-carat bastard if I’ve ever met one,” Gemma said with feeling.
Kincaid glanced at her, amused. “I rather got the impression you didn’t take to him.”
“You noticed?” She smiled and settled a bit further down in her chair. “The odd thing is, I can see why they were attracted to him. Jo and Annabelle, I mean, and even Brandy.”
“The Heathcliff-in-a-suit looks?”
“He made me feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. If you didn’t know what a rotter he was …” She took a contemplative sip of cider. “Or for some women, he might be appealing even if they did.”
“Including Annabelle?” Kincaid asked. The sun dropped behind the roof of the house next door, and the garden seemed instantly cooler.
“Mrs. Pargeter, Jo’s neighbor, said she thought that Annabelle was so devastated by her mother’s death that she grabbed the first thing that looked like love. But if that’s the case, I think she must have realized fairly quickly what Martin Lowell was really like.” Gemma scowled. “What I don’t understand is why she told Jo. In spite of what Lowell says, Annabelle hasn’t struck me as a righteous sort, or as someone who deliberately hurt people.”
“Lowell seemed to want to have his cake and eat it, too, so Jo need never have known—”
“But he might have threatened Annabelle, told her he’d confess to Jo if she tried to end things. I don’t think he’d have let her go easily, and maybe Annabelle saw telling Jo as the only option.”
It seemed to Kincaid that Gemma was going to great lengths to whitewash Annabelle Hammond’s behavior. “What about her affairs with Gordon and Lewis Finch? Surely she knew Mortimer would be hurt if he learned the truth about those.”
“I think she was searching for something she hadn’t found in Reg Mortimer. And she
kept
those relationships secret. Up to a point anyway. She only told Mortimer there was someone else under extreme provocation.”
“
If
Mortimer is telling the truth,” Kincaid agreed with some skepticism. “I still believe he’s holding out on us. Did you get a look at his papers?”
Nodding, Gemma stretched out her feet and wiggled toes unencumbered by sandals. “Looked like bills and bank statements, but I didn’t catch the details. Were those paintings as valuable as I thought?”
“If I remember what I read recently in the
Times
, I’d say twenty to thirty thousand pounds apiece.”
Gemma whistled through her teeth. “Crikey. How could he afford that?”
“Family money?” Kincaid finished his beer, upending the bottle to get the last drops. “His father’s on the Hammond’s board, but from what I’ve seen, none of the Hammonds have that sort of lolly.”
“Posh flat, expensive furniture, expensive paintings, expensive clothes … and a stack of bills and bank papers.” Gemma wrinkled her nose. “Financial overextension? But I can’t see how that would give Reg a reason to kill Annabelle. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain.”
“He might have thought she’d left him her shares. Or that he’d get her position.”
“A big risk, either way, but we should do a bit of digging into his affairs—as much as we can without getting up Sir Peter’s nose,” added Gemma.
“I’m not happy about the Finches, either—major or minor,” Kincaid said, glancing at her. “I find it very hard to swallow that neither of them learned about the other.”
“Reg Mortimer’s story seems to bear out what Gordon told us—that he was the one who rejected her. What if it was because he found out about Annabelle and his father?”
“That would give him a bloody good motive for killing her—”
“Maybe when he found out, two or three months ago. But why kill her now? When she wanted to mend things between them?”
“We only have his word for that,” Kincaid said, irritated by her defense of Finch. “For all we know, she told him it was his father she was in love with, and he snapped and killed her.”
Gemma glared at him. “According to Mortimer, Annabelle said that even if the man she loved wouldn’t have her, she wouldn’t be satisfied with less—if you weren’t being pigheaded you’d see that Mortimer’s statement supports Gordon Finch’s.”
Stung, he retorted, “And you weren’t being pigheaded when you compromised your safety by going to Gordon Finch’s flat on your own yesterday?”
“Are you still on about that? Give me credit for a bit of judgment, will you? I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t felt perfectly safe, and I got results, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“Since when do I need telling how to do my job?”
Kincaid realized this was escalating into a full-scale row. “Gemma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Shhhh,” she said suddenly, holding out a restraining hand. “Listen.”
It took him a moment to realize that it was the silence she meant. He sat up and looked round. The children had been huddled together, giggling, the last time he’d looked, but now they were nowhere to be seen.
“Toby?” Gemma called, setting her drink on the table and starting to rise.
Kincaid stood. “I’ll go see what they’re up to, the little buggers.” It would give him a chance to cool off.
The children were not allowed to go out the garden gate alone—even though it was only a few steps from the gate to the front door of Gemma’s flat, they would be unsupervised on a busy street. Kincaid’s heart quickened at the thought, and it was with difficulty that he kept his pace unhurried as he crossed the lawn, peering into the pockets of deeper shadow. They were simply hiding, he told himself, and as he neared the gate he caught a pale flash of movement behind the mock orange hedge.
Whistling faintly, he walked on by, and was rewarded by the sound of a stifled giggle. He backed up a step and stood looking round, as if confused, then whirled about and reached through a gap in the hedge. “Got you!” His hands closed on damp skin and the children squealed with delight. Gently, he extricated them from the shrubbery, then scooped Toby up under one arm and Holly under the other. Their small bodies were sticky from the drippings of the iced lollies Hazel had given them after their tea. “All right, you two. You stay where we can see you, or you’ll have your baths early and up to bed.”
“One more hide-and-seek, please, Duncan, pretty please,” wheedled Holly, while Toby squirmed and wiggled in his grasp.
“Can’t catch me, can’t catch me,” the boy chanted.
Kincaid tightened his grip. “I just did, you wiggle-worm. I’ll tell you what. If you’re both very, very, very good, I’ll read you a story after your baths.”