After a moment’s pause, Kincaid said evenly, “Inspector, at this stage of an investigation, we don’t know what’s important, and everything has a point. I’ll see Mr. Brent myself.”
“But—”
“In the meantime, we’ll need to get the house-to-house inquiries started as soon as possible and the incident room set up. Our first priority is identification, and we had better be prepared to make use of the media.”
A SHREDDED PIECE OF PLASTIC BLEW fitfully across the section of the ASDA car park visible through the screen of trees. Watching from her balcony, Teresa Robbins thought of a film she’d seen once about tumbleweeds in the American desert. The giant weeds had blown in a similar way, in erratic bursts, as if they had a life of their own. The movement of the bit of rubbish made her feel vaguely uneasy, as did the hot breeze that animated it.
Yet she stayed, leaning against the chipped iron railing, craning to see beyond the trees. She’d seen the first police car arrive midmorning, while she’d been hanging out washing on her half of the narrow concrete balcony. There was a cluster of cars now, pulled up in a rough circle beyond the petrol station. It worried her, not knowing what was happening, but she couldn’t bring herself to join the crowd of onlookers gathering in the car park.
A loud thump from next door warned her that her neighbor was up, and that her time on the balcony was limited. Teresa prized her quiet mornings there, especially Saturdays, when she had the time to tend her geraniums and petunias. The evenings were his, given over to heavy metal music and six-packs of lager, and he fueled their ongoing skirmish by leaving fag ends in her flowerpots for her to clean out the next morning. She knew she should tell him to bugger off, but standing up to people was never as easy for her as it was for Annabelle.
She’d improved at it, though, in the five years she’d worked for Annabelle Hammond. It simply never occurred to Annabelle that she wouldn’t get what she wanted, whether professionally or personally, and Teresa had often watched with quiet amusement as her boss sailed into a meeting with unsuspecting executives who had not been prepared to take her seriously because she was female. By the time they stopped gaping at her looks, Annabelle would have their signatures on the dotted line.
Although Teresa knew she could never aspire to Annabelle’s flair, she’d worked at her job as the firm’s bookkeeper with a zeal and efficiency no one from her Croyden comprehensive would ever have expected from her—a girl so ordinary that she’d once overheard a teacher describe her as “the girl most likely to disappear.”
After a series of accounting jobs that hadn’t quite fit, she’d started at Hammond’s with little expectation. To her surprise, she’d soaked up the business like a sponge, discovering a talent for organizing as well as figures. She learned she could juggle things in her head, and had even begun to develop a passion for tea that rivaled Annabelle’s. A year ago, Annabelle had promoted her to chief financial officer.
They made a good team. Between them, they had taken Hammond’s Fine Teas from the past into the nineties, and it was only in the past few months, as Annabelle had begun to address the future of the firm, that Teresa had seen her display any doubt or hesitation.
She frowned as she thought of the breakfast Annabelle had organized with Sir Peter Mortimer at the Chili’s in Canary Wharf this morning. Annabelle had not shown up, and it was unthinkable that she would not keep such an appointment. Reg and Teresa had entertained Sir Peter as best they could, but without Annabelle, they had not dared broach the reason for the invitation. And as the day wore on with no word of explanation from her, Teresa felt increasingly worried.
Next door, another thump was followed by the sudden blare of music—the heavy repetitive bass and growling lyrics that made her head ache. With a grimace, she turned and gathered her things from the wooden drying rack. She’d ring Annabelle at home again, and if there was no reply, she’d go to the office in case Annabelle showed up there.
As Teresa glanced down at the car park once more before retreating into the flat, an unmarked white van moved slowly across the tarmac.
WHILE THEY WAITED FOR THE MORTUARY van, Gemma nipped down to the supermarket cafe for a bacon-and-egg roll and a cup of tea, not knowing when she might have another chance to eat. The air-conditioned market provided a welcome refuge from the heat and she looked round with interest as she peeled the cling-film from her roll.
Cavernous and comprehensive, the store was the sort Gemma hadn’t much opportunity to visit, but she assumed it was what the inhabitants of the posh developments expected. It was only when she’d watched the shoppers for a few minutes that she realized most of them were solidly working class. Curious, she quickly finished her sandwich and entered the main part of the store. To her surprise, although the shelves were well-stocked, there was a distinct shortage of gourmet items and a preponderance of white bread.
She bought a packet of ginger-nut biscuits for emergency rations, tucking it in her handbag as she emerged into the glare of the street. The mortuary van was parked unobtrusively at the rear of the car park, its rear doors standing open. She crossed the hot tarmac, and as she reached the path leading up to the Mudchute, she saw that the attendants were attempting to maneuver the stretcher and zipped black body bag through the cubicle of the swinging gate. They were red-faced and sweating, and one swore steadily and inventively. Kincaid stood a few yards up the hill, his hands in his pockets, his lips pressed together in impatience.
The attendants put the stretcher down and looked up at him. “ ’Fraid we’re going to have to upend her, guv,” said the one with the rich vocabulary.
“Just be careful, will you?” Kincaid admonished them, and Gemma heard him mutter something about “buggering up the physical evidence” under his breath.
“We’ll get some straps.”
Gemma took advantage of their descent to the van to slip through the gate and join Kincaid.
“Feeling a bit better?” he asked.
“Much. Where’s the inspector?”
“Limehouse Station, getting things organized. Just our luck they closed the old station here on the Island and the new one’s not finished.”
Looking up at him, Gemma noticed the small spot on his chin he’d missed with the razor that morning, shaving in her cupboard-sized bathroom. She was close enough to smell her soap on his skin and the thought of their shared shower brought a smile to her lips. “Sorry about your Saturday,” she said. “What about Kit?”
“The Major stood in for me.”
“Kit must have been disappointed, just the same.”
“Yes.” Kincaid didn’t meet her eyes.
“How rotten for you.” Gemma knew he hated to let Kit down, and she also suspected that any guilt he felt over failing in his commitment to Kit was strengthened by his guilt over Vic’s death. Although he didn’t talk about it, she’d sensed it gnawing at him the past few months, and she felt it driving a wedge between them.
“Worse for him, poor little beggar.”
Gemma thought of Toby, who accepted her frequent unexpected absences with equanimity because it was all he’d ever known. “He will get used to it, and you’ve not much choice, have you?”
“We’ll have her out of here in a tick, guv,” called out the talkative attendant, returning from the van.
Glancing at Gemma, Kincaid seemed about to reply, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the corpse on the stretcher. Frowning, he said, “If she were dumped here, how did the killer get her into the park? That gate would have made things bloody difficult.”
“I suppose you could get through it with a body over your shoulder, if you were strong enough. But you’d be visible, even at night. There must be other entrances.” Watching the men strap down the body, then hoist the stretcher into an upright position and maneuver it through the gate, Gemma added, “Did you find anything under the body?”
“No. Nor any definite evidence of dragging. But the ground’s hard. It might not have left traces.”
Gemma winced as she thought of how carefully the woman’s body had been placed in its bower of grass. “That wasn’t necessary. There’s no bloody hurry now, is there?”
Kincaid gave her a surprised glance. “You know it doesn’t mean anything to them. She’s not a person anymore.”
Gemma shook her head. “She is to someone, somewhere.”
“She did look remarkably peaceful,” he said, and she heard the understanding in his voice. It was odd, thought Gemma, that the more disfigured the corpse, the easier it seemed to distance oneself from the victim’s humanity. With a light touch on her shoulder, Kincaid added, “I suppose we’d best get on with it. I think we should see the pensioner who discovered the body. And I’d like to have a look at the geography of the park on our way.”
When he’d retrieved his jacket and his A to Z from his car, they climbed back up to the Mudchute plateau. Skirting the crime scene, they continued eastwards along the path. To their left lay a steep bank, and at its bottom the high-fenced back gardens of a new housing estate. The dense growth of brambles and bindweed that covered the slope and spilled over to crowd the edge of the path showed no signs of trampling. Pausing to look down, Gemma felt the palpable weight of the sun beating against her scalp as the air over the high ground of the park shimmered in the midday heat.
Beside her, Kincaid picked a ripe blackberry and popped it in his mouth. “From the map, it seemed possible that she’d been killed in the housing estate, then dragged up into the park.” He shook his head. “But there’s no access, unless you can fly.”
Gemma tentatively considered a blackberry. She’d read about berry-picking in books, but it was something she’d never done—in her childhood, berries had come in punnets at the greengrocer’s, and her family hadn’t had time for holidays in the countryside. As Kincaid moved away she reached out and plucked one. It left sticky purple stains on her fingers, and as she hurried after him, the wild, sweet-tart taste of it on her tongue gave her an unexpected sense of liberation.
Before them both path and bank made a sharp right turn. Gemma thought of the brief glimpse she’d had of the slightly irregular square of park on the map. “I thought it would be an ordinary city park, but it’s more like the rolly bits of Hampstead Heath laid out on a tabletop, isn’t it?”
“A living tablecloth?”
“I suppose so. But it is an odd place, and an odd name.”
“The Mudchute was built from the silt dredged up from the Millwall Dock—I think the mud was quite literally pumped through a chute,” Kincaid said. When Gemma gave him a surprised look, he smiled and added, “I asked Inspector Coppin about it and got the penny lecture from her for my pains. The land belonged to the Dock and, being off-limits, was a huge temptation to the local children for years. It was only made a park about twenty years ago.”
They had reached a bench set back from the path, a sort of natural lookout point. Gemma stopped and gazed round at the rolling, scrubby grassland, dotted with the occasional tree. “But it’s enormous. What was it all for?”
“Dockworkers’ allotments, mostly, and timber storage. Look, there’s someone’s garden.” He pointed down the now-gentle slope at a small vegetable patch fenced off with chicken wire. “Some of the park is still used for allotments, though I wonder if they’ll be kept up when the pensioners are gone. There’s a demonstration farm here now, used mostly for educating schoolchildren.”
“It sounds like you managed to thaw Inspector Coppin.”
He grinned. “Only because she enjoyed knowing more than I did.”
Ahead of them, the path disappeared into a wide, level expanse of dirt, and the breeze brought them a distinct whiff of manure. “Is that a road?” asked Gemma.
Kincaid consulted the map. “We’re coming to the farm now, and it looks as though a track comes up from the farm entrance. We’ll have to see if it’s accessible at the bottom.”
“If you could drive a car this far, you could carry a body to where we found her.”
Looking back along the path, Kincaid mused, “A good walk, carrying such a burden.” He knelt and felt the dry earth with his fingers. “But as hard as the ground is, you might be able to drive partway along the path without leaving a trace.”
They started down the gentle incline and soon reached the main farm buildings. Inside the central courtyard a group of small children ate ice creams bought from the concession kiosk. “A thriving business, that,” said Gemma. The sight of the children made her think of Toby, left in her sister’s care by default. A day spent with Cynthia’s little hellions and her son would be wound up like a top for a week, but what choice had she had?
Where the dirt farm road met paved street, a large, metal-barred gate stood propped open. A rusty padlock hung from a chain looped through its leading edge.
“Doesn’t look as though it’s been closed recently.” Kincaid rubbed the toe of his shoe against the dusty road surface. “No sign of scraping or dragging that I can see.”
Gemma touched the pitted surface of the gate. “So the murderer could have driven her into the park.” She looked round at the council flats lining the paved cul-de-sac. “But in this area you’d surely run a risk of being seen even in the middle of the night. Nosy neighbors.”
“They might remember seeing an unfamiliar car, even if they thought it was just teenagers looking for an uninterrupted cuddle.”
Smiling at his choice of words, Gemma touched his arm briefly as they turned towards the street. “How delicate of you, Superintendent. Where do we find Mr. Brent, then?”
He consulted the map. “This is Pier Street. It should take us right into Manchester Road if we continue along it.”
The council houses they passed as they walked were built of the gray concrete blocks typical of the sixties, but most appeared well-kept. Front doors stood open in the midday heat, and although the bead curtains hanging in most doorways afforded inhabitants a bit of privacy, they allowed cooking odors an easy escape. Gemma sniffed appreciatively at the scent of garlic mingled with spices not quite as familiar.
Some of the tiny front gardens had been paved over entirely, others had a few pots and hanging baskets or revealed a small attempt at a plot of flowers, but the garden of the flat they approached would have made a garden center green with envy. Every inch of the eight-foot square was filled with something blooming, and as they came nearer Gemma saw that one would have to squeeze through a gate held ajar by a mass of purple clematis.
She checked the number over its door. “Mr. Brent, I believe.”
“The inspector said something about his prize flowers.”
“An understatement.” No bead curtain covered this doorway, and as they brushed their way down the narrow path, the smell of roasting meat competed with the cloying scent of the flowers. From inside, a telly blared forth the theme from Grandstand.
Kincaid tapped on the doorjamb, waited a moment, then called “Hullo!” over the din.
“Just coming,” answered a woman’s voice. She appeared from the rear of the house, wiping her hands on a flowered pinny. “Can I help you?”
“We’re here to see Mr. Brent.”
Grimacing, the woman said, “Hang on a moment while I turn this racket down.”
As she slipped through the sitting room door, they saw a flash of television screen, then the noise stopped.
Returning to them, she nodded. “That’s better. Bloody thing drives me crazy. Now, what did you say you wanted?”
“Mr. Brent,” answered Gemma. “We’re from the police. We’d like to talk to him about this morning.”
The woman’s face instantly creased with concern. “A terrible thing. Dad’s been that upset, it’s taken me the whole morning to get him settled. I had to promise him roast chicken and potatoes,
in this heat, and now you want to get him all riled up again.” She was small and wiry, with cropped hair kept black with the help of the dye bottle. Beneath the flowered pinny she wore stretchy trousers and an open-necked tee shirt.
Kincaid smiled. “I’m sorry, Mrs.—”
She touched her hair, then held her hand out to Kincaid. “Hubbard. Brenda Hubbard, née Brent. I’ll just—”
“Bren!” a man’s voice called from the back of the house. “Who is it, Bren?”
Brenda hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “It’s the police, Dad. They’ve come to see you.” Stepping back, she led the way into the sitting room.
Gemma instinctively drew in her arms as they entered, for the small room was stuffed so full of things that movement was restricted to a narrow path through its center. The fringed lamp shades competed with the poppy-sprigged wallpaper, which shouted in turn at what was visible of the bold floral carpet. Souvenir-type knickknacks and family photographs jostled for space on every flat surface, but the photos held the advantage by spilling over onto the walls.
Brenda Hubbard looked back at Gemma, then gestured at the photos. “I tell Dad there’ll be no room for him one of these days, but he can’t bear to part with any of them.”
Pausing, Gemma examined a group of particularly ornate frames atop a bookcase. “School class?” she asked, pointing at the photo in the largest.
Smiling, Brenda said, “Family. There were fourteen of us. Thirteen girls and a boy, the last. Mum was determined, I’ll give her that.” She briefly touched a photo of a faded, sweet-faced woman surrounded by children, then moved on.
The blue plush reclining chair in front of the television provided the room’s sole island of solid color, but it was empty. The glass door to the small, concrete patio stood open, and in the shade of a garden umbrella sat an elderly man in a white plastic patio chair. Beside him, a Patterdale terrier raised its slender black head from its paws at their approach.
“Mr. Brent.” Kincaid held out his warrant card as they followed Brenda onto the patio. Glancing at the dog, which was now sniffing his ankles, he added, “I’m Superintendent Kincaid and this is Ser—”
Kissed a Sad Goodbye Page 4
