Where Memories Lie (3 page)

A few weeks later, embroiled in an odd case involving Duncan’s family in Glastonbury, Gemma had been researching goddess worship and had pulled up a monograph by Dr. Erika Rosenthal. Recognizing the name from their previous meeting, she had called on Erika for advice, and so had begun a rather unusual friendship.

They differed widely in age, education, and background, and yet Erika had given Gemma support and advice, and had taken a keen interest in the boys, particularly Kit, encouraging him to pursue his dream of becoming a biologist.

Now, Gemma wondered if she had given half as much to the relationship as she had taken. “Of course you’re not taking advantage of me,” she said crisply, glancing at the open book by Erika’s chair, and a half-empty tumbler of what looked like whisky. She felt a frisson of unease—she’d never seen her friend drink anything stronger than the occasional sherry or glass of wine.

“Do let me get you something,” Erika was saying, “for coming out at this hour. I’ve sherry or whisky, or I could make you tea.”

“No, I’m fine, really.” Gemma sat in her usual spot, the chair nearest Erika’s, and studied her friend. “Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Erika subsided into her own seat and, after her burst of welcoming energy, seemed to shrink into herself. She looked frail and tired, and unnatural spots of color bloomed in her cheeks. Fingering the open book on her reading table, she said, “I feel foolish now, ringing you, when there’s nothing…But it was such a shock, and I couldn’t—”

The book slipped from her hands and landed, open, crumpled pages down, on the floor near Gemma’s foot. Lifting it, she saw that it was not a book but an elegantly produced soft-cover catalog from the auction house Harrowby’s. “‘Art Deco Jewelry’?” she said aloud, reading the cover. “I don’t understand.”

“No, of course not.” Erika shook her head, but made no attempt to retrieve the book. “And I hardly know where to begin.”

Gemma sat quietly, making of her listening an almost physical thing, as she had learned to do in interviews.

After a few moments, Erika sighed and met her eyes briefly. “I don’t often speak of these things. There are a few friends who know a little, because we share some experiences…but even so, after all these years, it is not easy.” Her language began to slip into a more formal ca
dence, as if her native German were closer to the surface of her mind.

“You know I came here to London from Berlin, at the beginning of the war?”

“With your husband. Yes, you’ve told me that,” agreed Gemma, realizing that she knew very little more.

“It sounds so simple, yes?” Erika’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, and her hands seemed to twist together of their own accord. “My father came to Germany from Russia,” she continued, “after the Great War, thinking to make a new future for himself and his bride. So we are, you see, refugees by tradition, as are almost all Jews. His name was Jakob Goldshtein, and he was a tradesman with some skill in metalwork. He apprenticed himself to a jewelry maker, and by the beginning of the 1930s he had surpassed his late master and made a reputation for himself.

“He loved the new Art Deco styles, the influence of Egyptian and African art—he said it made him think of all the places he would never see. He loved the contrast of silver and platinum against the brightly colored stones, but above all, he loved diamonds. He was a jolly man, my father, who liked to make jokes about his name. It amused him that he only worked in silver metals.

“By the time the Nazis began their rise to power, my mother had died, and my father had acquired wealth as well as reputation. He took commissions from the new German elite, even if it meant adding hooks to his beautiful necklaces and brooches so that they could attach their swastikas.” Erika’s face had softened as she talked about her father, and there was no censure in her voice.

“He thought, of course, that it would pass, the new regime, as such things usually did. And so it was that he sent his spoiled only daughter to university, and there she fell in love with her tutor, and married.”

Erika stopped, her hands still now, and silence descended upon the room. There were no muffled voices from the houses on either side, no footsteps from the street, and Gemma hesitated on the precipice of speech, not sure whether she might extend the spell or break it. At
last she said, very softly, “This was your husband?” and as she spoke she realized how seldom she had heard Erika speak of her marriage.

“David, yes. He was fifteen years older than I, a philosopher, and a pacifist, quite well known in intellectual circles. There was even talk that he might be nominated for the Nobel Prize. But in 1938, Carl von Ossietzky died in police custody, and my father knew what David refused to see, that neither David nor his ideas would be tolerated.

“We had little money, but my father had funds and connections. He arranged for us to leave the country, quietly, anonymously, and David was forced to agree.”

The tension in the air grew palpable, and Gemma saw the movement of Erika’s throat as she swallowed. She found herself holding her breath, this time not daring to interrupt.

“My father gave me a parting gift, the most beautiful of all the things he had created. It was to be my inheritance, and my bulwark against the future, if things did not go as we planned.”

Just as Gemma began to guess the import of the book she held, Erika reached for it. Slowly, deliberately, she smoothed the pages, then let it fall open of its own accord. As Erika gazed down, transfixed, Gemma got up and looked over her shoulder.

She gave a gasp of surprise and pleasure. The photo was full page, the background black, and against the velvety darkness the diamonds fell in a double cascade. The caption on the right-hand page read,
Jakob Goldshtein, a diamond cascade double-clip brooch, 1938
. “It’s lovely,” breathed Gemma.

“Yes. My father’s masterpiece.” Erika looked up and met her eyes. “I last saw it in Germany, more than fifty years ago. I want you to help me find out how it came to be in an English auction.”

“So how did you get on with Melody?” Kincaid handed Doug Cullen a dripping saucepan, glancing over as his friend was applying a tea towel industriously.

He and Doug had seen off the rest of the well-fed and well-lubricated guests, and now, with Kit and Toby home and the dogs having given up any hope of scraps, they’d loaded the dishwasher and begun on the pots and pans.

Doug Cullen’s blond schoolboy good looks and expressive face made him usually easy to read, but for once the glance he gave Kincaid was inscrutable. “No joy, there, I think,” he said, reaching for another pan.

“She doesn’t fancy you, or vice versa?” asked Kincaid, thinking that Gemma would be disappointed by the failure of her matchmaking scheme.

Shrugging, Cullen pushed his glasses up on his nose with the damp edge of the tea towel. “It might just be my bruised ego, but I don’t think PC Talbot fancies blokes much, full stop.”

Kincaid glanced at him in surprise. “Seriously?”

“There’s definitely a
Let’s all be blokes together
vibe.”

“Might be armor. That’s common enough.” Melody Talbot was attractive, dark haired, dark eyed, and cheerfully efficient, and Gemma had come to depend on her a good deal at work. If Melody was gay and had chosen not to make her sexual orientation public, then that was her business. It was tough enough for women officers as it was—his thought stopped suddenly short as he remembered Melody’s solicitousness towards Gemma, all the little thoughtful gestures that Gemma often repeated to him at day’s end.

“What about the prickly Maura Bell, then?” Kincaid asked.

They had worked a case in Southwark with the Scottish Inspector Bell, and although she and Cullen seemed as mismatched as chalk and cheese, there had been an attraction between them. Doug had even broken it off with his longtime girlfriend, Stella Fairchild-Priestly, but then gradually any mentions of Maura had disappeared.

This time Cullen’s feelings were all too apparent, as he flushed to the roots of his fair hair. “I couldn’t say,” he answered tersely, and Kincaid knew he’d overstepped the mark. It occurred to him that he
was as clueless about Cullen’s personal life as Gemma apparently was about Melody Talbot’s.

It was not something he was going to be given a chance to remedy that night, however, as Cullen quickly finished his drying and took himself off with a muttered excuse.

“You bloody sad wanker!” Cullen said aloud as he settled into a seat on the night bus that trundled its way down Bishop’s Bridge Road, earning him a look from an old lady bundled in too many coats for the May night. He’d contemplated the tube, certainly a quicker alternative, but had found himself unable to cope with the thought of sharing a carriage with drunken Saturday-night revelers and snogging couples.

But the brisk walk and the wait at the bus stop hadn’t made it any easier to put Maura Bell out of his mind, and his face burned with shame again as he remembered his reaction to Kincaid’s question. Why couldn’t he have just shrugged and offered some manly and macho platitude.
Easy come, easy go. You know women.

But no, he had to make an utter fool of himself in front of his boss.

The truth was that he’d taken Maura Bell out a number of times, for drinks, for dinner, to the cinema. He had thought she liked him, but a public school education combined with a deep and fundamental shyness had handicapped his nerve severely. When he finally got up the courage to make a serious advance, she’d drawn away from him as if stung.

He’d stammered out apologies; she’d made excuses and left him standing in the middle of the Millennium Bridge, so humiliated that for a moment he’d contemplated jumping in. But good sense had prevailed. Perhaps even that was sad—that he was incapable of making a grand romantic gesture.

He’d gone home to his gray flat in the Euston Road, and when
Maura had rung him repeatedly over the next few days, he’d refused to take her calls. After a bit the calls stopped, and in the months since, he’d devoted himself to work with excessive zeal, becoming the best researcher in the department, and limited his social life to an occasional after-work drink with Kincaid, and a monthly visit home to his parents in Saint Albans, during which he told them exaggerated stories of his importance at work.

The bus slowed for Great Portland Street, and for an instant Cullen had a wild thought. He could still take the Circle Line. Then the Docklands Light Railway to the Isle of Dogs. He could stand outside Maura Bell’s flat, waiting for a glimpse of her, just to see if she was still as he remembered.

Then he snorted in disgust.
Stalking,
that’s what he was contemplating, and he wasn’t that far gone—at least not yet. But the woman in the multiple coats seemed to disagree. She glared at him, chins quivering, making it clear she thought he was a nutter, then got up and waddled her way to the very back of the bus.

After Cullen had left, Kincaid gave the worktops one last wipe, turned out all but the small lamp in the kitchen, then stood and listened. Wesley had brought the boys home wired on pizza and lemonade, but now the giggles had faded upstairs. Even the dogs had disappeared; Tess, thirteen-year-old Kit’s little terrier, would be with him, while Geordie, Gemma’s cocker spaniel, would be curled on the foot of their bed, accompanied like sticking plaster by their black cat, Sid, who had developed a perversely unfeline passion for the little dog.

The house seemed to exhale, settling into the profound silence of night inching towards morning, and Kincaid gave a worried glance at the clock above the cooker. It was half-past twelve—surely Gemma would be home soon.

He felt a niggle of worry about Erika’s phone call. It seemed so
out of character, but then he found Gemma’s relationship with Erika rather odd as well. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the older woman, but when she studied him with her keen glance he felt like a suitor sized up and found wanting, an uncomfortable sensation for a man unused to feeling intimidated.

Did she disapprove of the fact that they weren’t married? he wondered. But surely she knew Gemma well enough to know that was her choice, rather than his.

Kincaid shrugged, irritated with himself for letting his thoughts go down that path, but he found he couldn’t contemplate going to bed or settling down with a book while Gemma was still out. He’d decided he might turn on the telly when the doorbell rang. The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet house, and upstairs one of the dogs gave a single yip of surprise.

Hurrying towards the front door, he was spurred by an instant, clutching panic. Gemma was out—had something happened to her?

He was telling himself not to be daft, that one of the guests had forgotten something, when he swung open the door and found Gemma’s father standing on the doorstep.

The restaurant and club on All Saints Road was one of the latest ventures meant to upgrade the still dubious nether regions of Notting Hill. But on this Saturday night, the veterinary clinic across the street and the barred shop fronts seemed only to add to the ambience, and inside the restaurant, the aura of cool could have cut glass. No patron was much over thirty; all were rich, or pretending to be rich.

Kristin Cahill was one of those pretending to a status as yet unachieved. She stood at the bar in a little black dress, a designer copy that made up in élan what it lacked in label, and that set off her milky-white skin. Her dark hair was feather cut, flattering her gamine features and long neck, and her full lips were carefully outlined in deep pink.

She checked her lipstick for the hundredth time, then snapped her compact closed, satisfied. She could pass for French—a Leslie Caron, even an Edith Piaf—but there was no one to appreciate her efforts except the bartender, and she was tired of fielding his too-interested glances.

Lifting her martini, she turned her back and sipped, gazing with growing irritation at the door. Where the hell was Dominic? The DJ had started in the club downstairs; she could hear a blare of sound when the stairway door swung open, feel the vibration through the soles of her feet. Dom always had an excuse, more often than not having to do with his mother, the controlling bitch from hell. But then what had she expected when she started going out with an almost thirty-year-old man who lived with his mum?