The Garden of Lamentations

by Deborah Crombie

  Nita Cusick peered at the sheet of paper, then looked back at Kerry. “No. You can’t just come in my house. You can’t persecute my child.”

  “Is your son here, Mrs. Cusick?” Kerry said with a glance at Gemma, as she knew very well that he wasn’t. “Because, if so, we can have a family liaison officer come sit with him.”

  “No. No, he’s—he’s not here.”

  “Then, I suggest we go inside.” When Kerry and Gemma and the constable, who was very large and very dark skinned, moved forward, Nita Cusick stepped back. The officers shifted direction to the right, into the sitting room, so that Nita had no choice but to step that way. “Why don’t we have a seat?” Kerry suggested.

  The constable, who Gemma had learned was named Jacobs, took his place by the door, relaxed in parade-rest stance. They could see the two SOCOs come through with their kits, one going upstairs, one going down. They had instructions to look for specific items, as well as anything else they thought might be germane to Reagan Keating’s death or the attack on Asia Ford.

  Nita had backed up to one of the sofas and sat down as if unaware of her actions. She was dressed, not in the yoga gear she’d worn the previous day, but in a fitted gray linen dress. The color did nothing for her sallow complexion, and as she sat, the dress rode up unflatteringly on her thighs.

  The spoiled roses were gone, Gemma noticed, although the room still seemed stuffy even with yesterday’s drop in temperature. Once again she had to fight the urge to open a window.

  “You can’t just go through my things,” Nita said, starting to rise again, then subsiding as she glanced at the constable. “What are they looking for?”

  “Mrs. Cusick, it’s routine to search the domicile of a person who has been murdered,” Kerry told her. “It should have been done much sooner, but the circumstances of Reagan Keating’s death were a bit unusual. Why don’t I go make us some tea while we wait?” she added, as she and Gemma had prearranged. “I’m sure this won’t take long.”

  “But I don’t—” began Nita, but Kerry had already left the room.

  “I’m so sorry we have to put you through this, Nita,” said Gemma. “I’m sure it’s unnecessary.” She rolled her eyes in the direction Kerry had taken. “Regulations can be such a pain.”

  Nita visibly relaxed, but the look she gave Gemma was still wary. “How did you know Jess wasn’t here?”

  “Oh, we contacted his father. Routine with a missing child. He told us Jess was safe and sound and that he might be less upset away from reminders of Reagan for a few days.”

  “He would say that.” Nita’s mouth tightened. “That—that nurse probably egged him on. I told him he was violating his custody agreement and that I’d be calling my solicitor.”

  “I’m sure you want what’s best for your son,” Gemma said, going for soothing if noncommittal.

  “Well, yes, of course. But his audition for the Royal Ballet is coming up, and his father has given him some silly idea that he should stay where he is.”

  “That’s the London Boys Ballet School, isn’t it? Where Jess takes classes during the week? I thought it was quite good.”

  “Quite good sums it up, I would say. It’s merely a stepping-stone to training with a world-famous company.”

  “Oh? I’d thought of looking into it for my son.”

  “Your boy is, what, seven?” Nita gave Toby and his future dance career a dismissive shrug. “I doubt it will matter much where you send him.”

  Gemma forced a smile. “Jess has his heart set on the Royal Ballet, then?”

  “Of course he does,” Nita said, frowning, as if Gemma had just uttered a blasphemy.

  “Then it would be a terrible shame if anything—or anyone—was to stand in the way of Jess succeeding at the audition.”

  “That’s what I told her—” Nita clamped her mouth shut, the wariness returning in full force.

  “Do you mean Reagan?” Gemma asked. “Surely she agreed with you?”

  “Of course she did. She understood how important this is for Jess.”

  Gemma made an effort to keep her tone light, as if the question was of no importance. “So she would never have suggested that Jess do anything that might jeopardize his future in dance?”

  “Of course not.”

  “And you wouldn’t have minded her encouraging Jess to tell Henry Su’s parents that he’d taken Henry’s asthma inhaler on the day Henry died?”

  For an instant, Nita Cusick’s face went completely blank, as if Gemma had spoken suddenly in a foreign tongue. Then her eyes opened wide with shock and the color drained from her face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered.

  “I think you do,” Gemma said quietly. “Jess told Reagan that he’d picked up Henry’s inhaler on the day Henry died. Jess was fed up with Henry’s bullying, and decided it would serve Henry right if he got in trouble for losing the inhaler. He put it in his pocket and went home. He didn’t know that Henry would get himself stuck in the shed and panic.

  “Jess wanted to tell the Sus. Reagan supported him, but told him he had to discuss it with you first. You, however, told him that telling his secret would ruin his life and his dance career, and that you’d take any steps to see that didn’t happen.”

  “But you can’t know—that’s absurd. Jess would never—”

  Gemma had no intention of admitting that Jess had told her. “We’ve recovered Reagan’s computer,” she said, as if that explained everything. They had, in fact, as it had been in Jess’s backpack and his father had brought it into the station that morning. Whether there was anything useful on it remained to be seen. It was password protected and Jess had not known the password.

  “Reagan told Jess on Friday evening that she might be leaving your employ—she thought that forcing Jess to keep his secret would haunt him for the rest of his life. Quite an annoying stickler for honesty, that girl.” Gemma shook her head in mock dismay.

  “Honesty?” Nita said with sudden venom. “She was a bloody self-righteous prig. How could she possibly know what was best for Jess? I’m his mother.”

  Gemma nodded. “Of course you are. And I can understand that. I wouldn’t want someone else telling me what to do with my kids. Or someone telling me where my son should dance, after all my hard work and sacrifice to give him the best opportunity.”

  “Jess has to dance for the Royal Ballet.” Tears trembled on Nita’s lower eyelids. “Otherwise it will have all been for nothing. All these years, all the things I’ve given up . . .”

  It didn’t look to Gemma as if Nita had given up much at all, but she nodded and leaned forward, inviting more confidence. “You must have spoken to Reagan. Tried to talk her into staying. And to dropping any silly idea about Jess going to the Sus.”

  “I—she went out. I never saw her again.”

  “But you texted her, when she was out with her friends on Friday night. They told us you did. They also said she was very upset and didn’t want to talk to you.” Gemma had no problem with her invention.

  “No, I didn’t text her. I’m sure I didn’t.” Nita’s body seemed to be curving in on itself, knees up, shoulders forward, in almost a fetal position. “I can’t think why she’d have said that. It’s not true.”

  “But Reagan always told the truth. She was breaking up with her boyfriend because he was dishonest.”

  “She didn’t tell me about Edward Miller,” Nita said in a flash of spite that drew back her lips. “That wasn’t honest.”

  “She meant to,” Gemma said, soothing again. “I think she would have told you sooner, but when Jess told her about the inhaler it threw a spanner in the works. And she wanted to finalize breaking it off with Hugo Gold before she entered into any kind of relationship with Edward.”

  “She was living in my house. Eating my food. Poisoning my child with her ideas.” Nita wiped at her mouth. “And then she—she seduced my client. Edward.”

  For the first time it occurred to Gemma that Nita might have had
designs on Edward Miller, had perhaps mistaken his friendly demeanor for something more.

  “Behind your back,” she agreed. “Even more reason to be angry with her.”

  Nita nodded, her head bobbing with the ferocity of it. “She had no right. Just like she had no right to tell Jess what to do.”

  “So, of course you wanted to talk to her,” said Gemma, moving past Nita’s denial of the texting. “You had to know what she meant to do about Jess. If she meant to tell the Sus about the inhaler. I know,” she added confidingly, “I wouldn’t have been able to stand not knowing. But maybe she wouldn’t want to tell you. Or maybe she wouldn’t tell you the truth.” She realized now that it would never have occurred to Nita that Reagan wouldn’t lie.

  Gemma had been aware for some time of the hum of activity in the house—soft voices, footsteps, the creaks of the treads on the stairs. She only hoped Kerry would give her a few minutes more. Jacobs the constable stood unmoving as a statue, out of Nita’s line of vision, and Gemma didn’t dare glance in his direction.

  “You thought if Reagan was tipsy, she might tell you, didn’t you, Nita? The only problem was that Reagan wasn’t much of a drinker. But what if she drank something really tasty—a gin punch, maybe? You must have had a good supply of Red Fox. Then, she wouldn’t notice if the alcohol was a lot stronger than she was used to.”

  Nita stared at her, her eyes dilated, her thin chest rising and falling rapidly. Gemma thought of a rabbit caught in the glare of oncoming headlamps.

  Swallowing, Gemma went on. “It was such a lovely night. Warm. Unusual for May. A perfect night for a chat in the garden. With a candle, a pitcher of punch, two pretty glasses. And Reagan in her white dress. She might have walked out of a fairy tale.

  “And it worked a charm, didn’t it? Just the two of you, on the soft cool grass, with nothing but the stars and the flicker of the candle. She drank the punch and she giggled. When her head started spinning, she flopped back onto the grass, the white dress spread all around her like foam.”

  “You can’t know,” Nita whispered. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  Gemma clasped her hands together to stop them trembling. “But when you asked her what she meant to do about Jess—surely, you said, she must understand how essential it was that nothing interrupt his progress—she said that nothing was more important than Jess doing the right thing. That she’d help him in any way she could. And you couldn’t have that, could you, Nita?”

  Nita blinked, once, but there was no flicker of emotion in her eyes. Thinking of Asia Ford’s bleeding head, Gemma was suddenly very glad of the constable’s presence in the room.

  “Just shut her up,” Gemma murmured, a thread of sound. “Shut her up, you thought. Stuff her mouth with that soft white skirt. And she must have felt soft, too, with her girl’s skin, almost like a child’s. She struggled a bit. The candle tipped and went out, the wax spilling on the grass. Poof. And then she was gone, just like the candle.

  “But you couldn’t leave her,” she went on, swallowing against the nausea. “Rumpled like a rag doll. So you straightened her dress. You laid her out as if she’d just fallen asleep, didn’t you, Nita?”

  Another blink, and the slightest shake of the head, not quite a negation.

  Gemma took a breath. “Where did Reagan leave her phone, Nita? In the kitchen? In her room? It must have been a shock when you’d tidied everything away, then the text came through. From Edward. Surely, not your Edward, you thought. Did you recognize the number? What if he came here? You must have panicked. So you texted back, just in case.

  “Where’s the phone, now, Nita? Did you keep it? You had to read the texts and the e-mails, had to see if she’d told anyone. It must have been an even bigger shock the next day when you found her computer gone. Had she given it to someone? Had someone been in the house?

  “But nothing happened except that Jess stopped talking to you. He wouldn’t tell you where he’d been on Saturday morning. Did he know something? Guess something?” Gemma was relentless now. “Had he loved her more than you? Then, when Asia rang and said she’d seen him in the garden when he should have been in school, you panicked. Real panic, this time. Asia told you she thought he might have taken her alcohol, but you didn’t want anyone connecting you, or Jess, to the missing bottle.

  “Asia told you something else, too, didn’t she, Nita? Roland Peacock saw you that night, coming back across the garden. He was coming to tell Asia their tryst for that night was off. His wife had come home unexpectedly, and his son was ill. He didn’t dare use the phone to ring her. Neither of them wanted to speak up, for obvious reasons.” It was Roland who’d rung Gemma that morning and haltingly said that since the attack on Asia, he’d decided he couldn’t keep anything from the police, even if it meant coming clean to his wife. The affair, he’d admitted, had been going on for some time, and more than once Clive Glenn had glimpsed him leaving Asia’s house at daybreak.

  Nita’s eyes had widened, but she didn’t speak. Gemma took a breath and went on. “So you took your chances, Nita. You had to shut Asia up, too.

  “But it didn’t work, and Asia told us Jess never touched the bottles. Only you, Nita.”

  “You can’t know,” she whispered, running her tongue around her lips. “You can’t know any of it. I won’t tell you.”

  “Would Roland Peacock have been next? Where would it have stopped, Nita?”

  The spasm in Nita’s hand told Gemma more than enough. When the hall door opened, she looked up with relief. She couldn’t bear another moment in the room with Nita Cusick.

  It was Kerry, beckoning her. When Gemma stood, she found she was soaked with sweat.

  Jacobs, his face still impassive, but his eyes warm with understanding, nodded at her as she went out. When the door closed behind her, she leaned against the hallway wall for a moment.

  “Gemma?” said Kerry. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Fine.” Gemma straightened up. “What have you got?”

  Kerry held up two evidence bags. One held a mobile phone, the other an asthma rescue inhaler. “Found both of them in her bedroom drawer, buried under her frilly knickers. People, honestly.” She rolled her eyes. “The phone is not password protected. It’s Reagan Keating’s. And Nita can’t claim the inhaler. It has Henry Su’s name on the label.”

  “Christ.” Gemma sagged against the wall again, her knees weak.

  “Not to mention,” Kerry continued, “the bottle of grain alcohol in the back of her liquor cabinet. The fingerprint techs will have a field day with it. And,” she added, not to be interrupted, “they found the shoes you described her wearing yesterday. The UV light brought out what looks like blood spatter on the toes. Did you get anything from her?”

  “An admission? No. Confirmation?” Gemma nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then let’s get her down to the station,” said Kerry, “and we’ll cross our own frilly knickers that the prosecutor will run with it.”

  It took effort on Kincaid’s part to extricate himself quickly from the meeting with Lindsay Quinn, and without showing anything other than mild interest in what Quinn had told him. He thanked Quinn for the tea, shook his hand, and left the man looking mildly puzzled.

  When he came out of the bar into the upper concourse, someone was pounding on the nearer of the two pianos in the lower concourse. Rachmaninoff, he thought, one of the piano concertos, well played. It was the music his mother had listened to when cleaning house, or when working out a knotty problem, but at that moment it made Kincaid feel like his head would explode. He headed quickly for the nearest exit, but as soon as he came out into Euston Road, his mobile rang.

  It was Doug. “You won’t believe what I dug up,” Doug said when Kincaid answered. “Your bloke in Cheshire who topped himself? Retired Chief Inspector Fletcher?”

  “What about him?” Kincaid asked, ducking his head and covering his other ear to shut out the traffic noise.

  “He worked for Deputy Assistant Commissioner Tr
ent. SO15.”

  Kincaid felt like he’d been kicked in the gut a second time. “Shit.” He took a breath, trying to patch things together. “We need to talk. Not on the phone. Where are you?”

  “Home,” said Doug. “Skived off work, didn’t I? Melody, too. She’s at the paper. We’ll probably both lose our jobs.”

  “I only hope that’s the worst of it,” Kincaid muttered, thinking furiously. He didn’t dare meet them at King’s Cross, or anywhere near Holborn. “Look. Meet me where we met the other day, okay?” Maybe he was being ridiculously paranoid, but he didn’t care. “And ask Melody if she can check whether our DAC has roundabout financial interests in King’s Cross Development or its subsidiaries. Then meet her in Kensington and come together. Take a taxi.”

  Doug laughed. “You’re taking the piss.”

  “No, I’m bloody well not,” Kincaid snapped. “Just do it.”

  He walked. It would take Doug and Melody some time to get to Hatton Garden, and he needed time to think. Taking Gray’s Inn Road south, he passed Wren Street and Roger Street and the Duke, the pub where Denis had felt safe meeting him on Saturday night. He hoped he was not as naive as Denis had been, in thinking he wouldn’t be traced to the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

  It wasn’t until he reached Greville Street that he remembered the whisky society didn’t open until twelve. Feeling a prize idiot, he settled in the pub downstairs, texting Doug accordingly and nursing a coffee. The pub had begun to fill for lunch and a sudden shower had drenched the streets, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared. By the time Doug and Melody spilled out of a taxi in Greville Street, it was straight up noon.

  He met them outside and together they went upstairs to the society rooms above the pub. Kincaid ordered them all sandwiches and more coffee, then told them what he’d learned from Lindsay Quinn. Taking the Polaroid from his pocket, he passed it to them.

  “Bloody sodding hell,” Doug said succinctly, staring at it.

  “That’s her, without a doubt,” agreed Melody, “but who’s the other woman, the pretty brunette?”