Chapter Six
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—Brad Alan Lewis
“Wait,” Kincaid said. “Back up a bit. You’re telling me that Rebecca Meredith was training for the Olympics? But she wasn’t a member of the Leander crew.”
“Didn’t have to be,” Milo answered. “Becca was a member of the club. She could represent Leander in a race. But even that wasn’t necessary. Anyone can compete in an Olympic trial.”
Cullen frowned for a moment, then his face cleared. “Brad Lewis.”
Milo Jachym was already nodding in agreement. Kincaid felt as if he were playing table tennis without the ball. “What are you talking about?”
“Brad Alan Lewis,” Cullen explained. “He won gold in double sculls at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. And he did it from completely outside the system, and with next to no financial backing.”
“And Becca is—was”—Milo’s lips tightened in a spasm of distress—“not dissimilar in character. Stubborn. Obsessive. Determined to do things her way. And like Lewis, she knew it was her last opportunity.”
“But you said her ex-husband was furious when he found out she was training. Why, if she really did have a chance at something that big?”
“I— He was concerned about her safety, I assumed, because she was going out so late. But it was the only way she could row every day.”
“Unless,” Kincaid said thoughtfully, “she quit the job. And that—”
The phone in his pocket vibrated once, then again—an incoming call. Irritating as the interruption was, he couldn’t afford to let it go.
He didn’t recognize the number on the display, but he knew DI Singla’s voice immediately. “Superintendent, there’s a man at Rebecca Meredith’s cottage,” said Singla. “He’s threatening the constable I put on watch there. Do you want me to have him picked up? He says he’s her husband.”
“You are an absolute dear.” Gemma stretched her legs out under the kitchen table and raised her glass to Melody in salute. Melody had not only arrived with a very nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, but had picked up pizza, dripping with olive oil and garlic, from Sugo’s, Gemma’s favorite Italian bistro at Notting Hill Gate.
“Good thing I left the car at the flat,” Melody said, pouring herself another generous measure. “And if I come across any vampires on the walk home, they’ll take one whiff of me and run the other way.” She blew out a breath, as if testing her theory.
Melody lived in a mansion block on Kensington Park Road, and declared that the half-mile walk between her flat and Duncan and Gemma’s house in St. John’s Gardens provided just the right amount of exercise after an overindulgence in food and drink.
“Do you suppose garlic has a calming effect on children, too?” Gemma asked. “I think they’re probably related to vampires.”
By the time they’d reached home, Toby had been overexcited, and Charlotte even more clingy and fretful. While Toby had refused to sit still, dancing around the table with his slice of pizza, teasing the dogs, the cat, and Charlotte, Charlotte had agreed to eat her supper only if held in Gemma’s lap. Kit, unusually unsociable, had grabbed half a pizza and disappeared upstairs, plate in one hand and phone in the other.
“I can do the washing-up,” offered Melody. “Dab hand in the kitchen.”
Gemma considered. “You know, I’ve never actually seen you cook. But you get top votes for deliveryperson.”
“I can cook,” Melody protested, grinning. “Um, cheese, biscuits, wine . . .” She furrowed her brow, then shrugged. “Well, maybe not so much. But I really can wield a mean Fairy Liquid.” She started to stand, but Gemma waved her back into her chair.
“It’s only pizza boxes. Easily done when the kids are in bed.” Knowing bedtime would be an ordeal and wanting to enjoy her visit with Melody, Gemma had bribed the little ones with the promise of a video in the sitting room. Once she’d convinced Toby that he really did not need to watch
Now she could hear Toby singing along tunelessly.
“The West End in his future, for certain,” said Melody, and they both giggled.
“Only if he can swashbuckle,” Gemma said, meditating on Toby’s possibly brilliant career. “But maybe, if I’m lucky, he’ll put Charlotte to sleep, and not just future audiences.”
She thought her friend looked unusually relaxed. Melody had changed into jeans, but still wore the bright pink cardigan she’d had on earlier, and her cheeks were flushed from taking the dogs for a quick outing while Gemma was settling the kids.
“And that would be a blessing? Putting Charlotte to sleep?”
“Some nights. Most nights,” Gemma admitted. “And even when she does go to sleep, she wakes up with bad dreams.”
“Does she dream about her parents, then?” Melody asked.
Gemma swirled the wine in her glass. “Sometimes. Sometimes she calls out for them.” She didn’t want to confess, as she had to Winnie, how helpless and inadequate she felt when Charlotte woke up sobbing, “Mummy! Daddy!” Only recently had she begun calling out for Gemma as well, but Gemma wasn’t sure that was an improvement.
Melody glanced towards the sitting room and lowered her voice. “I’d think that was pretty normal, under the circumstances. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a child to lose her parents, her home, everything familiar . . .”
“The odd thing,” Gemma answered slowly, “is that except for the separation anxiety, during the day it seems as if she’s adjusting quite well. She does talk about her mum and dad in the present tense, as if they were just away somewhere, but she doesn’t ask to go home.”
“Have you taken her back there?”
Gemma shook her head. “No. We didn’t think that was a good idea. But Louise is getting ready to put the house up for sale, and we wanted her to have some familiar things.”
Louise Phillips had been Charlotte’s father’s law partner and was now the executor of the estate.
Although art dealers—including Pippa Nightingale, who had represented Sandra Gilles, Charlotte’s mother— were begging for the textile collages that remained in Sandra’s studio, Lou Phillips had decided she would store all Sandra’s works and her notebooks until Charlotte was of age and could sell or keep them as she saw fit. Her mother’s art would be a legacy for Charlotte’s future, and the money from the sale of the Fournier Street house, which should be considerable, would go into a fund to pay for her education.
“So I took her to the park one day when the boys were at school,” Gemma went on, “and asked her to play a game. She had to close her eyes and name her favorite thing from every room in her old house.”
“I can’t think of a thing I’d save from my flat even in a fire,” Melody said, sounding wistful. “It’s not like this house.”
Gemma looked round at her cheerful blue and yellow kitchen, with her treasured Clarice Cliff tea set on the shelf above the cooker, then glanced into the dining room, where her piano held pride of place.
