beacon lit Mrs. Vandemeer’s middle-aged and unassuming face when Kincaid introduced himself.
Sounding genuinely regretful, she said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, the chief inspector’s away just now,” when Kincaid asked to see Ogilvie. “He left on Friday to teach a training seminar in the Midlands, and he won’t be back until”— she flipped a page, and then another, on her calendar—“Wednesday. He’ll be so sorry to have missed you.”
Absolutely heartbroken, thought Kincaid as he smiled back at her. As Gemma took the small cubicle’s only chair, he propped one hip on the corner of Mrs. Vandemeer’s pristine desk. She would have been Gilbert’s secretary as well, he remembered, wondering if she had been hired for her habits, or if she had acquired them through association. “Do you have the number where he might be reached?” he asked. Then he added confidentially, “It’s about Commander Gilbert. You see, we hadn’t really checked into what the commander might have done between the time he left the office that day and the time he arrived home. We thought DCI Ogilvie might be able to throw some light on the matter.”
“Oh, dear. I’m afraid he won’t be much help to you, then. He had a meeting with a local citizen’s group after lunch that day, and it must have dragged on a bit, because he never made it back to his office. And the commander…” Helene Vandemeer took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if it suddenly hurt. “The commander left here on the dot of five, just like always. He put his head round my door and said, ‘Cheerio, Helene. See you tomorrow’” She looked up at Kincaid, and he saw that her unmasked eyes were a startling, true violet. “Do you think I might have been the last person to speak to him?”
“That’s difficult to say,” Kincaid temporized. “You’re sure the commander didn’t say anything about what he meant to do that afternoon or anything else unusual?”
Looking as if she could hardly bear to disappoint him, Helene shook her head. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t think of a thing.”
“You’ve been terrific,” he said warmly, avoiding Gemma’s derisive glance. “If you could just give us that phone number…” As she wrote, he added nonchalantly, “That citizen’s meeting DCI Ogilvie had that afternoon, you don’t happen to remember what the group was called?”
“Let me think.” Glasses firmly in place again, Helene frowned, then gave him a brilliant smile. “I’ve got it. The Notting Hill Association for Noise Reduction. NHANR. They’re petitioning for traffic reduction on certain streets.”
Taking the phone number she’d jotted down for him, he said, “Thanks, love,” and left the room on Gemma’s heels.
When they were barely out the door, Gemma whispered, “You might as well hand out doggie treats while you’re at it.”
The suspicion of a dimple intimated that she was taking the mickey, so he answered in mock defense, “Hey, it was your idea. And it got results, didn’t it?”
He pulled out his phone as he left the building and began to dial, and only when he reached the pavement did he realize that Gemma was no longer by his side. Turning back, he saw her standing just at the top of the steps, looking stricken. “Gemma,” he began, but just then the Yard answered, and by the time he’d finished his call, she had caught up to him.
“What’s next, guv?” she asked, determinedly businesslike.
After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “Let’s get a bite of lunch. Then I’d like to take a look at something, just to satisfy my curiosity.”
They stood at the top of a tiny, cobbled mews, not far from the Notting Hill Police Station. Kincaid had finagled David Ogilvie’s address from a mate at the yard. On either side the houses stretched away like chocolate-box confections—peach and yellow, terra-cotta and pale sherbet green. Some had shiny black wrought-iron railings, others windowboxes overflowing with bright flowers, and like Elgin Crescent, every house sported a burglar alarm and a baby satellite dish.
Kincaid whistled softly. “You can almost smell the money. Which one is number ten?”
Walking on a bit, Gemma said, “Here.” It was a deeper shade of yellow, with glossy black trim.
Peering through a gap in the ground-floor curtains, Kincaid caught a glimpse of a sleek contemporary sitting room, and beyond it a garden. He stood back and let Gemma have a look. “I certainly couldn’t have managed this on a chief inspector’s pay. Somehow I doubt if our friend David invites the lads over for a beer after work—what do you think?”
Gemma looked up at him. “I’d say it’s time we called in C&D.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
Once back at the Yard, they settled into Kincaid’s office for an afternoon of tedious telephoning. First Kincaid checked in with Guildford CID, and finding Deveney still out on the burglary case, spoke to Will Darling. “Go back over everything with a fine-tooth comb, Will. We’re missing something—I can feel it—and it’s probably as obvious as the nose on your face. The lad in charge of effects made a sloppy call on the commander’s diary—let’s make sure that was the only instance.”
A call to the chairman of the NHANR—“We call it
Kincaid raised an eyebrow as he hung up the phone. “So what did he do for the rest of the afternoon? Tell me that,” he demanded as much to himself as to Gemma.
Next, Gemma rang the Midlands training center and managed to elicit the fact that Ogilvie had not finished his lecture until almost a quarter to ten the previous night. She shook her head as she hung up and relayed the information to Kincaid.
“He’d have had to fly to make it back to London in time to shoot Jackie,” said Kincaid, “and while he may live above his means, I haven’t seen any evidence of superhuman powers.” He sighed. “Still, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he might have hired someone to do it. If he’s bent, he’ll have the connections.” He looked at Gemma sitting across the desk, her face lit by the watery, late-afternoon sunlight slanting through the blinds. “Are we chasing our tails, Gemma? If Gilbert found Ogilvie out and threatened to expose him, why the hell would Ogilvie bash his head in his own kitchen, rather than arranging something much less risky?
“Should we be back in Surrey grilling Brian Genovase like the Spanish Inquisition? But we’ve no hard evidence, and I still just can’t quite see Brian for it.”
