pretend that Mum had just gone away. But then last night, when everyone was asleep, I forced myself to go through the box again.' She glanced at the shoe box but made no move to touch it. 'I think I should tell you… One of the reasons I didn't feel I could talk to you about my mother- or my father- was that she'd always cautioned me against it.'
'I'm not sure I understand.'
'Mum said that my safety depended on never talking about my background. Of course I didn't take it seriously- you know how children are- but then after she was killed I began to wonder…'
'Do you know anything about your father? Were they divorced?'
'I always assumed so. Mum wouldn't talk about him at all. But I was curious, and one day I looked through the things she kept in the special drawer in her bureau. She caught me at it- it was the one time I remember her truly losing her temper.'
'Are these the things from her drawer?' Kincaid asked, indicating the box.
Without answering, Eliza pushed it towards him.
He lifted the lid and reached for the top document. It was a birth certificate, issued in the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in 1971. The child's name was given as Eliza Marie Thomas, the mother as Marianne Wolowski Thomas, and the father as Ronald Samuel Thomas. The address of record was Talbot Road, W. 11.
'You were born in Notting Hill,' Kincaid said.
'Yes, but I don't remember the area. We must have moved away when I was a baby. That's me with my parents.' She lifted a photograph and he took it by its edge.
The color had faded, but the young woman was instantly recognizable as the girl he'd seen in Edgar Vernon's photo. But here she looked older, the platinum hair darker, longer, with a fringe, and he thought he could see a new wariness in her eyes.
She stood beside a tall, dark-skinned man whose face looked vaguely familiar, and between them they held a laughing infant.
'It must have been hard for your mother,' he commented. 'An interracial marriage at that time.'
'If it was, she never let on. Nor did it ever seem to occur to her that I should mind my skin being a different color than my schoolmates'.' Eliza's voice held a trace of bitterness. 'When I came home crying because I'd been taunted and teased, she'd tell me I should be proud, and that was the end of it. It was better after she married Greg.'
'How old were you?'
'Eight. Greg would tell me that I was beautiful, that I was special, and that one day the other children would be sorry they weren't like me.' She smiled, and Kincaid realized how right Greg Hoffman had been. Taking the photo back from him, she studied it. 'I'm ashamed to admit this, but after Greg came to live with us, I used to tell people I was adopted. That way I didn't have to admit my mother had been married to a black man. Now I only wish that I had known my father.'
There were other photos in the box of the chubby little girl who had been Marianne Wolowski, standing stiffly with parents who wore the formal-looking dress of the fifties, receiving a prize at school, blowing out candles on a birthday cake. In another, a bit older, she and a thin black girl in a pink dress smiled out at the camera to- gether.
Stuck to the back of the photo was a folded piece of paper. When Kincaid uncreased it, he saw that it was a school report from Colville School, dated 1957. Not only had Marianne Wolowski lived in Notting Hill when she'd given birth to her child, she had grown up there.
'Do you mind if I take this?' He indicated the birth certificate. 'I'll have it returned to you as soon as I've made a copy.'
'Will any of this help you?' asked Eliza. 'You know, at first the why of it didn't matter so much to me- I was too busy trying to accept the fact that she was gone. But now… What makes it really difficult is that it seems to me she had finally reached a good place in her life. I don't think she was happy when I was a child- I don't mean she wasn't a good mum, but I think there was more duty in it than joy. But with my twins… She loved them so unreservedly, and there was no worry in it.'
'That's the blessing of being a grandparent- or so I've heard.'
She gazed out the window a moment, then turned back to him. 'There's something else. Now that Mum's gone, my father is all I have left. Do you think you could find him for me?'
By late afternoon, Gemma would have been happy to murder Gavin Farley herself. The veterinarian had obviously taken his solicitor's advice to keep his mouth shut, stating flatly that he knew nothing about Dawn Arrowood's affair with Alex Dunn, nor had he ever taken photos of either of them. Not even Sergeant Franks's natural belligerence in the interview room had goaded him into any further response.
She finished writing up another discouragingly noncommittal release for the press- though fat lot of good her discretion would do. The headline of the latest edition of the
The other papers had followed suit, if slightly more sedately, and the station switchboard had rung nonstop all morning with calls from citizens concerned about their personal safety.
Melody Talbot came into her office, collapsing into a chair with a groan.
'Any luck?' Gemma asked, although the expression on Melody's face told her it was a faint hope. 'Did you find the photos?'
'Not a trace. All we turned up was a bit of ash floating in the toilet. We interviewed Farley on Christmas Eve- if he'd got the wind up, he could have come in anytime on Christmas Day to destroy the evidence.'
'Bloody sodding hell!' snapped Gemma, unable to contain her frustration. 'The bastard!'
'Now what, boss?'
'What about Christmas Eve, then?'
'It took me all afternoon to track down Farley's neighbors. But in the meantime, I had a good natter up and down the street.'
'And?'
'The upshot is, you couldn't find more reliable witnesses. Simmons is a banker; Mrs. Simmons belongs to every parents' organization imaginable. The neighbor across the street told me that the only reason the Simmonses put up with the Farleys' social invitations is that Mrs. Simmons wants to stay on good terms with Mrs. Farley, because their kids share rides to school and sports. So that's pretty well that. What about your end?'
'Now I go and give the super a progress report. But I'm not giving up on this. Get the surgery's phone records. If Farley was blackmailing Dawn, he had to have communicated with her somehow.'
Superintendent Lamb listened impassively while she recited the day's events.
'What about the area where the scalpel was found?' he asked when she'd finished. 'Have you had a forensics team in?'
'Yes, sir. They've gone over the rubbish bin and anything else he might have touched in the immediate vicinity. So far no prints have matched anyone involved in our inquiries. We've also had a team questioning anyone who lives nearby, and we've put out a notice asking for help from anyone who might have been passing.'
'We've got to turn up something, Gemma.' He nodded at the newspapers spread out on his desk. 'Not to mention I've had the commissioner on the phone. Arrowood's friends have been complaining loudly about our failure to prevent his death- and I can't say I blame them.'
'I know, sir.' It took an effort of will, as well as clenched teeth, to stop Gemma venting her frustration. The super didn't care how hard they'd tried; he wanted results. She realized suddenly that this was the first time she'd had to assume responsibility for failure in a difficult case without Kincaid as a buffer.
'I'm not criticizing your work,' Lamb added with uncomfortable proximity to her thoughts. 'But perhaps you need to put the pieces back in the box, shake them up and dump them out again, to see if they settle a different
