And Justice There Is None

by Deborah Crombie

  ***

  "The kids will be thrilled, I'm sure, but I don't know what Duncan will say," Gemma confessed to Melody.

  "Tell him the dog's a Christmas present. Then he can't complain without looking like Scrooge."

  "You're devious," Gemma said, laughing. "Remind me to come to you for advice more often." She nodded at the sheaf of papers in Melody's hand. "Have you got something else for me?"

  "The blood work's come back, boss."

  "Anything helpful?"

  "Inconclusive. More on the negative side than the positive, if you ask me. It looks like Arrowood picked up his wife, just like he said, but that doesn't prove incontrovertibly that he didn't hold her from behind first, until she bled out."

  "Difficult to do without getting some blood spatter on his clothes. And if he'd dumped some sort of protective covering anywhere in the neighborhood, we'd have found it by now." Gemma tried to keep the discouragement from her voice- this was no more than she'd expected. Six days and virtually no progress.

  "So what do we do now?"

  "We keep working on the drug angle with Arrowood. Which means we talk to Alex Dunn again."

  ***

  They found Alex Dunn at home, packing bubble-wrapped china into a box. He seemed tired, and edgier than he had on Tuesday. Gemma suspected that he'd come into the station buffered by a surge of adrenaline that had since worn off.

  "This is a Sèvres dinner service I found for a client in Nottingham," he told them. "That's a good deal of my business, selling to private clients. I keep an eye out at auction for them, or pick up things from other dealers that I know they want."

  Gemma found her eye drawn once again to the bright dishes she'd noticed on her first visit. "Is that pottery, or china?"

  "Pottery. Made by a woman named Clarice Cliff, mainly in the twenties and thirties, the heyday of Art Deco. She started work in the potteries at thirteen, and by the time she was in her late teens she was designing her own wares."

  Moving closer to study the pieces, Gemma saw that although they all had the same bright, bold look, there was infinite variation in the patterns.

  "It's not really my field," Alex continued, "but I fell in love with the first piece I saw and I've been collecting it ever since. And Dawn loved it. I was going to give her that teapot"- he nodded towards a piece dominated by red-roofed houses against a deep yellow ground- "for Christmas."

  "Is the pottery expensive?" Gemma asked, with a private sigh of regret.

  "Very."

  "Would Karl have noticed?"

  "Yes. Anything to do with antiques, Karl noticed. And he would certainly be aware of the value of Clarice Cliff pottery, even if it's not the sort of thing he stocks in his shop."

  "So Karl is successful because he's good at what he does?"

  Alex gave her a puzzled look. "The antiques trade is no business for fools, and Karl has a particularly good eye for finding pieces that will bear a huge markup. Not to mention the connections with clients who can pay the markup."

  "We've been told Karl has other clients- and other uses for his business- as in laundering the money he makes in drug transactions."

  "Drugs? You're joking." Alex's bark of laughter died as he read their faces. "But that's daft! Why would Karl need to do something like that? He's got more money than God."

  "Maybe you're putting the cart before the horse. Maybe the drugs came first, or at least simultaneously. Did Dawn never mention anything like that to you?"

  "Are you saying Dawn was aware of it?"

  "We don't know. That's why we're asking you."

  "I'm the last person you should've come to. Apparently there were a lot of things Dawn didn't tell me." He stuffed a wrapped teapot into the box so violently that Gemma repressed a gasp.

  "You knew her better than anyone," she said. "How do you think she would have felt about Karl's involvement in drugs?"

  "A week ago, I'd have thought she'd have left him in horror if she found out." Alex said it savagely. "Now I'm not so sure. It's not the sort of thing we sat around and discussed. 'Oh, by the way, dear, how do you feel about drug trafficking?' "

  "So what did you talk about?" Gemma asked. She needed to penetrate the bitter shell the young man had erected.

  "Whatever you talk about with your significant other, assuming you have one. Food, music, movies, stupid television programs, the state of the world."

  "But the problem with an affair is that you don't talk about the ordinary, everyday things, because you don't share them. What to have for dinner, the size of the gas bill, your child's cough."

  "Do you think I don't know that?" Alex told her hotly. "Do you have any idea what I'd have given for even one day of conversations like that? You don't appreciate it, do you? Either of you?"

  Gemma said softly, "No. You're right. I'm sorry."

  "The funny thing is… She was so beautiful, the kind of woman men dream about. But it was the ordinary things I loved most about her. She had a passion for ginger ice cream. And flowers. They had a fortune in flowers delivered to the house every week, but she could go bonkers over a geranium in a pot on the patio, or a late rose blooming beside the pavement."

  "But that's a good thing, isn't it?" said Melody. "That she had that capacity for enjoying life?"

  "Is it? I'm not so sure." He stared at them belligerently. Then his anger seemed to dissipate and he knelt again beside his packing box. "Of course you're right. If I were a good person, I'd wish her every bit of joy given her by anything- or anyone- instead of envying what she might have shared with someone else.

  "And what I said before, it was just the doubt eating at me. I knew her. Even if she didn't tell me she was pregnant, I'm absolutely certain that if she found out Karl was selling drugs, she would have left him in an instant."

  CHAPTER TEN

  Funny thing, history. Since the sixties, all sorts of people, moral reformers, right-wingers, left-wingers, politicians, feminists, male chauvinists, law-and-order campaigners, and censorship freaks of every kind, have invented a straightlaced, well-behaved public life from which the country somehow strayed with the invention of permissiveness.

  – Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,

  from Notting Hill in the Sixties

  Although never very substantial, Angel lost weight rapidly after she moved into the Colville Terrace bedsit. This was in part from lack of funds, as her wage did not stretch as far as she'd expected, and in part because the single gas ring in her room didn't encourage more than heating soup or stew from a tin. She took up smoking, finding that tobacco both dulled hunger and eased boredom, not to mention the fact that her boss gave her a discount on cigarettes.

  She grew her hair long and straight, with a fringe that brushed her eyebrows and, unable to afford the new fashions, hemmed her skirts above her knees with clumsy stitches that would have made Mrs. Thomas cringe. Her lashes were heavy with mascara, her skin pale with the latest pancake foundation.

  There were boys, of course, to impress with her newfound sense of style. As soon as word got round that she was on her own, they came into the shop in pimply droves, wanting to take her to the cinema, or out for a coffee.

  At first she was flattered, but she learned soon enough what those invitations meant. After the first few disappointing encounters, she decided she preferred to stay in her room in the evenings, watching the telly and listening to 45s that scratched and hissed on her father's old phonograph. Posters of the Beatles now covered the damp stains on her walls- their smiling faces watched over her like medieval saints.

  These small comforts kept her going until a bitterly cold night in March, when she came to the end of her wages, her food, and paraffin for the heater. It was two days until payday and, shivering beneath a swath of blankets as her stomach cramped from emptiness, she wondered how she was going to manage. Her employer, Mr. Pheilholz, was kind enough, but she knew he had nothing extra to give her. She could go to the Thomases, but the thought of Ronnie's pity and contempt made h
er decide she'd rather die than give in to that temptation.

  Prompted by the thought of the Thomases, however, a memory came to her unbidden. She had been ill once, as a child, and her mother had soothed her with tinned chicken soup and fizzy lemonade. The recollection brought tears to her eyes. She shook it off, as she did most reminders of her former life, but the thought of her mother had triggered another vivid flash.

  She got out of bed and scrabbled in the bureau. She didn't remember throwing away the last of her mother's tablets- were they still there? When her mother had been too fretful to sleep, the tiny morphine tablets had given her ease. Could they help her daughter now?

  Her fingers closed on a smooth round shape, right in the back of the drawer. She drew it out- yes, it was the same brown glass bottle she remembered. Unscrewing the cap, she shook a few of the tablets into her hand, then, with sudden resolution, took a kitchen knife and cut one in half. Gingerly, she swallowed the tiny crescent moon.

  She regretted it instantly. Her heart thumped with fear as she waited, wondering how she would feel dying, poisoned, unable to call for help.

  After a few minutes, something began to happen. First came a cold numbness in her mouth, then warmth spread through her body and she felt a strange sort of separation from the cold and hunger. She was still aware of the sensations, she knew that they were a part of her, and yet she was somehow outside them.

  Forgetting her terror, she relaxed, snuggling deeper into the blankets. It was all right… It was going to be all right. A rosy contentment possessed her. The light from her single lamp seemed to coalesce into a luminous halo, and she hummed to herself as disconnected bits of songs floated through her brain. At last, she drifted into a deep and blissful sleep, the first in days.

  After that, she hoarded the little white tablets, saving them for the times when things seemed more than she could bear.

  Summer came at last, and with it her seventeenth birthday. The day passed unremarked except for a card sent by Betty and her mother. It was hot, even for August, and as the afternoon wore on, the shop became more and more stifling. Angel was minding the place on her own, as Mr. Pheilholz had declared it unbearable and departed for the day. She stood at the cash register, aware of every breath of air that came through the open door, watching the hands on the big wall clock move like treacle.

  The young man came in for cigarettes. She barely noticed him at first, as there was a faint buzzing in her ears and her vision seemed to be doing strange things.

  "Are you all right?" he asked as he took his change. "You're pale as a ghost."

  "I… I do feel a bit odd." Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

  "It's the heat. You need to sit down, get some air," he told her decisively. "Here." Dumping the apples from one produce crate into another, he turned over the empty one and placed it in the doorway. He then led her to it, holding her by the arm. "Sit. Put your head down." He pulled a newspaper from the display and fanned her with it.

  After a few minutes, he asked, "Feeling better?"

  "Yes, thanks." Lifting her head, she took in the blond hair brushing his collar, the clear, gray eyes, the smart, uncreased jacket he wore even in the heat, and the giddiness that washed over her had nothing to do with the heat. She thought that he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

  "Come on, then," he ordered. "I'll take you out for something cold to drink."

  "Can't. Not until closing. I'm minding the shop."

  "Then shut it. It's too hot for anyone to buy groceries, much less cook them."

  "I can't!" she protested, horrified. "I'd lose my job."

  "And that matters?"

  "Of course it matters!" she told him, but she was partly convincing herself.

  He studied her, and she gazed back, as mesmerized as a rabbit facing a snake.

  "How long till you can close, then?" he asked.

  She glanced at the clock and was surprised to find that half an hour had passed. "An hour. It's my birthday," she added, inexplicably, feeling a fool.

  "Is it? Then I suppose I'll just have to wait." Leaning against the produce case, he crossed his arms, looking about the shop with evident disdain. "What are you doing working in this lousy place, anyway?"

  "It's all I could get." She was ashamed, seeing it through his eyes. "And it pays my rent."

  "You haven't told me your name."

  For a moment she hesitated, then she lifted her chin. "Angel."

  "Just Angel?"

  Excitement surged through her. He knew nothing of her, her parents, her background; she could reinvent herself as she chose. "That's right. Just Angel."

  ***

  Two weeks later, she lay beneath him in her narrow bed, the rumpled sheets pushed back, the window open as wide as it would go. "Tell me what you want, Angel," he urged, his breath catching in his throat. "I can give it to you. I can give you anything- fame, fortune, glory." He had pursued her as if nothing else mattered in the world, waiting at her flat every day after work, taking her out for meals and to the cinema, buying her trinkets… and staying every night in her room. The wonder of it took her breath away. What could he possibly see in her, when he could have anyone?

  His skin, glistening with perspiration, slid effortlessly against hers as he moved inside her. A sultry breeze lifted the curtains; the light from the street lamp silvered his corn-yellow hair.

  She was lost, and she knew that he knew it, but she didn't care. "I want you to love me." Digging her fingertips into his shoulders, she whispered against his cheek, tasting the salt like blood. "I want you to love me, just me. More than anyone, or anything, ever."

  ***

  Kit McClellan loaded the last of his boxes into his dad's- make that his stepdad's- Volvo. He had learned, since his mum had died the previous April, that the man he had always known as his father was actually not his dad at all, and that his real dad had not known of his existence until his mum's death. It was all quite confusing, but he had gradually got used to it, and now everything was going to change again.

  His stepfather, Ian, was taking a teaching post in Canada, and Kit was going to live with his real father, Duncan, Duncan's girlfriend, Gemma, and her son, Toby, in a house in a part of London Kit had never even seen. It was what he had wanted, to be a real family, and Gemma was going to have a baby in the spring, a new brother or sister for him.

  It was also terrifying, and it meant leaving the pink cottage in the little village of Grantchester where he had spent his whole life, and where he had last seen his mum.

  That morning he'd said good-bye to his friend Nathan Winter, who had been his mother's friend as well, and who had fostered Kit's love of biology. Much to Kit's embarrassment, Nathan had given him a crushing hug, and it had been all Kit could do to keep from blubbing like a baby. "You know you can come visit any time the pavement gets too much for you," Nathan had teased, and Kit thought with a pang of the long, slow days spent by the river that flowed past his back garden.

  "Are you ready, Kit?" called Ian.

  Swallowing hard, Kit took one last look at the cottage, its "For Sale" sign already posted in the front garden. "All set."

  He opened the car door and summoned Tess with a whistle. "Ready for a ride, girl?" he asked the little terrier who had been his constant companion since he'd found her hiding in a box behind a supermarket, just days after his mum's death.

  Tess bounded into the car, licking his face excitedly as he climbed in beside her.

  They made the drive in silence, Kit watching out the window with avid interest as they reached London and drove west along Hyde Park. He could bring Tess to the park, Duncan had said, whenever he liked, so they must be getting close to the house.

  He had a fleeting impression of ugly, square buildings round the Notting Hill Gate tube stop. They swung to the right, entering streets lined with sedate rows of terraced houses. Next, a church, its brick dark with age; then they were running down a hill and drawing to a stop before a solid-look
ing brown brick house with a red door and white trim.

  "You'll come to Canada on your summer break," Ian reminded him. "I'll make all the arrangements."

  Kit nodded absently, for Duncan had come out the front door, and Toby stood at the garden gate, calling excitedly to him. His new life had begun.

  ***

  Hazel had helped her pack with such cheerful competence that Gemma decided she must have imagined that her friend was distressed over her leaving. But Gemma herself found it hard to say good-bye to the tiny flat: It was the first home she had been able to call entirely her own. And then there was Hazel's piano- when would she ever be able to play again? Making an excuse for a last trip into the big house, she dashed into the sitting room and stood for a moment gazing at the instrument, then touched the keys briefly in farewell.

  "Don't worry if you've forgotten something," Hazel assured her as Gemma squeezed into the car with the collected bundles. "Holly and I will come over tomorrow and help you get settled."

  "I'll need it, I'm sure," Gemma called out as she waved and drove off. Duncan had taken Toby with him in the van he'd fixed to transport the things from his flat- and Sid the cat. They would meet her at the new house.

  After a week's relentless drizzle, Saturday had dawned clear and unseasonably warm, a perfect day for moving, and as Gemma neared Notting Hill she found herself singing along with the old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tune "Our House" on the radio. She laughed aloud with sudden, unanticipated joy.

  They were all waiting for her- Duncan, Toby, and Kit, with Tess bounding round and barking madly.

  "I take it she likes the house." Gemma gave Kit a welcoming hug.

  Toby tugged at her, his cheeks flushed with excitement. "Mummy, Mummy, have you seen the garden? Have you seen my room? Sid's shut in the loo." The poor cat must be utterly traumatized, thought Gemma, but before she could check on him, Toby grabbed her hand and yanked her towards the stairs. "Come see my room, Mummy. Kit's going to share with me!"