The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  Carefully, he unscrewed the removable cap. The end of the tube had been stuffed with a bundle of blue cloth, filled, Kincaid found as he eased it out, with something heavy and granular. From the feel, he thought the contents were desiccant, the sort you bought in bulk. He looked again at the cloth. It was a bandanna, he realized, dark blue, Indian cotton. Ryan had been wearing it—or one just like it—the day he’d left the island with them.

  He sat back on his haunches, suddenly reluctant to pull more of the contents out willy-nilly. Instead, he smoothed a level space on the pile of soil he’d removed. Then he canted the tube at the sealed end and gently tipped the contents onto the ground. There were two cloth bags with drawstring ties. The first contained a notebook, which seemed to be filled mostly with lists of camping supplies, a passport with Ryan’s photo under the name of Roger Meadows—Ryan had liked his initials, and his nature references, apparently—and a tight elastic-banded wad of one-hundred-pound notes.

  Kincaid guessed what was in the second bag from its shape. He eased the bag free, and was glad he hadn’t dumped the contents without care. It was a handgun, a Walther nine millimeter, with a spare clip. He stared at it, frowning. If this was Ryan’s, where had the gun that had killed him come from?

  He looked at the bandanna again. It was certainly possible that Ryan had had more than one of the cotton handkerchiefs. But he had left the island wearing one, and he’d not had one on when he died. If he’d only owned one, had he come back to the island?

  Ryan had stayed with Doug for a week in February, during which he’d certainly not been a prisoner, and Doug had been gone all day at work. So Ryan had hours every day, unaccounted for. But if he’d come back, how the hell had he got here? Hitched? Hired a car? He’d had the cash to do the latter, as evidenced by the wad of bills. In that case, had he hired a boat? Or stolen one, so as not to leave a record?

  If Ryan had come back, what, Kincaid wondered, had he taken away with him? Or, he thought, perhaps more important, what had he left behind?

  Spurred by this thought, he picked up the last item in the tube, a peppermint tin, perhaps two inches by three and half an inch deep. Opening it, he saw miscellaneous camping oddments—some stick matches, a ball of drier fluff useful for starting fires, a little coil of twine, a mini Swiss army knife. Beneath them, he caught a glimpse of something small and flat and dark blue, perhaps the size of his thumbnail, in the bottom of the tin. Pushing the drier fluff aside, he lifted the little rectangle. It was a memory card.

  Despite Mrs. Armitage’s advice, Gemma and Kerry had tried the Sus, then the Peacocks. Mrs. Armitage had also said that she thought Roland Peacock went in to his newspaper on Tuesdays. Mrs. Armitage was, of course, correct, so after finding no one at home, they then went on around to Blenheim Crescent and rang the bell at Nita Cusick’s. When there was no answer there, they walked round the corner into Kensington Park Road, looking for the address Nita had given them for her office. It was a small, elegant space, sandwiched between a gourmet provision shop and an Italian bistro, and only a few doors from Kitchen and Pantry. There was no sign advertising the business, only a small brass plate by the door identifying it as cusick public relations. Through the window they could see a front room that looked more like a chic sitting/conference room than an office.

  When Gemma opened the door, a bell chimed, and Nita came hurrying out of a room at the back. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, and Gemma wondered who she’d been expecting. She looked, Gemma thought, as if she’d aged five years since she’d seen her on Sunday. Then, she’d looked thin but fit. Today, the flesh seemed to have melted from the bones in her face, and in her fitted sleeveless dress her shoulders looked almost obscenely skeletal.

  “Can we have a word, Mrs. Cusick?” Kerry asked, but Gemma heard the concern in her voice.

  “Oh.” Nita looked baffled for a moment, as if processing the request, then said, “Of course. Come into the back.” She led them into a windowless office which, while not exactly untidy, looked more inhabited than anywhere Gemma had seen in Nita’s house. The back wall was lined with black-and-white photos of Jess dancing. In some, he was even younger than Toby, and Gemma was fascinated by the progression in his grace and posture.

  Although Nita didn’t offer them seats, Gemma and Kerry took the two visitors’ chairs.

  “I understand you’ve heard the news about Reagan,” Kerry began without preamble.

  “Gwen Keating called me first thing this morning.” Nita shivered, even though it was warm in the office, and slipped into a cardigan that had been thrown over the back of her chair. “I still can’t believe it. It was bad enough that Reagan was dead . . .” She shook her head. “But murdered? There must be some mistake.”

  “I assure you there is not, Mrs. Cusick. And that we’re doing everything possible to find out who was responsible. Now, if we can just—”

  Nita didn’t let Kerry finish. “Her . . . body. Gwen wants to make funeral arrangements. Now that you’ve done . . . whatever it is that you do . . .” She seemed unable to finish the thought, and looked so ill that Gemma felt sorry for her.

  “I promise we’ll let both you and Mrs. Keating know as soon as Reagan can be released,” said Gemma.

  “Gwen wants to have the service there. In Cardiff. Which is understandable of course, but Jess . . . I don’t know what to do about Jess.”

  “Does he want to go to the funeral?” Gemma asked.

  “I don’t know. He won’t talk to me.”

  Gemma heard the indignation in Nita’s voice and a little of her sympathy evaporated. She couldn’t help but think of Kit at almost the same age, trying to find a way to deal with his shock and grief over the loss of his mother. “He’s only ten,” she said. “This must be very hard for him.”

  “Yes, of course.” Nita nodded. “His father thinks Jess should stay with him for a few days, but I said he’d just have to come home and deal with it all over again.”

  She had a point, Gemma supposed, although she was inclined to agree with Jess’s dad.

  “Mrs. Cusick,” said Kerry, “we’ve been given to understand that Reagan knew one of your clients, a Mr. Edward Miller.”

  Nita frowned. “Edward? Of course she knew Edward. He and Thomas come to the house occasionally.”

  “Thomas?” asked Gemma.

  “Edward’s brother. They own a boutique gin distillery. Very up and coming.”

  Gin, Gemma wondered, or the brothers? “According to Reagan’s friend,” she said, “Reagan and Edward Miller had been seeing each other socially.” Silently, she cursed Kerry for having infected her with police-speak.

  “What?” Nita looked as if a bomb had fallen in the room. “If you mean she was going out with Edward, that’s absurd. Edward and Thomas come from a prominent family—”

  “So you’re saying Reagan wasn’t good enough for Edward Miller?” said Gemma.

  “No, of course not. Reagan was a perfectly nice young woman. But their backgrounds are very different. Reagan attended business college, Edward went to Harrow and Oxford. And if this is true—which I doubt—it was very unprofessional of her.” She couldn’t have made it clearer that the help had no business fraternizing with above-stairs.

  “Where could we find Mr. Miller?” asked Kerry, seemingly unconcerned with the social niceties.

  “On the premises of the distillery, I should think,” said Nita, grudgingly. “Red Fox Gin, in Shepherd’s Bush. But I’d really prefer you not bother him.”

  Back at the marina, Kincaid returned the canoe, telling the chatty marina owner that, yes, he’d had a pleasant and uneventful paddle. Then he squelched back to the car and took his already worn but dry socks from his overnight bag. He sat on the edge of the backseat as he changed his socks and shoes, gazing at the river beyond the marina car park. It did look peaceful, he thought, but his mood didn’t match.

  He’d stood for a long time, staring down at Ryan’s cache, deliberating. In the end, he’d put everything back into the tu
be except for the memory card. He’d had the tube half buried when, on impulse, he’d opened the end once more and, dumping out the desiccant, removed the bandanna. Then he’d finished refilling the hole, and had camouflaged the spot as best he could with leaves and brush.

  Now, he looked down at his hands, which were raw and red. What was he going to do with what he’d discovered? What had Ryan been planning, and what was on the memory card that he’d gone to such pains to keep safe?

  Did he dare look at the thing even on his home computer? He wasn’t at all sure he had the expertise to protect activity on his computer from scrutiny, if someone should decide to look at it.

  But the worst thing was that he needed a sounding board, someone he could trust, to talk to. He was beginning to see that he’d kept things to himself for far too long. And that he had better start working on his apologies.

  Taking out his mobile, he dialed Doug Cullen’s number.

  Chapter Sixteen

  July 1994

  He’d kept his temper, that day in the café, and hadn’t given Red an answer. He’d never been one to act precipitously, and so he’d gone about his daily routine for a few days, doing odd jobs, showing up at the Tabernacle for cups of tea and gossip. In the end, he decided that since he had no intention of doing what Red had instructed, the best way to counteract his threat was to neutralize it.

  He went home on an unscheduled day, following his usual routine of parking the van several streets away and walking to the house. But this time he was as concerned about being spotted by one of Red’s minions as by someone from his undercover life.

  On his last visit home, he’d walked right past a neighbor, unrecognized. It surprised him how much small things changed people’s perception. He’d let his hair grow shaggy and kept his beard trimmed at just past stubble length, and he’d traded his suits for flannel shirts, T-shirts, and jeans. Clothes did indeed make the man, it seemed. A good thing, he supposed, as it was less likely his cover would be blown if he ran into a friend or an acquaintance, but it also made his visits home awkward. He didn’t want the neighbors thinking his wife was entertaining strange men.

  So he made a pretense of knocking, then let himself in with his key. The house reeked of turps. Following his nose, he found his wife on a ladder in the kitchen, stripping old paint off the wall beside the cooker.

  She turned, startled, then said, “Darling! What are you doing here?” Jumping lightly down, she came into his arms with a smile.

  He held her tightly, then stood her at arm’s length, keeping his hands on her shoulders while he looked her over. She wore old paint-spattered jeans with a tank top, and had tied a scarf over her dark hair. “You smell of turps,” he said. “And you don’t look like a policeman’s wife.”

  “Just as well, since you don’t look like a policeman.” She laughed up at him. This had become their stock routine. “But, really, darling.” She searched his face. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”

  “I think,” he said, “that we should have a cuppa.”

  What Red hadn’t counted on was that he’d never kept anything from his wife. Sitting at their kitchen table, amid tins of paint and a floor covered with spread newspapers, he told her about Red’s demand.

  “But that’s awful,” she said. “Those poor people, the Lawrences, lost their son. Why would the Met want to make up bad things about them?”

  “Because the Met buggered the investigation very badly, and they hope that by discrediting the boy’s family they’ll draw attention away from their failure.” He didn’t say that he suspected the officers in the Lawrence investigation might have been guilty of more than ineptitude. His group of campaigners were convinced that at least one officer had been bribed by the father of one of the original suspects in Lawrence’s murder.

  “That’s despicable.” She was incensed, and he loved her for it. “But they can’t make you, can they?” she added, sounding suddenly a little frightened.

  Taking her hand, he told her about Red’s threat, and the photo. He’d described the campaigners to her on his weekly visits, so she nodded when he mentioned Annette Whitely. “It would have been hard work to have got even one shot that might be interpreted as intimate,” he added. “Which means that they’ve been following me.”

  Her eyes widened. “But that’s dreadful. Can’t you just quit? Tell them you don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “I can’t just quit. Not if I ever want to work as a copper again.” He squeezed her hand and smiled. “Well, I might get a job as a constable in Upper Footing . . .”

  He’d made her laugh. “There’s no such place and you know it, Den. But, seriously—”

  “I’m a police officer, love. This is what I do. And if I quit, they’d just put in someone they know would be willing to discredit the Lawrences. There has to be a way round this, some sort of compromise.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. A puff of warm breeze from the open window stirred her hair, and her eyes were blue as cornflowers. He didn’t see how he could bear to go on being separated from her, taking his one night a week like a starving man’s ration, but he didn’t see a choice. “You just said it yourself, darling,” she murmured at last. “You’re a police officer, not a diplomat, and compromise isn’t your job. Promise me you’ll be very, very careful.”

  The address Nita Cusick had given them for Red Fox Gin turned out to be a very ordinary lockup garage in a very ordinary suburban road in west London. “Are you sure this is it?” Gemma asked Kerry, who was driving.

  “This is the right number,” said Kerry, when she’d maneuvered into a parking space. “And look.” She pointed at a small metal plaque by the garage doors, on which was depicted the head of a red fox, wearing a smile. “Clever.”

  Possibly, thought Gemma, but the place was not what the “boutique” in “boutique distillery” had conjured up in her imagination.

  The only thing that marked the premises as different from the surrounding houses and garages was the glossy red paint on the garage doors. There was also a side door next to the lockup doors, and beside it, a bell, and, they discovered, a small brass plate that read red fox london dry gin, distillers.

  Kerry glanced at Gemma, said, “Right place, then,” and rang the bell.

  After what seemed an interminable wait, a young woman answered. She was short, slightly stocky, had blue-tinted spiked hair, and wore a white cotton tank that showed off her brightly colored wrist-to-shoulder tattoos. “Sorry,” she said, in an unmistakable East London accent. “Bit understaffed today. And we’re not really open to the public.”

  “We’re not public.” Kerry produced her ID. “We’d like a word with a Mr. Edward Miller.”

  The young woman stared at them, then said, a little fiercely, “Edward’s not seeing visitors today. If you can leave a num—”

  “I’m sorry.” Gemma stopped her with a smile. “But we really do need to see him. It’s important,” she added gently.

  “Well, okay,” said the young woman, after another moment’s hesitation and a shrug of a colorful shoulder. “You’d better come in, yeah.” Opening the door fully, she led them into a room that seemed to be a combination of product display and shop. One wall was lined with glass shelves filled with perfectly aligned bottles of different varieties of Red Fox gin—at least half a dozen, to Gemma’s surprise. There was also a counter, and a seating area furnished with comfortable-looking modern furniture.

  There was a door that Gemma guessed led into the garage proper, and another that she thought must lead to a room overlooking the small gated parking area they had seen to the right of the garage.

  Suddenly the second door banged open and a man strode through it into the display room, saying, “Agatha, tell whoever it is to bugger—” He came to a halt as he seemed to realize the visitors had already intruded. He was tall, with a shock of unruly red hair. Unlike Gemma’s coppery locks, his hair was true ginger, the color that got you teased in the school yar
d. And, now, as he ran his hands through it, making him look a bit unhinged. “Agatha,” he said again, “I said I didn’t want—”

  “Edward, they’re from the police.”

  “Mr. Miller,” said Gemma, “we need to speak to you about Reagan Keating.” She told him their names, but she wasn’t sure he’d taken them in.

  Agatha took charge. “Why don’t you take the visitors into the office, Edward. I’ll bring in some tea, yeah?” She put a hand on Edward Miller’s arm and he nodded slowly.

  “Thanks, Ag,” he said. To Gemma and Kerry, he added, as if he owed them an explanation, “Administrative assistant, Agatha. Runs the place.” His eyes, Gemma saw, were red-rimmed and puffy. She had to assume that Nita Cusick had given him the news about Reagan.

  He led them into the room he’d vacated so hurriedly and sank into the chair behind a paper-littered desk. Behind the desk was a serving cabinet which held a bottle of each of the liquors Gemma had seen in the display room, as well as some clean tumblers.

  The only other seating was a short sofa in front of the desk, so that Gemma and Kerry Boatman were forced to sit side by side in sardine fashion. “Sorry,” said Edward. “Usually we have our meetings out there, or in the garage. But . . .” He trailed off, looking at them blankly, as if having trouble remembering why they were there.

  After a glance at Kerry, Gemma took the lead. “Mr. Miller, we understand you were friends with Reagan Keating. You do know that she’s dead.”

  Grimacing, he nodded. “Nita called me. I still can’t believe it.” He shook his big head.

  Edward Miller was good-looking, Gemma thought, with strong bones and, rather incongruously for a big man, a slightly upturned nose. She guessed that he was not that much older than Hugo Gold. But where Hugo seemed like a boy, Edward Miller looked very much a man. As if to prove it, he seemed to make an effort to recover himself.