– Dennis Severs,
Alia had set down Charlotte’s little pink bag and got as far as the front door when Charlotte realized she meant to leave without her. “Lia!” she screamed, latching onto Alia’s leg with the tenacity of a limpet.
Loosening the child’s grip, Alia knelt and hugged her. “You go with Dr. Tim, Char. I’ll see you soon.” She looked up at Gemma, helplessly, her eyes filling.
Gemma reached down and gathered Charlotte into her arms, automatically settling her on her hip as she opened the door. Afternoon was fading into evening, the shadow from the great spire of the church seeming to loom over the narrow street. There were more cars now, and the sounds of voices and television drifted from a few town house windows, left open in the August warmth.
The child’s body was tense, unyielding. Strands of her hair tickled Gemma’s nose, smelling of baby shampoo and, faintly, curry.
“Lia,” Charlotte wailed again, “want to go with you.” She wriggled, then lunged towards Alia, almost causing Gemma to lose her balance. Gemma gripped Charlotte more tightly, feeling her small, firm body and the heat radiating through her thin T-shirt.
“Go,” Gemma mouthed at Alia.
Alia gave them an uncertain smile, then turned and walked swiftly towards Brick Lane, head down, her heavy leather handbag on her shoulder.
“You’d better go, too,” Gemma said to Tim. Charlotte was crying, but silently now, fat tears running down her cheeks as she watched Alia disappear around the corner. “You’d like to play with Holly, wouldn’t you, love?” Gemma coaxed, but Charlotte wept unchecked. Reluctantly, Gemma handed her to Tim, then fetched her things.
She looked so small, nestled in Tim’s arms, but she must have found his familiarity comforting, because when Gemma offered her green plush elephant, she took it and hugged it against her chest. “Will you let Bob play with Holly, too?” asked Gemma, and got a solemn nod in response. “Good girl.”
“We’ll see you later?” asked Tim, not looking reassured.
“I’ll ring beforehand if there’s any news.” Alia had left her keys, so Gemma and Tim had agreed that Gemma would take them to Islington once she’d had a look round the house.
Tim nodded, then carried Charlotte to the Volvo, carefully strapping her into Holly’s oversize safety seat in the rear. He got in and drove away without looking back.
“I can stay,” said Hazel. “I could help you. Then I can run you to Islington to drop off the keys.”
Gemma heard the note of entreaty in her friend’s voice, and was tempted. But the tension between Hazel and Tim was distracting her, and she felt suddenly that she needed to be alone in the house, to concentrate, to get a feel for who these people were and what might have happened.
“I need to make phone calls, and I don’t know how long that will take.” She checked her watch. The first call was personal and urgent-she needed to tell Duncan where she was and what she was doing. “You go on,” she added to Hazel. “I’ll get the tube from Liverpool Street when I’ve finished. I’m trespassing, really, without Tim or Alia here, and I’d rather you not be guilty by association.” She didn’t say that the house might be a potential crime scene, and the less disturbed, the better.
“But I-” Hazel left the sentence unfinished, but the silence spoke clearly-she didn’t want to go home.
Impulsively, Gemma hugged her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll ring you in just a bit. I promise.”
When Hazel reached the Golf, she turned back. “I’ve been a bitch, haven’t I? It’s just-” She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I hope Tim’s friend is all right.”
“So do I,” said Gemma.
Duncan Kincaid was stretched out on the sitting room sofa, the Saturday
“You’re taking up too much real estate, buddy,” he said, but he felt too lazy to make the dog move and merely stroked his dark gray ears. Geordie gave a huge doggy sigh of contentment and settled himself more firmly against Kincaid’s rib cage.
That afternoon, Kincaid had paid a call on the tenant in his flat in Carlingford Road, and had taken advantage of the visit to Hampstead to take both boys and both dogs to Hampstead Heath.
There had been method in his madness-a couple of hours of Frisbee throwing, ball chasing, and hunting for imaginary buried treasure had worn everyone out sufficiently to give him a rare bit of Saturday-afternoon peace. The boys were upstairs in their rooms, and the faint thump of bass from Kit’s iPod speakers provided an oddly comforting counterpoint to doggy snores.
When his mobile rang, he stretched towards the coffee table, fumbling for the phone, and dislodged Geordie in the process. “Sorry, mates,” he said as Sid, their black cat, raised his head and gave a hiss of displeasure at the disturbance.
Expecting Gemma, he was surprised by the name on the caller ID. Why ring him and not Gemma? A little jolt of dread made him sit up as he answered.
He listened, made the appropriate responses, and by the time he’d hung up, the dread had settled in the center of his chest like a fist.
When the mobile rang again, he was still sitting with the phone in his hand, staring blankly at the oil painting of a hunting spaniel over the fireplace, a gift to Gemma from his cousin Jack.
This time it was Gemma, and he took a moment to compose himself before he clicked on, saying brightly, “Hullo, love.”
Before he could go any further, she launched into a complicated story involving a missing friend of Tim Cavendish’s, and when he could get a word in edgewise, he said, “Wait. Where did you say you are?”
“Spitalfields,” she answered. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. I need to talk to someone on the local force. Do you know anyone at Tower Hamlets?”
“Um, not below senior command. I’d try CID at Bethnal Green. Gemma-” It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if this was something that really merited her involvement, but he knew as soon as the thought crossed his mind that he would be wasting his breath. She would do what she thought was right, and it was not his place to caution her.
“I’m sorry about dinner,” she said, misinterpreting his silence.
“The boys want pizza. We’ll save you some.”
“I’ll ring you as soon as I’m on my way home. Duncan-” She hesitated, then said, “This will probably come to nothing, but-”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Even if the husband strolls in claiming he had a bit of temporary amnesia, what happened to the wife? She’s been missing for three months.”
He recognized the tone-Gemma with the investigative bit between her teeth-and hoped that either there was a simple explanation or that the Tower Hamlets CID were not territorially prickly. On the other hand, a distraction might prove helpful at the moment. He was still debating whether or not to mention the phone call when Toby came in. He was carrying an umbrella from the stand in the hall, swinging it in arcs across the floor the way he had seen a man using a metal detector on Hampstead Heath, and adding buzzing and clicking noises as sound effects.
That definitely flipped the disclosure needle over to negative. “You’d better go now,” he told her, “or you’ll be treated to a dissertation on buried treasure, Cap’n Jack and talking parrots included.”
“Oh, dear.” Gemma laughed. “I won’t ask. Okay, then. I’ll ring you soon.” The connection went dead.
Toby stopped buzzing. “Was that Mummy?”
“Yes, sport.”
“Why didn’t I get to talk to her?”
“Because she was busy. She’ll be home later.”
