The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  Kincaid leaned forward, keeping his voice down even with the buzz of the pub to cover it. “We don’t know that he did. All we know is that he had a connection with the village, and with the Craigs, because of his photos. And that he was in the village with Michael Stanton on the evening of the night of the fire. And, if Mr. Wilson is correct, he was arguing with Stanton. What I’d like to know is whether Ryan or Stanton was still working for the force.”

  “But we’ve assumed they were both—at least at one time—working undercover for Special Branch,” Doug said. “Or in Ryan’s case, one of the newer groups keeping an eye on domestic extremists, under SO15.”

  “You know that the ‘domestic extremism’ designation has always been bollocks,” Melody said hotly. “Basically, it means any protest group that might potentially do something to disrupt public order. And the definition of ‘public order’ is anything that might be inconvenient to the police or to the government. Anyone who’s ever shown up for a protest can be labeled a ‘domestic extremist.’”

  “You’ve been reading your father’s newspaper again.” Doug grinned at her. She shot him a dagger look, but relaxed a little. “Not that I don’t agree that going round spying on protesters is out of line,” Doug went on after sipping his beer. “But we’re talking about spying on Angus Craig here. He had nothing to do with protest groups.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Kincaid slipped the Polaroid from his pocket and passed it across, careful to touch only the edges.

  Doug stared at it, then took his glasses off and peered more closely. Frowning, Melody slid it away from him. “What is this?” she asked.

  “I found it in Michael Stanton’s flat this afternoon.”

  “Stanton?” said Doug. “What are you talking about? I thought you said his address was false.”

  “It was. But Jasmine Sidana found the flat and got a warrant. It was Undercover Anonymous, I can tell you. But he had a cache, just like Ryan. Same sort of stuff—cash, passports, gun—with the addition of tactical clothes. The only really personal thing was an envelope with what looked like old family photos. This was stuck to the back of one of them.”

  Melody looked horrified. “But that’s evi—”

  “I didn’t enter it into evidence. I didn’t show Sidana or Sweeney, either. Look again.”

  Doug moved the photo back. “That’s Stanton,” he said. “I get that. I recognize him from the ID photo, even with the skinhead look. Suits him, by the way. But— Bloody hell.” His eyes widened. “That’s bloody Denis. What’s he doing with the hair and beard getup? And they’re a good twenty years younger, both of them.”

  Sliding the Polaroid back, Melody gave him full sarcastic payback for the newspaper dig. “You think? Although I hear Polaroids are making a comeback. No leaks, no naked pictures on the Internet. And it’s not that far-fetched that they knew each other. We guessed that Denis and Stanton both worked undercover ops for Special Branch,” she added, studying the photo again, “although not togeth— Shit.” She looked up at Kincaid. “That’s Craig. That’s Angus Craig with them. What the—”

  “My guess is that he was the handler,” Kincaid said, having had time to think about it. “Which means he and Denis knew each other very well. So when Denis went to talk to Craig in Hambleden that night, it wasn’t just one senior officer doing another the courtesy of letting him know the sky was about to fall in. That’s what I thought, afterwards, you know, and I was furious with Denis.” He paused for a moment, trying to work it out. “But I think Denis either knew or suspected the sorts of things Craig had done, and that’s why he assigned me to the Meredith case. I also think it was personal. He despised Craig. But that wouldn’t have kept him from using the situation—Craig’s impending arrest—to get what he wanted.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Melody. “What could he have wanted from Craig?”

  “Information,” Doug answered. “Maybe he thought he could find out who’d kept Craig’s nose clean all these years.”

  “What if,” Kincaid said slowly, “what if he got that information? Something big changed that night. After that, Denis started moving pieces on the board. Gemma’s transfer. My transfer. Then he organized his liver transplant. And when he came back, well enough to deal with things, he set something in motion.”

  “Something that almost got him killed.” And might yet, Doug didn’t add, but Kincaid knew they were all thinking it.

  “We found something else in Stanton’s cache,” Kincaid said. “A baton.”

  Melody and Doug stared at him. “You mean an ordinary police-issue baton?” Melody asked.

  “Denis was hit on the back of the head with something hard, something designed to convey a lot of force. An expanded baton also has reach, so the attacker could have been shorter than Denis and still had the ability to do serious damage.”

  Doug halted his beer halfway to his mouth. “You think Stanton attacked Denis?”

  Kincaid nodded. “I also think that if the Craigs were murdered that night, that Michael Stanton had something to do with it. He had a personal connection with Craig”—he tapped the photo—“and with Denis. But I can’t imagine he did either of those things on his own. So who was he working for?

  “And who was Ryan Marsh working for? Someone must have told him to take photos of the Craigs. Someone put him in Matthew Quinn’s protest group.” He felt for the small bag he’d put on the seat beside him, and was suddenly hesitant. Did he want to know what Ryan had thought worth safekeeping? But he’d crossed that Rubicon already, and he knew there was no going back.

  “What is it?” said Melody. “What aren’t you telling us?”

  Kincaid put the bag on the table. “Ryan left this with a friend.” He wasn’t going to bring Medhi Atias into it. “On the day of the protest at St. Pancras. I just happened upon it this afternoon.” When they both looked at him dubiously, he said, “It’s his camera. I haven’t opened it.”

  “Can I have a look?” asked Doug.

  After a quick glance to make certain no one was paying them any attention, Kincaid pushed the bag across.

  Unzipping the blue nylon case, Doug eased out the camera, and smiled. “Nice. It’s a Canon SLR. Big enough to take good-quality photos, small enough to slip in a pocket if you want to be unobtrusive.” He pushed the Power button. “Let’s hope it still has some battery life.” The camera made a small whirring noise and the lens extended. “Bingo.” Doug sounded relieved.

  “The memory card,” Kincaid said. “Is there anything on it?”

  Melody looked on as Doug began scrolling through images. “Lots of shots in and around King’s Cross/St. Pancras,” Doug said. “Ordinary, touristy stuff. The canal. Granary Square. Gasholders—isn’t that what that new development behind St. Pancras is called? It’s the old Pancras Gasworks.”

  Frowning, Melody tapped Doug’s hand. “Scroll back.” Impatiently, she took the camera from him and rotated the scroll wheel herself. “That’s”—she looked up at Kincaid—“that’s the cop who was on the scene at St. Pancras, after the grenade.” Moving the wheel again, she added, “There’s half a dozen shots of him. Looks like he’s coming out of the Gasholders building. I remember him, because of the silver hair and silver suit. SO15, wasn’t he?”

  Kincaid reached across for the camera, almost knocking over his beer. He stared at the screen in disbelief. “That’s Nick Callery, the detective from SO15. Why the hell was Ryan taking pictures of Nick Callery?”

  Gemma had finally convinced Jess to go downstairs for a sandwich and a cold drink. Then, she’d phoned his dad, keeping a firm eye on Jess sitting in the dining area while she talked to Chris Cusick. Chris was surprised that Nita hadn’t let him know that Jess was missing, but it occurred to Gemma that Nita hadn’t let him know Jess was missing the previous Saturday, either.

  “How did you find him?” Chris asked.

  “I’d met him at the Tabernacle last Saturday, while I was waiting for my son to finish his class. Jess
seemed—I don’t know—very happy and relaxed here. So I thought I’d give it a try. Look, Mr. Cusick, of course you’ll need to let your wife know where Jess is, but if you could keep him with you for a day or two? I think it’s very difficult for him to be there just now, with everything that’s happened. I would hate for him to run away again.”

  “I’ll make sure that he doesn’t,” Cusick said. “Parminder’s off the next few days, so there will be two of us to keep an eye on him. And if Nita wants to gripe about the custody arrangement, that’s too bad.”

  “Um, could you just say Jess rang you? I’d hate to get in Nita’s bad books, since she didn’t think to look here.”

  “Oh. Right.” Chris Cusick’s tone made it clear that he understood exactly what she meant.

  Gemma waited with Jess just inside the building’s main doors until they saw his father’s car pull up in the front. As she walked him out, Jess suddenly tugged at her hand. “I don’t want to go home.”

  While Jess had been finishing his sandwich, Gemma had told him that he must tell his dad everything he’d told her, about Henry, about the inhaler, and about his mother’s reaction.

  “Your dad understands that,” she said now. “He says you don’t have to go to your mum’s.”

  Jess nodded, reassured.

  Gemma felt reassured, too, when she saw Chris Cusick give his son a hug, and Jess bury his head for a moment against his father’s shoulder.

  Waving them off, Gemma rang Kerry to check in. But Kerry had been called to another case and couldn’t talk.

  With a sigh of relief for decisions temporarily delayed, Gemma picked her own children up from school and tried to make the most of what seemed the only normal day since this whole business had begun.

  She had, she saw, missed calls from MacKenzie Williams and from Chief Superintendent Marc Lamb, both wanting an update on the case. MacKenzie apologized profusely for having got her into the mess and then buggered off, as she put it, but they’d had a hell of a time rescheduling the catalog shoot.

  Gemma didn’t return either call. She made the children omelets and salad, which they ate with oven chips that Kit had made from scratch. Kit had come into the kitchen with Captain Jack draped over his shoulders like a fur collar.

  How had the kittens got so big, so fast? Gemma wondered. With his piratical swagger and lightning reflexes, the black-and-white kitten was living up to his name. “Watch out, he’ll scratch you,” she said.

  “No, he won’t— Ow.” Laughing, Kit detached the kitten, put him down, and watched him shoot out of the kitchen, tail in the air.

  “Where’s Dad?” he’d asked after a bit, cutting potatoes.

  Gemma had had a text from Kincaid that said only, “Still at station. Home ASAP.” That left a lot of leeway, she thought. “Working,” she said to Kit.

  “Poor Dad,” Kit said, surprising her. “Is he all right? Is he just worried about Granddad?”

  The question caught Gemma completely unprepared. “I—I’m sure he’s fine, Kit. Just juggling too many things at once, I think.”

  “I wish we could spend more time with them, Granddad and Nana Rosemary,” Kit said. Kit, who had lost so much, adored the grandparents discovered so late in his childhood.

  “We will. We’ll plan a visit when school’s out, what do you say?” She realized as she spoke just how much she would like to do that. “Although you three will have to promise not to wear Hugh out.”

  Kit went on slicing potatoes with precision. “He is all right, isn’t he?”

  “He’s fine, sweetie. Lots of people have stents in. He just needs to rest up for a bit.”

  It only occurred to her afterwards, when she was doing the washing up, that she wasn’t sure if Kit had been referring to his granddad, or to his dad.

  When she’d given Charlotte her bath and tucked her into bed, then instructed Toby to hop in the tub and wash everything, she went back downstairs and poured herself a glass of wine. She desperately needed to talk to someone.

  It was Duncan who had always been her sounding board, who might be able to help her decide what to do. He would tell her if she was daft for even thinking she knew what had happened. But he wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there for a good while, in fact.

  So she sat alone at the kitchen table, sipping her wine, and marshaling her argument. Then she picked up her phone and rang Kerry Boatman.

  Kincaid thought back to the day of the grenade in St. Pancras. By the time he and his team arrived from Holborn, Nick Callery was already on the scene, representing SO15. He’d told Kincaid he’d happened to be nearby when the call came in. He explained this to Doug and Melody, then said, “But what if he was already in the station? What if Callery knew there was going to be a demonstration, and that they meant to set off a smoke bomb?”

  “You think SO15 was running Ryan? And Callery was Ryan’s handler?” Doug asked.

  “I suppose it’s possible.” Kincaid lifted his half-pint absently and found it empty. “But, surely, Matthew Quinn’s little group can’t have been perceived as that much of a threat.”

  Without a word, Doug scooped up all three of their glasses and dodged his way to the bar. The pub was filling up.

  “How’s your dad?” Melody asked Kincaid. “I was sorry to hear he was ill. I didn’t have a chance to say, before.”

  With dismay, Kincaid realized he’d gone another day without checking on his parents. “He’s doing fine, thanks,” he said, making a mental note to ring as soon as he had a bit of quiet. “Melody,” he went on, “could you possibly find out who had financial interests in the properties involved in Matthew Quinn’s antidevelopment protests? We know, obviously, that his father did, but Lindsay Quinn is not the only shareholder in King’s Cross Development. And I’d still like to know why your father was hinting about Denis’s ‘checkered past.’”

  Doug returned with two carefully balanced half-pints and a glass of white wine for Melody. He took up where’d he left the conversation. “If Callery was Ryan’s handler, he must have been pissing himself when he thought Ryan had died in that blast.”

  “Even if Ryan was working for the counterterror spooks,” put in Melody, “it doesn’t explain why he had photos of Callery, instead of the other way round.”

  “No,” Kincaid agreed. He didn’t say that neither did it explain why Ryan had been so afraid that the grenade was meant for him that he’d gone into hiding. Or what any of the St. Pancras debacle had to do with Angus Craig. Or why Ryan was dead.

  What was Ryan Marsh’s connection with Michael Stanton? And if Stanton had attacked Denis, had it been personal—an old grudge acted on, perhaps—or had someone told him to do it? And who the hell had knifed Stanton and thrown him in the Regent’s Canal?

  He remembered suddenly the phone call that afternoon from Ronnie Babcock. “Frank Fletcher,” he said to Doug and Melody. “Does that ring any bells?” When they shook their heads, he relayed what Ronnie had told him about the former Met officer who’d mumbled about wild police conspiracies when he was in his cups.

  “Another convenient suicide?” asked Doug.

  Kincaid shrugged. “Ronnie said he was drinking a lot—out of control, from Ronnie’s description. Could have been an accident, I suppose, in that case. Or a genuine suicide if the chap thought he was losing it. I didn’t ask Ronnie to look further. Just in case someone reported him nosing around.”

  Doug and Melody exchanged a look and he wondered if they thought he’d gone completely round the bend. “Well, I might as well have a look,” said Doug. “Seeing as how I’ve already been poking wasps’ nests.”

  “Just do it carefully, then.” The light slanting in through the pub’s slatted shades was softening. Kincaid realized it was getting late. “Speaking of drinking—” he lifted his beer and finished it. “Thanks. My shout next time. I’ve got to dash.”

  He left Ryan’s camera and the memory card with Doug, who said he’d go through the photos on his laptop and see if he could come up with a
nything more useful. It wasn’t until Kincaid walked out of the pub that he realized he’d done just what Ryan had done the day he’d left the camera with Medhi Atias. He told himself not to be stupid. He wasn’t walking into a demonstration that could very likely go wrong.

  Perhaps because he was irritated with himself, or because the beer had made him a bit reckless, instead of walking back the way he’d come, he kept going north. When he reached the Regent’s Canal, he took the steps down to the towpath and turned back towards King’s Cross, just opposite the way he’d meant to walk earlier in the evening.

  Most of the canal was now in deep shadow. Lights blinked on in the occasional flat or building, and he passed a few joggers. Coming to the section where Stanton’s body had been brought out of the water, he found a fragment of police tape fluttering from the iron fence atop the stone wall on the north side of the towpath. The SOCOs wouldn’t have shut the towpath down for long. Just a bit farther along, a few metal-doored lockups fronted the towpath. A bit odd, he thought, wondering if they served as storage for the flats above, but the area would be unlit and not much overlooked at night.

  He trusted Sidana to be thorough, but still he wanted to make absolutely certain that no one in the buildings on either side of the canal had seen a suspicious encounter.

  When he came to York Way, he took the stairs up, then continued until he reached the rear of the great train shed at St. Pancras. He could see the dark iron silhouettes of the Gasholders buildings, the old gasworks, rising beyond the curving path of the canal.

  There was no connection that he knew of between Michael Stanton, dead in the canal a few hundred yards back, and Nick Callery, other than the fact that they had both known Ryan Marsh—and that was basing Ryan’s acquaintance with Callery on the slim evidence of a few of Ryan’s photos.

  But, Kincaid thought, what if Callery had shown up so quickly at the scene in St. Pancras, not because he was shadowing Ryan, but because he lived nearby, in the Gasholders flats.