Where Memories Lie (26 page)

On Friday morning, Gemma arrived at the hospital as soon as visitors were allowed on the ward. For the first time, she managed to catch the consultant as he made his rounds.

“I want you to tell me the truth,” she’d said, taking him aside. “How bad is it?”

The doctor considered her, as if checking for signs of hysteria, then shrugged. He looked tired, and his skin had the slight gray tinge of someone who slept little and worked too many hours.

“Leukemia is very serious, of course,” he told her. “But your
mother seems to be responding to treatment. It’s early days yet, and there are other options if the chemotherapy isn’t successful.”

With that Gemma had to be content for the moment. She waited for her mother to come back from her treatment, then sat with her while she dozed. When Vi woke, Gemma told her a bit about Erika and what had happened the night before, leaving out any mention of how close they had come to disaster. She wasn’t ready to think about that quite yet.

“Will you get a conviction?” asked Vi.

“It’s early days yet,” Gemma told her, echoing the doctor. “We’ve a lot of evidence to sift through.”

“And you want to be there, in the middle of it. Go,” Vi scolded. “I don’t need you to sit here reading silly magazines to me.” She flapped a copy of
Hello!
at Gemma as if she were shooing a fly.

“But I want to be with—”

“Gemma, you’re no better at twiddling your thumbs than I am. And I’m not going anywhere. I’ve stuffing in me yet.”

Gemma laughed. “So you do. Okay, you’ve convinced me.” She stood. “The nurse says I can bring Kit for a visit tomorrow. And Toby’s making you a card at school today.”

Patting her hair, Vi said, “I’d better have Cyn make me presentable, if I’m going to have handsome young men visiting.”

But as Gemma bent to kiss her mother’s cheek, Vi clasped her hand and held it. “Gemma, it’s your dad I worry about. Promise me you’ll look after him.”

“Mum.” Gemma shook her head. “Don’t say things like that. You’re going to get—”

“I know I am,” her mum assured her. “It’s just—he’s got the bakery to run on his own, and with the worry on top of that—And he misses you, Gem, but he won’t tell you. I shouldn’t say this,” she added, lowering her voice, “but you always were his favorite, and that just makes it all the harder for him.”

“I’ll go see him,” Gemma said. “Tomorrow. I promise.”

Ellen Miller-Scott had done exactly what they expected, but not even the most high-powered of solicitors had been able to engineer an immediate release for a woman who had attempted a hit-and-run in front of police officers.

When Gemma arrived at the Yard, Ellen was still “helping the police with their inquiries,” which meant that she was sitting in an interview room with Kincaid and Cullen, backed by her solicitor, coolly refusing to answer any questions.

Rather than join this frustrating and unproductive party, Gemma had Melody escort Erika into the Yard, where Gemma took her detailed statement herself.

“Was I right about the gun?” Erika asked. “I had seen it in my dreams for more than fifty years.”

“It is a Walther PPK,” Gemma told her. “And it dates from the early thirties, when they were very popular in Germany with both police and civilian shooters. And it certainly is not legally registered to Ellen Miller-Scott, nor to her father, so I would say it’s a pretty good bet he brought it back from Germany.”

“But you can’t prove it.”

“No,” Gemma said, gently. “I wish we could. But we have a warrant to search the Cheyne Walk house this afternoon. We may find other things.”

“Do you think he kept it—David’s book—all these years?”

“If he did,” Gemma said, “will you read it?”

Erika paled, but after a moment said, “Yes. I suppose I must. I owe that much to David. And to the others.”

They found the pages, tucked into a brown pasteboard file, in the safe in Joss Miller’s office. David Rosenthal’s name was at the top, and every margin of the thin onionskin paper was covered with tiny
black script—it looked as if David had feared he would never find room to put down everything he had to tell.

In places on the top page, the ink was smeared by small brown teardrops—the unmistakable splatter of blood. Gemma could only guess that David Rosenthal had been holding his manuscript in his hands when Joseph Mueller stabbed him.

Gemma and Kincaid found other pieces of jewelry in the safe as well, although none as exquisite as Jakob Goldshtein’s diamond brooch. When Dominic Scott had needed money, he had gone for the prize.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Ellen Miller-Scott had been more careful than her father. There was nothing in the house that obviously tied her to the killing of Kristin Cahill or Harry Pevensey. But as the SOCOs began their minute examination, Cullen rang to say that the lab had found blood and tissue matches from both victims on the front of the Land Rover, and that the steering wheel bore only Ellen Miller-Scott’s prints.

“She can say she wiped the wheel after Dom drove the car, to protect him,” said Gemma.

“She could,” Kincaid agreed. “And she probably will. But that doesn’t mean anyone will believe her. Let’s leave them to it,” he added, nodding at the techs.

As they let themselves out into the cool evening, Gemma took a last look back at the house. “Could she have saved him, do you think?”

“Dom?” Kincaid shrugged and shook his head. “I doubt we’ll ever know for certain. But my guess is that she might have seen Dom’s death as the solution to a very big problem. A necessary sacrifice.”

Dusk had fallen while they were inside, and the lights had come on along the river. Instead of going to the car, Gemma took Kincaid’s hand and they walked across the road.

They stood on the Embankment in silence, between the Battersea Bridge to the west and the Albert Bridge to the east, gazing
at the river making its slow muddy way towards the North Sea.

All the victims, past and present, thought Gemma—David, Gavin, Kristin, Harry, and poor Dominic—were a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of lives taken by those like Joss Miller and his daughter, but that made their loss no less significant, nor the things they had cared about any less important.

The wind that blew off the river felt more like March than May. Gemma shivered, and Kincaid put his arm round her shoulders. She leaned against him, looking away from the sunset, and said, “Erika told me that Gavin Hoxley loved the lights on the Albert Bridge.”

Doug Cullen found himself leaving the main entrance of the Yard at the same time as Melody Talbot. “Back to Notting Hill, then?” he asked, as casually as he could manage.

“Yeah. Seems a bit dull, though, after yesterday.” She smiled at him, satisfaction still bright in her eyes, and he wondered how he could ever have thought her not pretty.

“As ditchwater,” he agreed, trying for an air of insouciance he didn’t feel.

The truth was that he had been scared shitless. All the firearms training in the world hadn’t prepared him for the adrenaline rush of jumping out of a car and aiming the bloody gun at a real person. Then, when he’d seen the weapon in Ellen Miller-Scott’s hand, his guts had turned to water.

But Melody—Melody had been practically bouncing with excitement, her face shining, and yet she had held her gun on Ellen Miller-Scott with the steadiness of a rock.

“You were good last night,” he told her, and when Melody gave him a surprised glance, he wondered if he had sounded grudging.

But she smiled again and said, “So were you. A regular cowboy.”

He shrugged, as if he did things like that every day, and an awkward silence fell between them.

But before he could think of what else to say, Melody broke it. “We should maybe sort of celebrate or something. Want to get a drink?”

Doug stared at her—the efficient and sarcastic Melody Talbot was asking him out? Trying to stutter an acceptance, he said, “I—”

But then he thought of Maura Bell, and of the last time he had made a fool of himself, imagining that a woman fancied him.

He wasn’t going to risk that humiliation again, not any time soon, and not with someone who could rip him to shreds if it suited her. “I, uh—I have to be somewhere,” he amended. “Some other time?”

He saw an unexpected flash of disappointment in her face, quickly concealed, but before he could figure out how to take back his refusal, she said evenly, “Right.” This time her smile was brittle. “See you, then,” she added, tossing the words back at him as she turned and walked away.

“What will you do about the brooch?” asked Gemma. It was late on Saturday morning, and she was in Erika’s sitting room, drinking the strong and bitter—and, Erika had added fiercely, not decaffeinated—coffee that Erika had made them.

Early that morning, Gemma had taken Kit to see her mother, and then they’d ridden the tube to Leyton High Road. Her father, caught unawares in the midst of serving a customer, had looked ridiculously pleased to see them. Kit volunteered to stay and help out, with touching enthusiasm, and before Gemma left she had taken her dad aside.

“We’ll get through this,” she said. “I’m taking some time off work. I can help out in the mornings for a bit, and maybe Kit can come in after school. And Mum’s going to be okay.”

As her father’s face worked with emotion, she saw how perilously close he had come to collapse.

It wasn’t in his nature to accept with grace, but he nodded, then
turned away, patting at his eyes with his apron, and Gemma vowed to do better by them both. If he couldn’t move towards her, she would have to move towards him.

“The brooch?” repeated Erika thoughtfully. “I went to Harrowby’s first thing this morning. Your nice Mr. Khan showed it to me. Very charming fellow.”

Gemma waited, wondering if she would ever see the charming side of Amir Khan, and after a moment, Erika went on, “It is a beautiful thing, even more so than I remembered. And Mr. Khan gave me the number of Harry Pevensey’s cousin, his next of kin. When I rang her, she offered it to me, as a gift. She said she thought it should go to its rightful owner. It was very generous of her.”

“Then you—”

“Yes, I told her I would take it, but not to keep. There’s too much pain attached to it. That’s not what my father intended when he made it.”

“But it’s worth—”

“Nothing. Or everything,” said Erika. “I’m going to give it to the Victoria and Albert. The museum has a fine jewelry collection, and my father would have been proud to see it there.”

“I would like my father to be proud of me.” The confession caught Gemma unawares. “He told me that I was hurting my mother by not marrying Duncan.”

“Well.” Erika sipped at her coffee without wincing. “I am not a psychologist, but it may be that your father is projecting his own wishes onto your mother, perhaps in part because he cannot fully admit them.

“But you shouldn’t let your decisions be influenced by what will make your father or your mother happy, but rather by what will make you and Duncan happy.”

Gemma twisted her cup in her hands. “But I’m…afraid.” There, she had said it. “Why isn’t Duncan afraid? There are so many things that could go wrong. I don’t want to—”

“You cannot stand still. And Duncan knows all about fear. He lost Kit’s mother. He almost lost you. And he lost the baby that was his as well as yours. I suspect that is when he made the leap that you are afraid to make. And what, after all, have you to lose?”

“Myself,” Gemma said softly. “I don’t want to be like my mum. I don’t want to orbit around someone else’s sun.”

“Are you sure it’s not the other way round with your parents? That it’s your father who orbits your mother?” asked Erika. “And besides,” she added with emphasis, “you are not your mother, and Duncan is certainly not your father.”

“But what if…” Gemma forced herself to admit the thing that terrified her most. “What happened the other night…It was Doug in the line of fire, but it could have been Duncan…What if I lost
him
?”

“Then,” said Erika, “you have to consider the alternative to taking the risk. And that is many long nights of lonely suppers and cold beds. And teetering on the fence doesn’t protect you from pain; it merely gives you more to regret.”

Gemma slid round on the piano bench just a little, running her fingers lightly over the keys. There was a chime of sound, so faint she thought she might have imagined it, but it seemed to reverberate through her body.

Without looking at Erika, she said, “I got a call today. From Duncan’s cousin Jack’s wife. My friend Winnie, the Anglican priest. She’s pregnant.”

“Ah. How do you feel about that?”

“I’m not sure. Happy. Sad. Jealous. Confused.”

“Yes.” Erika nodded. “I expect so. Have you told Duncan?”

“Not yet. I was in the City, visiting my mum.”

“Then you should go and tell him now. It’s cause for celebration.”

“I should, shouldn’t I?” Gemma felt a sudden, unexpected fizz of exhilaration, like champagne bubbles in her blood, and almost laughed aloud. Winnie was
pregnant
.

She stood and went to Erika, dropping down on one knee so that she could look up into her face. For an instant, she saw the young woman Gavin Hoxley had loved, and who had taken the leap of loving him back, regardless of the consequences. “Will you be all right?”

“I’m not sure I know what all right is.” Erika smiled, and the twinkle was back in her dark eyes. “But I think I will ask my friend Henri to dinner.”

Gemma walked down Arundel Gardens, feeling the slight spring as her heels connected with the pavement. The sun shone in a blue and perfectly cloudless sky, and the air seemed to have texture to it, so that she almost felt as if she were swimming in its crystal clarity.

When she reached Portobello Road she bought flowers from the corner stall, two dozen red tulips, imagining, as she watched the vendor wrap them, the bright splash of color they would make against the white wall of the sitting room when she put them on the bookcase. Then, a bit farther along, she chose strawberries and asparagus, taking her time, as if finding the perfect specimens was the most important thing in the world. The street was crowded, the shoppers brought out in force by the beautiful day, but for once she didn’t mind the jostling, and the colors of people’s clothing and stall awnings seemed unnaturally bright.