Where Memories Lie (16 page)

“I’ve seen him round once or twice before, this bloke. Not Harry’s usual—he goes for blond actress wannabes, for the most part, with fake tits.” Andy shrugged. “What they see in him, I don’t know.”

“Did you hear what they were arguing about, Harry and the bloke who came yesterday?” asked Cullen.

“No. Sorry.”

“What did he look like, then, this bloke?”

“Young. Dark hair, dark eyes. The kind of looks that girls start heavy breathing over. And dripping with it.” When Kincaid raised an eyebrow, Andy elaborated. “Money. Clothes. Shoes. Haircut. Probably fucking manicure to boot. But—” He stopped, eyeing them with caution.

“But what?” Kincaid asked.

“Look. I’m in a band. I know shit when I see it, and this guy was into something, big-time.”

“Drugs?” asked Cullen.

Andy gave him a quelling look. “No. Sweeties. What do you think?”

“Any idea what Harry’s connection with him was?” put in Kincaid.

“No. I didn’t ask. Harry didn’t tell. We didn’t talk about personal stuff, Harry and me.”

“Andy.” Cullen was quivering like a bloodhound. With studied casualness he pulled a photo from his inside pocket and handed it across. “Have you ever seen this man?”

Andy Monahan gazed at the photo, then looked from Cullen to Kincaid, as wide-eyed as if they’d just pulled a rabbit from a hat. “Bloody hell,” he said. “That’s the pretty boy. Who is he, then?”

“His name,” Cullen said, glancing at Kincaid with ill-concealed satisfaction, “is Dominic Scott.”

Gemma’s first impulse, when she had dropped the boys at their respective schools, was to confront Erika about her husband’s murder.

But then, Gemma considered a little more calmly, maybe Erika had not thought it relevant, and perhaps David Rosenthal’s death had no connection at all with Kristin Cahill’s.

But Gemma wouldn’t know until she had the facts, and so decided she should start with the case itself, and talk to Erika when she knew enough to ask useful questions.

Kit had said that David Rosenthal had been murdered in a garden near the Albert Bridge. It would have been Chelsea’s patch, then. So for the second time that week, Gemma found herself
heading for Lucan Place, and an interview with Detective Inspector Kerry Boatman.

“Dominic Scott knew Harry Pevensey
and
Kristin Cahill. And it was Kristin who took the brooch in for sale,” Cullen said as they got back into the car, sounding exultant. “And he had rows with both of them on the days they were murdered. That puts him square in the frame, alibi or no alibi, if you ask me.”

Kincaid didn’t like it when things seemed too pat, nor could he dismiss alibis so easily. And it didn’t tell them where Harry had got the brooch, or why Amir Khan had had a row with Kristin, or why he had been so reluctant at first to cooperate with the police.

“Let’s talk to Dom Scott again before we start jumping to conclusions. Does he have a job, do you think, or will we find him at home?”

“Melody said something about him being on the board of his grandfather’s company,” Cullen said a bit grudgingly.

“Having met him, I can’t quite see him turning up for work on the dot every day in some City office. And Andy Monahan said he was sure Dom Scott was using drugs. That fits in with what the barmaid told you about his dodgy friends, but how does that fit in with Harry Pevensey, who liked his gin? And what on earth brought the two of them together?”

Kristin Cahill, and now Harry Pevensey, dead on his watch, two people perhaps not blameless, but certainly not deserving of ruthless and brutal murder. He would find out who had done this, but not by jumping the gun. When he got there, he would make sure it would stick.

Dominic Scott answered the door. This morning, however, he wore a slightly less ratty version of jeans and T-shirt than Andy Monahan,
and looked infinitely more exhausted. He stared at them, recognition of Kincaid only slowly dawning in his eyes.

“You came about Kristin,” he said. “Is there—have you—”

“No, we haven’t any news about Kristin. We wanted to talk to you about something else. Can we come in?” Kincaid sensed Cullen’s impatience, but he didn’t want a repeat of yesterday’s rather bizarre fainting spell, and he meant to take on Dom Scott at his own pace.

“Oh, right.” Dom Scott held the door for them, then hesitated in the hall. “We can talk upstairs,” he said, with a grimace at his mother’s living room. “Not exactly my idea of comfort, the barrage of great art in the arctic space.” He turned instead towards the stairs, and they followed, Kincaid looking round with interest.

In the stairwell, Ellen Scott-Miller had abandoned the snowy expanse and gone for a dark, cool green, against which small landscape oils glowed like little jewels.

They climbed all the way to the top floor, Dom Scott taking a surprisingly quick lead considering the lassitude with which he’d greeted them.

A door stood ajar on the top landing, and when Dom pushed it wide, Kincaid saw that it was not a room, but a flat with a small kitchen and separate bedroom and, he assumed, a bath.

There was no evidence of Dom’s mother’s hand in the decorating. The furniture seemed to be odds and ends collected from other parts of the house; the gray walls displayed framed posters featuring current bands and comedy acts, a few from the Edinburgh festival.

Clothes were strewn across sofa and floor, the coffee table was littered with glasses and mugs, and the room had a slightly unwashed aroma.

“Didn’t seem much point in tidying,” said Dom, with a shrug of apology, but he swept the sofa clean and tossed the bundle of clothing in the direction of the bedroom. He motioned them to the sofa and sat on the edge of a scuffed leather Morris chair, seemingly unaware of the crushed suit jacket beneath him. “So what did you want
to talk about?” he asked, and Kincaid saw that his eyes were more focused than the previous day.

“Harry Pevensey.”

“Harry?” Dom looked at them blankly, but his hands twitched. “What about him?”

“How do you know Harry, Dom?”

“He’s just a bloke I met in a bar.” Dom’s fingers moved to his T-shirt, began to pick at the fabric. “What does Harry have to do with anything?”

“Why did you go to see Harry yesterday?” Kincaid asked, his voice still casual.

“What? But I—How could you—” Visibly rattled now, Dom clutched at his shirt with one hand and rubbed at his nose with the other.

“What do you know about a diamond brooch that Harry Pevensey put up for auction through your girlfriend, Kristin Cahill?”

“I don’t—”

“Oh, come on, Dom.” Kincaid leaned forward, holding Dom’s gaze, and said quietly, “I don’t believe you. Were you Harry Pevensey’s connection with Kristin?”

Dom let go of his shirt and seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. “So what if I was? Look, I told you. I met Harry one night in a bar, the French House, in Soho, when I went with some friends. It’s an actors’ bar. Harry liked to hang out there. We talked, and sometimes I’d pop in when I was in the West End. It was…comfortable…you know. Not like most of the places I go. And no one knew me.

“Harry was always hard up. I’d buy him a drink, but he never asked anything of me.” There was a plaintive sort of innocence in the words, as if Dom Scott didn’t have many interactions with people who didn’t want something from him.

“Until a couple of weeks ago,” Dom went on, his voice going flat. “He rang me. He said he had this brooch. He said he’d found it in an
estate sale, but he thought it might be really valuable. So I introduced him to Kristin. I thought that if it was true, it might be a good thing for her, too, to bring in something.

“But then the police came round asking questions about it, and Kristin got into trouble with her boss. So yesterday I went round to ask Harry to take it out of the sale. I told him that the bloody thing was jeopardizing Kristin’s job, and that was never part of the agreement. But he said he wouldn’t do it, and I couldn’t change his mind, so I left.

“And then—then you came, and said Kristin was dead.” He sagged into the chair, his eyes dull again.

Kincaid didn’t mean to let him off so easily. “Dom,” he said sharply. “Did Kristin tell you why Mr. Khan was angry about the brooch?”

He frowned, as if thinking were an effort. “She said there was some woman claiming it was stolen from her during the war. It was that part that pissed him off. Mr. Khan said they would take items of unknown provenance, but they didn’t want the kind of investigation that would ensue from claims that might involve war looting. Like it was Kristin’s fault.”

“And that’s why you had a row with Harry?”

“That’s what Harry told you? I wouldn’t exactly call it a row, but Harry likes his bit of drama—What?” He had caught some telltale flicker in their faces. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Harry’s dead, Dom,” answered Kincaid. “Just like Kristin. Where were you last night between midnight and two?”

Kerry Boatman greeted Gemma with a warm smile as she ushered her into her office. “I didn’t expect to see you back so soon. Is it the Cahill case?”

“It’s actually not about that at all,” admitted Gemma, taking a seat. “Or only in a very odd and roundabout way. My friend who
claims the brooch Kristin Cahill put into the sale at Harrowby’s…well, I’ve just learned from another source that her husband was murdered here in Chelsea, after the war. I don’t see any obvious connection, but I thought I should know more before I spoke to my friend. Don’t want to put my foot in it.” She smiled, feeling an idiot. “I wondered if I might look through your files. His name was David Rosenthal.”

“And the year?”

“I don’t exactly know. Say within ten years after the war?”

Boatman raised both brows and peered at Gemma over the tops of the reading glasses she’d perched on her nose. “Good God, Inspector, have you any idea of the state of our records?”

“Well, if they’re anything like ours…” Gemma looked down at the pretty skirt and top she’d put on that morning, and shrugged.

Boatman grinned. “You’ll find them in the basement. Enjoy.”

“So what did you think?” Kincaid asked Cullen when they were back in the car.

Cullen gave a snort of disgust. “Total bollocks.”

Dom had not repeated his dramatic faint, but he had gone white as a Victorian damsel and said he refused to believe Harry was dead. When Kincaid had told him that the police didn’t usually lie about things like that, Dom had just shaken his head like an obstinate child.

“I’m afraid it’s true, and I am sorry,” Kincaid had said. “And we still need to know where you were last night.”

“I was here. What would I be doing, with Kristin dead?”

“Did you drive your mother’s car?”

Dom looked as horrified as when they’d told him Harry was dead. “Are you out of your mind? And even if I were that daft, her car’s been in the garage for two weeks, waiting on a part from Germany.”

Cullen had got the name of the garage. Now he said, “Want me to check out the car, guv?”

“Yes, and see if you can find any mobile records for Harry Pevensey. There was no mobile phone on his body and we didn’t see one in the flat.” To Kincaid’s astonishment, the phone in Pevensey’s flat had been rotary dial. No wonder Cullen hadn’t reached an answering machine.

“What about Amir Khan?” asked Cullen. “I talked to my mate in Fraud. He said the salesroom has skirted the law a number of times, falsifying imports, documentation, and so on. What if Khan knew more about the brooch than he let on? Could he have recognized it as stolen and allowed it in the sale anyway? I could have sworn he looked worried this morning.”

“I’m not sure Erika ever reported it as stolen.” Kincaid glanced at his watch. “I need to check with Gemma, and before we tackle Mr. Khan again, I’d like to know a little more about Harry Pevensey. I think I’d like to check out the bar where Dom Scott said they met, the French House.”

By the time Gemma found David Rosenthal’s case file, her back hurt, her fingers were grimy, and the smell of old dust seemed permanently embedded in her nostrils.

“Why the hell couldn’t the Met pay some low-grade clerk to sit in the dungeon all day and transfer the bloody things to computer?” she’d groused when she first began searching the boxed files.

But when she had taken the box to the table, sat down in the utilitarian chair provided, and finally held David Rosenthal’s file in her hands, she changed her mind. Slowly she shuffled through the pages. Typed reports, with the occasional uncorrected error. Handwritten notes by the senior detective in charge of the case, an inspector named Gavin Hoxley. It all felt suddenly, undeniably, real.

David Rosenthal, she read, had been found lying on the ground
beside a bench in Cheyne Gardens, on a Saturday night in May 1952. He had apparently been robbed of all his belongings, so that he had not been identified until his wife reported him missing.

His wife.
Erika
. Good God.

He had been stabbed multiple times with a double-edged blade, the reports went on, and was thought by the pathologist to have died instantly. There had been no defensive wounds.

He had lived in Notting Hill, and the address was the same as Erika’s house in Arundel Gardens. He had worked in North Hampstead, and had spent any free time at the British Museum. There was no known reason for him to have been in Chelsea on that Saturday evening.

And then Gemma came to the photos. This—this had been Erika’s
husband
. Even in monochrome, the crime scene photos were brutal, the blood on his shirt front starkly black against the white of the fabric and his blanched face. But even in death she could see that David Rosenthal had been striking, handsome in a fine-boned, careworn sort of way.

Why had she never seen a photo of him in Erika’s flat? Not even a wedding portrait. And Gemma, doing a quick calculation, guessed that Erika had been only in her thirties when her husband had been killed. Why had she never remarried? Had David Rosenthal been the great love of her life, never to be replaced?

And why had she, Gemma, never thought to ask?

Pushing back her chair, Gemma separated Gavin Hoxley’s notes from the other papers. He had made jottings to himself, just as she kept running commentary in her own notebooks, and his handwriting was well formed, with a bold downstroke. It made her think he had been a careful man, but determined, perhaps even obstinate, and she smiled at her amateur analysis.

She had just begun to read when her phone beeped, telling her she had a text message waiting, and she realized that she had been without a signal until she moved her chair. Her first thought was that she
had missed some news about her mum, but the message was from Kincaid, asking if she could meet him at an address in Dean Street.

Kincaid leaned against the lamppost in front of the French House, looking up at the cheerful blue awnings above the bar. The windows of the upstairs dining room were thrown wide to let in the air, but the French flags flying over the first floor gave only a desultory flutter in the warm air.

He had taken off his jacket, and glanced with some dismay at the crush of customers spilling from the doorway of the bar and into the street. If it was warm outside, it would be warmer still within, and any thoughts he’d had of a cool drink and something to eat while they chatted with the staff were probably doomed to logistical failure.

Still, he was not, like Cullen, on his way back to a stuffy office in the Yard to subpoena phone records. The thought made him grin. Cullen had wanted to be in on this interview, and hadn’t hesitated to protest.