The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  “Look everywhere,” he told Sweeney and Sidana. “Under things, behind things, inside things. We’re missing it.”

  It was Sidana who found the cache. “I think there should be cabinet doors here,” she said a few moments later, rapping on a flat panel beside the cupboard that held the tins of baked beans. “And feel it.” She ran her fingers over the surface of the panel. “It’s a good match, but I think the paint is slightly different, and it sounds like a hollow space.”

  Carefully, she removed the tins of beans and tomato sauce and soup from the neighboring cupboard, then felt inside the space. “Solid. Or at least, there’s a partition, but I can’t—” Her severe face split in a sudden smile. “Blimey.” For Sidana, this was serious swearing. “There’s a little catch on one side.”

  It took her five minutes to maneuver a black duffel bag into the bean cupboard, then out onto the kitchen floor. It was carry-on size, perhaps one foot by one by two, and it had been squeezed tightly into its hiding place.

  Glancing at Kincaid, who nodded and said, “Your find,” she slipped on latex gloves and unzipped the bag. As she removed each item, she laid it on the large trash bag they’d spread on the floor.

  The top of the bag was stuffed with utility clothing—black combat trousers, black shirts, a black heavy cotton jacket. Clothes for night work. Beneath the folded items, there was a pistol. A Glock, Kincaid thought. Sweeney, who did not have Sidana’s distaste for swearing, breathed, “Holy shit.”

  Frowning again, Sidana put it carefully on the cloth. There were also two boxes of ammunition, and something wrapped in black cloth—a T-shirt, Kincaid saw as Sidana carefully unfolded the fabric.

  In the T-shirt was an expandable baton, similar to those every officer carried on his or her duty belt. Collapsed, the short cylinder didn’t look all that threatening, but deployed they were vicious. And looking at it, Kincaid thought about the wound on Denis Childs’s head.

  “Bag that separately, and very carefully,” he said, but he didn’t explain why.

  Sidana did as he asked, then went on with her methodical unpacking. There were expensive binoculars, odds and ends of camping equipment, and, in a leather wallet, two passports and several thousand pounds in banknotes. Neither passport was in the name of Michael Stanton nor Michael Stanley, but carried the same photo as Stanton’s driving license. “Nice job,” Sidana commented. “They look like real government issue.” Kincaid didn’t comment on that, either.

  Near the bottom of the bag, something made a crinkling sound. Sidana felt round the edges, then pulled out a manila envelope. She’d started to open it when Kincaid said, “Mind if I have a look?”

  He pulled on gloves, then carried the envelope to the kitchen table. It was light, and from the feel of it, contained paper. Gently, he slid the contents onto the table.

  There were photos, many yellowing with age. Some were obviously of Stanton as a child—one a family portrait with a man who looked much like him and a tired-looking woman, one as a small boy at the seaside, holding a bucket and trowel and smiling. In the photo, the boy was about Toby’s age, and it filled Kincaid with dismay to think that child had grown into the man they knew as Michael Stanton.

  Something slightly thicker was stuck to the back of one of the photos. He grasped it by one corner and very carefully peeled it free. It was a Polaroid, its color faded, its surface slightly tacky. It showed half a dozen people crowded together in what looked like a cheap sitting room.

  Kincaid peered at the photo, trying to make out the faces captured in the disintegrating emulsion. The two women were in the front of the group, one blond, rather serious, one brunette, startlingly pretty. Behind them stood the men. He immediately recognized Stanton—Stanton a good twenty years younger, his head buzzed and a small tattoo plainly visible on his neck. And the tall, gaunt man, with the shaggy, dark, collar-length hair and the stubble—dear God, that was Denis Childs. Kincaid wasn’t sure he’d have recognized him if not for the familiar almond shape of his dark eyes.

  He was so gobsmacked by the sight of Denis that it took him a moment to place the man standing slightly to one side. Short hair, neatly brushed, although the photo was too faded for the color to be distinguishable. A little military bristle of a mustache. A supercilious expression, the same expression that had been leveled at him just a few months ago when Kincaid had interviewed him in his study. It was, without a doubt, Angus Craig.

  “What have you got, boss?” asked Sidana.

  Kincaid’s back was to the room. “Just some old photos,” he said, and, almost without thinking, slipped the Polaroid into his breast pocket.

  Leaving Kerry to deal with transferring Asia to the ambulance, and with instructing the uniformed officers to secure the patio and greenhouse, Gemma hurried to the Cusicks’.

  Nita answered the door on the first ring, looking startled and not particularly pleased to see Gemma. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This isn’t a good time. I was just going out.” She wore, not business attire, but yoga bottoms and trainers.

  “I’m afraid it won’t wait.” Gemma stepped inside, uninvited, and with a shrug, Nita led her into the sitting room. The white roses, Gemma saw, were still in their bowl, but wilted, and the room had a stale, unpleasant smell.

  Nita turned to face Gemma, her arms crossed over her breasts, small under the thin T-shirt. “If this is about Edward Miller, I’m sure you know you’ve harassed my client for no reason. I don’t appre—”

  “Mrs. Cusick, your neighbor Asia Ford was attacked in her greenhouse a few minutes ago. Have you seen anyone in the garden?”

  “What? What are you talking about?” Nita stared at her, her face blanching beneath her makeup. “How— That’s impossible. Is she—is she all right?”

  “She’s going to be fine. She needs a few stitches.”

  Nita sat on the nearest sofa as if her legs had been knocked from under her. “Thank God. But who . . .”

  “I was hoping you might tell us that. Were you home all morning?”

  “I had my yoga class, early. Then I ran into the office to do some paperwork. And then, Asia rang me . . .”

  “You went to see her?”

  “I stopped in, yes. She was very upset. She was going on about people stealing things from her. I thought she might be confused.”

  “About the alcohol being missing?”

  “Ye-es. I suppose.”

  “Has Asia been confused about things before?” Gemma asked, sitting down opposite Nita.

  “Well, no, but—I couldn’t imagine that someone would—”

  “Nita.” Gemma was losing patience. “Asia rang you this morning because she was worried about Jess. She said she saw him in the garden, after school starting time. Where is he?”

  Nita’s face crumpled and she put a hand to her mouth. “I don’t know. The school rang. He didn’t sign the register this morning. Now that Reagan’s gone he makes his own way to school on the mornings I have yoga class. He was gone when I got home, so I just assumed . . .”

  “Of course you did,” Gemma said. “But it was hours ago that Asia said she saw him in the garden—”

  “I don’t believe for one minute that my son got into her alcohol,” Nita broke in, sniffing. “I told her. Jess would nev—”

  “That may be true. But someone has been hurt, and your son is missing. We need to find him,” Gemma insisted. “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  Slumping, Nita shook her head. “He only goes to school and to dance. He’s not at school, and there are no dance classes until after school hours.” She looked up at Gemma, tears in her eyes again. “He’s only ten.”

  “Almost eleven,” corrected Gemma, coming to sit beside her and giving her shoulder a pat. If, as Chris Cusick had guessed, Jess had made his way to Finsbury Park and back on his own last Saturday, he was a pretty savvy kid. “We’ll find him,” she told Nita. “In the meantime, you stay here, so that you can let us know if he calls or comes home. Okay?”
>
  “Okay.” Nita gave her a tentative smile. “But what if—”

  Gemma was already shaking her head. “No. Don’t worry. You’ve checked Jess’s room?” Nita nodded. “Did he take anything unusual?”

  Nita thought for a moment. “His dance bag was gone. He usually picks it up after school.”

  After making certain that Nita had her mobile number, Gemma left her and went back to Asia Ford’s house. The paramedics were still checking Asia, so Gemma called Kerry into the front hall and filled her in.

  “Can you have a look for him in the garden?” she asked.

  “I can, but, look, Gemma. If this kid stole Ford’s high-proof alcohol, he could have given it to Reagan, then smothered her. He’s a strong kid, with physical training. He could have done it. Then, maybe he was worried that Asia would connect him to the missing booze, so he hung around this morning waiting for an opportunity to get rid of her.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Gemma. “There’s no actual evidence that he took the alcohol. And even if he had, I don’t believe that Reagan would have agreed to a midnight tryst in the garden, with drinks, with her ten-year-old charge.”

  “Okay, okay.” Kerry rolled her eyes at Gemma’s vehemence. “I agree it’s pretty unlikely. But, then who took Asia Ford’s alcohol? What was the boy doing in the garden this morning? And where the hell is he now?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m worried about him. We know he’s been angry and uncommunicative since Reagan died. He and Reagan were close. What if he’s not just grieving? What if he knows something? Or saw something? We have no idea what he was doing the night Reagan was killed. In my experience, ten-year-old boys don’t normally go to bed when they say they will, and if his mother took a sleeping pill, she couldn’t check on him.”

  “Oh, hell.” Kerry blew out a breath. “Don’t tell me we’ve got an endangered child on our hands. Before we call out the cavalry, let’s look in all the obvious—”

  Gemma’s mobile rang. Thinking it might be Nita with news, she waved a hand at Kerry to excuse herself.

  It wasn’t Nita, however, but Thea Osho, the young woman they’d met at Bill’s. “Detective,” she said, a little hesitantly, “you wanted me to ring you.”

  Gemma stepped outside. “Thea, why was Reagan arguing with Sidney at the piano bar on Friday night?”

  “Sidney?”

  “Yes, Sidney. None of you told us that.”

  There was silence on the phone. Finally, Thea said, “They’re my friends, wankers that they are. I didn’t want to get them into trouble. Reagan found out that Hugo used one of Sidney’s papers on a major degree project. She was furious with them both. She couldn’t bear people being dishonest.”

  “She was going to break up with Hugo over that?” asked Gemma.

  “She said if he cheated on one thing, she could never be sure he wasn’t cheating on something else. And, well, I think meeting Edward Miller put Hugo in a new light.”

  “Smart girl,” Gemma murmured after she’d thanked Thea and hung up. It would have been a good decision—if Reagan had lived to see it through.

  But what had any of this to do with Jess having gone missing?

  Gemma stood, staring blankly into Blenheim Crescent, shivering a little in the breeze that had come up with the scudding clouds. Where would you go if you were a ten-year-old boy, and you were angry, and maybe frightened? She didn’t believe he was hiding in the garden. He hadn’t gone to his father—they’d just seen Chris Cusick and she’d no reason to think he had been untruthful with them.

  She thought about the things Chris had said, and what Nita had told her just a bit ago.

  And suddenly she knew where to look.

  “Bugger the chain of evidence,” Kincaid said aloud as he drove from the Hackney flat to Holborn Police Station. But the Polaroid felt like a weight in his pocket. As soon as he’d got in the car, he’d transferred the photo to an evidence bag, but he hadn’t logged it in, so it would be useless as proof of anything.

  But he couldn’t get the image out of his mind. They’d guessed that Stanton had worked undercover. They’d guessed that Denis had worked undercover. But they’d had no reason to think that the two had been connected. And what the hell had Angus Craig to do with them? From his appearance in the photo, it was highly unlikely he’d been working an undercover assignment. And he was older than either of the other men, so had probably been senior in ranking.

  “Bloody hell,” he said as the thought struck him, then braked hard to avoid bumping the car in front of him.

  Angus Craig had been their handler. Everything he’d ever learned about Craig told him that Craig would have reveled in the control that came with the job. Control, manipulation, opportunity.

  It also meant that Denis Childs had had a long, and by necessity, fairly intimate relationship with Craig. And that Denis Childs and Michael Stanton had known each other, and probably well.

  He was still mulling over the implications when he got to his office. Checking messages and reports, he saw there was no further progress in the investigation into the death of Michael Stanton, other than the discovery of the flat and its contents.

  Its contents . . . Angus and Edie Craig had been shot with a semiautomatic pistol, but the gun had been left at the scene. Ryan Marsh had been shot with a semiautomatic pistol, which had also been left at the scene. So there was no connection between the gun in Stanton’s flat and either of the weapons used in the murders—assuming he was right and they were murders. No connection except for Stanton himself. He’d known Angus Craig. He’d been seen near the Craigs’ on the night of their deaths.

  And, he had known Ryan Marsh.

  Had Stanton killed the Craigs?

  Had Stanton killed Ryan, using a different gun but the same method?

  And if either of those things were true, how would he ever prove it?

  He saw again the baton they’d found in Stanton’s things, and he thought of the description of the wound to Denis Childs’s head. There were no crime scene photos of Denis’s injury to use for a comparison, but he’d be willing to bet that the depression in Denis’s skull would match the thin, flexible end of a deployed baton.

  But he couldn’t suggest a comparison to his team, or to the team investigating Childs’s assault, without revealing why he had made the connection. And that took him back to the purloined photo.

  He needed to talk to Doug. And King’s Cross was nagging at him. Why, if Michael Stanton lived in Hackney, had his body been found in the Regent’s Canal, a few hundred yards from King’s Cross station and St. Pancras station? St. Pancras, where the white phosphorous grenade had gone off in the great train shed. And the spot on the canal was just a short distance from the Caledonian Road, where Ryan had lived with Matthew Quinn’s protest group. Coincidence? Probably. But he didn’t like it.

  Glancing at his watch, he texted Doug. “Meet me in an hour. The Driver.”

  Doug replied, “Why the hell there?”

  “Will explain,” Kincaid sent back, although he wasn’t at all sure he could.

  Leaving his office, he murmured an excuse to Sidana.

  He strolled out of the building, trying not to hurry, trying not to feel the Polaroid burning a hole in his pocket, and a few minutes later exited the tube at St. Pancras/King’s Cross. The sky was now completely overcast, and a chill little breeze had come up from the north, welcome after the morning’s heat.

  He walked into the wind, due north up York Way, thinking he’d circle round to the Driver via the canal towpath, and have a look at the spot where Stanton had been fished out of the water. Passing the sparkling new complex that housed the Guardian, he remembered when one wouldn’t have chosen to walk along the canal in the daytime, much less at night, but with all the development in the King’s Cross area the canal had become a desirable attraction. And desirable real estate.

  Pausing, he looked down at the towpath from the York Way bridge. The canal looked serene, the left side lined with
cheerful moored narrow boats, the right, with the sheer walls of offices and flats. He knew, however, that farther east, nearer to the Caledonian Road, there were sections where the moorings were vacant, where foliage blocked the towpath from sight on the left, and where the buildings on the right had small windows like blind eyes. It was in one such section that Michael Stanton’s body had floated to the surface.

  He found himself thinking of Ryan again. Ryan, who must have known this area intimately, having lived for months in the flat on the Caledonian Road. Had he photographed it, Kincaid wondered, the way he’d photographed Hambleden? Many of the shots in and around the village had been very good, almost professionally composed.

  What, he wondered, had happened to Ryan’s camera? It had not been among the things stashed on the island. Had it been with him the night he died, perhaps in the open backpack in the sitting room of the Hackney flat?

  The wind picked up with a gust that blew dust in his eyes and rattled rubbish along in the gutters. He turned and, instead of taking the stairs down to the towpath, walked back the way he’d come.

  When he reached King’s Cross again, he rounded the corner and walked up the Caledonian Road. He wondered if Matthew Quinn was still there, and if Matthew might recognize the photo of Stanton. Matthew, he realized, would not know Ryan was dead. Ryan Marsh had disappeared, as far as the group was concerned, on the day of the St. Pancras explosion.

  The flat, he saw, had not yet succumbed to the inexorable march of gentrification. The Georgian building looked grubbier and more run down than ever, and when he rang the bell, there was no answer. He’d almost turned away when he recognized the friendly face of the proprietor of the halal chicken shop next door.

  “Medhi,” he said, going in. “Medhi Atias.”

  Atias, a middle-aged, dark-eyed man with a small paunch, looked up with a surprised smile. “Mr. Kincaid. How nice to see you.”