"I called out, had a look round the house. Then… I'm not quite sure why, I went back out into the drive. I suppose I thought she'd met a neighbor or… I don't know." He rubbed a hand across his forehead, leaving a tiny smear of red. "I saw something white in the drive, near the bonnet of her car. When I got closer I saw it was a carrier bag, from Harrods. And then…"
This time Gemma waited in silence.
"I thought she'd fallen… fainted, perhaps. She hadn't been feeling well lately. I tried to lift her…"
"Then you rang for help?"
"I had my mobile in my pocket. I couldn't leave her."
"Was there anything worrying your wife, Mr. Arrowood?"
"Good God! You're not suggesting suicide?"
"No, of course not. Only that she might have been approached by someone recently, or had an argument with someone. Anything out of the ordinary."
"No. I don't know of anything. I'm sure she'd have told me." He drummed long fingers on the table and Gemma saw that he had blood under his fingernails. "Look. Is that all? I've phone calls to make. Her family… I'll have to tell her family…"
A motion in the hall alerted Gemma to Talbot's return. Talbot gave her a nod of assent, then stood by for instructions.
"Mr. Arrowood, Constable Talbot is going to stay with you while we search the premises-"
"Search my house?" Arrowood scowled in disbelief. "You're not serious?"
"I'm afraid I am. It's the first thing we do in any homicide investigation. We'll need your clothes as well, for the lab. I'll have one of the technicians bring you some clean things from upstairs."
"But this is outrageous. You can't do this. I'm going to call my contact in the Home Office-"
"You're welcome to ring whomever you like, Mr. Arrowood, but the warrant's already been issued. I'm sorry. I know this is difficult, but it's normal procedure and we've no choice under the circumstances. Now, did your wife keep a diary of her appointments? Or an address book where I might be able to find the name of the friend she met for tea?"
She thought he might refuse, but she held his gaze and after a moment the fight seemed to seep out of him. His shoulders sagged. "In the sitting room. On the desk by the window."
"Thank you. Is there someone you can call to stay with you?"
"No," he said slowly, almost as if the thought surprised him. "No one."
***
Gemma found the address book and diary easily enough, just where Arrowood had said; small books, covered in floral fabric and smelling of perfume. A quick look showed her that Dawn Arrowood had written only one thing in her diary for that day, at ten o'clock in the morning: Tommy to vet. Was Tommy the gray cat she had met in the hall?
Gemma paged carefully through the neat script in the address book. With helpful feminine logic, Dawn had placed All Saints Animal Hospital under V for vet. Making a note of the number, Gemma continued searching for Dawn's friend Natalie. In the W's, she found a listing for a Natalie Walthorpe, but Walthorpe had been carefully lined through and Caine had been written in after it.
After writing an evidence receipt, Gemma tucked both books in her bag for later perusal.
"Anything upstairs?" she asked the technician.
"No bloody shoes tucked neatly in the wardrobe, if that's what you're hoping," the technician returned cheekily. "You can have a go, if you like."
"Thanks, I will."
As she climbed the stairs, she felt again the brush against her leg, and looked down to find the cat padding up the stairs alongside her. "Tommy?" she said experimentally.
The cat looked up at her and blinked, as if to acknowledge his name. "Okay, Tommy it is."
At the top of the stairs, she turned towards the sound of voices. She was rewarded by the sight of the master bedroom, and within it, two coveralled technicians going over every surface with tweezers and sticky tape.
"Afraid you'll have to observe from the doorway for a bit longer, guv," one of them informed her. "Let us know if there's anything particular you want to look at."
With that Gemma had to be content. She stood, taking in the atmosphere of the pale yellow room. It was a gracious and elegant retreat, large and high-ceilinged, with a draped four-poster bed. The floral print of the drapes was matched by the coverlet and window coverings, a show of expensive decorating that made Gemma feel slightly claustrophobic.
Tommy the cat jumped up on the bed, curled himself into a ball, and began to purr. When the technician gave her the go-ahead, Gemma went into the room and began to look round her.
The bedside table on the right held glossy copies of Vogue and Town and Country, as well as a copy of the latest best-selling novel and a delicate alarm clock. Gemma thought of her own bedside, usually endowed with a stack of dog-eared paperbacks and a used teacup.
Peeking into the en suite bathroom, she found monogrammed, pale yellow towels, and an antique oak sideboard displaying expensive makeup and perfumes tidily arranged on lacquered trays. On the back of the door hung a fluffy toweling dressing gown. Where, Gemma wondered, was the hastily abandoned hairbrush, the jewelry taken off and left to be dealt with at a later time?
The built-in wardrobe revealed more of the same: neatly arranged women's clothes on one side, men's expensive suits on the other. Frowning in frustration, Gemma dug deeper. Shelves held handbags and stored summer clothes, the floor racks of shoes. It was only when she sat back with a sigh of exasperation that she saw the edge of the box behind the shoes. Moving the shoe rack, she pulled out the box- not cardboard, heaven forbid, but a specialty shop storage container- and removed the lid.
Here at last was some semblance of a jumble. Tattered volumes of Enid Blyton's children's books jostled against romantic novels and two dolls; a smaller, obviously hand-papered box held school reports and family photos labeled in a childish, yet recognizable, hand.
Gemma sat back, perplexed. These things had, at one time, defined the woman who had died that night. Why had Dawn Arrowood found it not only necessary to reinvent herself so completely, but to hide away the remnants of the person she had been?
***
Kincaid had tucked Toby into bed with a reading of Graham Oakley's The Church Mice Adrift, the boy's book of choice as of late, and now sat at Gemma's half-moon table, nursing a glass of the Chardonnay he'd found in her fridge.
As he looked round the room, he thought how deeply Gemma had stamped her presence on this space. It had given her safety and comfort when she had felt adrift in her life- Would he be able to provide her as much security as she'd found here? God knew they needed anchors badly enough in their jobs… and this case she'd landed tonight would test her resources; he'd known that from the outset. The media attention alone would be brutal, especially if she failed to produce a suspect in the amount of time the journalists deemed suitable.
Was he making the right choice in moving her into a house in her own patch, where there would be no escape from the presence of work, and in forcing her to do it so quickly? Yet he felt compelled to act; now that she'd agreed at last, he was afraid if he hesitated she might change her mind.
And then there was Kit to consider. His son's school term ended in a week, and when Kit made the move from Grantchester to London, Kincaid wanted them to begin as they meant to go on- as a family. He still harbored the fear that his ex-wife's widower, Ian McClellan, who remained Kit's legal guardian, might change his mind about leaving the boy in Kincaid's care when Ian took up a teaching post in Canada in the new year.
And then there were his ex-wife's parents, who felt they should have charge of their grandson. Eugenia Potts was both selfish and hysterical, and when forced to stay in her care, Kit had run away. Since then, Ian had allowed the grandparents only one supervised visit a month, which was coming up the Friday after Christmas. Eugenia had chosen the stuffy formality of afternoon tea at Brown's Hotel for their meeting- not the outing of choice for a twelve-year-old boy.
Nor would Eugenia be happy to see Kincaid, whom she despised, or to l
earn about Kit's new living arrangements. Over them hung the specter that Eugenia might actually undertake the legal action she threatened on a regular basis, and attempt to wrest Kit's guardianship for herself.
Well, they would just have to deal with that when the time came. If Kincaid's job had not taught him that there were few guarantees of stability in life, he should have learned it from his ex-wife's tragic death.
Thinking of the young woman they had seen that night, her life so unexpectedly snuffed out, Kincaid got up and poured the remains of his wine down the sink. He turned off all but the bedside lamp, then opened the blind and stood looking into the darkened garden. What worried him most was that he had seen a murder like this once before, less than two months ago.
CHAPTER THREE
If you saw Notting Hill at the beginning of the sixties, it would be hard to recognize it as the same place you can see today. Nowadays Notting Hill is wealthy and gentrified. Go back thirty years and the area is a massive slum, full of multi-occupied houses, crawling with rats and rubbish.
– Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,
from Notting Hill in the Sixties
A warm, moist current of dog breath woke her. Bryony opened one eye and tried to focus on the lolling pink tongue of Duchess, her golden retriever mix, inches from her face.
"What is it, girl? What time is it?" Turning over, she peered at her alarm clock. Was it seven already? "Shit," she muttered, rolling out of bed and giving Duchess a hasty caress as she headed for the loo. She'd meant to be at the café before now. Several of them had formed a habit of meeting for early coffee and croissants before the Saturday morning trading got into full swing, and she was dying to tell someone about her project- especially Marc, if the truth be told. Whether or not her plan would work depended on him.
When she'd scrubbed her face and pulled on jeans, boots and sweater, she took Duchess for a quick constitutional in the postage stamp of Powis Square, then set off for Elgin Crescent.
A blanket of cloud hovered over the rooftops, obscuring the light of the rising sun, but at least it had not yet begun to rain. Bryony's long strides devoured the distance from her flat to the café, and by the time she pushed open the door she'd worked up a rosy glow.
Her friends sat in the back, gathered round two tables: Wesley, his ebullient dreadlocks sedated by a cap; Fern Adams, whose punk dress and makeup belied her knowledge of the antique silver she traded in the market; Marc, who flashed Bryony the quick smile he seemed to reserve just for her; and Otto, apron-clad, coffee pot in hand. Only Alex Dunn was missing.
They all looked up at her with solemn faces as she came in, and no one offered a greeting.
"What?" Bryony joked. "Did someone die?"
When no one answered, she gazed at them with dawning horror. "Oh, no," she whispered, sinking into the nearest chair. "Has something happened? Not Alex-"
Otto upended a cup from the stack on the table and poured her a coffee, but it was Wesley who answered. "It's Dawn Arrowood, the lady that Alex was, um, seeing. She was killed last night. Murdered."
"Mrs. Arrowood? But that's not possible! She was just in the surgery yesterday, with her cat. Gavin saw them." The pretty blond woman, so devoted to her cat, was one of the hospital's regular clients. "I can't believe it. What happened?"
Marc shook his head. "That's all we know for certain. Although rumors have been going around the market like wildfire since daybreak."
"Alex-" Bryony glanced uneasily at Fern, whom she knew had been Alex's lover until recently. They had made an odd couple; Alex with his Oxford cloth shirts and Oxbridge haircut, Fern in glitter and camouflage, but their stalls were side by side in the market arcade, and Bryony had seen proximity make stranger bedfellows.
"I told him," Otto rumbled. "I told him it was a bad business. But I thought it was he who would come to harm."
"Does he know?"
"No." Fern tugged nervously at the silver ring in her eyebrow. "He was setting up his stall when I left. There were whispers round the arcade, but no one dared say anything to him."
"But what if he comes in?" asked Bryony. "We'll have to-" She stopped as Fern's eyes widened. Turning, she saw Alex Dunn pushing open the café door.
"Morning, all," he called out. "It's going to be a bloody miserable day, but let's hope that won't dampen the Christmas shoppers' enthusiasm. Has anyone got a newspaper? I'd no change for the newsagent this morning-"
"Alex-" interrupted Wesley, then turned helplessly to Otto.
His face creased with distress, Otto said, "I'm afraid we have some very bad news. Dawn Arrowood was murdered last night."
Alex stared at him. "If this is your idea of a joke, it's not amusing. Just leave it alone, Otto. It's my business."
"I am not joking, Alex. When I heard the first rumor this morning, I went to the house. There are still police everywhere, and I knew one of the constables. He told me it was the truth."
Blanching, Alex whispered, "No. There must be some mistake."
"There is no mistake," Otto assured him grimly. "Karl Arrowood came home and found her in the drive."
Alex looked wildly from one friend to another. "Oh, Jesus, no!"
"Alex-" Fern reached out and touched his hand, but he jerked away as if burned. She huddled back into her chair, her eyes filling with tears.
"But why- How?" Alex whispered.
"That I don't know," answered Otto, but the big man didn't meet Alex's eyes and Bryony found herself unexpectedly wondering if he was lying.
"I don't believe it. I'm going to see her."
"You don't want to cross paths with Karl just now," Otto cautioned.
"Do you think I give a bloody piss about Karl?" Alex snarled.
Marc came out of his chair in one fluid motion and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "I know you're upset, but try to be reasonable, man-"
"Reasonable? Why the hell should I be reasonable?" Alex slapped Marc's hand away. "Just bugger off, all of you."
He stormed out of the café, and as the door swung closed behind him, Bryony saw that it had begun to rain.
***
The smell of disinfectant, laced with the faint but undisguisable odor of death, made Gemma clench her teeth against rising nausea. Morning sickness and morgues did not make a good combination, but she was certainly not going to announce her discomfort to Kate Ling. Something must have given her away, however, because when Kate glanced up from the postmortem table, she asked, "Are you feeling all right, Gemma?"
"Late night. Not enough sleep," Gemma offered in explanation. It was true enough. After leaving the technicians to finish their search of the Arrowood house, she had set up and staffed the incident room, arranging for the correlation of information in a database, and designed the questionnaire that would be used in the house-to-house inquiries begun this morning. Fortunately, they had been able to use Notting Hill Station itself because of the proximity of the crime, rather than having to set up a mobile incident room, an undertaking always beset with problems. She'd put Gerry Franks in charge, which left her free to conduct interviews.
And she had dealt with the press, refusing to release any details until Dawn Arrowood's family had been informed of her death. By evening, however, the tabloids would be in full cry, and she needed to make use of them, asking anyone who had seen anything odd in the neighborhood of the crime to come forward.
Only then had she allowed herself to go home and slip into bed beside Kincaid, where she had lain awake into the small hours of the morning thinking about the momentous decision she had made.
"Gemma," said Kate Ling, drawing her attention back to the matter at hand. "Here's something you might find interesting. Did anyone mention that the victim was about six weeks pregnant?"
"No." Gemma thought of the dolls and the Enid Blyton books, saved perhaps for a longed-for child? "Her husband did say she hadn't been feeling well."
"Perhaps he didn't know?" Kate raised an eyebrow.
"And if not, why not?"
Gemma mused. "Have you come across anything else that might be helpful?"
"Well, it's as we thought last night; there's no evidence of any sort of sexual interference. So it looks like you can rule out sexual motivation for the crime."
"What about the chest wound?"
"A single stab, which penetrated the left lung. From the angle, I'd say it was done last, after she fell to the ground."
"Can you tell if the killer was male or female?"
"Male, I'd say. Or a very tall woman."
"Left- or right-handed?"
"Right."
"Any ideas about the weapon?"
"Something quite sharp and clean-edged. A razor, or possibly a scalpel."
"Oh, God. We can't let the press get hold of that."
"No. You'll have a Jack-the-Ripper panic on your hands, and that you don't need." Kate gave her another assessing glance. "You can take off now, if you want. I'll get the organs off to the lab, and let you know the results."
"Thanks." Gemma gave the other woman a grateful smile, sensing that they had connected for the first time on a personal level. But as she left the hospital, she also wondered just how much Kate Ling had guessed about her condition. Glancing down at her rapidly thickening waist, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep her secret much longer.
***
"I'm going after him." Fern pushed her coffee away and stood up.
"It might not be a good idea to try to talk to him now," Marc advised her gently. "Especially not in front of the Arrowoods' house-"
"I'm not going there. He'll go back to his stall, when he's sure it's true. I know him." She turned away from the pity in their faces, and for a moment she hated them for it. She did know him, better than anyone, and she could comfort him, no matter what they thought.
Rounding the corner into Portobello Road, she ducked her head against the rain and battled the flood of shoppers coming down the hill as if she were a salmon swimming upstream, turning into the arcade where she and Alex had their stalls.
And Justice There Is None Page 4
