“What?” Gemma said again, sounding completely baffled. “But that school is impossible to get in. How could you possibly—”
“A friend got me an introduction.”
“A friend?”
“Someone I know from morning coffee at Kitchen and Pantry. MacKenzie Williams. Her son goes there—he’s Charlotte’s age—and she put in a word for Charlotte.”
When Gemma didn’t say anything, he glanced at her again. She was gaping at him. Frowning and gaping. “What?” he asked.
“MacKenzie Williams? Do you have any idea who she is?” Her voice rose in a squeak.
He shrugged. “She’s nice. And Charlotte likes Oliver. I thought if she was in the same class with someone she felt comfortable with, she might do better.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gemma’s hair swing as she shook her head. “Oliver. Just Oliver. Like he was any ordinary little boy.”
“Isn’t he?”
Gemma pushed at the seat belt strap so that she could turn towards him in her seat. “Don’t you ever notice the mail-order catalogs I get? The small, pretty one with the clothes for mothers and children?”
“Um, that’s the one you put in the bathroom sometimes, right?”
“How can you not know what that is?” She smacked him on the arm, hard enough to hurt. “OLLIE. It’s an incredibly successful mail-order company run by Bill Williams, who just happens to live in Notting Hill. OLLIE is named for his son, Oliver. And his wife, MacKenzie, is the catalog’s principal model. Didn’t you ever ask her what she did?”
“Um, no.” He thought of MacKenzie showing up at his door in her grubby clothes, saying she was on her way to a job. A fashion shoot.
“They are very rich and very famous. Everyone wants to be friends with them. And everyone wants their child to go to the same school as their son.”
“Really? Miss Jane said they didn’t encourage celebrity parents.”
“They have to beat celebrity parents off with a stick.” Gemma started to laugh. “It’s because you didn’t know. You liked MacKenzie Williams for herself. And the headmistress must have known you had no idea who MacKenzie was, or that the school was one of the juiciest plums in Notting Hill.”
“I told you MacKenzie was nice.” He was a little affronted. “And she goes out of her way to be kind to Charlotte. So, have I made a complete fool of myself?”
“No, love. Or only in the nicest possible way.” She patted his arm this time, but when he glanced at her, she was frowning. “But this school has got to be bloody expensive,” she said. “It’s all very well to get Charlotte in, but how on earth are we going to afford it?”
“Ah, well.” Kincaid cleared his throat. “When I saw Louise on Saturday, we had a talk. The Fournier Street house has sold. She told me to look for a better place for Charlotte, and the estate should be able to cover the fees.”
“And you didn’t tell me this, either?”
“You were on a case, and I didn’t want to distract you when I didn’t know anything for cer—”
She was shaking her head, and when she spoke there was no mistaking her seriousness. “Don’t you keep secrets from me, Duncan. Not for any reason, including for my own good. You don’t have the right to decide that. And for all your good intentions, I’ve missed out on this. Did you not think I would want to see the school and meet with the head? That I would want to worry and anticipate along with you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It all happened very quickly.”
“Charlotte—” Gemma said after a moment. “Did she—” There was the slightest quaver in her voice. “Did she like the school?”
“She loved it. She visited Oliver’s class. And she can’t wait to tell you all about it when you get home.” He felt on firmer ground now. “If it helps, we’re encouraged to go with her to her class the first few days, to help her settle in.”
“Oh, God. The bloody case.” Gemma rubbed her hands against her cheeks, looking stricken. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get away. Although if something doesn’t break soon, the super may replace me as SIO.”
Kincaid sighed. As much as he hated to add to her worries, he knew there wouldn’t be a better time to tell her about Louise. If he kept it from her now it would be unforgivable. “There’s something else, love,” he said.
Melody heard the music as she came round the corner into Hanway Place. Guitar, coming from Andy’s flat. It was loud, even with the windows closed. He was playing an electric, with the amp volume turned up high. The haunting melody teased at the edges of her memory, but she couldn’t quite place it.
Her knees felt weak. He was here. He was safe.
The relief that washed through her was followed just as quickly by a flash of anger over the fact that he’d refused to answer her calls. She pressed hard on the flat bell, let up, pressed again. When there was no answering buzz, she took out her phone and typed in a text message: I KNOW YOU’RE THERE. OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR.
After a moment, the music stopped. The downstairs door buzzer sounded and Melody pushed it open. She climbed the stairs, but when she reached the first floor, Andy wasn’t waiting for her in the hallway. The flat door was ajar, however, so, taking a breath, she brushed her knuckles against it in a cursory knock and walked in.
He sat on the folded futon, the Strat on his knees. From the space beside his thigh, Bert, the marmalade cat, glared at her balefully.
“What were you playing?” asked Melody, which was not at all what she’d intended to say. Her anger had evaporated as quickly as it had come. “I liked it.”
“Just something I was working on with Poppy.”
Searching for someplace to sit, she pulled up a low stool near one of the amps and perched on it. “Why didn’t you tell me about Nadine?”
“I couldn’t.” Andy plucked two strings and the guitar emitted a discordant jangle. “I thought I’d gone mad. Hallucinating.”
“Because you’d seen Joe?”
“You’ve talked to Duncan.” It was a statement.
She nodded, waiting.
Slowly, Andy went on. “Because of Joe, and then, on Sunday—I thought it might have been because I was with you.”
“Me? Why ever—”
“You’ll think it’s stupid.” Andy glanced up at her, then looked back at the guitar and ran his hand along the neck. “Because I was happy with you, that night,” he said so softly that she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly. “And I hadn’t felt that way since—Never mind. I told you it was daft.”
Melody wrapped her arms round her knees to keep from reaching out to touch him. “I don’t think it’s daft at all,” she said. “What you thought, I mean. But what you saw wasn’t crazy, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Andy, what time was it when you thought you saw Nadine in the Twelve Bar?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Nine, or half past, maybe. Why?”
Dear God. It was possible. Nadine could have left the 12 Bar and gone straight to Kennington, then chatted up Shaun in the Prince of Wales. And taken him home.
But how to tell Andy what they suspected? Melody suddenly wished herself anywhere else, but she knew she had no choice. “We think you really did see Nadine. Tell me what she looked like.”
Andy stared at her as if she were the one who was mad. “She looked like Nadine.”
“No, I mean—describe her to me.”
He gazed into the distance as he thought. “Well, she was older, of course. And thinner, I think. It was just a glimpse, a figure in the back of the room. She—” When he frowned, the outer ends of his eyebrows lifted like wings. “Her hair was cut in a sort of sleek way. It used to be longer”—he touched his collarbone—“and a little wavy. And she looked . . . sophisticated, I suppose. But it was her face . . . ” He focused on Melody again. “Are you telling me I really saw her?” Hope lit his blue eyes.
“Duncan told us what happened when she lived next door to you,
with the boys. But it wasn’t your fault that Nadine left.” Melody swallowed, wishing he’d offered her tea or even water, anything to wet her dry mouth. “After that . . . incident . . . Joe Peterson started a rumor at her school that she had sexually assaulted him. She—Nadine—lost her job. Then, when the police refused to press charges, Peterson’s father filed a civil suit against her for causing emotional damage to his son. The man who berated you in the White Stag on Friday, Vincent Arnott, was the lawyer Peterson hired. And then Shaun Francis—we think it was most likely Shaun who fanned the flames of the rumor, making sure it got to school authorities.”
Andy stared at her. “What are you saying?”
“We think that some time after Nadine left Crystal Palace, she went to France. But a few months ago she came back to London. She manages a designer clothing boutique in Covent Garden. The scarf”—Melody swallowed again—“the scarf that was used to gag Vincent Arnott and strangle Shaun Francis—we’ve traced it to the shop. Nadine’s shop.”
“You—You think Nadine killed them?”
“Arnott was seen leaving the White Stag with a woman. Caleb Hart saw a woman that night that fits the description you gave me. He said she was watching Arnott. And Shaun, even if he’d recognized her in the Prince of Wales, he might have been flattered. Andy, you need to be careful. We’ve tried to talk to her but we can’t find her.”
He stood so quickly that it startled Bert the cat, who disappeared into the workroom with a hiss and a bristle of orange tail. “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe any of this. Nadine would never hurt anyone.” He was holding the Strat by the neck and now he shook it at her. “She gave me this. Did you know that? It was the one thing of her husband’s she couldn’t bear to part with. She had faith in me. And how did I repay her? I betrayed her. Shaun Francis was a bully and Joe Peterson was a nasty little liar, and I let them—I let them ruin her.” He sounded close to tears.
“They used you, those boys. It wasn’t your fault.”
“That’s no excuse. She was my friend. Nadine was—She was the kindest person I’ve ever known. I let her down. And now you’re telling me she killed those bastards and she’s going to try to kill me? It’s bollocks. Absolute bollocks.”
Melody stood, too, frightened by his intensity. “Andy, I know it’s hard—”
“You don’t know anything.” He sat again, as if his knees had refused to hold him up, and held the guitar against his chest like a shield. His face had gone blank. “I need to practice. I’ve got a session tomorrow with Poppy. I promised Tam I’d do at least one more, and I don’t break promises.”
“Andy, I—”
He looked at her as if she were a stranger. “Shut the door behind you.”
“Andy, I never meant to hurt you.”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer; then he said, “We never mean to do a lot of things, but that doesn’t undo them.”
Midafternoon, she closed and locked the shop, simply because she could no longer bear to speak to anyone, or to summon a smile and a compliment for the customers who came in and ran their hands over the merchandise as if that gave them the satisfaction of temporary ownership.
She’d walked, mindlessly, through Covent Garden and Soho, until she realized that the streetlamps were coming on, and her hair and her coat were beaded with tiny drops of moisture that were soaking through to her scalp and her dress.
The chestnut vendor had set up his brazier outside the Covent Garden arcade. The fire drew her. She stopped and held her hands out towards it to warm them.
Gnarled as an old piece of driftwood, the vendor looked up at her with a toothless grin. “A pound, pretty lady, chestnuts nice and hot,” he said, and she thought of men like him in the parks in Paris. She fished in her wallet for a coin and exchanged it for the hot paper bag. When she was out of his sight, she tucked the bag into her coat pocket. She couldn’t bear to eat, but the warmth was comforting.
But when she cut through into Floral Street, she saw them outside her flat. She knew what they were, even in plainclothes. There was no mistaking police officers when you’d lived on the streets of Paris. She turned, careful not to hurry, and walked back towards the market. With one hand she turned up her coat collar and tucked her hair into it.
There was no point in checking the shop, not if they’d found the flat. She came out into Garrick Street by St. Paul’s, the actors’ church, and made her way into Charing Cross Road. Panic rolled over her in waves, making her dizzy and disoriented. A couple in hats and dark coats stood arm in arm, gazing into the window of Patisserie Valerie, and for a moment she thought she was in Paris.
No, no. She shook her head, her heart pounding, and dared to walk faster. Memories clouded her vision as careless passersby jostled her. Then, without being quite sure how she’d got there, she found herself once again in Denmark Street, an oasis of quiet. The guitars gleamed in lamplit windows. She passed the 12 Bar, still shuttered, with her head down. There was no refuge for her there.
Light shone from the church at the street’s end. The doors to the nave stood open. It was Wednesday, she realized, clinging to the fragment of rational thought. There must be some sort of evening service. When she reached the great doors, she stopped for a moment, listening, and was reassured by the familiar rise and fall of the liturgy. There were a few people in the pews, she saw, enough so that she could slip into the next but last without being noticed.
She huddled in her coat, struggling to stand when the others did. Memories rose around her, carried by the joined voices, and the past seemed to bleed into the present. She saw Marshall, falling, and clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. The smell of wine came to her, sour, and on a new rush of dizziness, the sound of her own scream.
Her hands were now so cold that for a moment she thought she was in Paris, that first freezing winter, when she’d learned to find shelter in the empty churches.
Then, as the congregants knelt, she remembered how it was done. She glanced round. There was no one behind her. She bent, as if searching for something, a dropped hymnal or service leaflet, perhaps. As the congregants rose for the final response, she slipped into the cramped space beneath the pew. Curling herself into a fetal ball and pulling her coat round her, she willed herself invisible.
There was a slow shuffle of feet, then the priest’s voice, calling a good night to someone. Then, at last, quiet. The doors swung closed with the weight of centuries, and the lights went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It was a strange crowd which came out to see the end of a famous London landmark. There were the connoisseurs forearmed with a knowledge of local topography. There were the sort of young men and women to be seen at almost any free entertainment in the streets. There were vast numbers of cyclists, both men and women. There were youngish men and women with traces of Bloomsbury, Hampstead and Chelsea in their clothes and speech, taking the whole affair very gravely. But among these were to be seen many elderly men and women to whom the destruction of the Palace meant the end of a chapter in their lives.
—www.sarahjyounger.com
Melody hadn’t slept well. She’d spent the remainder of last evening at Doug’s, using Doug’s laptop to read all the court records he’d accessed.
She’d gone home to Notting Hill dispirited, and once in bed, she’d tossed and turned, plagued by fragmented dreams in which something kept eluding her, something she had seen or heard but that slipped away from her like quicksilver whenever she almost grasped it.
When she woke, feeling heavy from lack of sleep and queasy with anxiety, she found she had a text message from Gemma telling her not to bother picking her up, as she was taking the tube to Putney to pick up her car. Melody groaned. She should have been up earlier.
And on top of that, the weather forecast on Radio 2 was dismal—temperatures hovering at freezing with a chance of snow and sleet—so when she’d showered, she pulled on a sweater, jeans, boots, and an old down coat she kept for fo
rays to her parents’ country house.
When she reached Brixton, she found Gemma not in the CID room but in her office.
“Bad night?” asked Gemma, glancing up at her.
“That obvious?” Melody rubbed her hands over her face. “God, I must look a fright. Sorry I didn’t stop to get coffee, boss. I was late enough as it was.”
Gemma gestured to a lidded paper cup on her desk. “I got it for you. You can pop it in the microwave if it’s gone cold. Although,” she added, casting another glance at Melody, “you look as though you might need to mainline it. Turn up anything new with Doug?”
“No.” Melody had rung Gemma on her way to Doug’s last night, saying just that she’d spoken to Andy and that he was all right. “I’m a bit worried about Doug’s ankle, though. He’s keeping off it pretty well but it doesn’t seem to be improving much.” She frowned, taking in the notes scattered over Gemma’s desk. “Any developments here?”
“I’ve been checking Caleb Hart’s alibis.” Gemma took a sip of her own coffee, made a face, and put the cup down. “Ugh. Cold. Anyway, I finally managed to talk to the pop singer, although it took speaking to her agent and her agent having her ring me back through the station number, just to ensure I was really the police. But she said yes, she was having a bad night on Friday, and that she did ring Caleb and ask him to come to her flat in Knightsbridge. He arrived there well before eleven and stayed until the early hours of the morning.”
“So he’s definitely a nonstarter for Friday. And Sunday?”
“I’ve had forensics pick up his computer to run a check—not that he was happy about that—but I think we’ll find he was online when he said he was. The video went up at nine, so I suppose it’s possible he uploaded it, then drove to Kennington and somehow drugged and murdered Shaun Francis, but it seems highly unlikely.
“Oh, and I’ve been on the phone with Poppy’s father, Tom, and he confirms what Hart told us. He did help get Hart into rehab, and the whole family has been very supportive of his sobriety. So Hart had nothing to hide.”
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