"No, of course not." Erika shook her head, but made no attempt to retrieve the book. "And I hardly know where to begin."
Gemma sat quietly, making of her listening an almost physical thing, as she had learned to do in interviews.
After a few moments, Erika sighed and met her eyes briefly. "I don't often speak of these things. There are a few friends who know a little, because we share some experiences…but even so, after all these years, it is not easy." Her language began to slip into a more formal cadence, as if her native German were closer to the surface of her mind.
"You know I came here to London from Berlin, at the beginning of the war?"
"With your husband. Yes, you've told me that," agreed Gemma, realizing that she knew very little more.
"It sounds so simple, yes?" Erika's smile didn't reach her eyes, and her hands seemed to twist together of their own accord. "My father came to Germany from Russia," she continued, "after the Great War, thinking to make a new future for himself and his bride. So we are, you see, refugees by tradition, as are almost all Jews. His name was Jakob Goldshtein, and he was a tradesman with some skill in metalwork. He apprenticed himself to a jewelry maker, and by the beginning of the 1930s he had surpassed his late master and made a reputation for himself.
"He loved the new Art Deco styles, the influence of Egyptian and African art-he said it made him think of all the places he would never see. He loved the contrast of silver and platinum against the brightly colored stones, but above all, he loved diamonds. He was a jolly man, my father, who liked to make jokes about his name. It amused him that he only worked in silver metals.
"By the time the Nazis began their rise to power, my mother had died, and my father had acquired wealth as well as reputation. He took commissions from the new German elite, even if it meant adding hooks to his beautiful necklaces and brooches so that they could attach their swastikas." Erika's face had softened as she talked about her father, and there was no censure in her voice.
"He thought, of course, that it would pass, the new regime, as such things usually did. And so it was that he sent his spoiled only daughter to university, and there she fell in love with her tutor, and married."
Erika stopped, her hands still now, and silence descended upon the room. There were no muffled voices from the houses on either side, no footsteps from the street, and Gemma hesitated on the precipice of speech, not sure whether she might extend the spell or break it. At last she said, very softly, "This was your husband?" and as she spoke she realized how seldom she had heard Erika speak of her marriage.
"David, yes. He was fifteen years older than I, a philosopher, and a pacifist, quite well known in intellectual circles. There was even talk that he might be nominated for the Nobel Prize. But in 1938, Carl von Ossietzky died in police custody, and my father knew what David refused to see, that neither David nor his ideas would be tolerated.
"We had little money, but my father had funds and connections. He arranged for us to leave the country, quietly, anonymously, and David was forced to agree."
The tension in the air grew palpable, and Gemma saw the movement of Erika's throat as she swallowed. She found herself holding her breath, this time not daring to interrupt.
"My father gave me a parting gift, the most beautiful of all the things he had created. It was to be my inheritance, and my bulwark against the future, if things did not go as we planned."
Just as Gemma began to guess the import of the book she held, Erika reached for it. Slowly, deliberately, she smoothed the pages, then let it fall open of its own accord. As Erika gazed down, transfixed, Gemma got up and looked over her shoulder.
She gave a gasp of surprise and pleasure. The photo was full page, the background black, and against the velvety darkness the diamonds fell in a double cascade. The caption on the right-hand page read, Jakob Goldshtein, a diamond cascade double-clip brooch, 1938. "It's lovely," breathed Gemma.
"Yes. My father's masterpiece." Erika looked up and met her eyes. "I last saw it in Germany, more than fifty years ago. I want you to help me find out how it came to be in an English auction."
***
"So how did you get on with Melody?" Kincaid handed Doug Cullen a dripping saucepan, glancing over as his friend was applying a tea towel industriously.
He and Doug had seen off the rest of the well-fed and well-lubricated guests, and now, with Kit and Toby home and the dogs having given up any hope of scraps, they'd loaded the dishwasher and begun on the pots and pans.
Doug Cullen's blond schoolboy good looks and expressive face made him usually easy to read, but for once the glance he gave Kincaid was inscrutable. "No joy, there, I think," he said, reaching for another pan.
"She doesn't fancy you, or vice versa?" asked Kincaid, thinking that Gemma would be disappointed by the failure of her matchmaking scheme.
Shrugging, Cullen pushed his glasses up on his nose with the damp edge of the tea towel. "It might just be my bruised ego, but I don't think PC Talbot fancies blokes much, full stop."
Kincaid glanced at him in surprise. "Seriously?"
"There's definitely a Let's all be blokes together vibe."
"Might be armor. That's common enough." Melody Talbot was attractive, dark haired, dark eyed, and cheerfully efficient, and Gemma had come to depend on her a good deal at work. If Melody was gay and had chosen not to make her sexual orientation public, then that was her business. It was tough enough for women officers as it was-his thought stopped suddenly short as he remembered Melody's solicitousness towards Gemma, all the little thoughtful gestures that Gemma often repeated to him at day's end.
"What about the prickly Maura Bell, then?" Kincaid asked.
They had worked a case in Southwark with the Scottish Inspector Bell, and although she and Cullen seemed as mismatched as chalk and cheese, there had been an attraction between them. Doug had even broken it off with his longtime girlfriend, Stella Fairchild-Priestly, but then gradually any mentions of Maura had disappeared.
This time Cullen's feelings were all too apparent, as he flushed to the roots of his fair hair. "I couldn't say," he answered tersely, and Kincaid knew he'd overstepped the mark. It occurred to him that he was as clueless about Cullen's personal life as Gemma apparently was about Melody Talbot's.
It was not something he was going to be given a chance to remedy that night, however, as Cullen quickly finished his drying and took himself off with a muttered excuse.
***
"You bloody sad wanker!" Cullen said aloud as he settled into a seat on the night bus that trundled its way down Bishop's Bridge Road, earning him a look from an old lady bundled in too many coats for the May night. He'd contemplated the tube, certainly a quicker alternative, but had found himself unable to cope with the thought of sharing a carriage with drunken Saturday-night revelers and snogging couples.
But the brisk walk and the wait at the bus stop hadn't made it any easier to put Maura Bell out of his mind, and his face burned with shame again as he remembered his reaction to Kincaid's question. Why couldn't he have just shrugged and offered some manly and macho platitude. Easy come, easy go. You know women.
But no, he had to make an utter fool of himself in front of his boss.
The truth was that he'd taken Maura Bell out a number of times, for drinks, for dinner, to the cinema. He had thought she liked him, but a public school education combined with a deep and fundamental shyness had handicapped his nerve severely. When he finally got up the courage to make a serious advance, she'd drawn away from him as if stung.
He'd stammered out apologies; she'd made excuses and left him standing in the middle of the Millennium Bridge, so humiliated that for a moment he'd contemplated jumping in. But good sense had prevailed. Perhaps even that was sad-that he was incapable of making a grand romantic gesture.
He'd gone home to his gray flat in the Euston Road, and when Maura had rung him repeatedly over the next few days, he'd refused to take her calls. After a bit the calls stopped, and in the mont
hs since, he'd devoted himself to work with excessive zeal, becoming the best researcher in the department, and limited his social life to an occasional after-work drink with Kincaid, and a monthly visit home to his parents in Saint Albans, during which he told them exaggerated stories of his importance at work.
The bus slowed for Great Portland Street, and for an instant Cullen had a wild thought. He could still take the Circle Line. Then the Docklands Light Railway to the Isle of Dogs. He could stand outside Maura Bell's flat, waiting for a glimpse of her, just to see if she was still as he remembered.
Then he snorted in disgust. Stalking, that's what he was contemplating, and he wasn't that far gone-at least not yet. But the woman in the multiple coats seemed to disagree. She glared at him, chins quivering, making it clear she thought he was a nutter, then got up and waddled her way to the very back of the bus.
***
After Cullen had left, Kincaid gave the worktops one last wipe, turned out all but the small lamp in the kitchen, then stood and listened. Wesley had brought the boys home wired on pizza and lemonade, but now the giggles had faded upstairs. Even the dogs had disappeared; Tess, thirteen-year-old Kit's little terrier, would be with him, while Geordie, Gemma's cocker spaniel, would be curled on the foot of their bed, accompanied like sticking plaster by their black cat, Sid, who had developed a perversely unfeline passion for the little dog.
The house seemed to exhale, settling into the profound silence of night inching towards morning, and Kincaid gave a worried glance at the clock above the cooker. It was half-past twelve-surely Gemma would be home soon.
He felt a niggle of worry about Erika's phone call. It seemed so out of character, but then he found Gemma's relationship with Erika rather odd as well. It wasn't that he didn't like the older woman, but when she studied him with her keen glance he felt like a suitor sized up and found wanting, an uncomfortable sensation for a man unused to feeling intimidated.
Did she disapprove of the fact that they weren't married? he wondered. But surely she knew Gemma well enough to know that was her choice, rather than his.
Kincaid shrugged, irritated with himself for letting his thoughts go down that path, but he found he couldn't contemplate going to bed or settling down with a book while Gemma was still out. He'd decided he might turn on the telly when the doorbell rang. The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet house, and upstairs one of the dogs gave a single yip of surprise.
Hurrying towards the front door, he was spurred by an instant, clutching panic. Gemma was out-had something happened to her?
He was telling himself not to be daft, that one of the guests had forgotten something, when he swung open the door and found Gemma's father standing on the doorstep.
***
The restaurant and club on All Saints Road was one of the latest ventures meant to upgrade the still dubious nether regions of Notting Hill. But on this Saturday night, the veterinary clinic across the street and the barred shop fronts seemed only to add to the ambience, and inside the restaurant, the aura of cool could have cut glass. No patron was much over thirty; all were rich, or pretending to be rich.
Kristin Cahill was one of those pretending to a status as yet unachieved. She stood at the bar in a little black dress, a designer copy that made up in élan what it lacked in label, and that set off her milky-white skin. Her dark hair was feather cut, flattering her gamine features and long neck, and her full lips were carefully outlined in deep pink.
She checked her lipstick for the hundredth time, then snapped her compact closed, satisfied. She could pass for French-a Leslie Caron, even an Edith Piaf-but there was no one to appreciate her efforts except the bartender, and she was tired of fielding his too-interested glances.
Lifting her martini, she turned her back and sipped, gazing with growing irritation at the door. Where the hell was Dominic? The DJ had started in the club downstairs; she could hear a blare of sound when the stairway door swung open, feel the vibration through the soles of her feet. Dom always had an excuse, more often than not having to do with his mother, the controlling bitch from hell. But then what had she expected when she started going out with an almost thirty-year-old man who lived with his mum?
Of course, she'd thought that both Dom and his mum had money, then, and the house, bloody hell, the house had reduced her to openmouthed goggling. That had been a mistake. Dom's mum had given her a knowing little smile that had put her in her place quickly enough.
Grasping middle class, the look had said. Grasping middle class with a comprehensive education, an art history degree from a middlebrow university, and aspirations that would never amount to anything her son would fancy. And maybe, Kristin thought as she looked at her watch, Mummy had been right.
A girl waiting alone at the bar for half an hour might have a date who was unavoidably detained; a girl waiting alone for more than half an hour shouted stood up. Some of the other customers were beginning to eye her, too, and she could imagine the whispers, more malicious than sympathetic. She knocked back what was left of her drink with an unladylike gulp, set her glass on the bar, and flashed the bartender a dazzling smile as she stalked towards the stairs.
She hadn't come out-not to mention spending half her pay on the dress-to stand about like a stupid cow. If Dom didn't have the decency to show up, she was going to have a good time without him.
Still, as she negotiated the steep stairs to the club rather gingerly in her four-inch heels, she felt an unwelcome jab of worry. Dominic, for all his faults, had always been kind, and she'd seen some things lately that made her suspect he was in real trouble. There had been whispered conversations in the corners of pubs with men whose reputations frightened her, and there were other signs: even his rich-boy good looks were becoming a little worn around the edges, and yesterday she had noticed his hands shaking, although he'd tried to hide it by lighting cigarette after cigarette.
And then there was the business with Harry, which made her profoundly uneasy. She didn't want to get involved with anything dodgy, but on the other hand, it just might give her the step-up she needed, and then she could tell Dominic Scott to go to hell.
There were other men who would appreciate what she had to offer. Men who were going someplace with their lives-men who were free of Dominic's baggage, and whose families wouldn't sneer at her background.
Before her, a sea of people moved in the eerie blue light, swaying like sea anemones in an underwater current. The beat of the house music was mesmerizing, vibrating nerve and bone, and she wanted to dance. A tall man with skin the color of espresso smiled at her across the floor. Before she lost her resolution, she eased into the flow of bodies and met him halfway.
CHAPTER 3
Notting Hill Gate is a superstitious place because it seems to exceed rational prescriptions and explanations. On the Portobello Road, one feels oneself growing more insubstantial, less and less able to keep a sense of personal proportion in the crowd of people who all look so much poorer, or richer, or wilder, or more conventional than one is oneself.
– Jonathan Raban,
Soft Cities
"Mr. Walters?" Kincaid caught his slip as soon as the words left his mouth. "Ern?" he corrected himself. "Is everything all right?" He'd never got comfortable with calling Gemma's dad by his first name.
"Gemma here?" Ern Walters asked it so tersely that it might have been a statement. A small, wiry man, he was dressed in his usual outfit of tweed jacket and tie, with a weathered flat wool cap covering what remained of his thinning hair.
"No, no, actually she's not. But come in, please." His sense of apprehension growing, Kincaid held the door wide and gestured him in. Gemma's parents had visited them only once since they'd moved into the Notting Hill house, for Toby's birthday party.
Walters followed, but once in the hall, he planted his feet and, taking off his cap, crumpled it in his hands as he spoke. "Work, is it?" From the disapproval in his tone, Gemma might have been soliciting.
Kincaid frowned but said m
erely, "No. She's gone to see a friend who rang up. Some sort of problem."
"Always has time for her friends, does she?"
Bewildered by the other man's belligerent tone, Kincaid wondered if he had been drinking. But there was no smell of alcohol on Walters's breath or any wavering in his stance, and Kincaid felt a greater prickling of alarm. "Come into the kitchen and sit down, Mr. Walters," he said, reverting instinctively to the more formal address. "Let me fix you a drink or a cup of tea, and you can tell me what's wrong."
"I'll not be stopping." Ern Walters set his chin in a stubborn line that suddenly reminded Kincaid of Gemma. "It's just I thought she should know. Gemma. It's her mum. She's been taken ill. Collapsed."
"What?" Kincaid stared at him in shock. Whatever he'd expected, it hadn't been this. Vi Walters was one of the toughest women he'd ever met, an indomitable life force. "When? Where? Is she all right? Why didn't you ring us?" The questions tumbled out, too fast, he knew, for coherent answers. He stopped himself, giving Ern Walters time to speak.
"Right in the middle of Saturday-afternoon rush. Said she didn't feel well. Then she went down like a felled tree. I couldn't get her up."
Now Kincaid heard the terror beneath Ern Walters's gruff manner. He clamped down his impatience, made himself wait until Walters went on.
"The ambulance took her to Whipps Cross. They say she's resting comfortably, whatever that means."
"You didn't know she was ill?"
Walters glared at him. "She'd complained of feeling a bit tired lately. Wanting to put her feet up and have a cuppa. I never thought-"
"No, of course not." Knowing Vi, Kincaid guessed she wouldn't have taken kindly to a suggestion that she see a doctor. "What will they do now?"
Where Memories Lie Page 3
