Kincaid watched as a motorcyclist roared by them, his face rendered blank and anonymous by his helmet. "You know how hard those sort of cases are to solve. They would naturally assume it was manslaughter rather than homicide, given no other evidence. Gemma, are you all right?"
The cramp had caught her by surprise, but she kept her voice even as she replied, "Fine. I just need to get off my feet for a few minutes. And I've got to get back to the station, anyway. I've a meeting with the super, though I've no idea what I should tell him at this point."
"Let me go back to the Yard and see what I can find out about the couple who went to prison. We've got a name, we can assume that the offense was drug-related, and we have an approximate date- sixty-nine or thereabouts. I'll put Cullen on it. His research skills almost make up for his lack of bedside manner."
"Ring me?" she asked, suddenly loath to see him go.
"Of course." He kissed her briefly, a touch of warm lips against her cold cheek, then they went their separate ways.
When Wesley's sisters came in with their children, he made an excuse to leave the flat. While his mum seemed to find the bedlam comforting, he felt an urgent need to sort out his thoughts.
He walked quickly down to Portobello Road, then his feet turned him automatically to the left, towards Elgin Crescent and the café.
They were all there: Alex, looking subdued, with new hollows under his cheekbones; Fern, hair sparkling with glitter, green eyes inscrutable; Marc, who sat back, observing, as he usually did; Bryony, animated for Marc's benefit; and even Otto, who appeared to have joined them over the remains of their sandwiches and a pot of coffee.
"Wesley!" called out Otto. "You see, you cannot stay away, even when you have the day off. Is this a good thing?"
"Sit down, Wes," urged Bryony. "You look as if you've seen a ghost."
They were all gazing at him expectantly.
"It's the oddest thing," he said reluctantly, then proceeded to tell them about his aunt and uncle, and how he had learned of their unexpected connection with Karl Arrowood.
Kit and Toby had just come back from taking the dogs for a walk down the street. The sun had come out, briefly, and Kit had taken advantage of the warmest part of the day. Once the sun passed its zenith, the afternoon would cool quickly.
The boys had developed a routine for their days together, and Kit had just begun to realize how much he would miss it when his school term started the following week.
After Duncan and Gemma left for work, he made Toby eggs for breakfast, then they took the dogs for a run in the big garden. Before lunch they played indoor games, then after their cheese-and-pickle sandwiches (Toby's without the pickle) they had quiet time. Toby, of course, insisted that he was too old for naps, but Kit had found that if they read books together, Toby would usually drift off to sleep for an hour or so and be much better tempered for the remainder of the afternoon.
Now, he would make them something for tea, and they could watch Blue Peter on the telly.
There was still a drift of snow under the eave of the house, and Kit paused to pick up a leaf that had lodged in its surface. It was golden, and completely encased in a clear coating of ice, a momentary jewel. As he turned to show his find to Toby, Tess barked suddenly. Startled, Kit dropped the leaf and looked up. A man walking along the pavement had stopped and stood watching them. Geordie gave a few halfhearted woofs, but his tail was wagging, and Kit recognized Marc, the man who'd brought Geordie to them.
"Hullo, Kit," Marc called out. "Hullo, Toby. Is your mum at home, by any chance?"
"No, she's still at work."
"Oh, well, tell her I said hello," he said, with an odd sort of smile. "Happy New Year to you, then," he added, and walked on.
Kit stared after him. There was something in the line of Marc's body, the length of his stride, that triggered a memory. He had seen the man a few days ago, just up the street, but had only glimpsed him from the back.
Oh, well, he thought, shrugging, perhaps Marc lived in the neighborhood, and liked to take walks. People did take walks without dogs, although Kit now found that hard to imagine.
His own charges were tugging at their leads, claiming his attention, and Toby had managed to find a muddy patch beneath the tree. Pulling in the dogs, Kit gathered up Toby and shepherded his brood into the house, the walking man already forgotten.
Oh, God, it was all such a muddle, Gemma thought, running her hands through her already disheveled hair. The files and reports on all three murder cases lay strewn across her desk as if a whirlwind had picked them up and dropped them again, a jumble of utterly useless facts. She stood abruptly, feeling that if she didn't get some air, her head would burst with frustration. Patting her jacket pocket to make sure she had her phone, she slammed out of her office. "I'm going out for a bit," she called out to Melody as she passed the staff room, but she didn't stop to explain.
She walked without thinking for the first few minutes, concentrating on nothing but the regular jab of the frigid air filling her lungs and the crisp step of her booted feet on the pavement.
Then, as she relaxed, bits of the reports began to shift and jostle in her mind like pieces in a child's puzzle square. She sorted them as if it were an exercise, running through each possible suspect, each discarded avenue of investigation. It was only when she reached Alex Dunn that something began to niggle at her. Her steps slowed.
Alex was Bryony's friend, Kincaid had said. He could have taken the scalpel from the surgery… On the pretext of a visit, perhaps, Gemma added to herself, as could any of Bryony's friends. But the scalpel had disappeared at night, in an obvious theft…
A fragment of that morning's conversation with Bryony floated back to her, only half heard in her worry over Geordie. Bryony had panicked because she'd misplaced her keys, fearing she might have compromised the surgery's security. All had been well in this morning's case… but what if it had happened before? Gavin had accused Bryony of absentmindedly leaving the surgery unlocked, but what if someone Bryony knew- and trusted- had taken her keys without her knowledge? Only a few minutes would have been needed to make a copy of the key to the surgery door, then the keys would have been returned, no one the wiser.
But which of them had it been? Alex and Otto had alibis for the time of Dawn's death, as did Otto for Karl's, and Alex's involvement in Karl's death seemed unlikely. Fern they had never considered seriously, simply because she did not possess the physical size and strength to wield the knife.
That left Marc.
Gemma's blood ran cold. If anyone had access to Bryony's keys, as well as knowledge of the surgery, it was Marc. He was fit and strong; she had seen him lift their Christmas tree as if it were a twig.
And he lived alone. As far as Gemma knew, his movements on the nights of Dawn's and Karl's murders had never been checked. But why would Marc commit such crimes?
No, it just wasn't possible! The whole idea was a fabrication of her overstressed imagination-
And yet… Looking up, she realized she had come to the intersection of Kensington Park and Elgin Crescent. She was near enough. It couldn't hurt to have a friendly word with Marc, ask in a roundabout way what he'd been doing on those nights, just to set her mind at rest.
She glanced in Otto's window as she passed the café, seeing Wesley wiping down a table, his head bobbing to unheard music. Then she turned into Portobello Road and started down the hill.