The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  As soon as Melody arrived, she could tell Doug was full of news. But she made him show her what he’d done in the garden first, while there was still light. “No wonder you got a sunburn,” she said, gazing at the pristine slate of newly dug beds in the twilight.

  “You’ll still help me, won’t you?” Doug asked.

  “Of course I will,” she said, but all her ideas and her energy for the project seemed to have vanished. Filling those empty beds now seemed an insurmountable task. “We’ll talk about it at the weekend.”

  They went in, and only when she had her tea did she let him begin.

  Doug told her everything he’d learned that day from Kincaid.

  She couldn’t take it in. Shaking her head, she said, “Ryan didn’t kill himself? But . . .” She felt numb. Ryan Marsh taking his own life had been the overriding fact of her existence for nearly two months. She’d dreamed of him putting the gun to his head, seen his blue eyes gazing at her from his smudged face as he pulled the trigger. She’d wondered, over and over, if there was something she might have said or done that would have stopped him. She’d wondered, if he’d been so haunted by the horror of the death in the fire at St. Pancras, if she would ever escape it.

  Suddenly, she was furious. “Duncan didn’t tell us? Why didn’t he tell us?”

  “He hadn’t any proof. And—”

  “We could have found proof. We could have—”

  “And that’s the other reason he didn’t tell us,” Doug broke in. “He was afraid that if Ryan had been murdered, and we started digging, we’d be in danger, too. Now look what happened to Denis.”

  “But there’s no connection between Ryan and Denis,” Melody argued. “Other than the fact that we know—or think we know—that they both worked undercover.”

  Doug, straddling his ottoman, waved his beer at her for emphasis. “They both thought they were being watched. And Ryan might have had some sort of connection with Angus Craig.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Melody said hotly.

  “He had photos of the Craigs’ house. Maybe he was working for someone who was watching Craig.”

  “But who—”

  “There’s something else. Duncan rang me while you were on your way here. Camden pulled a body from the canal at King’s Cross today. According to his fingerprints, a cop. But his ID was false and he’d no record of any posting in the Met for at least ten years. His address was false, too, no such number in that estate. But the estate was in Hackney, not far from Ryan Marsh’s cover flat.”

  Melody’s curiosity started to take over. “You said ‘no posting in at least ten years.’ How old was this guy?”

  “Fifty-two, according to the fake driving license. Duncan said his record showed ‘disciplinary issues,’ but when I looked at his files, there was more than that.” Doug got up and went into the kitchen, pulling another beer from the fridge. This time, when he held it out towards Melody, she nodded. He grabbed another for himself and brought one to her.

  She didn’t drink, but held the cold bottle to her face while Doug returned to his perch on the ottoman. It was growing dark. Through the open slats of the shades, she could see the lights coming on in the street. With a sudden shiver, she got up and closed the shades with a snap. “What else?” she asked, turning back to Doug.

  “This guy, Michael Stanton, disappeared more than once. He was a DC, with twelve years in the force and no further promotion. Then, in the summer of ’93, he just vanished. He doesn’t show up again until three years later. After that, he moved from department to department, with repeated cautions for excessive force, and complaints of sexual harassment from female colleagues. Until he disappeared again, this time for good.”

  “Summer of ’93?” Melody frowned. “Wasn’t it ’94 when Denis dropped off the map for a couple of years? Could there be a connection?”

  “Between Denis and this scumbag? I don’t see what.”

  “It’s too much of a coincidence.” Melody started to pace. “I don’t believe in coincidence. What the hell was Denis Childs doing in 1994?”

  “You know someone who might know,” Doug said a little hesitantly.

  “What?” Melody frowned at him, beer bottle half lifted to her mouth. “What are you talking about?”

  “You mean ‘whom,’ not what. Your father.”

  The house was dark and quiet when Kincaid came in the front door. It was well after nine now—of course the younger children were in bed—but something about the stillness didn’t feel right. He told himself not to be silly, but he was relieved when he heard a woof and Geordie came running to greet him.

  “Where’s Mum, boy?” he asked, stooping to ruffle the dog’s silky ears. Geordie, who certainly understood every word, led him straight to the kitchen. Gemma sat at the kitchen table, illuminated only by the small lamp on the work top, cradling what looked like a mug of tea.

  “Gemma,” he said, more sharply than he intended. “What are you doing in here in the dark? Where are the kids?”

  “Charlotte is asleep. Toby is supposed to be reading for”—she glanced at the clock—“five more minutes. And Kit is doing his homework.” She was enunciating with the sharp precision of anger. It did not bode well. “And I might ask where you’ve been,” she went on. “Your mum rang ages ago. She thought you might like to know how your father was doing.”

  “He’s all right, isn’t he?” Kincaid said, alarmed.

  “She says he’s doing fine. A bit fretful is all.”

  “Oh. Good.” Relief washed over him. “I’ll just go check on the children, then.”

  “Not until you’ve told me what’s going on.” Gemma leaned forward, pointing at the opposite chair. “Sit.” When the light caught her face, he saw that it was implacable.

  “I’m not sure where to start.” He went to the high cupboard where he kept his good bottle of Scotch, taking the bottle down, then pouring an inch into a tumbler. He held the bottle out towards Gemma.

  She shook her head. “I’ve had enough tonight, thank you.”

  “Scotch?” he asked, confused.

  “No. Long story. And I’m not telling it now.”

  When he’d put away the bottle and taken the chair she’d indicated, Gemma went on, conversationally, “You know, if you were anyone else, I’d think you were having an affair.”

  “An affair?” He stared at her, shocked. “But that’s daft.”

  “Is it? You’ve been distant. You make excuses not to be home. When you’re gone, you can’t seem to explain what you’ve been doing. And today, after driving all the way to Cheshire to see your father yesterday, you couldn’t even be bothered ringing your mother. Or checking your messages. So you had better tell me.”

  He took a swallow of the whisky, and when it had burned its way down all the way to his gut, he took a breath and began. He started, as he had with Doug, with the night Ryan Marsh had died. As he spoke, he watched her eyes grow wider. Her cheekbones looked sharp and her full lips were pressed tightly together. When he got to his conversation with Ronnie Babcock in Nantwich, she interrupted him.

  “You told Rashid all this, and not me? And then you told Ronnie, and not me?”

  “It wasn’t deliberate, Gem. I didn’t want to worry you and I thought maybe I’d just let things get to me—”

  “Since when have you not trusted me to tell you if you were bat-shit crazy?” she interrupted.

  “And would you have told me that?” he countered. “If I’d told you I saw Ryan dead that night? And that I didn’t believe he’d killed himself, but I had no proof?”

  Gemma sat back. After a moment, she said, “I don’t know. I’d have thought you were understandably upset.”

  “You could say that.” He heard the hard sarcasm and took another swallow of the whisky. “But I wasn’t off my nut.” He told her about his second meeting with Rashid, although he hesitated to tell her that the initial pathologist had been Kate Ling. He knew she liked Kate personally, as did he, and that she wouldn
’t want to hear it.

  “Shit,” Gemma whispered when he’d finished.

  “Yeah.” Getting up, he retrieved the whisky bottle and poured a splash into her empty teacup. “There’s more,” he said.

  He told her about going to the island, and about finding the memory card. And then what the memory card contained.

  Gemma looked puzzled. “Wait. How did you—” Light dawned. “You didn’t have your laptop, and you’d never have used a computer at work. You asked Doug, didn’t you?”

  He nodded, reluctantly. “I rang him this afternoon.”

  “What about Melody? Does she know about all of this, too?”

  Kincaid knew he was digging himself in deeper, but there was no help for it. “Doug was going to talk to her. We think her father knows something about Denis.” He explained about the hints Ivan had dropped.

  Absently, Gemma sipped at the whisky, then made a face and pushed the cup aside. “Not everything that Ivan Talbot knows is necessarily the truth,” she said. “And none of this explains why Ryan had photos of the Craigs. Do you think he was spying on Angus Craig? Who would have authorized something like that? And who could arrange a dodgy postmortem report on Ryan Marsh?” For the first time, she looked a little frightened. “That would take someone with both knowledge and authority—”

  “Gem, the pathologist was Kate Ling.”

  “What?” She stared at him, her face blank with shock. “That’s bollocks. I don’t believe it.”

  “She signed the damned thing.”

  “But—Rashid must be wrong, then,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Have you ever known Rashid to be less than thorough? Or accurate?”

  “No. But . . . Kate must have made an honest mistake, then.” Gemma’s chin went stubbornly up.

  “More than one mistake? The report was full of them.”

  “It’s subjective, any postmortem. You know that. And she’s been—” Gemma stopped suddenly.

  “She’s been what?”

  Gemma shook her head. “Nothing,” she said, but she didn’t meet his eyes. “What are you going to do, then?” she asked.

  He realized he hadn’t told her about the dead cop—or former cop—in the canal. But he was exhausted, and grubby, and he honestly didn’t know what the hell he was going to do about any of it. “Keep digging, I suppose,” he said, rubbing his hand across his chin. “There must be connections we’re not seeing.”

  “Well, you’ll have all your coconspirators to help you. A good thing, since you obviously haven’t needed me.”

  Gemma got up and dumped her undrunk Scotch in the sink. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “You can suit yourself.”

  Chapter Twenty

  September 1994

  He’d demanded a meeting with Red Craig the day after the incident at Notting Hill Carnival. Not the café, he said. He didn’t intend to be discreet. Holland Park, by the Kensington gates, he told Craig. And then he waited, pacing, cradling his bandaged hand, which was throbbing.

  Craig was late, and when he did arrive, he looked, as usual, perfectly groomed, supercilious, and slightly amused. Furious, Denis walked into the park, forcing Craig to follow him to a spot away from passing pedestrians, before he spat out, “What the hell happened yesterday? Mickey has gone completely mental. Do you realize that? He assaulted a bystander.”

  “According to him,” Craig said, flicking an early falling leaf from his collar, “he and his friends were threatened, by you and by the black man. He felt a need to protect himself. And in doing so, he established credibility.”

  Denis stared at him. “Credibility? Are you mad? That man could have been killed. Mickey’s actions could have started a riot.” He rubbed a shaking hand across his mouth. “A riot! And it would have been the Met’s responsibility.”

  “You know we have no official connection with any officer in a deep-cover assignment.”

  He couldn’t conceal his shock. “You mean you’d disavow him.”

  “Or you, if it was necessary.” Craig smiled. “I suggest you make the most of your heroics yesterday with your group. We need some real information, something that will damage the Lawrence campaign. And if you can’t get it, we’ll find someone who will.”

  He hadn’t gone to the weekly undercover officers’ gatherings for six weeks after that. He’d checked in with terse messages, and he’d stewed, angry at Craig, at Mickey, at the force, and at his own inadequacy. After a month, his wife told him he was not fit to live with and she was glad he only came home once a week.

  The only positive thing he felt he’d accomplished was keeping his group from any more clashes with Whitewatch. But the next time he showed up at the Tabernacle, Annette was waiting for him in the garden. The weather was beginning to turn and the dark was coming on earlier. Lights began to blink on in Powis Square as she took his arm, saying, “Let’s take a little walk.” For the first time, he was tempted to put his arms round her for comfort, and perhaps for more than comfort. But then she gave his arm a squeeze and let it go, swinging her gloved hands briskly against the evening chill, and the moment passed.

  She glanced at him, then away, before she spoke again. “Denny, I know you want to look after us. I can see it in everything you do. And you were marvelous that day at Carnival. But there’s not much point in us just meeting for coffee. The whole idea was that we should do something important.”

  “You want to be martyrs?” he said, his anger suddenly spilling over to include her, too.

  “No,” Annette answered, carefully. “I don’t think any of us do. But we want to be a voice for the sort of injustice that let Stephen’s killers go free. And we can only be that if we speak up.”

  Slowly, he turned to face her. He was floundering. If he agreed to help them, he might be putting innocent people in danger. If he refused, he was out of a job, and quite probably a career. And he would be putting Annette, and Marvin, and all the others in the hands of someone who would assuredly betray them.

  He knew where his duty lay, and he knew what was right.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “Count me in.”

  Kincaid spent a restless night in uneasy, exhausted sleep, dreaming of water and blood, and always aware of Gemma, huddled on the far side of the bed. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, she rolled against him, relaxed in deep sleep.

  Fully awake, he lay still, not daring to disturb her. But he was comforted by the warmth of her body and the steadiness of her breathing, and, eventually, he drifted to sleep again. This time, he dreamed of Hambleden, a jumble of images like the ones he’d seen on the memory card. He saw the house, whole and unscathed by fire. He saw the church and the lych-gate. He saw Edie Craig, trailing her green scarf in the dusk, but her face was always turned away from him. Somewhere out of his sight, her little dog barked and barked, and then Angus Craig shouted at his wife to shut the damned dog up.

  He woke with a gasp. Dogs were barking, but he realized they were his dogs, and it was play barking, not alarm. It was morning. The children were up, and Gemma was gone from the bed. From the bathroom, he heard the shower running. He lay still, trying to hang on to a fragment of the dream that was slipping from his grasp like tattered cloth. The dog barking . . . Edie Craig’s dog barking. Why had Edie Craig’s dog been out, and unharmed, the night the house burned? He sat up, blinking, and threw back the covers.

  When he came down to breakfast, Gemma was still giving him the cold shoulder.

  “I’m taking the children to school,” she said, although he’d offered.

  Kincaid had had enough. “Go get your backpacks,” he told the kids, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  When the kids had gone, Kincaid stood in the doorway, blocking Gemma’s exit. “Gemma, stop it, okay? You were right. I was wrong. I should never have kept anything from you. I’m sorry.”

  She faced him, hands on hips. “What if something had happened to you? And I’d have known nothing. Nothing. About any of this. Now you’ve gone
and done just what Denis warned you not to do—stuck your nose into things. And look what happened to him.”

  “What would you have me do? Stick my head in the sand and hope it will all go away?”

  “No, but— Well, yes, maybe.”

  “And let whoever murdered Ryan Marsh get away with it?” Their voices had escalated to what Toby called “shouting whispers.” He made an effort to tone his down. “You’d have me let whoever attacked Denis get away with it? I don’t believe you.”

  Gemma stood, arms folded now across her chest, glaring at him. Then, after a moment, she sighed. “No. But don’t you ever keep things from me again.”

  “No. I won’t. I promise.”

  She let him put his hands on her shoulders and kiss her cheek.

  From the doorway, Toby said, “Mummy, can we come in now?”

  “In one minute,” she called back.

  “I’m not going in to Holborn this morning,” Kincaid said, before she could ask. “Just so you know.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to Hambleden. To see a man about a dog.”

  Gemma dropped the children at their respective schools, then drove to Kensington Police Station, mulling over things as she sat waiting at successive traffic lights. She was still angry with Kincaid. Not as angry, true, but not happy, either.

  But what would she have done if he’d confided in her the night he’d found Ryan dead? Told him he was imagining things? She could work out, from what Rashid had told him yesterday, what had triggered his unease. The half-packed backpack, the body in the middle of the room. Perhaps there had been other tiny subliminal clues. And Duncan had known Ryan. He should have trusted his instincts.

  He had trusted his instincts, she reminded herself. He had been afraid, and his instinct had told him to run. What if he hadn’t? What if he’d gone blundering in, asking inconvenient questions? Could he have ended up like Denis? Or like Ryan?