fifteen years, and I think he’s reasonable enough to see that. But there are problems and conflicts of interest that could be handled more sensitively.” Janice sighed and tapped ash into the tin ashtray on the desk. “The irony is that both Gordon and Lewis Finch want to preserve the Island, and their aims aren’t necessarily incompatible. I see both sides every day, and there are concerns that need addressing. You can’t have the sort of massive redevelopment we’ve undergone on the Island without mistakes and excesses—but I’m no dinosaur: I’d not see things go back to the way they were.”
Gemma doodled on the page of her open notebook as her mind sorted details. “If Lewis Finch has been aggressively pursuing Hammond’s property, why didn’t he mention it when we saw him? He admitted to the affair with Annabelle readily enough.”
“My mate knew about that, too.”
“Did he?” said Gemma, thinking that she was finding it more and more difficult to believe that Gordon hadn’t. “Did he know about Gordon and Annabelle, then?”
“No, that one was a proper shocker.”
Slowly, Gemma said, “What if Annabelle’s interest in Gordon and his family had to do with the possible sale of the Hammond’s property, rather than rebellion against her father’s strictures? Remember, Gordon said she sought him out.”
“Surely Gordon Finch couldn’t have slept with the woman for months without finding out what she was up to— and that’s assuming he wasn’t already aware of his father’s interest in the property. My mate in the Neighborhood Association is the world’s worst gossip, and if
Gemma was beginning to feel she’d been played for a fool all round. Snapping her notebook closed, she stood up. “I’m going to have another word with him.”
“Gordon? What about Lewis?”
“I want the truth from Gordon before I tackle his father. I’ll ring you in a bit.” Ignoring the thought of the friction it had caused with Kincaid the last time she’d paid Gordon a visit, she gave Janice a farewell wave and took off.
LEAVING HER CAR IN THE LIMEHOUSE car park, Gemma walked the short distance down West India Dock Road and caught the DLR at Westferry Station. She’d had a sudden desire to see the Island from the elevated train, and the thought of her car’s metamorphosis into a traveling oven in the afternoon heat made the prospect seem even more inviting. Clouds had begun to build as the day wore on, as they had yesterday, but a storm had yet to break the heat’s grip on the city.
As the train slid into the Canary Wharf Station, Gemma looked up at the soaring glass arch of the terminal and thought about the Island. The architecture of the terminal echoed the great Victorian railway stations in boldly modern terms, as perhaps Canary Wharf itself expressed the same optimism and opportunism that had driven the Victorians who conceived the great docks.
The pneumatic doors closed with a sigh and the train moved on, crossing the middle section of the West India Docks. Office buildings and expensive flats filled the waterfront spaces once occupied by the warehouses, while sailboats and Windsurfers vied with the ghosts of the great ships that had unloaded their cargoes here.
If progress was inevitable, it seemed that Lewis Finch had done what he could to save the buildings themselves, adapting them to new uses, while Gordon strove to preserve the unique social structure of the Island, and to her it seemed a shame that father and son were unable to reach a compromise.
The train made a sharp left after the main section of the West India Docks, stopping at South Quay Station, where the damage from the IRA bomb that had exploded in the car park was still visible; then it turned right again to parallel the north-south Millwall Dock. To her right was the London Arena, followed on the left by Teresa Robbins’s building and the ASDA Superstore. Beyond that were the high banks of Mudchute Park and the hoardings that hid the construction at Mudchute Station.
After Mudchute the train seemed to spring into the open, crossing the expanse of Millwall Park on the old Millwall viaduct. She caught a glimpse of East Ferry Road, and of the bowling green nestled in the walls of the Dockland Settlement, then they were crossing over Manchester Road and pulling into Island Gardens Station.
As she left the train she stood for a moment on the elevated platform, looking down at Annabelle’s flat and just to the left, where she knew the entrance to the foot tunnel lay hidden by the trees of Island Gardens. She had a sense of imprinting the geography of place and players on her mind, a framework for the pattern of events that had led to Annabelle Hammond’s death—then she ran down the circular stairs and set out to look for Gordon Finch.
She tried the park first, and next the tunnel, but the spot under the plane tree was empty, and the guitar player had taken up the pitch in the tunnel again, prompting Gemma to wonder how he could possibly scrape together a living from busking. Tossing a few coins of condolence into his case, she turned away and climbed back up into the sunlight.
When she emerged from the tunnel, she turned left into Ferry Street at Annabelle’s flat and followed it until it made a sharp right angle at the Ferry House pub—the route Reg Mortimer said he had taken the night of Annabelle’s death. At Manchester Road, Ferry Street became East Ferry Road, and a short walk brought her to Gordon Finch’s flat. How easily, thought Gemma, Annabelle could have left the tunnel and gone either to the pub or the flat, and she wondered suddenly where Lewis Finch lived. Gordon had said that his father had moved back to the Island—perhaps near his office? She made a mental note to check the address when she got back to the station.
Today, no sound of the clarinet came from the flat’s open windows. Gemma crossed the road and knocked at the blue door, telling herself that he might be busking at South Ken today, or even in Islington.
But after a moment, the door opened and Gordon stared at her groggily. “Gemma?”
“Did I wake you?” she asked. His hair stood even more on end than usual, and one side of his face bore faint crease marks, as if from prolonged contact with a wrinkled sheet.
He shook his head as if to clear it, said, “I suppose you did,” then added, “I sat in on a recording session last night; didn’t finish until dawn.” He yawned. “If you’ve come to interrogate me, you’d better come in. Just let me put on some coffee.” There was a click of toenails as Sam came down the stairs, and after a questioning look at his master, he went out into the small side garden and efficiently did his business.
When the dog had finished, Gemma followed them both up the stairs. The flat looked very much as she’d seen it before, except that the narrow bed was unmade. Sam stretched out beside it with a sigh and closed his eyes.
“He’s getting too old for such late nights,” said Gordon, giving up his attempt to straighten the covers. “Though you’d have thought he slept just as much at the studio.” He squatted to rub the dog’s ears. “I suppose he doesn’t
