warehouse like the ribbon on a giant Christmas package, and that the smell of burning lingered in the air like a fog. She ducked her head as she walked by, wondering if she would ever be able to pass the building without seeing the ambulance men maneuvering their burden carefully out the door.
The shelter’s residents were unsettled as well. She’d spent yesterday – without Jason’s help – comforting and consoling, and trying to quiet the rumors flying round the shelter like contagious ghosts.
She found Jason where she’d expected, in the office, head bent over a filing cabinet. She stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him, knowing he was aware of her presence, but that he wouldn’t look up until she spoke.
He wore jeans, as he usually did when he took Sunday duty, rather than the designer shirts and ties he favored during the week, and the contrast between the rough clothes and the elegant planes of his face made the breath catch in her throat. God, one would think that knowing oneself for a fool would be enough to effect a cure, but the self-knowledge only made her despise her desire.
“How was your visit with your aunt?” she asked, when the silence had gone on as long as she could bear.
Jason looked up. “Great-aunt. She fell. She needed Mum to stay with her, and you know my mother doesn’t drive. It couldn’t be helped, Kath.” His voice was cool, dispassionate, the message clear. She was nagging, and he wasn’t going to apologize for leaving her in the lurch on a chaotic Saturday – or for anything else.
She came into the room and perched on the edge of her desk, making a pretext of straightening papers. “You missed all the excitement. Tony Novak showed up, accusing us of helping his wife run off with their child.”
Frowning, Jason paused with a paper half into a folder. “Dr. Novak? Why would he do that?”
“He says Laura threatened him, and now she and the little girl have both disappeared.”
The paper slid neatly into its ordained spot and Jason closed the file drawer. “Not very smart to give advance warning, if she meant to do a runner. It’s odd that she didn’t come to us for help, though.”
Kath rubbed her thumb across the rough edge of a fingernail. “I thought maybe there was something you weren’t telling me.”
“Me?” His wide, mobile mouth twitched in irritation. “Don’t be daft, Kath. You know Laura’s not that fond of me. If she’d come to anyone, it would have been you.” He studied her. “Look, if this is about the other night, something came up.”
“I waited,” she said, the words spilling out like acid. “And you played me for a fool.”
“It’s not always about you, Kath. Did that ever occur to you? You’ve no idea what it’s like for me, living with – My mum’s difficult. It was a bad night.”
“Your mum?” she spat back. “I lied to my kids-”
“And it’s not my sodding fault if you feel guilty. Give it a rest, Kath.”
They stared at each other, poised on the edge of a full-fledged row. Then, to her surprise, Jason looked away. “I did come, you know,” he said. “But you were gone. And it’s just as well we weren’t both here when all hell broke loose.” He flashed her one of his smiles, and she felt her anger start to melt.
Standing, he came over to her and ran his fingertip very lightly from her cheek to the corner of her mouth. She turned her face into his hand with as little volition as a moth flying into a flame.
“Am I forgiven?” he said softly.
“I-” She glimpsed a shadow at the office door, a whisper of movement that was somehow familiar. “Mouse?” she called out. “Beverly?”
But there was no answer, and when she went out into the corridor, no one was there.
“It’s not protocol,” hissed Maura Bell. She’d drawn Kincaid down to the far end of the corridor outside the interview room at the station. A shocked Tony Novak, having identified the photo of Elaine Holland as the woman he knew as Beth, waited inside the room, while at the other end of the corridor, Gemma spoke animatedly to Doug Cullen.
“I don’t care if it’s bloody protocol.” He glanced over at Gemma, then jabbed a finger at Bell. “She’s the one who got Tony Novak to cooperate. She’s the one who made the connection between Elaine Holland and Beth. She’s the one who insisted we had a child at risk. She’s going to sit in on the interview if she bloody well wants.”
“We don’t know that the child isn’t somewhere with her mother,” protested Inspector Bell.
“We don’t know that Tony Novak didn’t bash his wife over the head in the ten minutes he was inside her house. We won’t know until we get the search warrant. If you want to be useful instead of obstructive, why don’t you see if you can hurry the damned thing up?”
“Excuse me, ma’am.” Bell’s sergeant had appeared at her elbow. “A Mrs. Teasdale is here to see you. She says she’s Chloe Yarwood’s mother.”
When Bell hesitated, Kincaid said, “You’ve got another interview room?” At her nod, he went on. “I’ll take her up personally. We’ll have to put Novak on hold until we see what the former Mrs. Yarwood has to say – in fact, cut Novak loose when he’s signed his statement, but have a constable keep an eye on him. I’d just as soon wait to talk to him again until we’ve searched his wife’s house, but I don’t want him disappearing on us.”
“Is there – is there any news on Chloe Yarwood, sir?” asked the sergeant, with a quick glance at her boss.
“Not yet. The lab hasn’t finished running the match, and I hate to think what Konnie Mueller is going to say when I ask him to run a sample from Laura Novak’s flat.”
Gemma and Cullen had joined them and were listening intently.
“Sir – ma’am-” said the sergeant, obviously having difficulties with the issue of temporary authority, “that warrant’s just come through. I was coming to tell you when the duty sergeant rang up about Mrs. Teasdale.”
Kincaid considered, trying to work out the most expedient division of labor with the least amount of territorial pissing on Bell’s part. “Doug, why don’t you and Gemma go along to Laura Novak’s house with the uniforms? Maura, you and I will talk to Mrs. Teasdale. Then when we’ve finished we’ll meet the others at Park Street.” Bell might think she’d drawn the plum job, but the truth was that he trusted Gemma’s assessment of whatever they might find at the Novak house as well as his own.
Maura Bell drew breath as if to protest, then seemed to think better of it. Turning to the sergeant, she said, “Right. You’ll need a locksmith-”
“No, we won’t.” Gemma’s lips curved in a very small smile. “We’ve got Tony Novak’s keys.”
Sundays were supposed to be civilized, Rose thought grumpily as she hung her turnout coat on the drying rack for the second time that day. A day of rest, a day of roast beef and Yorkshire pud, of dozing in front of the telly or taking the kiddies to the park.
God knows she’d hoped for a quiet day after a night of dream-haunted, interrupted sleep, but instead they’d had half a dozen road traffic accidents, as many medical calls, and two fires. Both had been nuisance fires, one in a rubbish skip, the other brush set alight on waste ground at the edge of a park, but both times when she’d seen the smoke her mouth had gone dry and her hands had been unsteady as she pulled on her gear.
Surely she was just tired, and not losing her nerve, she thought as she pushed a stray hair from her face with a grubby hand. What she felt seemed more a bone-deep foreboding than fear.
There was certainly no one she could talk to about it. Even if she had been tempted to confess to Simms, he’d been distant and abrupt with her all day. Last night’s phone call hung unmentioned between them.
Nor had she heard from Station Officer Farrell, and she’d begun to think she’d made a complete ass of herself. She’d meant to talk to her own guv’nor about her theory, but as the day went by the prospect seemed less and less appealing. If she had any sense, she’d take Wilcox’s advice and forget the whole thing.
When she’d washed up, she wandered into the kitchen. Their lunch had been interrupted by the bells an hour ago, and bowls of congealing chili con carne still stood on the table. Steven Winston came in, whistling tunelessly, and popped his into the microwave, but after a moment’s hesitation Rose scraped hers into the bin. The smell made her feel nauseous, and the last thing she needed was to sick up her lunch on the next shout.
She made up her mind to speak to Bryan Simms, see if she could clear the air between them. At least she could tell him she appreciated his concern. She left the control room and went down to the turnout bay, where she found Bryan washing the mud off the appliance from the last shout.
“Hey,” she said, grabbing a towel and following along behind him.
“Hey, yourself.” His voice was casual, but he didn’t meet her eyes.
