Where Memories Lie (2 page)

Erika’s hands trembled as she picked up her reading glasses from on top of the attempted novel. As she put them on, the picture jumped sharply into focus. There was no need for her to read the description. The room seemed to recede, and with an effort she fought back the tide of memory.

She looked up at Henri, uncomprehending. “But this is not possible. I never thought to see this again.”

Henri reached out and set the catalog aside, and it was only when he gathered her hands between his that she realized hers were icy cold. “I don’t see how this can be a mistake, Erika.” Very gently, he added, “Perhaps the time has come for the past to give back.”

The party had reached the pudding and coffee stage, and Gemma had, at last, begun to relax. She’d been glad to see Chief Superintendent Childs again—
Denis,
she reminded herself—and his wife, Diane, had proved charming, as talkative as he was self-contained. Her own boss, Mark Lamb, was an old police college friend of Duncan’s, and Gemma had met his wife, Christine, often at departmental functions.

Everyone exclaimed over the house, the roasted salmon and fennel had proved a great success, and the only thing marring Gemma’s warm glow of accomplishment was the fact that Doug Cullen and Melody Talbot didn’t seem to have hit it off particularly well.

She had just stood to refill coffee cups when the kitchen phone rang. From the other end of the table, Kincaid met her eyes and lifted a brow in question.

Shaking her head, she mouthed, “I’ll get it.” It was the home line, not her mobile, so it was not likely to be work. Her heart gave an anxious little jerk, as it always did when the boys were out, even though she knew they were with Wesley Howard, who often looked after them and was very responsible.

Excusing herself, she made her way to the kitchen, coffeepot in hand, and snatched the phone from its cradle on the worktop.

“Gemma?” The voice was female, and so tremulous that at first Gemma didn’t recognize it. “Gemma, it’s Erika. I’m so sorry to disturb you, and on a Saturday evening. I can hear that you have guests. I can ring back tomorrow if—”

“No, no, Erika, it’s all right,” Gemma assured her, although surprised. She had met Erika when she was first posted to Notting Hill, and although they’d developed a friendship that Gemma valued, she’d never known Erika to call except to issue an invitation to tea or lunch, or to reply to an invitation from Gemma. Dr. Erika Rosenthal was a retired academic, a German Jew who had immigrated at the beginning of the war and made a noted career as a historian, and although Gemma had felt flattered by the older woman’s interest and support, Erika had always guarded her independence fiercely.

“Is there something wrong?” Gemma asked now, putting down the coffeepot and listening intently.

“I don’t quite know,” answered Erika, some of the usual crispness returning to her voice, although her accent was still more pronounced than usual. “But something very strange has happened, and I think—I’m very much afraid I need your help.”

May 1952, Chelsea

He knew the peculiarities of the latch so well that even with his coordination slightly impaired, he could ease the key round and swing the door open without a whisper of sound. Not that his delicate entry did him any good, because there was no way he could prevent the click as the lock snicked closed behind him.

“Gavin? Is that you?” called Linda from the kitchen. His wife had ears like a bat.

Of course it bloody was, he thought, unless it was a burglar with a key, but he merely sighed and said, “Sorry I’m late. Had some things to wind up.”

“You and the rest of the station.” Linda came into the hall, wiping her hands on her pink-flowered pinny, her nose wrinkling in the way that meant she could pick up the scent of beer or tobacco
from twenty feet. Bloodhound, maybe, not bat, he mused, and his mouth must have twitched involuntarily because she said, “What’s so funny? You’ve been down the pub with your mates, and your dinner’s burned again.”

He caught the sickly sweet smell of charred shepherd’s pie, and felt his stomach give an uneasy flip-flop. “I ate something at the station—” he began, and saw her lips compress into the thin line that meant she was going to tell him he’d wasted his ration of mince.

“I know,” he interrupted, “the children could have had it.” He noticed, then, that the flat was quiet except for the faint mutter of the wireless that Linda kept in the kitchen for company. The children must be out. His instant’s relief was followed by a flush of shame.

In the course of his job, he visited homes where children clustered round their parents, hugging their legs and clamoring for attention, but he couldn’t remember his ever behaving that way, and the older they got, the less he seemed to have to say to them, or they to him.

Stuart was twelve, conceived in the first flush of his courtship with Linda, when the threat of war lent an urgency to lovemaking that had long since vanished. Susan was a product of a brief leave from the front two years later, procreation fueled this time by a desperate need to leave something of himself behind if he did not come back.

But he had survived, and if the truth be told, he found his children a disappointment. The son he had imagined as his companion, the boy he would teach to play football and take for long afternoons of idling along the Thames, was thin and serious, his nose always in a book, and didn’t seem to know the difference between rugger and cricket.

And Susan, the princess he had longed to hold and tickle, was a solid, stodgy girl who giggled like a hyena with her girlfriends but only gave him a blank stare from her mother’s opaque brown eyes.

He felt the weight of it all then, so suddenly that his body sagged and he touched his shoulder to the wall for support. It had been a bad
day—they’d followed up on a report of an unpleasant smell from a neighboring flat, and on forcing entry had found a man sitting in a chair in the dingy bed-sitter, looking quite relaxed except for the fact that his brains were splattered in an arc on the wall behind him, and his service revolver lay where it had fallen in his lap.

The neighbors, now thronging round with interest, told Gavin the man had been a decorated war hero, but had returned to find his family gone and no jobs available for a man partially crippled at D-Day. Since then the man, one Terence Billings, had kept himself to himself, getting by, they supposed, on his pension.

“What was it?” Gavin had asked his team when they’d finished their report and retired to the pub nearest the station, squeezing into the corner table with foaming pints. “What do you suppose was the final straw?”

“Probably couldn’t get fags at the corner shop,” said PC Will Collins, shaking his head.

“Maybe his cat died,” offered Gavin’s sergeant, John Rogers, only half in jest. All of them had seen the most trivial things push people over the edge into despair. And all of them had served on the front—all knew the man in the chair could just as easily have been them, and it was this bond, shared but unspoken, that kept them there, smoking and drinking too much beer, until long after they should have been home.

“What is it, Gav? Are you all right?” Linda’s voice hovered between censure and concern.

He thought of her as he’d first met her, how he’d loved her for her piss-and-vinegar pluck. He’d thought she could take on anything, but she hadn’t signed on to be a policeman’s wife, and it had brought her to this—a sharp-faced shadow of that long-ago girl.

And the children—was he the one at fault? Had he failed them all? And if so, what had he accomplished by it? He’d certainly done nothing to make life better for the man in the chair today, or others like him.

“Gav? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” His wife came to him and lifted her hand, brushing the backs of her fingers against his cheek.

The gesture was so unexpected, the gentleness of it so long forgotten, that he felt tears spring to his eyes. He closed his hand over hers. The pressure of his grip brought her body lightly against his, her weight delicate and warm. Swallowing, he whispered, “I’m sorry—I’ve made a mess of things—I—”

The clang of the phone made them jerk apart, like guilty teenagers. Their eyes met for a moment, then, unable to resist, he glanced towards the telephone. It sat like a black beast on the table at the end of the hall, pulsing with insistent sound.

“I suppose I should get that,” he said.

“You always do,” answered his wife, slipping her hand from his.

Gavin walked down Tite Street towards the river from the flat in Tedworth Square, angling into Royal Hospital Road, stopping for a moment as he reached the Embankment to glance west at the sparkling outline of the Albert Bridge framed against an orange-and-purple-streaked sky. A year ago the bridge had been draped with electric lights for the Festival of Britain, and the sight still made his breath catch in his throat. Airy and insubstantial, it added to the odd sense of disconnectedness he’d felt since leaving the flat.

He’d protested, of course, but the duty sergeant at Chelsea Station had insisted he was the nearest ranking CID officer available, and Gavin had sighed and acquiesced.

Now he wondered if he had left a part of himself behind, the self that might have stayed and caressed his wife. Had he seen a glimmer of understanding in her eyes as she watched him go? Or had he taken the wrong turning at an irrevocable fork?

Nonsense, that was; utter rubbish. He had a job to do. He shook himself and, turning away, headed east into the gathering darkness.

The constable, a dark-uniformed silhouette, was waiting near the gate that led into a heavily wooded garden at the end of Cheyne Walk. “Inspector Hoxley.”

Gavin recognized him as he spoke, a young constable named Simms, and the tightness in the man’s voice made the hair rise on Gavin’s neck. This was more than a wino sleeping it off in the park. “Anyone else here yet?” he asked.

“No, sir. I didn’t like to leave it—him—sir, but I was afraid you wouldn’t see me if I didn’t wait near the gates.”

“All right, then, Simms, let’s see what you’ve found.”

He followed the flickering light of Simms’s torch as the constable picked his way through the gate and along a gravel path that shone faintly. Around a curve, the outline of a bench loomed out of the dimness, and beneath that, another form, dark with a glint of white.

There was no mistaking the shape of a human body, or the awkwardness of death. “Hold the light, man,” said Gavin as the torch wavered. As he glanced back, the light bobbed upwards, and he saw that the constable looked dangerously corpselike himself.

Too young to have been in the war, Gavin reminded himself—this might even be the man’s first body. “If you’re going to be sick, get right away,” he cautioned, but his tone was gentle.

“No, sir, I’ll be all right.” Simms straightened and steadied the torch.

Pushing back his hat, Gavin thought that if this were the young man’s first death, he’d got off easy. More than likely one of the pensioners had sat on the bench for a smoke and a view of the river, and his heart had clapped out.

But as he looked more closely, he saw that the figure was not clothed in the traditional navy uniform of the Chelsea pensioner, but in a black suit. Frowning, he knelt, and the smell of blood hit him in a foul wave.

“Christ,” he muttered, swallowing, then barked at Simms, “Give
me the torch.” He held it closer, the light illuminating a slender man, his body twisted so that his chest and face were turned upwards. One arm was flung out, as if he had reached for something—the bench, perhaps, to stop himself falling. His thick, wavy hair was streaked with gray, but his clean-shaven face took a few years from his age—he might, Gavin thought, have been in his late forties or early fifties. Where his dark coat fell open, great gouts of blood stained the white of his shirt.

“Any identification?” Gavin asked, glancing at Simms.

“No, sir. I just had a quick look in his pockets for a wallet, but there was nothing, not even coins.”

“You didn’t move him?”

“No, sir.” Simms sounded affronted. “I did find an old briefcase, a soft one, like a satchel, by the side of the bench, but there was nothing in that, either.”

“Odd,” Gavin said aloud, turning back to the corpse. An odd place for a robbery, and although the man’s clothes were of good quality, they were worn. The edges of his shirt collar had been darned with careful stitches.

What could this man of obviously reduced means have been carrying that was worth this sort of violence? And why would a common thief remove all traces of identification from his victim?

Then a glint at the man’s throat caught his eye and he held the torch nearer. It was a thin gold chain, half hidden by the neck of the white shirt. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, Gavin carefully turned back the shirt collar. A small pendant, no bigger than his fingernail, lay against the white skin of the man’s exposed clavicle. He lifted it as delicately as he could with his handkerchief-shrouded fingers and the chain came free, broken near the clasp.

Gavin sat back on his heels, frowning as he studied the pendant.

“What is it, sir?” asked Simms, breathing heavily over Gavin’s shoulder. “Looks like a miniature dumbbell.”

“No.” Gavin’s thoughts went back to his childhood neighbors,
the Kaplans, and the games of tag he and the Kaplan boys had played on fine days, racing in and out of the front door. He held the object up, so that it spun and glittered in the torchlight.

“If I’m not mistaken, it’s a mezuzah, a Jewish symbol of protection.”

Even over the hum of conversation at the table, Kincaid heard the slight rise of alarm in Gemma’s voice. Excusing himself with a smile at the other guests and a quick look at Cullen, who gave him a small nod, he slipped from his chair and threaded his way round the table and into the kitchen.

“We’re in the midst of a dinner party, but I could come in the morning,” he overheard as he came in. When he raised a brow in question, she covered the phone with her hand. “It’s Erika. She says there’s something she needs to talk to me about. But I—” She looked back at the dining room and shrugged.

Kincaid was surprised. He couldn’t imagine the independent and elegantly mannered Erika Rosenthal calling so late with such a request unless something was wrong.

“Go,” he said. “You’ve pulled the party off with flying colors, and things are winding down.” He gestured towards the guests assembled in the dining room. “We’ll tell them your friend’s ill. And you’ll get out of the washing-up.”

“Lucky you.” Gemma shot him a quick smile, then uncovered the phone. “Erika, I’ll be there in a quarter of an hour.”

The rain had stopped sometime during dinner, leaving the air fresh and cool. Realizing her head was a bit fuzzy from the wine she’d drunk, Gemma decided to walk the short distance to Arundel Gardens. It would give her a chance to clear out the high-energy chatter of the dinner party.

Just as a precaution, she took a brolly from the stand in the hall, and as she walked she swung it, tapping the end on the pavement. The leafy avenue of Lansdowne Road soon gave way to the terraces of Arundel Gardens, and light shone like a beacon from the lower windows of Erika’s house.

It occurred to Gemma that she had never been to Erika’s house in the evening, always for lunch or tea. She had always assumed Erika was early to bed and early to rise. She glanced at her watch as she rang the bell; it was half eleven.

Erika came quickly, however, and grasped Gemma’s hands in an unexpectedly physical gesture. As she led Gemma into the sitting room, she said, “I shouldn’t have got you out so late. You’ll think I’m taking advantage of our friendship.”

Gemma looked round with the pleasure she always felt. She had loved this room since the first time she had seen it, when, as a newly promoted inspector posted to Notting Hill, she had personally taken a burglary call, just to get the feel of the streets again. She had found Dr. Erika Rosenthal, a delicate white-haired woman with a fierce sparkle to her dark eyes, fuming over the theft of her television and some trinkets. It had been the invasion that had upset her more than the loss, and Gemma, worried about the older woman’s vulnerability on her own, had suggested she improve her security. She had known that the recovery of the woman’s possessions was highly unlikely.

She had stayed to chat a bit, she remembered, admiring the room with its deep red walls, expensive but comfortably worn furniture, shelves of books, and glowing landscape paintings. And then there had been Erika’s grand piano, an object much envied by Gemma before Duncan had given her one of her own.