IT WAS STILL POURING WHEN THEY reached the warehouse. Kincaid killed the engine as the Rover coasted to a stop behind a gray Mercedes.
“Lewis’s car?” asked Gemma, thinking she remembered seeing it in the car park at Heron Quays.
Kincaid nodded, meeting her eyes. “Careful.”
They dashed through the pelting rain to the warehouse. The door stood open a few inches. Kincaid eased inside and Gemma followed, coming to a halt beside him in the shadowy interior.
They heard the voices immediately, coming from the open door of Annabelle and Teresa’s office high above them. Gemma felt Kincaid touch her arm, lightly, then move away towards the staircase. She followed as quietly as she could, cursing the fact that she’d worn slick-soled shoes.
Halfway up, she found she could distinguish the voices—Lewis’s; Gordon’s; and, though less familiar to her, William’s—if not quite make out the words. Then, as they neared the top, she heard Lewis shout, “Gordon, don’t be a bloody fool! Give it to me.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, then the smack of something hard hitting the floorboards.
Gemma skidded to a halt inches from Kincaid and peered through the doorway. Gordon and Lewis Finch were locked together as if frozen in the midst of a dance, Lewis’s hand clamped round Gordon’s wrist, Gordon’s fingers splayed, empty. Their eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the room, where William Hammond stooped and straightened again, a gun in his hand.
He held it awkwardly, staring at it as if not quite certain what it was. Then he looked up at them, and Gemma saw in his faded blue eyes not surprise, but a grief so bleak it made her bones feel cold.
He lifted the gun. Before Gemma or Kincaid could react, Lewis shouted, “William, no!” and lunged towards him.
But William Hammond touched the barrel of the revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 16There is a growing movement determined to bring the river back to life.
George Nicholson, from Dockland
“He loved her,” Gemma said slowly. She sat in Janice’s office at Limehouse Station, drinking revolting coffee from the machine. “Annabelle was the child of his dreams, the one who would carry on for him, fulfill his ambitions. How hard it must have been for her, living up to that.”
Janice said, “And he couldn’t bear for her to destroy his image of her—”
“Or his own image. William Hammond spent fifty years living a lie so thoroughly that he even convinced himself.”
A week had passed, and they were still sorting out the details of the case. Lewis Finch had made a detailed statement, as had Gordon, and it seemed to Gemma that their shared loss might go a long way towards healing the rift between them.
“And Lewis?” said Janice. “He was responsible for Edwina Burne-Jones’s and the tutor’s deaths as well. Will he be prosecuted?”
“Unlikely, I should think. There’s no evidence, except for Lewis’s own statement, and I doubt the Crown Prosecution Service would waste their time.” Softly, Gemma added, “I have a feeling Lewis Finch has paid enough.”
Janice nodded. “I was wrong about Reg Mortimer,” she said wryly, making a face as she sipped at her coffee. “And it seems I was wrong about George Brent, too. He did know something. When I told him what happened, he remembered that the night Annabelle was killed, he’d stepped outside sometime after midnight to see his lady friend home. He saw a car come slowly up Seyssel Street and turn right into Manchester Road, and he knew the driver’s face—although he’d never actually met him, he’d seen him many times over the years.”
“William Hammond?”
“He must have had his car at the warehouse when Annabelle arrived unexpectedly, and that’s the way he would have gone, taking Annabelle’s body to the park. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t turn himself in when he realized he’d killed her.”
“I suppose even then he couldn’t face the truth of what he’d done to Annabelle—or to Edwina. But it destroyed him.” Gemma thought of the way he had left his daughter’s body, so lovingly arranged … and she thought of Jo Lowell, bereft now of mother, sister, and father, burdened with the terrible knowledge of what her father had done. But she thought Jo, like Annabelle, had taken her strength from their mother, and that she would be all right.
“There’s one good thing to come out of this, maybe,” Janice said a bit hesitantly. When Gemma looked at her, she went on with a little smile, “George Brent’s son’s been round to see me. He was an old beau, before I met Bill.”
“And?” asked Gemma, grinning.
“We have a proper dinner date. Tonight. He’s a nice enough bloke,” Janice added, defensively.
“I’m sure he is,” said Gemma, and surprised Janice by giving her a quick hug before collecting her things and saying goodbye.
• • •
DURING LAST FRIDAY’S STORM, LIGHTNING HAD struck the DLR tracks, but the damage had been repaired and Gemma had taken the tube and then the train out to Limehouse.
The storm had brought a week of clear skies and mild weather as well, and as Gemma boarded the DLR at Westferry, she looked forward to her walk home alone from the Angel tube stop. All week she had been plagued by a sort of melancholy that not even the thought of tomorrow’s piano lesson had relieved, and although she knew she was indulging it, she couldn’t seem to shake it off.
She had tried to put Gordon Finch from her mind—it had been an impossible relationship from the beginning, she knew that. But still she had this nagging sense of opportunities missed, of doors not opened, and when she emerged from the Angel and saw that the music shop across Pentonville Road was still open, she went in.
She browsed for a bit, looking over simple arrangements that she thought she might be able to learn to play, but in the end she bought what she knew she had come in for—the sheet music for Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When.” Tomorrow, she’d ask Wendy if she could work towards learning it.
Tucking the music a bit guiltily into her bag as she left the shop, she walked back to the Liverpool Road, past the Sainsbury’s where she’d first seen Gordon, turning into Richmond Avenue for the last few blocks before she reached Thornhill Gardens.
Suddenly, she stopped, listening, thinking at first she was imagining the notes of the clarinet, faint on the clear air. Then she saw him, sitting on a swing in the empty school yard, clarinet in hand. He stood and came towards her.
“I took a chance,” he said.
“But how—”
“I used to watch the way you walked home. I wanted to know about you.”
“But you—” She shook her head. He had never seemed to notice her at all.
“I’ve seen your son, too. How old is he?”
“He’s three,” said Gemma, bemused. “His name’s Toby. Gordon, about your dad—how is he?”
“He’s gone to Surrey—something about laying ghosts. But that’s not why I wanted to see you,” he added quickly. “I think we have some unfinished business, you and I … and …” He looked away, rubbing his fingers absently over the keys of the clarinet. “And it seems to me that the past has done enough damage, that we shouldn’t let what’s happened chart our course.”
Gemma met his eyes then, and what she saw there made her throat tighten with emotion. Gordon Finch would never say he was lonely, would never admit to needing anyone, and she knew the effort it must have taken him to come here.
But she also saw something else. He had put before her the choice she’d never expected to have the option of making. Reaching up, she kissed him on the lips, then stepped back and looked at him. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And before she could change her mind, she turned and walked away.