He had left Irene then, left the Hall, left them all behind. And he’d never told anyone the truth … until the night Annabelle had told him she loved his son and called him a cheat and a liar. She’d said she’d never hurt her father for him, that she couldn’t believe she had ever considered doing something that would cause William Hammond so much pain.
He hadn’t known until that moment how much Annabelle had come to mean to him—that she should turn against him was beyond bearing. His words poured out—he’d wanted to hurt her—and he told her that her precious father was a coward and a murderer, and he told her exactly what William had done.
Lewis opened the door of the car and stumbled out into the rain. He was soaked by the time he reached the warehouse, but he hardly felt it. The door was unlocked, and he stepped for the first time into the building he had tried for years to destroy.
As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he saw that the large main floor was empty, but a light shone from a door on the catwalk that ran along the left-hand side of the building. Feeling his way carefully to the stairs, he began to climb. He heard a faint sound, and as he neared the top of the staircase, the sound sorted itself into a singsong voice, rising and falling beyond the open doorway.
William Hammond sat behind one of the scarred oak desks in the center of the room. He was talking to himself, his hands busy with the colorful tea tins on the desktop, but when he looked up and saw Lewis he didn’t seem at all surprised.
“She was beautiful, wasn’t she?” said William, his eyes drifting back to the tins. “She made these for me. My favorite colors, cobalt and russet. Russet like her hair. She looked like her mother, so beautiful.”
“William.” Lewis stepped further into the room. “Why did you do it? What did Annabelle say to you?”
“Do you remember, Lewis?” William’s gaze skated across his again. “Do you remember the watercress? And the deer? I’ve been thinking.… It all seems so vivid, like it was just yesterday.”
“Did Annabelle find you here, William? She was angry with you, wasn’t she?”
For an instant William’s eyes were clear. “Annabelle loved me. She was a perfect daughter.”
“I know she was. But she found out, didn’t she … about Edwina.”
William froze, the tea tins suspended in midshuffle like a shell game gone awry. “She said things … terrible things. She said she’d tell people … Sir Peter, even. That she would sell … this.” His hand looked almost translucent as he gestured round the room. “And she said … she said she’d spent her whole life trying to live up to me—and that I was a hollow man. A hollow man,” he repeated. “I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to kill her?” said a voice behind Lewis, and without turning he knew it was his son.
Lifting a hand to halt him, Lewis warned, “Gordon, no.” But Gordon came on, and as Lewis felt the force of his son’s fury, he realized his own had drained away at last.
William rose. “I only wanted to stop her from saying those things. I never meant …” He looked impossibly frail.
“But I do.” A gun appeared in Gordon’s hand—and Lewis saw that it was his own.
IT WAS STILL POURING WHEN THEY reached the warehouse. Kincaid killed the engine as the Rover coasted to a stop behind a gray Mercedes.
“Lewis’s car?” asked Gemma, thinking she remembered seeing it in the car park at Heron Quays.
Kincaid nodded, meeting her eyes. “Careful.”
They dashed through the pelting rain to the warehouse. The door stood open a few inches. Kincaid eased inside and Gemma followed, coming to a halt beside him in the shadowy interior.
They heard the voices immediately, coming from the open door of Annabelle and Teresa’s office high above them. Gemma felt Kincaid touch her arm, lightly, then move away towards the staircase. She followed as quietly as she could, cursing the fact that she’d worn slick-soled shoes.
Halfway up, she found she could distinguish the voices—Lewis’s; Gordon’s; and, though less familiar to her, William’s—if not quite make out the words. Then, as they neared the top, she heard Lewis shout, “Gordon, don’t be a bloody fool! Give it to me.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, then the smack of something hard hitting the floorboards.
Gemma skidded to a halt inches from Kincaid and peered through the doorway. Gordon and Lewis Finch were locked together as if frozen in the midst of a dance, Lewis’s hand clamped round Gordon’s wrist, Gordon’s fingers splayed, empty. Their eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the room, where William Hammond stooped and straightened again, a gun in his hand.
He held it awkwardly, staring at it as if not quite certain what it was. Then he looked up at them, and Gemma saw in his faded blue eyes not surprise, but a grief so bleak it made her bones feel cold.
He lifted the gun. Before Gemma or Kincaid could react, Lewis shouted, “William, no!” and lunged towards him.
But William Hammond touched the barrel of the revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 16
“He loved her,” Gemma said slowly. She sat in Janice’s office at Limehouse Station, drinking revolting coffee from the machine. “Annabelle was the child of his dreams, the one who would carry on for him, fulfill his ambitions. How hard it must have been for her, living up to that.”
Janice said, “And he couldn’t bear for her to destroy his image of her—”
“Or his own image. William Hammond spent fifty years living a lie so thoroughly that he even convinced himself.”
A week had passed, and they were still sorting out the details of the case. Lewis Finch had made a detailed statement, as had Gordon, and it seemed to Gemma that their shared loss might go a long way towards healing the rift between them.
