And Justice There Is None

***

They found Alex Dunn at home, packing bubble-wrapped china into a box. He seemed tired, and edgier than he had on Tuesday. Gemma suspected that he'd come into the station buffered by a surge of adrenaline that had since worn off.

'This is a Sevres dinner service I found for a client in Nottingham,' he told them. 'That's a good deal of my business, selling to private clients. I keep an eye out at auction for them, or pick up things from other dealers that I know they want.'

Gemma found her eye drawn once again to the bright dishes she'd noticed on her first visit. 'Is that pottery, or china?'

'Pottery. Made by a woman named Clarice Cliff, mainly in the twenties and thirties, the heyday of Art Deco. She started work in the potteries at thirteen, and by the time she was in her late teens she was designing her own wares.'

Moving closer to study the pieces, Gemma saw that although they all had the same bright, bold look, there was infinite variation in the patterns.

'It's not really my field,' Alex continued, 'but I fell in love with the first piece I saw and I've been collecting it ever since. And Dawn loved it. I was going to give her that teapot'- he nodded towards a piece dominated by red- roofed houses against a deep yellow ground- 'for Christmas.'

'Is the pottery expensive?' Gemma asked, with a private sigh of regret.

'Very.'

'Would Karl have noticed?'

'Yes. Anything to do with antiques, Karl noticed. And he would certainly be aware of the value of Clarice Cliff pottery, even if it's not the sort of thing he stocks in his shop.'

'So Karl is successful because he's good at what he does?'

Alex gave her a puzzled look. 'The antiques trade is no business for fools, and Karl has a particularly good eye for finding pieces that will bear a huge markup. Not to mention the connections with clients who can pay the markup.'

'We've been told Karl has other clients- and other uses for his business- as in laundering the money he makes in drug transactions.'

'Drugs? You're joking.' Alex's bark of laughter died as he read their faces. 'But that's daft! Why would Karl need to do something like that? He's got more money than God.'

'Maybe you're putting the cart before the horse. Maybe the drugs came first, or at least simultaneously. Did Dawn never mention anything like that to you?'

'Are you saying Dawn was aware of it?'

'We don't know. That's why we're asking you.'

'I'm the last person you should've come to. Apparently there were a lot of things Dawn didn't tell me.' He stuffed a wrapped teapot into the box so violently that Gemma repressed a gasp.

'You knew her better than anyone,' she said. 'How do you think she would have felt about Karl's involvement in drugs?'

'A week ago, I'd have thought she'd have left him in horror if she found out.' Alex said it savagely. 'Now I'm not so sure. It's not the sort of thing we sat around and discussed. 'Oh, by the way, dear, how do you feel about drug trafficking?' '

'So what did you talk about?' Gemma asked. She needed to penetrate the bitter shell the young man had erected.

'Whatever you talk about with your significant other, assuming you have one. Food, music, movies, stupid television programs, the state of the world.'

'But the problem with an affair is that you don't talk about the ordinary, everyday things, because you don't share them. What to have for dinner, the size of the gas bill, your child's cough.'

'Do you think I don't know that?' Alex told her hotly. 'Do you have any idea what I'd have given for even one day of conversations like that? You don't appreciate it, do you? Either of you?'

Gemma said softly, 'No. You're right. I'm sorry.'

'The funny thing is… She was so beautiful, the kind of woman men dream about. But it was the ordinary things I loved most about her. She had a passion for ginger ice cream. And flowers. They had a fortune in flowers delivered to the house every week, but she could go bonkers over a geranium in a pot on the patio, or a late rose blooming beside the pavement.'

'But that's a good thing, isn't it?' said Melody. 'That she had that capacity for enjoying life?'

'Is it? I'm not so sure.' He stared at them belligerently. Then his anger seemed to dissipate and he knelt again beside his packing box. 'Of course you're right. If I were a good person, I'd wish her every bit of joy given her by anything- or anyone- instead of envying what she might have shared with someone else.

'And what I said before, it was just the doubt eating at me. I knew her. Even if she didn't tell me she was pregnant, I'm absolutely certain that if she found out Karl was selling drugs, she would have left him in an instant.'

CHAPTER TEN

Funny thing, history. Since the sixties, all sorts of people, moral reformers, right-wingers, left-wingers, politicians, feminists, male chauvinists, law-and-order campaigners, and censorship freaks of every kind, have invented a straightlaced, well-behaved public life from which the country somehow strayed with the invention of permissiveness.

– Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,

from Notting Hill in the Sixties

Although never very substantial, Angel lost weight rapidly after she moved into the Colville Terrace bedsit. This was in part from lack of funds, as her wage did not stretch as far as she'd expected, and in part because the single gas ring in her room didn't encourage more than heating soup or stew from a tin. She took up smoking, finding that tobacco both dulled hunger and eased boredom, not to mention the fact that her boss gave her a discount on cigarettes.

She grew her hair long and straight, with a fringe that brushed her eyebrows and, unable to afford the new fashions, hemmed her skirts above her knees with clumsy stitches that would have made Mrs. Thomas cringe. Her lashes were heavy with mascara, her skin pale with the latest pancake foundation.

There were boys, of course, to impress with her newfound sense of style. As soon as word got round that she was on her own, they came into the shop in pimply droves, wanting to take her to the cinema, or out for a coffee.

At first she was flattered, but she learned soon enough what those invitations meant. After the first few disappointing encounters, she decided she preferred to stay in her room in the evenings, watching the telly and listening to 45s that scratched and hissed on her father's old phonograph. Posters of the Beatles now covered the damp stains on her walls- their smiling faces watched over her like medieval saints.

These small comforts kept her going until a bitterly cold night in March, when she came to the end of her wages, her food, and paraffin for the heater. It was two days until payday and, shivering beneath a swath of blankets as her stomach cramped from emptiness, she wondered how she was going to manage. Her employer, Mr. Pheilholz, was kind enough, but she knew he had nothing extra to give her. She could go to the Thomases, but the thought of Ronnie's pity and contempt made her decide she'd rather die than give in to that temptation.

Prompted by the thought of the Thomases, however, a memory came to her unbidden. She had been ill once, as a child, and her mother had soothed her with tinned chicken soup and fizzy lemonade. The