The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  His mum had said Hugh’s heart problem was minor—perhaps he was letting his worry over Denis color his concern for his dad. That was one thing, at least, he could hope he was right about.

  All the way into Brixton, Melody worried over whether to tell Gemma about her father’s veiled hints concerning Denis Childs’s past. Just what had Ivan been getting at? And why had there been no news from Gemma or Duncan?

  She’d decided to take the tube, and on the walk up to the Notting Hill Gate station she’d stopped in a newsagent’s and bought, not only the Chronicle, but all the major dailies. Thumbing through them on the train, she found brief mentions of the attack on Denis, but only the Chronicle had asked for information from witnesses.

  By the time she reached Brixton, she’d decided to keep Ivan’s innuendos to herself, at least for the time being. Heaven forbid she carried tales from Ivan that she might have to document to senior staff. She left the stack of papers on an empty seat and saw the other passengers reaching for them before she’d stepped off the train.

  The police station was a short walk from the Underground station, north along Brixton Road past the Station Road Market. It was quiet on a Monday morning, most of the stalls shuttered, but it still looked cheerful in the bright sunshine. She passed a dreadlocked young man who glanced at her red outfit, then gave her an approving grin and murmured, “Sweet.” The little encounter boosted her confidence and she walked into the police station a few minutes later still wearing a smile.

  The smile, however, only lasted until she got to CID. There was no sign of Gemma, and their boss, Superintendent Krueger, wore an expression that promised a blistering for some unlucky peon. Krueger was on the phone. Ending the call, she glanced round the CID room, and when she saw Melody her frown made it clear that Melody was the one who was in for it.

  “Sergeant.” Krueger motioned Melody into her office. “In here.” Krueger was a slender, dark-haired woman in her forties. Rumor had it she had a wicked sense of humor when she’d had a few drinks, but Melody had never seen it.

  She closed the door with some trepidation. “Ma’am.”

  Krueger didn’t sit. Not a good sign. “Your guv’nor, Sergeant, has somehow managed to get herself seconded to another case.”

  “Ma’am?” Melody had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I’ve just had it from the chief super at Notting Hill. Something about having connections with the victim.” Krueger made “connections” sound like a dirty word.

  “Connections?” Melody repeated blankly. “What connections? What victim?” She heard herself, knew she sounded a stupid cow, but her mind had gone into overdrive. Was it someone they knew? Or did this have to do with Denis? But Notting Hill had no connection with Denis. And Denis wasn’t—

  Krueger interrupted the whirlwind of Melody’s thoughts. “I can see that DI James has not seen fit to inform you of this development. Perhaps she’ll fill you in when she decides to grace us with her presence. In the meantime, you’re in charge.”

  Taking that as a dismissal, Melody said, “Ma’am,” once more, then turned and escaped to her desk.

  DS Shara MacNicols, the detective sergeant on their team, glanced from Melody to Krueger’s door and rolled her eyes, muttering, “Warpath,” under her breath.

  “Do you know anything about this?” Melody whispered.

  “Not a thing.” Shara shook her head and beads on the ends of her tiny braids made a faint clicking sound as they bounced. They were blue today, Melody saw.

  She tapped her computer to life and tried to look busy. Thank God their only active investigation was into the death of a homeless man whose body had been found in Battersea Park. The pathologist’s report was in her inbox. Glancing through it, she took a little breath of relief. Malnutrition, hypothermia, kidney and liver failure from chronic alcoholism. Natural causes, then. Poor old bloke, but his demise was not something that required Gemma’s immediate presence.

  With a surreptitious glance at Krueger’s office, she held her mobile below the level of her desk and pulled up Gemma’s number. “What the hell is up, boss?” she typed. Then, “Where are you?”

  There was no reply.

  Chapter Ten

  “I want to see the crime scene,” Gemma said to Kerry Boatman as they left the mortuary.

  “But I thought you were there yesterday.” Kerry, who had been checking her phone, glanced up at Gemma with a frown.

  “I was in the Cusicks’ house. I didn’t have any reason to go into the garden. I’d have looked like some sort of voyeur.”

  “Aren’t we all, though,” muttered Kerry absently, then she gave Gemma a sharp look. “What’s this about the victim’s boyfriend?”

  “I saw a photo of him in Reagan’s room. Her mother says his name is Hugo, but she doesn’t know his last name. And she got the impression that Reagan had gone off him lately.”

  “So they argue and he kills her?” Kerry shrugged. “Possible. But he’d had to have had access to the garden.”

  “Isn’t there a gate?”

  “No. There’s a heavy, locked door in a brick wall at the Ladbroke Grove end. It would take a ninja climber to get over it.”

  “Someone could have had a key,” suggested Gemma.

  “I suppose it’s possible someone could have got hold of a key,” Kerry agreed. “But I think it’s much more likely our perpetrator was either a resident or someone who had access through one of the houses. I’ve got an appointment with the gardener in half an hour. We’ll find out about the key.”

  Gemma heard the inclusive “we” and shook her head in protest. “But I’ve got to get to Brixton—”

  “Not to worry. I had a chat with Chief Superintendent Lamb on the way over. By now, he’s had a chat with your guv’nor.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Gemma. Krueger would be having kittens. “You really have hijacked me.”

  “You could always say no.”

  “And get in Marc Lamb’s bad graces?” Gemma could tell from Kerry’s self-satisfied expression that she knew she had Gemma well and truly fixed.

  They met Clive Glenn at the Ladbroke Grove end of Cornwall Gardens. It had grown warmer as the morning progressed and Gemma could feel the sun hot on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. If this weather kept up, she was going to have to start wearing sunblock.

  Clive Glenn was certainly tanned enough. He was also good looking in an American advert, outdoorsy way. In his late thirties or early forties, Gemma guessed, with hair and a short beard just beginning to gray. That he was fit was evident, given his jeans and tight T-shirt. But when he spoke, his accent was as posh as Melody Talbot’s, and Gemma had to stop herself looking surprised.

  The glint in his eye as they finished their introductions made her think he’d seen her slight start and was laughing at her.

  He’d arrived before them and they found him leaning against the tail of a small truck parked near the garden entrance. The truck’s bed was filled with equipment and bags of what looked like mulch.

  The entrance itself was as Kerry had described it—a wooden door, painted a soft blue, and set in a high redbrick wall that stretched between the two houses on either side. It was impossible to see into the garden, and it would take a ladder or climbing equipment to get over the wall.

  “This is the only entrance?” Gemma asked, sounding sharp even to herself. She wanted to wipe the amusement from Glenn’s face. “What about the Kensington Park Road end?” she added. Of course she’d walked or driven past it often enough, but she couldn’t remember ever noticing the garden, much less an entrance.

  “It’s an iron fence. Ten feet high, and grown over with very prickly Cecile Brunner roses. No gate.” It seemed to Gemma that there was still a slight mockery in Glenn’s voice, but if Kerry noticed it as well, she didn’t react.

  “So how do you get in this end, then?” said Kerry.

  Glenn pulled a key from the pocket of his jeans. It was a tarnished brass lever lock and was nearly
as long as his hand.

  “Is there only one key?”

  “This is the original,” Glenn answered. “Mrs. A has a copy.”

  Gemma frowned. “Mrs. A?”

  “Mrs. Armitage. She’s the chair of the garden committee. It was Mrs. A who found your body, and let your people in and out.”

  “Right,” said Kerry, as if she knew this, but the corners of her mouth were pinched and Gemma suspected she had not. “Let’s have a look, then.”

  “Do you know Mrs. Armitage well?” Gemma asked as Glenn led them to the gate.

  He shrugged. “I guess you could say she’s my boss. She’s all right. A bit fussy, but then most of the committee chairs are the same.”

  “You take care of more than one property?”

  Glenn threw her that amused look over his shoulder as he fitted the key in the lock. “I’d hardly have a business if I didn’t.”

  “But surely you can’t do all that work yourself?”

  “I’m a landscape designer, Sergeant. I hire contract labor for the big jobs. But I like doing the routine maintenance myself.”

  Gemma didn’t bother correcting him on her rank, because they’d stepped through the gate onto an interior path. The pea gravel was inches thick and shifted like wet sand beneath their feet. If anyone had come in this way, they wouldn’t have left usable prints.

  Shrubs and the trunks of large trees blocked their view of the garden proper but golden sunlight filtered in from either side. The space felt secret and a little claustrophobic. Following Glenn and Kerry down the right-hand path, Gemma stepped out into the open and said, “Oh.”

  The view down a long expanse spread before them. The path on which they stood ran all the way round the perimeter, as well as into the garden’s center where it outlined more formal beds. Thick-trunked, mature trees were scattered throughout the green turf at the nearer end, punctuated with banks of glowing rhododendrons.

  There was no sign of crime scene tape.

  “Where was she found, exactly?” Kerry asked, and Gemma realized for the first time that Kerry had not actually seen the body in situ. “This just landed on my desk this morning,” she said to Gemma, sounding defensive. “And I’m going to kill Enright,” she added under her breath.

  Clive Glenn led them to a particularly large plane tree at the edge of a sweep of lawn. A shed just large enough to hold gardening tools stood nearby. In the stronger light, Gemma could see the fine lines around his gray eyes and she revised her estimate of his age up by a few years. “She was under this tree,” he said. “Just there.” He pointed to a spot on the lawn side of the tree. “It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” For the first time he sounded less than sure of himself.

  “But you didn’t find the body,” said Boatman, glancing at her phone as if to check a note.

  “No. It was Mrs. A. But I got here just after—before the police. The residents use the space quite a bit on Saturdays, and I like to make sure it’s at its best. Sometimes rubbish blows in, or kids have a bit of a party and leave things lying about.”

  “Any particular kids?” asked Gemma, thinking instantly of Jess. But Jess was far too young to be hanging about late at night in the garden. Then she remembered, uncomfortably, that Jess’s mother had said she’d taken a sleeping pill and gone to bed early. Who knew what Jess had been up to?

  Glenn shrugged. “No. I don’t know any of them. But I do find things. Beer cans. Used condoms. Cigarette ends. You assume it’s kids, but . . .”

  “Was there anything like that around Reagan Keating’s body?” Kerry asked sharply.

  “No. I’m just saying it happens.”

  “That must have been really upsetting, finding her like that. For you and Mrs. Armitage,” Gemma said, trying to keep him talking.

  “She was in a right state, Mrs. A. No phone—she doesn’t hold with them—so I suppose she was going to wait until someone came out. She came running towards me when I came in the gate, white as a sheet. I was afraid she’d have a heart attack.”

  “Do you remember what she said?”

  His eyes half closed, Glenn turned the key in his fingers as if it was an aid to memory. “‘There’s a girl. The nanny. She’s dead.’ I thought she was off her head, but I followed her. And then when I saw her—the girl—I knew she was dead. But I checked for vital signs anyway”—he looked at Gemma, as if she’d doubted him. “You don’t run landscape crews without some first-aid training. I know how to find a pulse. But”— he gave an almost imperceptible shudder. “She was cold.”

  “Then what did you do?” Gemma asked.

  “I rang 999. Then I sent Mrs. A to wait at the gate. One of us had to let them in, and I didn’t want to leave her with the . . . girl.”

  So Clive Glenn had been alone with the body. As had Mrs. Armitage, Gemma reminded herself. “Did you know her? Reagan Keating?”

  For a moment, Gemma thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he lifted one shoulder in a little shrug and slipped the key into his jeans pocket. “I’d seen her a few times. With the kid she looked after.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “No. I didn’t even know her name.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Do you mind if I get to work now? I’ve a schedule to keep.” He added that they could make arrangements with Mrs. Armitage to use her key, and described her house to them so that they could find it from the inside.

  After asking him to leave the gate open until they could get a key sorted, and not to work near the area where the body had been found, Kerry thanked him. Then, as he turned away, she said suddenly, “This rubbish you find, Mr. Glenn. Are you sure you don’t know any more about that?”

  “Look.” He swung back towards them, both hands jammed in his pockets. “I don’t live here. There are probably close to thirty houses on this garden, and a good few of those are broken up into flats. I’ve spoken to maybe half a dozen residents in the five years I’ve looked after the place.”

  He hadn’t met Kerry’s eyes, and when he’d glanced at Gemma he’d looked away. There was something he wasn’t telling them. “But?” prompted Gemma.

  Glenn withdrew a hand from his pocket to scratch his beard. After another moment’s hesitation he seemed to come to a decision. “I don’t want to tell tales. But it’s light very early in the summer and I like working that time of day, before the heat. I’ve seen—I think there’s a bit of musical houses that goes on.”

  “Musical houses?” Kerry looked blank.

  But Gemma understood. Although she’d never caught anyone at it in their garden, she’d heard rumors about the goings-on in communal gardens since she’d first come to work in Notting Hill. “Hanky-panky between neighbors. Sneaking into each other’s houses. Or,” she added, thinking of the used condoms, “maybe meeting in the garden for a quickie.”

  Glenn nodded, looking pleased with her. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  Kerry, on the other hand, seemed anything but happy. “Who have you seen, Mr. Glenn? Playing musical houses. Was it Reagan Keating?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t know. It’s just an impression. Shadows moving in the dim half-light. The sound of doors closing. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve never recognized anyone.”

  “But you’ve seen which houses the people came from?”

  “No. Not even that. I can’t help you.” His answer was flat, final, his clamped lips making it clear he meant it.

  Gemma knew he was lying.

  “I’m getting the crime scene team on this,” Kerry said when Glenn had left them. “Although I think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that there’s anything left to find.” Putting her phone to her ear, she walked away from Gemma and began to pace up and down on the gravel path as she talked.

  Gemma moved into a patch of shade and stood, gazing at the spot where Reagan Keating’s body had lain. Why this spot, at the edge of the glade? Did it have some special significance? Was there any possibility the body had been moved here? Kate Lin
g hadn’t mentioned lividity. Pulling out the little notebook she still carried in her bag, mobile notwithstanding, she jotted a reminder to herself to check.

  The tree was beautiful, as perfect as a drawing in a children’s picture book, set against the green sweep of lawn. What was it called in some of the old books Kit read aloud to Toby? Greensward, that was it. It had an Old English sound that made Gemma think of knights and enchantments. Or maybe she was just associating it with the way the girl had been described—laid out like a sleeping princess. She needed to see the crime scene photos for herself.

  The turf showed no evidence of a struggle, although she did find a length of foot-wide parallel indentations at the edge of the path. Gemma thought it likely they had been made by the mortuary gurney, but there was always a possibility that it had been something else—a cart or a wagon, used if the body had been moved. She made another note, then looked up, trying to see how this spot related to the entire area. Was it visible from the nearby houses?

  She thought the trees and shrubs would have screened it completely from the houses on the left. On the right, the small private patios were dense with shrubs and flowering plants, although she thought it might be just possible to see the patch of lawn from the upper windows of the nearest houses. That left the approach from the center of the garden.

  There, casual beds of azaleas swooped down towards the formal beds in the garden’s center, the riot of color punctuated by clumps of spent tulips and daffodils. Gemma thought a witness would have to have been quite close to have had an unimpeded view. She wondered how much light there had been late on Friday evening. The tall houses themselves would block any illumination from streetlamps in the surrounding area.

  It had been a very private place to die.

  She’d pulled her mobile from her bag, intending to take some quick photos, when Kerry finished her call. “They’re on their way,” she said as she rejoined Gemma. “However much good it will do. And I’ve had them radio the beat constable to come keep an eye on things until the SOCOs get here. Again”—she rolled her eyes—“not that I think it likely to make much difference when everyone and their dog has probably been tramping over the place all weekend. But I’m hoping the officer on duty is the one who took the initial call.”