Charlotte gave her a pretend sip, then tucked the bottle against her chest and relaxed in Gemma’s arms with only an intermittent sniffle.
Would she become accustomed to disappointment? Gemma wondered as she swayed a bit and patted Charlotte’s small back.
Were the boys any the worse for always having one or both parents haring off after some case or other?
Of the two, Toby coped best. He’d been too young to remember being abandoned by his father, and since then, he’d accrued layers of security in his life like a little pearl in an oyster—although no one, she thought with a smile, was likely to refer to Toby as a pearl.
Kit, like Charlotte, had suffered loss, but also betrayal—by the man he’d thought was his father, and by his grandmother. And yet, he seemed to be mending, although there was no way to tell if he would ever be entirely whole.
At the moment, however, he was teasing his brother by playing keep-away with Toby’s pirate sword. He looked like any other mischievous fourteen-year-old. And that was good.
Charlotte, over her tantrum and tiring of being held, began to squirm. “I want down, Mummy,” she said.
“What?” Gemma was so startled she loosed her hold and let Charlotte slide the last foot to the floor with a thump.
“I wanna play with Holly,” said Charlotte, more firmly. And then she was gone, skipping across the room in her blue dress, unaware that she had uttered anything significant or momentous.
Gemma stood, knuckles pressed to her suddenly trembling lips. It was nothing, she told herself. Charlotte heard Toby call her “Mummy” all the time, and even Kit used it teasingly. It was only natural that Charlotte should start to parrot what she heard. But still—
“You okay, boss?” asked Melody, coming up beside her. “You look a bit . . . gobsmacked.”
“Oh.” Gemma made an effort to collect herself. “I’m fine. Too much cake, I think.”
Melody gave her a skeptical look, perhaps having seen Gemma take a bite, then put her plate aside to tend to someone else.
But instead of challenging Gemma’s evasion, she shifted and said a little hesitantly, “Boss, I know Charlotte’s party has been disrupted enough already, but . . . that woman, the Vice copper that Doug said Becca Meredith saw on her last day at work. Chris Abbott.”
“What about her?” asked Gemma. She felt an odd little twist in her stomach, as if her body had foreknowledge.
“I’ve just realized why her name seemed familiar,” said Melody. “It was in the Sapphire files.”
“Superintendent Kincaid,” said Owen Morris, the fire brigade investigator. “And Sergeant Cullen. Sorry I can’t shake.” He raised his gloved hands in an explanatory shrug. “We seem to keep meeting this way.”
Morris, still in full protective gear, had just come from the house, and Kincaid had glimpsed his red-haired assistant going back in.
“Can we go in if we suit up?” Kincaid asked.
“No, sorry. It’s still too hot, and the structure’s not safe. The pathologist and the SOCOs will have to wait as well. ”
Frustrated, Kincaid glanced at the open front door. “Give us a description, then.”
“Not pretty, this one,” said Morris, shaking his head, and Kincaid wondered if there were such a thing as a pretty fire scene. “But the victims were on the ground floor, and as the fire moved upwards, the bodies are still fairly intact.
“The wife—we’ll assume it was Mrs. Craig, for the time being—was in the kitchen. It looks as though she was shot in the back of the head.”
“The deputy assistant commissioner was in what looked to be his study.”
“You’re certain it was him?”
“I’d met him a few times,” Morris said with a grimace. “What remained of the face was recognizable. The study was the fire’s point of origin. There was a petrol can near the body. He still had the gun gripped in his hand, but the weapon was pretty badly damaged. Some sort of small-caliber handgun, but big enough to do the job. I’m sure the SOCOs will be able to tell you the make.”
“Can you tell what happened?” Kincaid asked, although his mind was playing it out, whether he liked it or not.
“It looks like he shot his wife, then doused a good bit of the ground floor with petrol, backing into his study as he poured. Then he tossed something—a lighter or a match—into the petrol trail. After that, my guess is he’d have waited until he was sure he had a good burn. Then he shot himself in the side of the head.”
They all stared at the house as if mesmerized, and Kincaid wondered how anyone could possibly do what Angus Craig had done.
A horn beeped. Turning, Kincaid saw a little lime-green Ford pull through the gate. Imogen Bell got out and walked over to them, looking considerably tidier and more rested than she had the previous morning. Apparently she hadn’t felt it necessary to spend last night surveilling Freddie Atterton’s flat from her car.
“Sir,” she said to Kincaid, including Cullen and Owen Morris in a nod of greeting. “DI Singla sent me to coordinate with you. He wanted me to tell you that the SOCOs and the Home Office pathologist are on their way. And we’ve got extra officers coming to cordon off the property. It won’t be long before the press show up in force.” She glanced at the house, shaking her head. “It’s really true? Assistant Commissioner Craig?”
“The pathologist will have to make the formal ID, but it looks that way. Did you know him?” he asked, with a lurch of concern.
“I’d seen him round Henley. He spoke to me once or twice. He seemed like a nice man.”
Kincaid closed his eyes in a little prayer of thanks that Imogen Bell hadn’t got to know Angus Craig better.
“Oh, sir,” said Bell. “There was a man at the gate just now, wanting to speak to someone in charge. A neighbor. He says he has Mrs. Craig’s dog, and he wants to know what he should do with him.”
“No matter what Angus Craig’s done now,” said Gemma, “we still don’t know why he would have killed Becca Meredith when he did. And I can’t believe it’s coincidence that Becca talked to another of Craig’s possible victims on the day she began behaving oddly. Especially if this woman really was an old friend.” She chewed her lip as she thought. “We need to talk to her.”
“Now?” Melody glanced round at the other guests. It looked as though the party was beginning to wind down. “What about the kids?”
“I’ll ask Betty or Hazel if they can look after the little ones for a bit,” said Gemma. The bubble of domestic perfection had popped even sooner than she’d thought. But although she hated deserting the children and her guests, she couldn’t leave such a loose end dangling. “We don’t know yet exactly what happened at the Craigs’,” she added slowly. “If we’ve missed something, something important, Duncan and Doug need to know as soon as possible.”
“She lives in Barnes, this Chris Abbott. I remember that from the file. I can check the address.”
“Do it, then. There’s something not right here.” Suddenly uneasy about Duncan and Doug in Henley, Gemma felt too edgy to stand still. But before anything else, she had to speak to her parents.
While Melody pulled out her phone, Gemma went into the dining room and knelt by her mum and dad. She was pleased to see that her mum was still looking bright.
“Mum, Dad. I’m so sorry, but something’s come up. Melody and I have to go.”
“Something always comes up with you,” said her dad.
Her mother gave him a quelling glance. “Is it that business of Duncan’s?”
“I think it might be connected, yes.” Seeing the beginning of Vi’s worried frown, Gemma hastened to reassure her. “It’s just an interview, Mum. But it needs to be done now.”
Her mother’s gaze went to the sitting room, where the three small children had subsided into playing a game on the floor with Toby’s cars. “What about Charlotte? It’s her birthday and all.”
“I know, Mum. But I won’t be gone that long. I’ll ask Hazel or Betty to look—”
“We can stay,” said her dad. “Can’t we, Vi?”
