Where Memories Lie (11 page)

“And after the call?” asked Gemma. “You told the rest of the staff? It seems very quiet round here today.” She gestured towards the empty auction area. “Is it on account of Kristin?”

“No. There’s no sale on today. Everyone is working on the displays and cataloging things that are upcoming. Although some of the girls were very upset.” Mrs. March blew her nose, with signs of returning to her usual briskness. “And then there was Giles, of course. He was completely shattered. Even Mr. Khan insisted that he should go home.”

“Giles?”

“Another one of our sales assistants. He and Kristin were…special friends.”

Gemma vaguely remembered a pudgy-faced young man watching them as Kristin had led her back to the office. “Were they going out?”

“No…At least I don’t think so. But Giles was…fond of her. Very cut up.” Mrs. March glanced up, and her expression grew suddenly wary. “Oh, there’s Mr. Khan now.”

Turning, Gemma saw Amir Khan striding towards them from the corridor that led to his—and Kristin’s—office.

“Mrs. March, you should have rung me,” he said as he reached them, and Gemma knew they would get nothing more from the receptionist for the moment. “Inspector James.” Khan’s gaze flicked from Gemma to Kincaid and Cullen. “If you are here about the brooch, I’m afraid that what I said yesterday still stands.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, Mr. Khan. We’re here about Kristin Cahill’s death, and I should think that might have changed things considerably. Oh, and this is Superintendent Kincaid and Sergeant Cullen. From Scotland Yard.”

Khan stared at her with what she could have sworn was genuine astonishment, and Gemma felt a moment’s pleasure in seeing this slickly urbane man discomfited.

But he seemed to recover quickly enough, giving her a smile that showed a flash of even white teeth. “Certainly, Kristin’s accident was unfortunate, but I don’t see—”

“Unfortunate!” Mrs. March rose from her chair. “Mr. Khan, how can you possibly say such a thing?” She was trembling. “The poor girl is dead! I’d call that more than unfortunate!”

“Nonetheless, Mrs. March,” Khan sounded more annoyed than placating. “That has nothing to—”

“Actually, we’re not here about the Goldshtein brooch,” Kincaid interrupted. “At least not directly. We’re here because we have reason to believe that Kristin Cahill’s death was no accident.”

Amir Khan hustled them into his office before Mrs. March had a chance to do anything but sink back into her chair, looking stunned.

Cullen, who had been occupying himself by examining an intricate wooden model of a steamship that was apparently going on the block, followed, unease now added to his aggravation. He hadn’t
cared for feeling like a piece of furniture while Gemma led the questioning, although he had to admit she had probably got more from the receptionist than he would have if it had been his call. But by rights it should have been his guv’nor in the lead, not Gemma, who had no business here.

And now he was faced with Amir Khan, the sort of man who as a boy would have been his nemesis at school—Anglo-Indian, yes, but the product of money and breeding, with the perfect accent, the perfect clothes, an undoubtedly sharp and sarcastic tongue, and who had probably captained his cricket team. Doug hated him on sight.

“Now you’ve set the cat among the pigeons,” said Khan as soon as he had them sequestered in his office. The space was cramped, and he didn’t ask them to sit. A bouquet of long-stemmed pink roses sat on the far desk, some of its buds already drooping. “I don’t know what sort of nonsense this is,” Khan continued, “but Mrs. March will have it spread round the salesroom in five minutes.” He glanced at his watch, which Doug suspected was a real Cartier and not a copy. “Or sooner. I don’t appre—”

“Mr. Khan.” This time Kincaid took the lead. “This is not nonsense. Someone ran Kristin Cahill down last night, brutally and deliberately. I don’t care if it upsets your staff. And as we will be talking to each of them in turn, there’s no way you could keep the news from them.”

“But surely that’s not possible.” Khan glanced from Kincaid to Gemma, his certainty wavering. “Why would anyone want to hurt Kristin?”

“We were hoping you might tell us,” Kincaid said. “It seems you gave her a bit of a bollocking yesterday, after Inspector James left.”

“Bollocking?” Khan gave a grimace of distaste. “I’d hardly say that, even if I were to use such a word.”

“Then what would you call it? A row?”

“Certainly not. I merely reminded Kristin that our first priority is our clients’ confidentiality, and asked her to be discreet.”

“You mean discreet about the Goldshtein brooch?” asked Gemma.

“Discreet as regards giving out information pertaining to any of our buyers
or
sellers, and that included the seller of the Goldshtein brooch.”

“Kristin had been working for you a year, I think? Why would you suddenly feel a need to remind her of something she surely knew quite well?”

Khan leaned against his desk and picked at his perfectly starched shirt cuff, looking less than comfortable for the first time. “Of course, Kristin was well aware of our policy. But this was the first time she was to receive an introductory commission. And to my knowledge, this was the first time she’d ever had someone make a prior claim on an object taken in for auction.”

“An introductory commission?” asked Gemma. “I remember you saying Kristin had brought the piece in. What does that mean, exactly?”

“Kristin had an acquaintance with the seller. When one of our staff brings in someone with a piece to auction, the staff member receives a small commission.”

“How small?” Kincaid asked sharply.

“Four percent.”

“Four percent of how much?”

“The reserve price on the brooch is one hundred twenty thousand pounds. But with the reputation of the designer, and the size of the diamonds, it could go considerably higher.”

Cullen heard Gemma give a small whistle under her breath. “So Kristin could have made as much as five or six thousand pounds?” she asked. “Or more?”

“Or nothing,” replied Khan. “The brooch might not meet its reserve. That’s always the danger when setting a limit.”

“When you say Kristin brought in the seller, does that mean she knew him or her personally?” asked Cullen.

“I’ve no idea. She didn’t explain the connection to me, and I didn’t ask.”

“You keep talking as if the sale of the brooch is still on,” said Gemma. “With Kristin’s death—”

“Kristin’s death doesn’t change anything, Inspector. Of course, it’s regrettable, but there is certainly no reason we should consider removing an item from the sale because of it.”

“But if Kristin had a connection with the seller—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Khan said with finality. “That association is now meaningless.”

“And Kristin’s commission?”

Khan shrugged. “A moot point, obviously.”

“And that means more profit to the salesroom,” put in Cullen, wanting to ruffle this man’s smooth exterior.

But Khan merely gave him an amused look down his aquiline nose. “And more for the seller, Sergeant—I’m sorry, I don’t remem—”

“Cullen,” Doug said sharply.

“Sergeant Cullen, then. You can’t seriously think that the seller would have murdered Kristin for the paltry few thousand pounds’ difference her commission would have made in his profit?” While Doug was considering the difference that paltry sum would make in his life, Gemma stepped up to Khan and looked him in the eye.

“Possibly not, Mr. Khan. But under the circumstances, you can see that we must interview the seller.”

“Then I’d suggest you have a word with Kristin’s friends and associates. But as a representative of Harrowby’s, I can’t give you that information. Our client confidentiality cannot be breached.”

Kincaid, who had been leaning against a filing cabinet, hands in pockets, straightened up and gave a deceptively courteous smile. “Then I suspect a warrant will make a fairly good battering ram.”

“We’ll have to start with the parents,” Kincaid said as they pushed through the salesroom doors back out into the ordinary hustle of the Old Brompton Road, where passersby untouched by this particular tragedy bumbled past on their own urgent errands, and the lunchtime scent of pizza and kebabs wafted from the open doors of restaurants and cafés.

Gemma knew he hated such interviews as much as she did, but he was better at concealing it. She stopped him with a touch on his arm, having remembered a fragment of conversation. “Wait just a sec.”

She ducked back into Harrowby’s and emerged a moment later. “I’ve got Kristin’s friend Giles’s address from Mrs. March. If he was cut up enough to go home, we should have a word. Especially if Giles might have sent the flowers.”

“Where does he live?” Kincaid asked.

“Fulham.”

“We’ll see the parents on the way, then.” He turned to Cullen. “Doug, can you go back to the Yard and get a start on that warrant? I want to know who put that brooch up for sale, whether Mr. Khan likes it or not. And, Gemma, about those flowers—”

“Already on it,” Gemma said as she pulled Melody up on her mobile. She’d got the name of the florist from Mrs. March along with Giles’s address, and when Melody answered, she asked her if she could use her powers of persuasion to get the name of the sender
without
a warrant.

“That’s asking a lot, boss,” Melody said, but she sounded more amused than aggrieved. It might save them valuable time, and she knew it.

“I’ve no doubt you can do it.” Gemma gave her the information and rang off, her smile cut short as she saw the play of emotions on Doug Cullen’s face as he watched her.

There was resentment—she guessed as much at her involvement in general as at being given the tedious job of getting a warrant—combined with what might have been a flicker of relief. He was probably glad not to have to cope with Kristin Cahill’s parents, she thought, but then again, she’d never seen Cullen display much empathy in interviews.

But he merely nodded at Kincaid and said, “I’ll find a sympathetic judge,” before handing Kincaid the car keys and heading off towards the tube station.

While Gemma had come via tube, Kincaid and Cullen had come in a Yard Rover, and now Kincaid took over the wheel as he and Gemma made the short drive to World’s End. The car was silver and anonymously discreet—nothing obvious to set the neighbors gossiping, Gemma thought as they pulled up to the block of flats just to the west of Edith Grove.

The address they had been given was not in the monolithic
seventies-era block of flats that dominated the skyline between the King’s Road and the Thames, but rather a more modest council estate that Gemma guessed had been built not long after the war. It looked well tended and comfortable, an image marred by the orange stripes of paint on the street and the Sokkia team working the accident site.

When Kincaid had found a spot to park the Rover, they walked over to speak to the lead investigating officer.

“Don’t often get the Yard in an accident reconstruction,” the officer said when Kincaid had introduced them.

“Anything interesting yet?” Kincaid asked.

“The laser’s faster, not miraculous. I’m Bill Davis, by the way.” Davis was a stocky man with a bristle of gray hair and lines round his eyes that suggested he liked a joke. “And there’s not much to work with here. Still might have been a drink driver who didn’t even see the poor kid. Except that from what we can see of the tire marks, it looks like the driver might have swerved
towards
the pedestrian.” He nodded at the camera mounted over the traffic light. “Maybe you’ll get something off the CCTV.”

“I’ve got the Yard on it now,” Kincaid told him.

“Going to interview the family?” Davis shook his head, said, “Don’t envy you,” and went back to his laser.

They found the flat easily. Gemma rang the bell with a slight tightening of the throat and a sympathetic smile at the ready, but the woman who answered almost immediately gave them a quick assessing glance before saying quietly, “Homicide team, then?” and motioning them in.

“Yolanda Fish.” She extended a firm, dark-skinned hand to each of them as they introduced themselves. “Detective constable. Family liaison officer.” She had a competent sort of compassion about her, just the right balance for family liaison.

It was not a job Gemma envied. The liaison officer was there to provide support and information about an ongoing investigation for
the families of victims, but they were also police officers, and bound to report anything they learned in confidence that might have an impact on an investigation.

“Mr. Cahill is taking a bit of a…rest. Not feeling too well.” DC Fish glanced towards what Gemma assumed were the bedrooms and lifted a hand to her mouth in a quick but unmistakable mime of drinking. “But Mrs. Cahill—Wanda—is in the kitchen. I’ll just tell her you’re here before I take you back.”

Gemma stopped her. “Is she—”

“Holding up as well as you’d expect. Kristin was an only child, and there aren’t any close relatives nearby. Nor a priest, although I know someone who might come in for a bit.”

Yolanda’s momentary absence gave Gemma a chance to look round the flat, and although the block may have originally been owned by the council, it looked as though this flat had been bought by the owners and refurbished. The sitting room was beautifully proportioned, fitted with expensive hardwood flooring, and arranged with a pleasing assortment of antiques and contemporary furnishings. The walls had been hand finished in a pale buff that set off the artwork and furniture.

The kitchen, when Yolanda beckoned them in, confirmed Gemma’s opinion. Pale blue walls set off the collection of antique china on a Welsh dresser and the warm woods of contemporary cupboards and a refectory table.

But then her attention was taken by the woman who sat at the table’s end. Gemma put her age in the mid to late forties, and with her chin-length dark hair and her daughter’s slight build, she might have passed for a good deal younger on a different day. But on this morning her face was ravaged by grief. The eyes she raised to Gemma’s were swollen, her stare blankly uncomprehending. A mug filled with untouched tea sat before her.

Yolanda went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Wanda, these are the police officers I told you about. They need to ask you a
few questions.” She glanced up at Gemma and Kincaid, adding, “I can make you a cuppa—”

Shaking his head, Kincaid pulled out a chair and sat facing Wanda Cahill. “We won’t trouble you long.” Yolanda nodded and, moving back to the sink, began drying cups with a tea towel.

Gemma felt a stab of relief at Kincaid’s declaration, then was ashamed of her reaction. But the pain in the room was palpable, a miasma in the air that made it seem hard to breathe. She slid into a chair at the opposite end of the table, as if the physical distance might provide some barrier.

As Gemma watched, Wanda Cahill made a visible effort to focus on Kincaid. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, and her voice sounded rusty, as if sobbing had rasped her throat. “They rang the bell. At first I thought it was a dream, the same dream I’d had since Kristin was a child, whenever she was away from home. And always I would wake up and know it was a dream, and then I could go back to sleep. But it didn’t stop, the sound, and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—I knew—” She looked from Kincaid to Gemma, her brow creased, her fingers pinching at the edge of her unevenly buttoned cardigan.

Gemma knew the dream, had had it herself, waking with a jolt and thumping heart in the darkest hour of the night to the imagined sound of a knock or the bell. She would sit up in bed, listening, and when she realized the dogs were quiet, she’d know that she had imagined it, that the children were safe. But for this woman, the nightmare had become real.

She stood and went to Wanda Cahill, kneeling and taking the woman’s unresisting hand in her own. “Mrs. Cahill, tell me about last night. Was Kristin at home?”

Wanda Cahill looked at Gemma with the same baffled expression she had turned on Kincaid, but after a moment a spark flared in her eyes, and she spoke, her voice stronger. “She came home after work, for dinner. It’s hard for her sometimes, living at home. Her father still treats her like a child, and I try to buffer things as much as I can.”
Her face came alive as the recollection moved her into the past.

“Did she talk to you about anything in particular, at dinner?”

“No. But her mobile rang while we were eating, and Bob made a fuss over no phones at the table—you mustn’t think he doesn’t love her,” she added, suddenly entreating. “He just wants things to stay the way they were when she was younger. Maybe he loves her too much—”

As Wanda’s face began to crumple again, Gemma said quickly, “Do you know who rang her on her mobile?”

“No. She didn’t answer. But I assumed it was the young man who called just afterwards on our phone. It was her friend from work, Giles. He was very polite, but she didn’t seem particularly happy to talk to him.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, he must have been asking her to do something, because she said thanks, but she couldn’t, really. But Bob was grumbling at her by that time, so she left the room…”

“She didn’t say anything about work? Or tell you where she was going?”

Wanda shook her head slowly, and Gemma could see the grief swamping her again, a rising tide. “No. She kissed me, the way she always does when she goes out, and said she loved me. But she was that aggravated with her dad. If he hadn’t—if she hadn’t—When he asked where she was going, she said out with friends, and that she wouldn’t be late…”

Kincaid, who had been listening intently, spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Cahill, I’m sure that your daughter’s little tiff with her father meant nothing at all. These things happen in families all the time.”

“They do, don’t they?” said Wanda Cahill, latching on to the offered crumb of comfort. “And she never ordinarily said, you know, who she was meeting, or where she was going. It was…she was defending her independence, I think.”

“Did she ever talk about work?” asked Gemma.

“To me, sometimes. I run a small antiques shop, just across the way, so I know a bit about the business.”

“Did she mention a brooch, an Art Deco diamond brooch that she’d taken in for sale?”

“Kristin? A diamond brooch?” Mrs. Cahill looked at Gemma so blankly that the answer was obvious.

“Never mind,” Gemma said gently. “I’m sure it wasn’t important.” She started to rise. “We’ll leave you to—”

“There was one thing.” Wanda Cahill squeezed her hand, hanging on. “That phone call she took. She was friendly enough, at first. But when she went to her bedroom, before she closed the door, she said again, ‘No, I don’t want to come over,’ but this time she sounded angry.” Frowning, she seemed to search for a word. “Not just angry. Final.”

“She won’t forgive him.” Kincaid slammed the car door harder than he’d intended.

“Who?” asked Gemma. “Who won’t forgive who—I mean whom?”

“The mother. She won’t forgive the father. And the poor bastard will probably spend the rest of his life blaming himself as well. I’ll give you odds that marriage won’t last a year.”

“It was bad. It will be bad.” Gemma touched his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“No.” He covered her hand with his for a moment. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you. And you were brilliant with Mrs. Cahill, by the way. It made me miss you, miss doing this together, every day.”

Reaching for the ignition, he glanced at her. “You hungry?”

“After that?” Gemma shook her head. “Can’t bear the thought.”

“All right. We’ll give it a bit. No word from Doug, or from the Yard on the CCTV or Kristin’s phone records, so let’s pay a call on Kristin’s mate Giles. Do we have a last name for him?”

Gemma checked the notes she’d made at Harrowby’s. “Oliver.” She gave him the address.

It was a fairly well-heeled area in Fulham, near enough to Stamford Bridge that you’d not be able to get through the streets before or after a football match, nor get a foot in the door of the local pub on a match day. Kincaid thought the young man must be doing quite well for himself as a sales assistant at the auction house, unless he, like Kristin, still lived with his parents.

But when they reached the address Gemma had written down, they found a terraced house in bad repair, obviously a rental property. Paint flaked off the cream stucco and peeled from window and door trim; dead plants drooped from a first-floor window box, and the small yard attached to the garden flat was littered with empty crisp packets and beer bottles, and smelled of rotting food and cat pee.

“Lovely,” Gemma muttered under her breath as Kincaid rang the bell for the top flat. A release buzzer sounded for the main door—there was apparently no intercom system. Kincaid opened the door for Gemma with a flourish. “Oh, you’re going to make me go in first?” she said, teasing. “Very gallant of you.” But as they entered the communal hall, she wrinkled her nose in real distaste. The ambience was on a par with the yard in front, but there was less fresh air to dilute it.

They climbed, Kincaid leading the way, passing scarred doors and treading on ever more threadbare carpet. A small, smudgy window on the landing let in much-needed light and air.

They reached the top floor, but before Kincaid could raise a hand to the door, a great woofing roar shook the corridor. Gemma started visibly and even Kincaid took a step back. “What the hell does he have in there, a bloody lion?”

“Get back, Mo, you great oaf!” came a shout from inside the flat, but the voice lacked a reassuring element of command.

Then the door swung open and a young man faced them, pant
ing, hanging on to the collar of the largest dog Kincaid had ever seen. “Don’t worry,” the young man said. “He won’t do anything worse than drool on you.”

From the size of the dog’s drooping jowls, Kincaid didn’t doubt the drooling, and as the beast’s tail was whipping back and forth in a frantically friendly wag, he decided to take the owner’s word for the rest. “Mr. Oliver? We’re from the police. We’d like to talk to you about Kristin—”