The Sound of Broken Glass (2 page)

“Rotten horses,” Charlotte added with a giggle. “Rotten horses in Rotten Row.” With a three-year-old's sense of humor, she was easily amused. “Bob wants to see horses,” she added, settling her bedraggled green plush elephant more firmly in her lap so that he could enjoy the view. Charlotte had at first protested against the pushchair, insisting that she was old enough to walk, and Kincaid had convinced her only by arguing that Bob would like to ride in a buggy that was also called “Bob”—a trendy brand with the Notting Hill set.

Kincaid slowed to a walk and even Geordie, their cocker spaniel, seemed glad of the respite. Tess, their terrier, got left at home when they went for their runs, as her little legs couldn't keep up.

Now Geordie looked inquiringly at Kincaid, his tongue lolling. “You'd like to see the horses, wouldn't you, boy?” Kincaid asked. Unfortunately, Kincaid had discovered that the sight and smell of the horses turned their normally good-natured dog into a barking, lunging demon. Geordie seemed to overestimate his size if not his own ferocity.

“Let's leave it for next time, shall we?” he suggested to Charlotte, rolling the pushchair off the path. “You could throw the ball for Geordie for a bit instead.”

Her mass of caramel-colored curls tickled his nose as he unbuckled her from the buggy and swung her to the ground with a bounce. He caught the scent of the organic baby shampoo that Gemma teased him for buying, and an indefinable trace of the exotic. Distilled little girl, he thought wryly as he unclipped Geordie's lead and pulled the tennis ball from the pocket of his anorak.

Geordie dropped into a perfect sit and barked in anticipation. This precious object was no ordinary tennis ball, but a lurid pink-and-green dog ball, its skin cracked, the squeaker long since excavated, and Geordie loved the husk from the depths of his cocker spaniel heart.

Kincaid tossed it and both dog and girl gave chase, Geordie yipping, Charlotte shrieking. Geordie, of course, reached it first, and the two began a happy game of keep-away.

He'd stopped at the edge of a grassy hollow near the north boundary of the park, and the game gave Kincaid a chance not only to catch his breath but also to survey the park's other occupants. He watched them, jogging, walking, throwing Frisbees for dogs, and a few hardy souls just sitting and soaking up the welcome winter sun. Were they skiving off work? he wondered. A couple coming from opposite directions stopped for what seemed a casual word, but when the woman looked round, her glance seemed slightly furtive. Then she took the man's arm and they walked away.

A clandestine meeting, Kincaid thought, then admonished himself for his suspicions. It was the detective's mind, and he didn't seem able to turn it off. Not that it was much use to him, these days, although the care of children ages three, six, and fourteen certainly required vigilance.

When he and Gemma had begun fostering Charlotte at the end of the previous summer, they'd agreed that Gemma would take parental leave first, and then, if Charlotte was still not able to adjust to child care, Gemma would go back to work and Kincaid would take the same length of leave.

Things had not quite worked out as they had planned.

Rather than starting back in her post as detective inspector at Notting Hill Police Station, Gemma had been asked to fill an emergency vacancy on a murder investigation team in South London as acting detective chief inspector.

Kincaid had watched with pride—and some envy—as she settled into the new and demanding job. And while he had struggled to fit himself into the role of caregiver in their blended family, he'd also found that he'd come to know the children in ways he could never have imagined when he had been consumed with his own work.

But his intended leave had come to an end with the first of the year, and Charlotte had not, after all, been ready to start school. They'd given it a disastrous week at the local preschool. Charlotte had howled inconsolably all day, every day. Finally, even her teacher had suggested that she might need a bit more time in her new home before taking on the stress of a different environment. The severe separation anxiety suffered by a child who'd experienced a loss the magnitude of Charlotte's, Miss Love had told him, in the lecturing tone usually reserved for preschoolers, required time and patience.

As if they didn't know, Kincaid had thought, and bitten his tongue.

Now, halfway through January, Kincaid found himself questioning his supply of the requisite patience, missing his job, and worried that the job didn't seem to be missing him.

“Papa, are you sad?” asked Charlotte. The game of fetch had come to a halt. She was kneeling beside a drift of leaves at the base of a tree, studying him intently, the blue-green of her eyes startling against her pale brown skin. Charlotte had attuned herself to his moods in a way that was sometimes unnerving.

“Of course I'm not sad,” he said, going to her. Geordie snuffled his face as he knelt, leaving a wet smear on his cheek. “How could I possibly be sad when I can go to the park with you? What have you found there?” he added. She'd fished something from the leaves that was definitely not Geordie's ball.

“A body.” Charlotte held up her prize for his inspection. It was indeed a body—that of a Barbie doll, naked, its head slightly askew, blond hair tangled as a rat's nest. “Can I keep her?” Charlotte asked.

“I don't see why not,” Kincaid said, although he was well aware of Gemma's feelings about Barbie dolls. Perhaps this one wouldn't count. The doll's skin looked sickly pink in Charlotte's hand, and its anatomically bizarre body alien. But Charlotte was a rescuer, and was already running towards the pushchair, where she wrapped the doll in an old bit of baby blanket she kept for Bob the elephant.

“She's cold,” Charlotte explained, and Kincaid suddenly realized that the weather was changing. The bright blue January sky had gone hazy, and he could see a bank of dark clouds moving in from the west.

“In you go, then,” he said, lifting her back into the pushchair and whistling for Geordie, “or your dolly will be cold
and
wet. Home, James.”

“My name's not James. And I don't want to go home,” protested Charlotte. “K and P, K and P,” she chanted as he swiveled the pushchair and started back towards Notting Hill Gate.

“K and P, eh?” He frowned, pretending to consider. “I suppose we could stop in for a bit. Maybe we'll see MacKenzie and Oliver, eh?” Kitchen and Pantry, the coffee shop on Kensington Park Road, had become a regular weekday-morning refuge, as it was for many local mothers with small children. At least it gave Charlotte an opportunity to socialize, Kincaid told himself as he picked up his pace.

Not to mention the opportunity it gave him for adult—and, he had to admit, female—company. He did his best to ignore the fact that his capitulation got easier by the day.

“We could have played Clerkenwell.” George looked up from tightening his snare drum, his round face already turning pink from the heat in the pub, his tone aggrieved.

“How many times have we played every bloody pub in North London?” Andy shot back. The fact that he knew he was in the wrong made him defensive. The gig they'd turned down had been at the Slaughtered Lamb, a good music venue with a reputation for launching up-and-coming bands. “It was time we did something different.” It sounded weak, even to him.

Nick kept his head bent over the tuners on his bass, not looking at either of them. “It was time
you
did something different, you mean,” he said, the hurt in his voice evident whingeing.

Members of bands tended to find separate personality niches. In theirs, George, despite his slightly chubby, jolly looks, was the moaner. Andy had the lead guitarist's attitude. And Nick, the lead singer and bass player, had a bass player's imperturbable cool. If Nick was angry, you knew you'd crossed a line.

“Look, guys,” Andy began, but he had to raise his voice over the increasing racket from the Friday-night post-happy-hour drinkers. It was a good pub, but the band was obviously secondary to the food and drink and they were jammed into a small space at the back on one side of the bar. “Tam said this producer would be here—”

“To hear you,” said George, now in full scowl. “Not that anyone is likely to hear anything in this place. And do you know how far away I had to park the fucking van?” They'd unloaded their equipment at the White Stag, with the van on the double yellows. Then George had driven off to find a place to put his battered Ford Transit. It had been a full twenty minutes before he'd reappeared, damp from the rain and huffing. “We might as well be marooned on a desert island. Bloody Crystal Palace, I ask you.”

Bloody Crystal Palace was right, thought Andy, and cursed himself. He'd known it was a bad idea, but Tam had been so persuasive. As managers went, Tam wasn't a bad egg. He'd done his best for them, but lately Andy had begun to sense even Tam's good-natured optimism flagging. Bands had a shelf life, and theirs was expiring. Chances were that if they hadn't made it by now, they weren't going to.

The fact that they all knew it didn't make it any easier, or mean that they talked about it. But Nick had enrolled in an accounting course. George was working days in his dad's dry-cleaning business in Hackney. And Tam had been booking Andy more and more session work on his own. The truth was that he was better than they were, and they all knew that, too. But as much as Andy had groused about the band and about needing a change, he was finding the reality of it bitterly hard. They were mates. They'd been together, off and on, in various groups, for nearly ten years. Nick and George were the closest thing he had to family, and he'd only now begun to realize what it would mean to lose them.

“Look, guys,” Andy said again. “It's only one night, all right? Then we can—”

“Tam's here.” George settled onto his stool and gave a little tap on the snare for emphasis. “So where's this mysterious producer who's coming to see if you can play with a
girl
.”

“Just shut up, will you,” Andy hissed. He could see Tam pushing his way through the crowd, an expectant smile on his face. Their manager's real name was Mick Moran, although few remembered it. He was a Glasgow Scot, and had acquired the nickname courtesy of the wool tam he wore, winter and summer, to cover his balding pate. The hat was so old that its red-and-green Moran tartan had long since faded into clan neutrality.

“Lads,” said Tam when he reached them. “All set, then? Looks a good crowd.” He rocked on the balls of his feet, grinning at them.

“Right, Tam.” Andy forced a smile, restraining himself from saying that the crowd looked the sort that would shout over the music and request the lamest covers imaginable. Neither Nick nor George responded, and when he glanced round, both looked mutinous.

Right, then, Andy thought. If that was their attitude, so be it. He ran his pick across the strings of his Strat to check the tuning one last time, then launched into the distinctive opening chords of Green Day's “Good Riddance.” He usually sang backup, but this was one of the few songs where he rather than Nick sang the lead.

The evening went downhill from there. Nick and George were off on their timing, and when Nick took the lead he mumbled and slurred the lyrics. Glimpsing Tam's worried face in the back of the room, Andy played faster and louder. If his bandmates were determined to bugger this for him, they were doing a bloody good job.

Then he saw another man with Tam. Tall, with close-cropped hair and beard and wire-rimmed glasses. Caleb Hart, the producer who had asked Tam to book them here. The producer who had discovered a promising girl singer, and who needed a guitarist to record with her. Caleb Hart and Tam went way back, and when Tam had told him he had a good session man, Hart had suggested this gig and a practice session the next day in a studio he used in Crystal Palace. He'd wanted to hear Andy with the band, and Andy had made the mistake of telling Nick and George the reason for the booking.

Now Hart said something in Tam's ear and shook his head.

The band shuddered to a halt at the end of Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Andy felt the sweat of desperation. Someone in the crowd yelled, “Mumford!”

A joker on the other side of the room shouted back, “‘Stairway to Heaven,' you wanker.” A groan went up. “‘Stairway,' ‘Stairway,'” the joker's friends began to chant, and a rumble ran through the room. The temperature in the bar had risen along with the alcohol consumption and Andy knew things could turn ugly fast.

“Stairway” topped most bands' hated-cover list, and Nick couldn't sing the Robert Plant vocal to save his life. But Andy could play the hell out of Jimmy Page's lead, so he hit the effects pedal and launched straight into the guitar solo, giving it a bluesy-reggae twist that had the crowd stomping within a minute.

When he knew he had them, he segued into Dr. Feelgood's “Milk and Alcohol,” playing Wilko Johnson's lead and singing Lee Brilleaux's husky vocal, which thank God was simple enough that he could play and sing at the same time.

It wasn't until he hit the last chord and gave a bow to the audience that he realized he was bleeding. He'd cut his left thumb and the bright blood had splattered, almost invisible against the Strat's red finish.

“Time for some of that alcohol,” he said into the mike. “We'll be back in a few.”

He scanned the audience. Tam and Caleb Hart were nowhere to be seen. But then he caught a glimpse of a profile, just a flash of a woman's face in the back of the room as she moved among taller punters. Then she too was gone, but memory pricked him, and he felt dislocated, breathless, as if the air had been sucked from the room.

Then he heard George laugh, a high-pitched snigger, and he was aware again of the blood on his thumb and of his own fury. “You bastards,” he said, turning on Nick and George. “What the hell do you think you were playing at?”