Chapter One From the train window Duncan Kincaid could see the piles of debris in the back gardens and on the occasional common. Wooden planks, dead branches and twigs, crushed cardboard boxes and the odd bit of broken furniture – anything portable served as fair game for Guy Fawkes bonfires. He rubbed ineffectually at the grimy window-pane with his jacket cuff, hoping for a better view of one particularly splendid monument to British abandon, then sat back in his seat with a sigh. The fine drizzle in the air, combined with British Rail’s standard of cleanliness, reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. The train slowed as it approached High Wycombe. Kincaid stood and stretched, then collected his overcoat and bag from the rack. He’d gone straight to Marylebone from the Yard, grabbing the emergency kit he kept in his office – clean shirt, toiletries, razor, only the necessities needed for an unexpected summons. And most were more welcome than this, a political request from the AC to aid an old school chum in a delicate situation. Kincaid grimaced. Give him an unidentified body in a field any day. He swayed as the train lurched to a halt. Bending down to peer through the window, he scanned the station carpark for a glimpse of his escort. The unmarked panda car, its shape unmistakable even in the increasing rain, was pulled up next to the platform, its parking lights on, a grey plume of exhaust escaping from its tailpipe. It looked like the cavalry had been called out to welcome Scotland Yard’s fair-haired boy. ‘Jack Makepeace. Sergeant, I should say. Thames Valley CID.’ Makepeace smiled, yellowed teeth showing under the sandy bristle of moustache. ‘Nice to meet you, sir.’ He engulfed Kincaid’s hand for an instant in a beefy paw, then took Kincaid’s case and swung it into the panda’s boot. ‘Climb in, and we can talk as we go.’ The car’s interior smelled of stale cigarettes and wet wool. Kincaid cracked his window, then shifted a bit in his seat so that he could see his companion. A fringe of hair the same colour as the moustache, freckles extending from face into shiny scalp, a heavy nose with the disproportionate look that comes of having been smashed – all in all not a prepossessing face, but the pale blue eyes were shrewd, and the voice unexpectedly soft for a man of his bulk. Makepeace drove competently on the rain-slick streets, snaking his way south and west until they crossed the M40 and left the last terraced houses behind. He glanced at Kincaid, ready to divert some of his attention from the road. ‘Tell me about it, then,’ Kincaid said. ‘What do you know?’ ‘Not much, and I’d just as soon you start from scratch, if you don’t mind.’ Makepeace looked at him, opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then closed it again. After a moment he said, ‘Okay. Daybreak this morning the Hambleden lock-keeper, one Perry Smith, opens the sluicegate to fill the lock for an early traveller, and a body rushes through it into the lock. Gave him a terrible shock, as you can imagine. He called Marlow – they sent a panda car and the medics.’ He paused as he downshifted into an intersection, then concentrated on overtaking an ancient Morris Minor that was creeping its way up the gradient. ‘They fished him out, then when it became obvious that the poor chappie was not going to spew up the canal and open his eyes, they called us.’ The windscreen wiper squeaked against dry glass and Kincaid realized that the rain had stopped. Freshly ploughed fields rose on either side of the narrow road. The bare, chalky soil was a pale brown, and against it the black dots of foraging rooks looked like pepper on toast. Away to the west a cap of beech trees crowned a hill. ‘How’d you identify him?’ ‘Wallet in the poor sod’s back pocket. Connor Swann, aged thirty-five, brown hair, blue eyes, height about six feet, weight around twelve stone. Lived in Henley, just a few miles upstream.’ ‘Sounds like your lads could have handled it easily enough,’ said Kincaid, not bothering to conceal his annoyance. He considered the prospect of spending his Friday evening tramping around the Chiltern Hundreds, damp as a Guy Fawkes bonfire, instead of meeting Gemma for an after-work pint at the pub down Wilfred Street. ‘Bloke has a few drinks, goes for a stroll on the sluicegate, falls in. Bingo.’ Makepeace was already shaking his head. Ah, but that’s not the whole story, Mr Kincaid. Someone left a very nice set of prints on either side of his throat.’ He lifted both hands from the wheel for an instant in an eloquently graphic gesture. ‘It looks like he was strangled, Mr Kincaid.’ Kincaid shrugged. ‘A reasonable assumption, I would think. But I don’t quite see why that merits Scotland Yard’s intervention.’ ‘It’s not the how, Mr Kincaid, but the who. It seems that the late Mr Swann was the son-in-law of Sir Gerald Asherton, the conductor, and Dame Caroline Stowe, who I believe is a singer of some repute.’ Seeing Kincaid’s blank expression, he continued, Are you not an opera buff, Mr Kincaid?’ ‘Are you?’ Kincaid asked before he could clamp down his involuntary surprise, knowing he shouldn’t have judged the man’s cultural taste by his physical characteristics. ‘I have some recordings, and I watch it on the telly, but I’ve never been to a performance.’ The wide sloping fields had given way to heavily wooded hills, and now, as the road climbed, the trees encroached upon it. ‘We’re coming into the Chiltern Hills,’ said Makepeace. ‘Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline live just a bit further on, near Fingest. The house is called Badger’s End, though you wouldn’t think it to look at it.’ He negotiated a hairpin bend, and then they were running downhill again, beside a rocky stream. ‘We’ve put you up at the pub in Fingest, by the way, the Chequers. Lovely garden in the back, on a fine day. Not that you’re likely to get much use of it,’ he added, squinting up at the darkening sky. The trees enclosed them now. Gold and copper leaves arched tunnel-like overhead, and golden leaves padded the surface of the road. The late afternoon sky was still heavily overcast, yet by some odd trick of light the leaves seemed to take on an eerie, almost phosphorescent glow. Kincaid wondered if just such an enchanting effect had produced the ancient idea of ‘roads paved with gold’. ‘Will you be needing me?’ Makepeace asked, breaking the spell. ‘I’d expected you to have back-up.’ ‘Gemma will be here this evening, and I’m sure I can manage until then.’ Seeing Makepeace’s look of incomprehension, he added, ‘Gemma James, my sergeant.’ ‘Rather your lot than Thames Valley.’ Makepeace gave something halfway between a laugh and a snort. ‘One of my green constables made the mistake this morning of calling Dame Caroline “Lady Asherton”. The housekeeper took him aside and gave him a tongue-lashing he’ll not soon forget. Informed him that Dame Caroline’s title is hers by right and takes precedence over her title as Sir Gerald’s wife.’ Kincaid smiled. ‘I’ll try not to put my foot in it. So there’s a housekeeper, too?’ ‘A Mrs Plumley. And the widow, Mrs Julia Swann.’ After an amused sideways glance at Kincaid, he continued, ‘Make what you will of that one. Seems Mrs Swann lives at Badger’s End with her parents, not with her husband.’ Before Kincaid could form a question, Makepeace held up his hand and said, ‘Watch now.’ They turned left into a steep, high-banked lane, so narrow that brambles and exposed roots brushed the sides of the car. The sky had darkened perceptibly towards evening and it was dim and shadowed under the trees. ‘That’s the Wormsley valley off to your right, though you’d hardly know it.’ Makepeace pointed, and through a gap in the trees Kincaid caught a glimpse of twilit fields rolling away down the valley. ‘It’s hard to believe you’re only forty miles or so west of London, isn’t it, Mr Kincaid?’ he added with an air of proprietary pride. As they reached the lane’s high point, Makepeace turned left into the darkness of the beech woods. The track ran gently downhill, its thick padding of leaves silencing the car wheels. A few hundred yards on they rounded a curve and Kincaid saw the house. Its white stone shone beneath the darkness of the trees, and lamplight beamed welcomingly from its uncurtained windows. He knew immediately what Makepeace had meant about the name – Badger’s End implied a certain rustic, earthy simplicity, and this house, with its smooth white walls and arched windows and doors, had an elegant, almost ecclesiastic presence. Makepeace pulled the car up on the soft carpet of leaves, but left the engine running as he fished in his pocket. He handed Kincaid a card. ‘I’ll be off, then. Here’s the number at the local nick. I’ve some business to attend to, but if you’ll ring up when you’ve finished, someone will come and collect you.’ Kincaid waved as Makepeace pulled away, then stood staring at the house as the still silence of the woods settled over him. Grieving widow, distraught in-laws, an imperative for social discretion . . . not a recipe for an easy evening, or an easy case. He squared his shoulders and stepped forward. The front door swung open and light poured out to meet him. ‘I’m Caroline Stowe. It’s so good of you to come.’ This time the hand that took his was small and soft, and he found himself looking down into the woman’s upturned face. ‘Duncan Kincaid. Scotland Yard.’ With his free hand he pulled his warrant card from his inside jacket pocket, but she ignored it, still grasping his other hand between her own. His mind having summed up the words Dame and opera as large, he was momentarily taken aback. Caroline Stowe stood a fraction over five feet tall, and while her small body was softly rounded, she could by no stretch of the imagination be described as heavy. His surprise must have been apparent, because she laughed and said, ‘I don’t sing Wagner, Mr Kincaid. My speciality is bel canto. And besides, size is not relevant to strength of voice. It has to do with breath control, among other things.’ She released his hand. ‘Do come in. How rude of me to keep you standing on the threshold like some plumber’s apprentice.’ As she closed the front door, he looked around with interest. A lamp on a side table illuminated the hall, casting shadows on the smooth grey flagstone floor. The walls were a pale grey-green, bare except for a few large gilt-framed watercolours depicting voluptuous, bare-breasted women lounging about Romanesque ruins. Caroline opened a door on the right and stood aside, gesturing him in with an open palm. Directly opposite the door a coal fire burned in a grate, and above the mantel he saw himself, framed in an ornate mirror – chestnut hair unruly from the damp, eyes shadowed, their colour indistinguishable from across the room. Only the top of Caroline’s dark head showed beneath the level of his shoulder. He had only an instant to gather an impression of the room. The same grey slate floor, here softened by scattered rugs; comfortable, slightly worn chintz furniture; a jumble of used tea things on a tray – all dwarfed by the baby grand piano. Its dark surface reflected the light from a small lamp, and sheet music stood open behind the keyboard. The bench was pushed back at an angle, as though someone had just stopped playing. ‘Gerald, this is Superintendent Kincaid, from Scotland Yard.’ Caroline moved to stand beside the large rumpled-looking man rising from the sofa. ‘Mr Kincaid, my husband, Sir Gerald Asherton.’ ‘How nice to meet you,’ Kincaid said, feeling the response inappropriate even as he made it. But if Caroline insisted on treating his visit as a social occasion, he would play along for a bit. ‘Sit down.’ Sir Gerald gathered a copy of the day’s Times from the seat of an armchair and moved it to a nearby end table. ‘Would you like some tea?’ asked Caroline. ‘We’ve just finished, and it’s no trouble to boil the kettle again.’ Kincaid sniffed the lingering scent of toast in the air and his stomach rumbled. From where he sat he could see the paintings he’d missed when entering the room – watercolours again, by the same artist’s hand, but this time the women reclined in elegant rooms and their dresses had the sheen of watered silk. A house to tempt the appetites, he thought, and said, ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Have a drink, then,’ Sir Gerald said. ‘The sun’s certainly over the yardarm.’ ‘No, I’m fine. Really.’ What an incongruous couple they made, still standing side by side, hovering over him as if he were a royal guest. Caroline, dressed in a peacock-blue silk blouse and dark tailored trousers, looked neat and almost childlike beside her husband’s bulk. Sir Gerald smiled at Kincaid, a great, infectious grin that showed pink gums. ‘Geoffrey recommended you very highly, Mr Kincaid.’ By Geoffrey he must mean Geoffrey Menzies-St John, Kincaid’s assistant commissioner, and Asherton’s old schoolmate. Though the two men must be of an age, there any outward resemblance ended. But the AC, while dapper and precise enough to appear priggish, possessed a keen intelligence, and Kincaid thought that unless Sir Gerald shared that quality, the two men would not have kept up with one another over the years. Kincaid leaned forward and took a breath. ‘Won’t you sit down, please, both of you, and tell me what’s happened?’ They sat obediently, but Caroline perched straight-backed on the sofa’s edge, away from the protective curve of her husband’s arm. ‘It’s Connor. Our son-in-law. They’ll have told you.’ She looked at him, her brown eyes made darker by dilating pupils. ‘We can’t believe it’s true. Why would someone kill Connor? It doesn’t make sense, Mr Kincaid.’ ‘We’ll certainly need more evidence before we can treat this as an official murder inquiry, Dame Caroline.’ ‘But I thought . . .’ she began, then looked rather helplessly at Kincaid. ‘Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Was your son-in-law well liked?’ Kincaid looked at them both, including Sir Gerald in the question, but it was Caroline who answered. ‘Of course. Everyone liked Con. You couldn’t not.’ ‘Had he been behaving any differently lately? Upset or unhappy for any reason?’ Shaking her head, she said, ‘Con was always . . . just Con. You would have to have known . . .’ Her eyes filled. She balled one hand into a fist and held it to her mouth. ‘I feel such a bloody fool. I’m not usually given to hysterics, Mr Kincaid. Or incoherence. It’s the shock, I suppose.’ Kincaid thought her definition of hysteria rather exaggerated, but said soothingly, ‘It’s perfectly all right, Dame Caroline. When did you see Connor last?’ She sniffed and ran a knuckle under one eye. It came away smudged with black. ‘Lunch. He came for lunch yesterday. He often did.’ ‘Were you here as well, Sir Gerald?’ Kincaid asked, deciding that only a direct question was likely to elicit a response. Sir Gerald sat with his head back, eyes half closed, his untidy tuft of grey beard thrusting forward. Without moving, he said, ‘Yes, I was here as well.’ ‘And your daughter?’ Sir Gerald’s head came up at that, but it was his wife who answered. ‘Julia was here, but didn’t join us. She usually prefers to lunch in her studio.’ Curiouser and curiouser, thought Kincaid. The son-in-law comes to lunch but his wife refuses to eat with him. ‘So you don’t know when your daughter saw him last?’ Again the quick, almost conspiratorial glance between husband and wife, then Sir Gerald said, ‘This has all been very difficult for Julia.’ He smiled at Kincaid, but the fingers of his free hand picked at what looked suspiciously like moth holes in his brown woollen sweater. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand if she’s a bit. . . prickly.’ ‘Is your daughter here? I’d like to see her, if I may. And I will want to talk to you both at more length, when I’ve had a chance to review the statements you’ve given Thames Valley.’ ‘Of course. I’ll take you.’ Caroline stood, and Sir Gerald followed suit. Their hesitant expressions amused Kincaid. They’d been expecting a battering, and now didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. They needn’t worry – they’d be glad to see the back of him soon enough. ‘Sir Gerald.’ Kincaid stood and shook hands. The watercolours caught his eye again as he turned towards the door. Although most of the women were fair, with delicate rose-flushed skin and lips parted to show small glistening white teeth, he realized that something about them reminded him of the woman he followed. ‘This was the children’s nursery,’ Caroline said, her breathing steady and even after the three-flight climb. ‘We made it into a studio for her before she left home. I suppose you might say it’s been useful,’ she added, giving him a sideways look he couldn’t interpret. They’d reached the top of the house and the landing was unornamented, the carpeting threadbare in spots. Caroline turned to the left and stopped before a closed door. ‘She’ll be expecting you.’ She smiled at Kincaid and left him. He tapped on the door, waited, tapped again and listened, holding his breath to catch any faint sound. The echo of Caroline’s footsteps had died away. From somewhere below he heard a faint cough. Hesitating, he brushed his knuckles against the door once more, then turned the knob and went in. The woman sat on a high stool with her back to him, her head bent over something he couldn’t see. When Kincaid said, ‘Uh, hello,’ she whipped around towards him and he saw that she held a paintbrush in her hand. Julia Swann was not beautiful. Even as he formed the thought, quite deliberately and matter-of-factly, he found he couldn’t stop looking at her. Taller, thinner, sharper than her mother, dressed in a white shirt with the tail out and narrow black jeans, she displayed no softly rounded curves in figure or manner. Her chin-length dark hair swung abruptly when she moved her head, punctuating her gestures. He read his intrusion in her startled posture, felt it in the room’s instantly recognizable air of privacy. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Duncan Kincaid, from Scotland Yard. I did knock.’ ‘I didn’t hear you. I mean, I suppose I did, but I wasn’t paying attention. I often don’t when I’m working.’ Even her voice lacked the velvety resonance of Caroline’s. She slid off the stool, wiping her hands on a bit of rag. ‘I’m Julia Swann. But then you know all that, don’t you?’ The hand she held out to him was slightly damp from contact with the cloth, but her grasp was quick and hard. He looked around for somewhere to sit, saw nothing but a rather tatty and overstuffed armchair which would place him a couple of feet below the level of her stool. Instead he chose to lean against a cluttered workbench. Although the room was fairly large – probably, he thought, the result of knocking two of the house’s original bedrooms into one – the disorder extended everywhere he looked. The windows, covered with simple white rice-paper blinds, provided islands of calm in the jumble, as did the high table Julia Swann had been facing when he entered the room. Its surface was bare except for a piece of white plastic splashed with bright daubs of paint, and a Masonite board propped up at a slight angle. Before she slid onto the stool again and blocked his view, he glimpsed a small sheet of white paper masking-taped to the board. Glancing at the paintbrush still in her hand, she set it on the table behind her and pulled a packet of cigarettes from her shirt pocket. She held it towards him, and when he shook his head and said, ‘No, thanks,’ she lit one and studied him as she exhaled. ‘So, Superintendent Kincaid – it is Superintendent, isn’t it? Mummy seemed to be quite impressed by the title, but then that’s not unusual. What can I do for you?’ ‘I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs Swann.’ He tossed out an expected opening gambit, even though he suspected already that her response would not be conventional. She shrugged, and he could see the movement of her shoulders under the loose fabric of her shirt. Crisply starched, buttons on the left – Kincaid wondered if it might have been her husband’s. ‘Call me Julia. I never got used to “Mrs Swann”. Always sounded to me like Con’s mum.’ She leaned towards him and picked up a cheap porcelain ashtray bearing the words Visit the Cheddar Gorge. ‘She died last year, so that’s one bit of drama we don’t have to deal with.’ ‘Did you not like your husband’s mother?’ Kincaid asked. ‘Amateur Irish. All b’gosh and b’gorra.’ Then she added more affectionately, ‘I used to say that her accent increased proportionately to her distance from County Cork.’ Julia smiled for the first time. It was her father’s smile, as unmistakable as a brand, and it transformed her face. ‘Maggie adored Con. She would have been devastated. Con’s dad did a bunk when Con was a baby . . . if he ever had a dad, that is,’ she added, only the corners of her lips quirking up this time at some private joke. ‘I had the impression from your parents that you and your husband no longer lived together.’ ‘Not for . . . ‘ She spread the fingers of her right hand and touched the tips with her left forefinger as her lips moved. Her fingers were long and slender, and she wore no rings. ‘Well, more than a year now.’ Kincaid watched as she ground out her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘It’s a rather odd arrangement, if you don’t mind my saying so.’ ‘Do you think so, Mr Kincaid? It suited us.’ ‘No plans to divorce?’ Julia shrugged again and crossed her knees, one slender leg swinging jerkily. ‘No.’ He studied her, wondering just how hard he might push her. If she were grieving for her husband, she was certainly adept at hiding it. She shifted under his scrutiny and patted her shirt pocket, as if reassuring herself that her cigarettes hadn’t vanished, and he thought that perhaps her armour wasn’t quite impenetrable. ‘Do you always smoke so much?’ he said, as if he had every right to ask. She smiled and pulled out the packet, shaking loose another cigarette. He noticed that her white shirt wasn’t as immaculate as he’d thought – it had a smudge of violet paint across the breast. ‘Were you on friendly terms with Connor? See him often?’ ‘We spoke, yes, if that’s what you mean, but we weren’t exactly what you’d call best mates.’ ‘Did you see him yesterday, when he came here for lunch?’ ‘No. I don’t usually break for lunch when I’m working. Ruins my concentration.’ Julia stubbed out her newly lit cigarette and slid off the stool. ‘As you’ve done now. I might as well quit for the day.’ She gathered a handful of paintbrushes and crossed the room to an old-fashioned washstand with basin and ewer. ‘That’s the one drawback up here,’ she said, over her shoulder, ‘no running water.’ His view no longer blocked by her body, Kincaid straightened up and examined the paper taped to the drawing board. It was about the size of a page in a book, smooth-textured, and bore a faint pencil sketch of a spiky flower he didn’t recognize. She had begun to lay in spots of clear, vivid colour, lavender and green. Tufted vetch,’ she said, when she turned and saw him looking. A climbing plant. Grows in hedgerows. Flowers in—’ ‘Julia.’ He interrupted the rush of words and she stopped, startled by the imperative in his voice. ‘Your husband died last night. His body was discovered this morning. Wasn’t that enough to interrupt your concentration? Or your work schedule?’ She turned her head away, her dark hair swinging to hide her face, but when she turned back to him her eyes were dry. ‘You’d better understand, Mr Kincaid. You’ll hear it from others soon enough. The term “bastard” might have been invented to describe Connor Swann. ‘And I despised him.’ Chapter Two ‘A lager and lime, please.’ Gemma James smiled at the barman. If Kincaid were there he would raise an eyebrow at the very least, mocking her preference. So accustomed to his teasing had she become that she actually missed it. ‘A raw evening, miss.’ The man set the cool glass before her, aligning it neatly in the centre of a beer mat. ‘Have you come far?’ ‘Just from London. Beastly traffic getting out, though.’ But the sprawl of western London had finally faded behind her, and she left the M40 at Beaconsfield and followed the Thames Valley. Even in the mist she had seen some of the fine Victorian houses fronting the river, relics of the days when Londoners used the upper Thames as a playground. At Marlow she turned north and wound up into the beech-covered hills, marvelling that in a few miles she seemed to have entered a hidden world, dark and leafy and far removed from the broad, peaceful expanse of the river below. ‘What are the Chiltern Hundreds?’ she asked the barman. ‘I’ve heard that phrase all my life and never known what it meant.’ He set down a bottle he’d been wiping with a cloth and considered his answer. Approaching middle age, with dark, wavy, carefully groomed hair and the beginning of a belly, he seemed happy enough to pass the time chatting. The lounge was almost empty – a bit early for the regular Friday night customers, Gemma supposed – but cosy with a wood fire burning and comfortable tapestry-covered furniture. A buffet of cold pies, salads and cheeses stood at the bar’s end, and she eyed it with anticipation. Thames Valley CID had certainly been up to the mark, booking her into the pub in Fingest and giving her precise directions. When she arrived she’d found a stack of reports waiting for her in her room, and having attended to them, she had only to enjoy her drink and wait for Kincaid. ‘The Chiltern Hundreds, now,’ said the barman, bringing Gemma sharply back to the present, ‘they used to divide counties up into Hundreds, each with its own court, and three of these in Buckinghamshire came to be known as the Chiltern Hundreds because they were in the Chiltern Hills. Stoke, Burnham and Desborough, to be exact.’ ‘Seems logical,’ said Gemma, impressed. And you’re very knowledgeable.’ ‘Bit of a local history buff in my spare time. I’m Tony, by the way.’ He thrust a hand over the bar and Gemma shook it. ‘Gemma.’ ‘All the Hundreds are obsolete now, but the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds is still a nominal office under the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the holding of which is the only reason one is allowed to resign from the House of Commons. A bit of jiggery-pokery, really, and probably the only reason the office still exists.’ He smiled at her, showing strong, even, white teeth. ‘There, I’ve probably told you more than you ever wanted to know. Get you a refill?’ Gemma glanced at her almost-empty glass, deciding she’d drunk as much as she ought if she wanted to keep a clear head. ‘Better not, thanks.’ ‘You here on business? We don’t let the rooms much this time of year. November in these hills is not exactly a drawing point for holiday-makers.’ ‘Quite,’ said Gemma, remembering the fine drizzle under the darkness of the trees. Tony straightened glassware and kept an attentive eye on her at the same time, willing to talk if she wanted, but not pushing her. His self-assured friendliness made her wonder if he might be the pub’s owner or manager, but in any case he was certainly a likely repository for local gossip. ‘I’m here about that drowning this morning, actually. Police business.’ Tony stared at her, taking in, she felt sure, the curling ginger hair drawn back with a clip, the casual barley-coloured pullover and navy slacks. ‘You’re a copper? Well, I’ll be . . .’ He shook his head, his wavy hair not disturbed a whit by his incredulity. ‘Best-looking one I’ve seen, I must say.’ Gemma smiled, accepting the compliment in the same good humour as it was given. ‘Did you know him, the man who drowned?’ This time Tony tut-tutted as he shook his head. ‘What a shame. Oh, everyone around here knew Connor. Doubt there’s a pub between here and London where he hadn’t put his head in once or twice. Or a racetrack. A real Jack the Lad, that one.’ ‘Well liked, was he?’ asked Gemma, fighting her prejudice towards a man on such good terms with pints and horses. Only after she’d married Rob had she discovered that he considered flirting and gambling as inalienable rights. ‘Connor was a friendly sort of bloke, always had a word and a pat on the back for you. Good for business, too. After he’d had a couple of pints he’d buy rounds for everybody in the place.’ Tony leaned forward against the bar, his face animated. And what a tragedy for the family, after the other.’ ‘What other? Whose family?’ Gemma asked, wondering if she’d missed a reference to another drowning in the reports she’d read. ‘Sorry.’ Tony smiled. ‘It is a bit confusing, I’m sure. Connor’s wife Julia’s family, the Ashertons. Been here for donkey’s years. Connor was upstart Irish, second generation, I think, but all the same . . .’ ‘What happened to the Ashertons?’ Gemma encouraged him, interested. ‘I was just a couple of years out of school, back from trying it out in London.’ His white teeth flashed as he smiled. ‘Decided the big city wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I’d thought. It was just about this time of year, as a matter of fact, and wet. Seemed like it had rained for months on end.’ Tony paused and pulled a half-pint mug from the rack, lifting it towards Gemma. ‘Mind if I join you?’ She shook her head, smiling. ‘Of course not.’ He was enjoying himself thoroughly now, and the longer she let him string out the story, the more detail she’d get. He pulled a half-pint of Guinness from the tap and sipped it, then wiped the creamy foam from his upper lip before continuing. ‘What was his name, now? Julia’s little brother. It’s been twenty years, or close to it.’ He ran his fingers lightly over his hair, as if the admission of time passing made him conscious of his age. ‘Matthew, that was it. Matthew Asherton. All of twelve years old and some sort of musical prodigy, walking home from school one day with his sister, and drowned. Just like that.’ The image of her own son clutched unbidden at Gemma’s heart – Toby half-grown, his blond hair darkened, his face and body maturing from little-boy chubbiness, snatched away. She swallowed and said, ‘How terrible. For all of them, but especially Julia. First her brother and now her husband. How did the little boy drown?’ ‘I’m not sure anyone ever really knew. One of those freak things that happen sometimes.’ He shrugged and drank down half his Guinness. ‘Quite a hush-hush at the time. Nobody talked about it except in whispers, and it’s still not mentioned to the family, I suppose.’ A draught of cold air stirred Gemma’s hair and swirled around her ankles as the outer door opened. She turned and watched a foursome come in and settle at a corner table, waving a familiar greeting to Tony. ‘Reservations in half an hour, Tony,’ one of the men called. ‘Same as usual, okay?’ ‘It’ll be picking up a bit now,’ Tony remarked to Gemma as he began pouring their drinks. ‘Restaurant usually fills up on a Friday night – all the locals out for their weekly bit of fun, minus the kiddies.’ Gemma laughed, and when the air blew cool again against her back she didn’t turn in anticipation. Light fingers brushed her shoulder as Kincaid slid onto the barstool beside her. ‘Gemma. Propping up the bar without me, I see.’ ‘Oh, hullo, guv.’ She felt the pulse jump in her throat, even though she’d been expecting him. ‘And chatting up the locals, I see. Lucky bloke.’ He grinned at Tony. ‘I’ll have a pint of. . . Brakspear, isn’t it, that’s brewed at Henley?’ ‘My boss,’ Gemma said in explanation to Tony. ‘Tony, this is Superintendent Duncan Kincaid.’ ‘Nice to meet you, I’m sure.’ Tony gave Gemma a surprised glance as he put out a hand to Kincaid. Gemma studied Kincaid critically. Tall and slender, brown hair slightly untidy, tie askew and tweed jacket beaded with rain – she supposed he didn’t look like most people’s idea of a proper Scotland Yard superintendent. And he was too young, of course. Superintendents should definitely be older and weightier. ‘Tell all,’ Kincaid said, when he’d got his pint and Tony had busied himself serving drinks to the customers in the corner. Gemma knew that he relied on her to digest information and spit the pertinent bits back out to him, and she rarely had to use her notes. I've been over Thames Valley’s reports.’ She nodded towards the rooms above their heads. ‘Had them waiting for me when I got in, very efficient.’ Closing her eyes for a moment, she marshalled her thoughts. ‘They had a call at seven-oh-five this morning from a Perry Smith, lock-keeper at Hambleden Lock. He’d found a body caught in his sluicegate. Thames Valley called in a rescue squad to fish the body out, and they identified him from his wallet as Connor Swann, resident of Henley-on-Thames. The lock-keeper, however, once he’d recovered from the shock a bit, recognized Connor Swann as the son-in-law of the Ashertons, who live a couple of miles up the road from Hambleden. He said the family often walked there.’ ‘On the lock?’ Kincaid asked, surprised. ‘Apparently it’s part of a scenic walk.’ Gemma frowned and picked up the thread of her story where she’d left off. ‘The local police surgeon was called in to examine the body. He found considerable bruising around the throat. Also, the body was very cold, but rigor had only just begun—’ ‘But you’d expect the cold water to retard rigor,’ Kincaid interrupted. Gemma shook her head impatiently. ‘Usually in drowning cases rigor sets in very quickly. So he thinks it likely that the victim may have been strangled before he went in the water.’ ‘Our police surgeon makes a bloody lot of assumptions, don’t you think?’ Kincaid selected a bag of onion-flavoured crisps from a display and counted out the proper coins to Tony. ‘We’ll see what the post-mortem has to say.’ ‘Nasty things,’ said Gemma, eyeing the crisps distastefully. Mouth full, Kincaid answered, ‘I know, but I’m starving. What about the interviews with the family?’ She finished the last of her drink before answering, taking a moment to shift mental gears. ‘Let’s . . . see they took statements from the in-laws as well as the wife. Yesterday evening, Sir Gerald Asherton conducted an opera at the Coliseum in London. Dame Caroline Stowe was at home in bed, reading. And Julia Swann, the wife, was attending a gallery opening in Henley. None of them reported having words with Connor or having any reason to think he might be worried or upset.’ ‘Of course they didn’t.’ Kincaid pulled a face. ‘And none of this means a thing without some estimate of time of death.’ ‘You met the family, didn’t you, this afternoon? What are they like?’ Kincaid made a noise that sounded suspiciously like ‘hummmph’. ‘Interesting. Might be better if I let you form your own impressions, though. We’ll interview them again tomorrow.’ He sighed and sipped his pint. ‘Not that I’ll hold my breath waiting for a revelation. None of them can imagine why anyone would want to kill Connor Swann. So we have no motive, no suspect, and we’re not even sure it’s murder.’ Raising his glass, he made her a mock toast. ‘I can’t wait.’ A good night’s sleep had imbued Kincaid with a little more enthusiasm for the case. The lock first,’ he said to Gemma over breakfast in the Chequers’ dining room. ‘I can’t get much further along with this until I see it for myself. Then I want to have a look at Connor Swann’s body.’ He gulped his coffee and squinted at her, adding, ‘How do you manage to look fresh and cheerful so early in the morning?’ She wore a blazer the bright russet colour of autumn leaves, her face glowed, and even her hair seemed to crackle with a life of its own. ‘Sorry.’ She smiled at him, but Kincaid thought her sympathy was tinged with pity. ‘I can’t help it. Something to do with genes, I expect. Or being brought up a baker’s daughter. We rose early at my house.’ ‘Ugh.’ He’d slept heavily, aided by one pint too many the night before, and it had taken him a second cup of coffee just to feel marginally alert. ‘You’ll get over it,’ Gemma said, laughing, and they finished their breakfast in companionable silence. They drove through the quiet village of Fingest in the early morning light and took the lane leading south, towards the Thames. Leaving Gemma’s Escort in the carpark half a mile from the river, they crossed the road to the path. A chill wind blew into their faces as they started downhill, and when Kincaid’s shoulder accidentally bumped against Gemma’s, he felt her warmth even through his jacket. Their path crossed the road running parallel to the river, then threaded its way between buildings and overgrown shrubbery. Not until they emerged from a fenced passage did they see the spread of the river. Leaden water reflected leaden sky, and just before them a concrete walkway zigzagged its way across the water. ‘Sure this is the right place?’ Kincaid asked. ‘I don’t see anything that looks like a lock.’ ‘I can see boats on the far side, past that bank. There must be a channel.’ ‘All right. Lead on, then.’ He gave a mock-gallant little bow and stepped aside. They ventured out onto the walkway single file, unable to walk abreast without brushing the tubular metal railing which provided some measure of safety. Halfway out they reached the weir. Gemma stopped and Kincaid came to a halt behind her. Looking down at the torrent thundering beneath the walkway, she shivered and pulled the lapels of her jacket together. ‘Sometimes we forget the power of water. And the peaceful old Thames can be quite a monster, can’t it?’ ‘River’s high from the rain,’ Kincaid said, raising his voice over the roar. He could feel the vibration from the force of the water through the soles of his feet. Grasping the railing until the cold of the metal made his hands ache, he leaned over, watching the flood until he began to lose his equilibrium. ‘Bloody hell. If you intended to push someone in, this would be the place to do it.’ Glancing at Gemma, he saw that she looked cold and a little pinched, the dusting of freckles standing out against her pale skin. He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘Let’s get across. It’ll be warmer under the trees.’ They walked quickly, heads down against the wind, eager for shelter. The walkway ran on another hundred yards or so past the weir, paralleling the bank, then turned abruptly to the left and vanished into the trees. The respite proved brief, the belt of trees narrow, but it allowed them to catch their breath before they came out into the open again and saw the lock before them. Yellow scene-of-crime tape had been stretched along the concrete aprons on either side of the lock, but not across the sluicegates themselves. To their right stood a sturdy red-brick house. The small-paned windows were symmetrical, one on either side of the door, but the one nearest them sported such a thatch of untrimmed green creeper that it looked like a shaggy-browed eye. As Kincaid put a hand on the tape and bent to duck under it, a man came out of the door of the house, dodging under stray twigs of creeper, and shouted at them. ‘Sir, you’re not to go past the tape. Police orders.’ Kincaid straightened up and waited, studying the man as he came towards them. Short and stocky, with grey hair bristle-cut, he wore a polo shirt bearing the Thames River Authority insignia, and carried a steaming mug in one hand. ‘What was the lock-keeper’s name?’ Kincaid said softly in Gemma’s ear. Gemma closed her eyes for a second. ‘Perry Smith, I think.’ ‘One and the same, if I’m not mistaken.’ He pulled his warrant card from his pocket and extended it as the man reached them. ‘Are you Perry Smith, by any chance?’ The lock-keeper took the card with his free hand and studied it suspiciously, then scrutinized Kincaid and Gemma as if hoping they might be impostors. He nodded once, brusquely. ‘I’ve already told the police everything I know.’ ‘This is Sergeant James,’ Kincaid continued in the same conversational tone, ‘and you’re just the fellow we wanted to see.’ ‘All I’m concerned with is keeping this lock operating properly, Superintendent, without police interference. Yesterday they made me keep the sluicegates closed while they picked about with their tweezers and little bags. Backed river traffic up for a mile,’ he said, and his annoyance seemed to grow. ‘Bloody twits, I tell you.’ He included Gemma in his scowl and made no apology for his language. ‘Didn’t it occur to them what would happen, or how long it would take to clear up the mess?’ ‘Mr Smith,’ Kincaid said soothingly, ‘I have no intention of interfering with your lock. I only want to ask you a few questions’ – he held up a hand as Smith opened his mouth – ‘which I’m aware you’ve already answered, but I’d prefer to hear your story directly from you, not second hand. Sometimes things get muddled along the way.’ Smith’s brow relaxed a fraction and he took a sip from his mug. The heavy muscles in his upper arm stood out as he raised it, straining against the sleeve-band of his knitted shirt. ‘Muddled wouldn’t be the half of it, if those idiots yesterday set any example.’ Although he seemed unaware of the cold, he looked at Gemma as if seeing her properly for the first time, huddled partly in the shelter of Kincaid’s body with her jacket collar held closed around her throat. ‘I suppose we could go inside, miss, out of the wind,’ he said, a bit less belligerently. Gemma smiled gratefully at him. ‘Thank you. I’m afraid I didn’t dress for the river.’ Smith turned back to Kincaid as they moved towards the house. ‘When are they going to take this bloody tape down, that’s what I’d like to know?’ ‘You’ll have to ask Thames Valley. Though if the forensics team has finished, I shouldn’t think it would be long.’ Kincaid paused as they reached the door, looking at the concrete aprons surrounding the lock and the grassy path leading upriver on the opposite side. ‘Doubt they’ll have had much luck.’ The floor of the hall was covered in sisal matting and lined with well-used-looking rubber boots, the walls hung with working gear – oilskin jackets and hats, bright yellow slickers, coils of rope. Smith led them through a door on the left into a sitting room as workaday as the hall. The room was warm, if spartan, and Kincaid saw Gemma let go of her collar and take out her notebook. Smith stood by the window, still sipping from his mug, keeping an eye on the river. Tell us how you found the body, Mr Smith.’ ‘I came out just after sunrise as always, have my first cuppa and make sure everything’s shipshape for the day. Traffic starts early, some days, though not so much now as in the summer. Sure enough, upstream there was a boat waiting for me to operate the lock.’ ‘Can’t they work it themselves?’ asked Gemma. He was already shaking his head. ‘Oh, the mechanism’s simple enough, but if you’re too impatient to let the lock fill and drain properly you can make a balls up of it.’ ‘Then what happened?’ prompted Kincaid. ‘I can see you don’t know much about locks,’ he said, looking at them with the sort of pity usually reserved for someone who hasn’t learned to tie their shoelaces. Kincaid refrained from saying that he had grown up in western Cheshire and understood locks perfectly well. ‘The lock is kept empty when it’s not in operation, so first I open the sluices in the head gate to fill the lock. Then when I opened the head gate for the boat to enter, up pops a body.’ Smith sipped from his cup, then added disgustedly, ‘Silly woman on the boat started squealing like a pig going to slaughter, you’ve never heard such a racket. I came in here and dialled nine-nine-nine, just to get some relief from the noise.’ The corners of Smith’s eyes crinkled in what might have been a smile. ‘Rescue people fished him out and tried to resuscitate the poor blighter, though if you ask me, anybody with a particle of sense could see he’d been dead for hours.’ ‘When did you recognize him?’ asked Gemma. ‘Didn’t. Not his body, anyway. But I looked at his wallet when they took it out of his pocket, and I knew the name seemed familiar. Took me a minute to place it.’ Kincaid moved to the window and looked out. ‘Where had you heard it?’ Smith shrugged. ‘Pub gossip, most likely. Everyone hereabouts knows the Ashertons and their business.’ ‘Do you think he could have fallen in from the top of the gate?’ Kincaid asked. ‘Railing’s not high enough to keep a tall man from going over if he’s drunk. Or stupid. But the concrete apron continues for a bit on the upstream side of the gate before it meets the old towpath, and there’s no railing along it at all.’ Kincaid remembered the private homes he’d seen upstream on this side of the river. All had immaculate lawns running down to the water, some also had small docks. ‘What if he went in further upstream?’ ‘The current’s not all that strong until you get close to the gate, so if he went in along there,’ – he nodded upstream – ‘I’d say he’d have to have been unconscious not to have pulled himself out. Or already dead.’ ‘What if he went in here, by the gate? Would the current have been strong enough to hold him down?’ Smith gazed out at the lock a moment before answering. ‘Hard to say. The current is what holds the gate closed – it’s pretty fierce. But whether it could hold a struggling man down . . . unlikely, I’d say, but you can’t be sure.’ ‘One more thing, Mr Smith,’ Kincaid said. ‘Did you see or hear anything unusual during the night?’ ‘I go to bed early, as I’m always up by daybreak. Nothing disturbed me.’ ‘Would a scuffle have awakened you?’ I’ve always been a sound sleeper, Superintendent. I can’t very well say, now can I?’ ‘Sleep of the innocent?’ whispered Gemma as they took their leave and Smith firmly shut his door. Kincaid stopped and stared at the lock. ‘If Connor Swann were unconscious or already dead when he went in the water, how in hell did someone get him here? It would be an almost impossible carry even for a strong man.’ ‘Boat?’ ventured Gemma. ‘From either upstream or down. Although why someone would lift him from a boat downstream of the lock, carry him round and dump him on the upstream side, I can’t imagine.’ They walked slowly towards the path that would take them back across the weir, the wind at their backs. Moored boats rocked peacefully in the quiet water downstream. Ducks dived and bobbed, showing no concern with human activity that didn’t involve crusts of bread. ‘Was he already dead? That’s the question, Gemma.’ He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘Fancy a visit to the mortuary?’ Chapter Three The smell of disinfectant always reminded Kincaid of his school infirmary, where Matron presided over the bandaging of scraped knees and wielded the power to send one home if the illness or injury proved severe enough. The inhabitants of this room, however, were beyond help from Matron’s ministrations, and the disinfectant didn’t quite mask the elusive tang of decay. He felt gooseflesh rise on his arms from the cold. A quick call to Thames Valley CID had directed them to High Wycombe’s General Hospital, where Connor Swann’s body awaited post-mortem. The hospital was old, the mortuary still a place of ceramic tiles and porcelain sinks, lacking the rows of stainless-steel drawers which tucked bodies neatly away out of sight. Instead, the steel gurneys that lined the walls held humped, white-sheeted forms with toe tags peeping out. ‘Who was it you wanted, now?’ asked the attendant, a bouncy young woman whose name-tag read ‘Sherry’ and whose demeanour seemed more suited to a nursery school. ‘Connor Swann,’ said Kincaid, with an amused glance at Gemma. The girl walked along the row of gurneys, flicking toe tags with her fingers as she passed. ‘Here he is. Number four.’ She tucked the sheet down to his waist with practised precision. And a nice clean one he is, too. Always makes it a bit easier, don’t you think?’ She smiled brightly at them, as if they were mentally impaired, then walked back to the swinging doors and shouted, ‘Mickey,’ through the gap she made with one hand. ‘We’ll need some help shifting him,’ she added, turning back to Kincaid and Gemma. Mickey emerged a moment later, parting the doors like a bull charging from a pen. The muscles in his arms and shoulders strained the thin fabric of his T-shirt, and he wore the short sleeves rolled up, displaying an extra inch or two of biceps. ‘Can you give these people a hand with number four, Mickey?’ Sherry enunciated carefully, her nursery-teacher manner now mixed with a touch of exasperation. The young man merely nodded, his acne-inflamed face impassive, and pulled a pair of thin latex gloves from his back pocket. ‘Take all the time you want,’ she added to Kincaid and Gemma. ‘Just give me a shout when you’ve finished, okay? Cheerio.’ She whisked past them, the tail of her white lab coat flapping, and went out through the swinging doors. They moved the few steps to the gurney and stood. In the ensuing silence Kincaid heard the soft expulsion of Gemma’s breath. Connor Swann’s exposed neck and shoulders were lean and well formed, his thick straight hair brown with a hint of auburn. Kincaid thought it likely that in life he had been one of those high-coloured men who flushed easily in anger or excitement. His body was indeed remarkably unblemished. Some bruising showed along the left upper arm and shoulder, and when Kincaid looked closely he saw faint dark marks on either side of the throat. ‘Some bruising,’ Gemma said dubiously, ‘but not the occlusion of the face and neck you’d expect with a manual strangulation.’ Kincaid bent over for a closer look at the throat. ‘No sign of a ligature. Look, Gemma, across the right cheekbone. Is that a bruise?’ She peered at the smudge of darker colour. ‘Could be. Hard to tell, though. His face could easily have banged against the gate.’ Connor Swann had been blessed with good bone structure, thought Kincaid, high wide cheekbones and a strong nose and chin. Above his full lips lay a thick, neatly trimmed, reddish moustache, looking curiously alive against the grey pallor of his skin. ‘A good-looking bloke, would you say, Gemma?’ ‘Probably attractive, yes . . . unless he was a bit too full of himself. I got the impression he was quite the ladies’ man.’ Kincaid wondered how Julia Swann felt about that – she hadn’t impressed him as a woman willing to sit at home meekly while her husband played the lad. It also occurred to him to wonder how much of his desire to see Connor had to do with assessing the physical evidence, and how much to do with his personal curiosity about the man’s wife. He turned to Mickey and raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Could we have a look at the rest?’ The young man obliged wordlessly, flipping the sheet off altogether. ‘He’d been on holiday, but I’d say not recently,’ Gemma commented as they saw the faint demarcation of a tan against belly and upper thighs. ‘Or maybe just summer boating on the Thames.’ Deciding he might as well imitate Mickey’s nonverbal style of communication, Kincaid nodded and made a rolling motion with his hand. Mickey slid both gloved hands beneath Connor Swann’s body, turning him with an apparent ease betrayed only by a barely audible grunt. Wide shoulders, faintly freckled; a thin pale band on the neck bordering the hairline, evidence of a recent haircut; a mole where the buttock began to swell from the hollow of the back – all trivial things, thought Kincaid, but all proof of Connor Swann’s uniqueness. It always came, this moment in an investigation when the body became a person, someone who had perhaps liked cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, or old Benny Hill comedies. ‘Had enough, guv?’ Gemma said, sounding a bit more subdued than usual. ‘He’s clean as a whistle this side.’ Kincaid nodded. ‘Not much else to see. And nothing does us much good until we’ve traced his movements and got some estimate of time of death. Okay, Mickey,’ he added, as the expression on the young man’s face indicated they might as well have been speaking in Greek. ‘I guess that’s it. Let’s look up Sherry Sunshine.’ Kincaid looked back as they reached the door. Mickey had already turned Connor’s body and tidied the sheet as neatly as before. They found her in a cubbyhole just to the left of the swinging doors, bent industriously over a computer keyboard, cheerful as ever. ‘Do you know when they’ve scheduled the post?’ Kincaid asked. ‘Urn, let’s see.’ She studied a typed schedule stuck to the wall with Sellotape. ‘Winnie can probably get to him late tomorrow afternoon or early the following morning.’ ‘Winnie?’ Kincaid asked, fighting the absurd vision of Pooh Bear performing an autopsy. ‘Dr Winstead.’ Sherry dimpled prettily. ‘We all call him that – he’s a bit tubby.’ Kincaid contemplated attending the post-mortem with resignation. He had long ago got over any sort of grisly thrill at the proceedings. Now he found it merely distasteful, and the ultimate violation of human privacy sometimes struck him as unbearably sad. ‘You’ll let me know as soon as you schedule it?’ ‘Quick as a wink. I’ll do it myself.’ Sherry beamed at him. Out of the corner of his eye Kincaid saw Gemma’s expression and knew she’d rag him about buttering up the hired help. ‘Thanks, love,’ he said to Sherry, giving her his full-wattage smile. ‘You’ve been a great help.’ He waggled his fingers at her. ‘Cheerio, now.’ ‘You’re absolutely shameless,’ said Gemma as soon as they were through the outer doors. ‘That poor little duck was as susceptible as a baby.’ Kincaid grinned at her. ‘Gets things done, though, doesn’t it?’ After a few unplanned detours due to her unfamiliarity with High Wycombe’s one-way system, Gemma found her way out of the town. Following Kincaid’s directions, she drove southwest, back into the hidden folds of the Chiltern Hills. Her stomach grumbled a bit, but they had decided that they should interview the Ashertons again before lunch. In her mind she ran through Kincaid’s and Tony’s comments about the family, her curiosity piqued. She glanced at Kincaid, a question forming on her lips, but his unfocused gaze told her he was somewhere else entirely. He often got like that before an interview, as if it were necessary for him to turn inward before bringing that intense focus to bear. She concentrated again on her driving, but she suddenly felt extraordinarily aware of his long legs taking up more than their share of the room in her Escort’s passenger compartment, and of his silence. After a few minutes they reached the point where she had to make an unfamiliar turning. Before she could speak, he said, ‘Just here. Badger’s End lies about halfway along this little road.’ His fingertip traced a faint line on the map, between the villages of Northend and Turville Heath. ‘It’s unmarked, a shortcut for the locals, I suppose.’ Ribbons of water trickled across the pavement where a stream bed ran down through the trees and intersected the narrow road. A triangular yellow road sign warned DANGER: FLOODING, and suddenly the story Gemma had heard of Matthew Asherton’s drowning seemed very immediate. ‘Hard left,’ Kincaid said, pointing ahead, and Gemma turned the wheel. The lane they entered was high-banked, just wide enough for the Escort to pass unscathed, and on either side thick trees arched until they met and intertwined overhead. It climbed steadily, and the high banks rose until the tree roots were at eye level. On the right, Gemma caught an occasional flash through the foliage of golden fields dropping down to a valley. On the left the woods crowded, darkly impenetrable, and the light filtering through the leafy canopy over the lane seemed green and liquid. ‘Sledging,’ Gemma said suddenly. ‘What?’ ‘It reminds me of sledging. You know, bobsleighing. Or the Olympic luge.’ Kincaid laughed. ‘Don’t accuse me of poetic fancy. Careful now, watch for a turning on the left.’ They appeared to be nearing the top of the gradient when Gemma saw a gap in the left-hand bank. She slowed and eased the car onto the leaf-padded track, following it on and slightly downhill until she rounded a bend and came into a clearing. ‘Oh,’ she said softly, surprised. She’d expected a house built with the comfortable flint and timber construction she’d seen in the nearby villages. The sun, which had chased fitfully in and out of the cloud bank, found a gap, making dappled patterns against the white limestone walls of Badger’s End. ‘Like it?’ ‘I’m not sure.’ Gemma rolled down the window as she turned off the engine, and they sat for a moment, listening. Beneath the silence of the woods they heard a faint, deep hum. ‘It’s a bit eerie. Not at all what I imagined.’ ‘Just wait,’ said Kincaid as he opened the car door, ‘until you meet the family.’ Gemma assumed that the woman who answered the door must be Dame Caroline Stowe – good quality, tailored wool slacks, blouse and navy cardigan, short, dark, well-cut hair liberally streaked with grey – everything about her spoke of conservative, middle-aged good taste. But when the woman stared at them blankly, coffee mug poised halfway to her mouth, then said, ‘Can I help you with something?’ Gemma’s certainty began to waver. Kincaid identified himself and Gemma, then asked for Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you’ve just missed them. They’ve gone down to the undertakers for a bit. Making arrangements.’ She transferred the coffee mug to her left hand and held out the right to them. ‘I’m Vivian Plumley, by the way.’ ‘You’re the housekeeper?’ Kincaid asked, and Gemma knew from the less-than-tactful query that he’d been caught off guard. Vivian Plumley smiled. ‘You might say that. It doesn’t offend me, at any rate.’ ‘Good.’ Kincaid, Gemma saw, had recovered both aplomb and smile. ‘We’d like a word with you as well, if we may.’ ‘Come back to the kitchen. I’ll make some coffee.’ She turned and led the way along the slate-flagged passage, then stepped back and let them precede her through the door at its end. The kitchen had escaped modernization. While Gemma might sigh over photographs of gleaming space-age kitchens in magazines, she knew instinctively that they provided no emotional substitute for a room like this. Nubby braided rugs softened the slate floor, a scarred oak refectory table and ladder-backed chairs dominated the room’s centre, and against one wall a red-enamelled Aga radiated warmth and comfort. ‘Sit down, why don’t you,’ said Vivian Plumley, and gestured towards the table. Gemma pulled out a chair and sat, feeling tension she hadn’t been aware of flow out of her muscles. ‘Some biscuits?’ added Vivian, and Gemma shook her head quickly, fearing they’d lose control of the interview entirely, seduced by the room’s comfort. Kincaid said, ‘No, thank you,’ and seated himself, taking the chair at the table’s end. Gemma took her notebook from her bag and cradled it unobtrusively in her lap. The drip coffeemaker worked as quickly as its expensive looks implied. It was only a few moments before the smell of fresh coffee began to fill the room. Vivian put together a tray with mugs, cream and sugar in silence, a woman enough at ease with herself not to make small talk. When the coffeemaker had finished its cycle, she filled the mugs and brought the tray to the table. ‘Do help yourself. And that’s real cream, I’m afraid, not dairy substitute. We have a neighbour who keeps a few Jerseys.’ ‘A treat not to be missed,’ said Kincaid, pouring generously into his cup. Gemma smiled, knowing he usually drank it black. ‘Are you not the housekeeper, then?’ he continued easily. ‘Have I put my foot in it?’ Vivian clinked her spoon around twice in her coffee cup and sighed. ‘Oh, I’ll tell you about myself, if you like, but it always sounds so dreadfully Victorian. I’m actually related to Caroline, second cousins once removed, to be exact. We’re as close to the same age as never-mind, and we were at school together.’ She paused and sipped from her cup, then made a slight grimace of discomfort. ‘Too hot. We drifted apart, Caro and I, once we’d finished school. We both married, her career blossomed.’ Vivian smiled. ‘Then my husband died. An aneurysm.’ The palms of her hands made a slapping sound as she brushed them together. ‘Just like that, he was gone. I was left childless, with no job skills and not quite enough money to get by. This was thirty years ago, mind you, when not every woman grew up with the expectation of working.’ She looked directly at Gemma. ‘Quite different from your upbringing, I’m sure.’ Gemma thought of her mother, who had risen in the early hours of the morning to bake every day of her married life, then worked the counter in the shop from opening till closing. The possibility of not working never occurred to Gemma or her sister – it had been Gemma’s driving ambition for the work to be of her own choosing, not something done purely for the necessity of putting food on the table. ‘Yes, very different,’ she said, in answer to Vivian Plumley’s statement. ‘What did you do?’ ‘Caro had two toddlers and a very demanding career.’ She shrugged. ‘It seemed a sensible solution. They had room, I had enough money of my own not to be totally dependent on the family, and I loved the children as if . . .’ They were your own. Gemma finished the sentence for her, and felt a rush of empathy for this woman who seemed to have made the best of what life had dealt her. She ran her fingers along the tabletop, noticing faint streaks of colour embedded in the wood’s grain. Watching her, Vivian said fondly, ‘The children did everything at this table. They had most of their meals in the kitchen, of course. As much as their parents travelled, formal family dinners were a rare treat. School assignments, art projects – Julia did her first paintings here, when she was at grammar school.’ The children this . . . the children that . . . It seemed to Gemma as if time had simply stopped with the boy’s death. But Julia had been there afterwards, alone. ‘This must all be very difficult for Julia,’ she said, feeling her way into the subject delicately, ‘after what happened to her brother.’ Vivian looked away, grasping the table’s edge with one hand, as if she were physically restraining herself from getting up. After a moment, she said, ‘We don’t talk about that. But yes, I’m sure Con’s death has made life more difficult than usual for Julia. It’s made life difficult for all of us.’ Kincaid, who had been sitting quietly, chair pushed back a bit from the table, mug cradled in his hands, leaned forward and said, ‘Did you like Connor, Mrs Plumley?’ ‘Like him?’ she said blankly, then frowned. ‘It never occurred to me whether or not I should like Connor. He was just . . . Connor. A force of nature.’ She smiled a little at her own analogy. ‘A very attractive man in many ways, and yet . . . I always felt a little sorry for him.’ Kincaid raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak, and Gemma followed his cue. Shrugging, Vivian said, ‘I know it sounds a bit silly to say one felt sorry for someone as larger-than-life as Con, but Julia baffled him.’ The gold buttons on her cardigan caught the light as she shifted in her chair. ‘He could never make her respond in the way he wanted, and he hadn’t any experience with that. So he sometimes behaved . . . inappropriately.’ A door slammed in the front of the house and she cocked her head, listening. Half-rising from her chair, she said, They’re back. Let me tell—’ ‘One more thing, please, Mrs Plumley,’ Kincaid said. ‘Did you see Connor on Thursday?’ She sank down again, but perched on the edge of her seat with the tentative posture of one who doesn’t intend staying long. ‘Of course I saw him. I prepared lunch – just salad and cheese – and we all ate together in the dining room.’ ‘All except Julia?’ ‘Yes, but she often works through lunch. I took a plate up to her myself.’ ‘Did Connor seem his usual self?’ Kincaid asked, his tone conversational, but Gemma knew from his still concentration that he was intent on her answer. Vivian relaxed as she thought, leaning back in her chair again and absently tracing the raised flower pattern on her mug with her fingers. ‘Con was always teasing and joking, but perhaps it seemed a bit forced. I don’t know.’ She looked up at Kincaid, frowning. ‘Quite possibly I’m distorting things after the fact. I’m not sure I trust my own judgement. Kincaid nodded. ‘I appreciate your candour. Did he mention any plans for later in the day? It’s important that we trace his movements.’ ‘I remember him glancing at his watch and saying something about a meeting, but he didn’t say where or with whom. That was towards the end of the meal, and as soon as everyone had finished I came in here to do the washing up, then went to my room for a lie-down. You might ask Caro or Gerald if he said something more to them.’ ‘Thank you. I’ll do that,’ Kincaid said with such courtesy that Gemma felt sure it would never occur to Vivian Plumley that she’d just told him how to do his job. ‘It’s strictly a formality, of course, but I must ask you about your movements on Thursday night,’ he added almost apologetically. ‘An alibi? You’re asking me for an alibi for Connor’s death?’ Vivian asked, sounding more surprised than offended. ‘We don’t yet know exactly when Connor died. And it’s more a matter of building known factors – the more we know about the movements of everyone connected with Connor, the easier it becomes to see gaps. Logic holes.’ He made a circular gesture with his hands. ‘All right.’ She smiled, appeased. ‘That’s easy enough. Caro and I had an early supper in front of the fire in the sitting room. We often do when Gerald’s away.’ ‘And after that?’ ‘We sat before the fire, reading, watching the telly, talking a little. I made some cocoa around ten o’clock, and when we’d finished it I went up to bed.’ She added with a touch of irony, ‘I remember thinking it had been a particularly peaceful and pleasant evening.’ ‘Nothing else?’ Kincaid asked, straightening up in his chair and pushing away his empty mug. ‘No,’ Vivian said, but then paused and stared into space for a moment. ‘I do remember something, but it’s quite silly.’ When Kincaid nodded encouragement, she continued. ‘Just after I’d fallen asleep I thought I heard the doorbell, but when I sat up and listened, the house was perfectly quiet. I must have been dreaming. Gerald and Julia both have their own keys, of course, so there was no need to wait up for them.’ ‘Did you hear either of them come in?’ ‘I thought I heard Gerald around midnight, but I wasn’t properly awake, and the next thing I knew it was daybreak and the rooks were making a god-awful racket in the beeches outside my window.’ ‘Couldn’t it have been Julia?’ Kincaid asked. She thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. ‘I suppose it could, but if it’s not terribly late, Julia usually looks in on me before she goes up.’ ‘And she didn’t that evening?’ When Vivian shook her head, Kincaid smiled at her and said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Plumley. You’ve been very helpful.’ This time, before rising, Vivian Plumley looked at him and said, ‘Shall I tell them you’re here?’ Sir Gerald Asherton stood with his back to the sitting room fire, hands clasped behind him. He made a perfect picture of a nineteenth-century country squire, thought Gemma, with his feet spread apart in a relaxed posture and his bulk encased in rather hairy tweeds. He even sported suede elbow patches on his jacket. The only things needed to complete the tableau were a pipe and a pair of hunting hounds sprawled at his feet. ‘So sorry to have kept you waiting.’ He came towards them, pumped their hands and gestured them towards the sofa. Gemma found the courtesy rather disarming, and suspected it was meant to be. ‘Thank you, Sir Gerald,’ Kincaid said, returning it in kind. ‘And Dame Caroline?’ ‘Gone for a bit of a lie-down. Found the business at the undertakers rather upsetting, I’m afraid.’ Sir Gerald sat in the armchair opposite them, crossed one foot over his knee and adjusted his trouser leg. An expanse of Argyle sock in autumnal orange and brown appeared between shoe and trouser cuff. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Sir Gerald,’ Kincaid smiled as he spoke, ‘it seems a little odd that your daughter didn’t take care of the arrangements herself. Connor was, after all, her husband.’ ‘Just so,’ answered Sir Gerald with a touch of asperity. ‘Sometimes these things are best left to those not quite so close to the matter. And funeral directors are notorious for preying on the emotions of the newly bereaved.’ Gemma felt a stab of pity at the reminder that this burly, confident man spoke from the worst possible personal experience. Kincaid shrugged and let the matter drop. ‘I need to ask you about your movements on Thursday night, sir.’ At Sir Gerald’s raised eyebrow, he added, ‘Just a formality, you understand.’ ‘No reason why I shouldn’t oblige you, Mr Kincaid. It’s a matter of public record. I was at the Coliseum, conducting a performance of Pelleas and Melisande.’ He favoured them with his large smile, showing healthily pink gums. ‘Extremely visible. No one could have impersonated me, I assure you.’ Gemma imagined him facing an orchestra, and felt sure he dominated the hall as easily as he dominated this small room. From where she sat she could see a photograph of him atop the piano, along with several others in similar silver frames. She stood up unobtrusively and went to examine them. The nearest showed Sir Gerald in a tuxedo, baton in hand, looking as comfortable as he did in his country tweeds. In another he had his arm around a small dark-haired woman who laughed up at the camera with a voluptuous prettiness. The photograph of the children had been pushed to the back, as if no one cared to look at it often. The boy stood slightly in the foreground, solid and fair, with an impish gap-toothed grin. The girl was a few inches taller, dark-haired like her mother, her thin face gravely set. This was Julia, of course. Julia and Matthew. ‘And after?’ she heard Kincaid say, and she turned back to the conversation, rather embarrassed by her lapse of attention. Sir Gerald shrugged. ‘It takes a while to wind down after a performance. I stayed in my dressing room for a bit, but I’m afraid I didn’t take notice of the time. Then I drove straight home, which must have put me here sometime after midnight.’ ‘Must have?’ Kincaid asked, his voice tinged with scepticism. Sir Gerald held out his right arm, baring a hairy wrist for their inspection. ‘Don’t wear a watch, Mr Kincaid. Never found it comfortable. And a nuisance taking it off for every rehearsal or performance. Always lost the bloody things. And the car clock never worked properly.’ ‘You didn’t stop at all?’ Shaking his head, Sir Gerald answered with the finality of one used to having his word taken as law. ‘I did not.’ ‘Did you speak to anyone when you came in?’ Gemma asked, feeling it was time she put an oar in. ‘The house was quiet. Caro was asleep and I didn’t wake her. I can only assume the same for Vivian. So you see, young lady, if it’s an alibi you’re after,’ he paused and twinkled at Gemma, ‘I suppose I haven’t one.’ ‘What about your daughter, sir? Was she asleep as well?’ ‘I’m afraid I can’t say. I don’t remember seeing Julia’s car in the drive, but I suppose someone could have given her a lift home.’ Kincaid stood. ‘Thank you, Sir Gerald. We will need to talk to Dame Caroline again, at her convenience, but just now we’d like to see Julia.’ ‘I believe you know your way, Mr Kincaid.’ * ‘Good God, I feel like I’ve been dropped right in the bloody middle of a drawing room comedy.’ Gemma turned her head to look at Kincaid as she preceded him up the stairs. All manners and no substance. What are they playing at in this house?’ As they reached the first landing, she stopped and turned to face him. And you’d think these women were made of glass, the way Sir Gerald and Mrs Plumley coddle them. “Mustn’t upset Caroline . . . mustn’t upset Julia,’” she hissed at him, remembering a bit belatedly to lower her voice. Kincaid merely raised an eyebrow in that imperturbable manner she found so infuriating. ‘I’m not sure I’d consider Julia Swann a good candidate for coddling.’ He started up the next flight, and Gemma followed the rest of the way without comment. The door swung open as soon as Kincaid’s knuckles brushed it. ‘Bless you, Plummy. I’m star—’ Julia Swann’s smile vanished abruptly as she took in their identity. ‘Oh. Superintendent Kincaid. Back so soon?’ ‘Like a bad penny,’ Kincaid answered, giving her his best smile. Julia Swann merely stuck the paintbrush she’d had in her hand over her ear and stepped back enough to allow them to enter. Studying her, Gemma compared the woman to the thin, serious child in the photo downstairs. That Julia was certainly visible in this one, but the gawkiness had been transmuted into sleek style, and the innocence in the child’s gaze had been lost long ago. The blinds were drawn up, and a pale, watery light illuminated the room. The centre worktable, bare except for palette and white paper neatly masking-taped to a board, relieved the studio’s general disorder. ‘Plummy usually brings me up a sandwich about this time,’ Julia said, as she shut the door and returned to the table. She leaned against it, gracefully balancing her weight, but Gemma had the distinct impression that the support she drew from it was more than physical. A finished painting of a flower lay on the table. Gemma moved towards it almost instinctively, hand outstretched. ‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ she said softly, stopping just short of touching the paper. Spare and sure in design, the painting had an almost oriental flavour, and the intense greens and purples of the plant glowed against the matte-white paper. ‘Bread and butter,’ said Julia, but she smiled, making an obvious effort to be civil. ‘I’ve a whole series commissioned for a line of cards. Upscale National Trust, you know the sort of thing. And I’m behind schedule.’ Julia rubbed at her face, leaving a smudge of paint on her forehead, and Gemma suddenly saw the weariness that her smart haircut and trendy black turtleneck and leggings couldn’t quite camouflage. Gemma traced the rough edge of the watercolour paper with a finger. ‘I suppose I thought the paintings downstairs must be yours, but these are quite different.’ ‘The Flints? I should hope so.’ Some of the abruptness returned to Julia’s manner. She shook a cigarette from a pack on a side table and lit it with a hard strike of a match. ‘I wondered about them as well,’ Kincaid said. ‘Something struck me as familiar.’ ‘You probably saw some of his paintings in books you read as a child. William Flint wasn’t as well known as Arthur Rackham, but he did some marvellous illustrations.’ Julia leaned against the worktable and narrowed her eyes against the smoke rising from her cigarette. ‘Then came the breastscapes.’ ‘Breastscapes?’ Kincaid repeated, amused. ‘They are technically quite brilliant, if you don’t mind the banal, and they certainly kept him comfortably in his old age.’ ‘And you disapprove?’ Kincaid’s voice held a hint of mockery. Julia touched the surface of her own painting as if testing its worth, then shrugged. ‘I suppose it is rather hypocritical of me. These keep me fed, and they supported Connor in the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed.’ To Gemma’s surprise, Kincaid didn’t nibble at the proffered bait, but instead asked, ‘If you dislike Flint’s watercolours, why do they hang in almost every room in the house?’ ‘They’re not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking. A few years ago Mummy and Daddy got bitten by the collector’s bug. Flints were all the rage and they jumped on the bandwagon. Perhaps they thought I’d be pleased.’ Julia gave them a brittle little smile. ‘After all, as far as they’re concerned, one watercolour looks pretty much like another.’ Kincaid returned her smile, and a look of understanding passed between them, as if they’d shared a joke. Julia laughed, her dark hair swinging with the movement of her head, and Gemma felt suddenly excluded. ‘Exactly what lifestyle did your husband need to support, Mrs Swann?’ she asked, rather too quickly, and she heard an unintended note of accusation in her voice. Propping herself up on her work stool, Julia swung one black-booted foot as she ground the stub of her half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray. ‘You name it. I sometimes thought Con felt honour-bound to live up to an image he created – whiskey, women and an eye for the horses, everything you’d expect from your stereotypical Irish rogue. I wasn’t always sure he enjoyed it as much as he liked you to think.’ ‘Were there any women in particular?’ Kincaid asked, his tone so lightly conversational he might have been inquiring about the weather. She regarded him quizzically. ‘There was always a woman, Mr Kincaid. The particulars didn’t concern me.’ Kincaid merely smiled, as if refusing to be shocked by her cynicism. ‘Connor stayed on in the flat you shared in Henley?’ Julia nodded, sliding off the stool to pull another cigarette from the crumpled packet. She lit it and leaned back against the table, folding her arms against her chest. The paintbrush still positioned over her ear gave her an air of slightly rakish industry, as if she might be a Fleet Street journalist relaxing for a brief moment in the newsroom. ‘You were in Henley on Thursday evening, I believe?’ Kincaid continued. ‘A gallery opening?’ ‘Very clever of you, Mr Kincaid.’ Julia flashed him a smile. ‘Trevor Simons. Thameside.’ ‘But you didn’t see your husband?’ ‘I did not. We move in rather different circles, as you might have guessed,’ said Julia, the sarcasm less veiled this time. Gemma glanced at Kincaid’s face, anticipating an escalating response, but he only answered lazily, ‘So I might.’ Julia ground out her cigarette, barely smoked this time, and Gemma could see a release of tension in the set of her mouth and shoulders. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I really must get back to work.’ She included Gemma this time in the smile that was so like her father’s, only sharper around the edges. ‘Perhaps you could—’ ‘Julia.’ It was an old interrogation technique, the sudden and imperative use of the suspect’s name, a breaking down of barriers, an invasion of personal space. Still, the familiarity in Kincaid’s voice shocked Gemma. It was as if he knew this woman down to her bones and could sweep every shred of her artifice away with a casual flick of a finger. Julia remained frozen in mid-sentence, her eyes locked on Kincaid’s face. They might have been alone in the room. ‘You were only a few hundred yards from Connor’s flat. You could have stepped out for a smoke by the river, bumped into him, arranged to meet him later.’ A second passed, then another, and Gemma heard the rustle as Julia shifted her body against the work-table. Then Julia said slowly, ‘I could have. But I didn’t. It was my show, you see – my fifteen minutes in the limelight – and I never left the gallery at all.’ ‘And afterwards?’ ‘Oh, Trev can vouch for me well enough, I think. I slept with him.’ Chapter Four ‘Division of labour,’ Kincaid told Gemma as they stopped for a quick lunch at the pub in Fingest. ‘You see if you can confirm Sir Gerald’s alibi – that’ll allow you a night or two at home with Toby – and I’ll tackle Henley. I want to go over Connor Swann’s flat myself, and I want to have a word with – what did Julia say his name was? Simons, that was it – Trevor Simons, at his gallery. I’d like to know a bit more about Julia’s movements that night,’ he added, and Gemma gave him a look he couldn’t interpret. They finished their sandwiches under Tony’s watchful eye, then Gemma ran upstairs to pack her bag. Kincaid waited in the gravelled carpark, jingling the change in his pockets and drawing furrows in the gravel with his toe. The Ashertons were very plausible, but the more he thought about it, the more difficult it became to make sense of what they had told him. They seemed to have been on close terms with a son-in-law their daughter barely tolerated, and yet they also seemed to go to great lengths to avoid confrontation with Julia. He made a J in the gravel with his shoe, then carefully raked it over again. How had Julia Swann really felt about her husband? In his mind he saw her again, her thin face composed and her dark eyes fixed on his, and he found he didn’t quite buy the tough persona she wore so successfully. Gemma came out with her case, turning back for a moment to wave goodbye to Tony. The sun sparked from her hair, and it was only then that Kincaid realized it had ventured out from the clouds that had hidden it through the morning. ‘Ready, guv?’ asked Gemma as she stowed her things in the boot and slid behind the wheel of her Escort. Kincaid put his speculations aside and got in beside her. She seemed to him refreshingly uncomplicated, and he offered up a silent thanks, as he often did, for her competent cheerfulness. Leaving the hills behind, they took the wide road to Henley. They had a glimpse of the river beneath the Henley Bridge, then it vanished behind them as the one-way system shunted them into the centre of town. ‘Can you get back to the pub all right, guv?’ Gemma asked as she pulled up to let Kincaid out in Henley’s marketplace. ‘I’ll ask the local lads for a lift. I could pull rank and requisition a car, of course,’ he added, grinning at her, ‘but just now I think I’d rather not be bothered with parking the bloody thing.’ He stepped out of the car and gave the door a parting thump with his hand, as if he were slapping a horse on its way. Gemma let up on the brake, but before nosing back into the traffic she rolled down the Escort’s driver’s-side window and called to him, ‘Mind how you go.’ Turning back, he waved jauntily to her, then watched the car disappear down Hart Street. The sudden note of concern in her voice struck him as odd. It was she who was driving back to London, while he merely intended an unannounced interview and a recce of Connor Swann’s flat. He shrugged and smiled – he’d quite grown to like her occasional solicitousness. Henley Police Station lay just across the street, but after a moment’s hesitation he turned and instead climbed the steps to the Town Hall. A cardboard sign taped to the wall informed him that Tourist Information could be found downstairs, and as he descended, he wrinkled his nose at the standard public building accoutrements – cracked lino and the sour smell of urine. Fifty pence bought him a street map of the town, and he unfolded it as he walked thankfully back out into the sun. He saw that his way lay down Hart Street and along the river, so tucking the map in his jacket and his hands in his pockets, he strolled down the hill. The square tower of the church seemed to float against the softly coloured hills beyond the river, and it drew him on like a lodestone. ‘St Mary the Virgin,’ he said aloud as he reached it, thinking that for an Anglican church the syllables rolled off the tongue with a very Catholic resonance. He wondered where they meant to bury Connor Swann. Irish Catholic, Irish Protestant? Could it possibly matter? He didn’t yet know enough about him to hazard a guess. Crossing the busy street, he stood for a moment on the Henley Bridge. The Thames spread peacefully before him, so different from the thunder of water through Hambleden Weir. The river course wound north for a bit after Henley, curved to the east before it reached Hambleden, then meandered northeast before turning south towards Windsor. Could Connor have gone in the river here, in Henley, and drifted downstream to Hambleden Lock? He thought it highly unlikely, but made himself a mental note to check with Thames Valley. He took a last look at the red-and-white Pimm’s umbrellas beckoning temptingly from the terrace of the Angel pub, but he had other fish to fry. A few hundred yards beyond the pub he found the address. Next door to the tearoom a discreet sign announced THE GALLERY, THAMESIDE, and a single painting in an ornate gilded frame adorned the shop window. The door chimed electronically as Kincaid pushed it open, then clicked softly behind him, shutting out the hum of sound from the riverside. The silence settled around him. Even his footsteps were muffled by a thickly padded Berber carpet covering the floor. No one seemed to be about. A door stood open at the back of the shop, revealing a small walled garden, and beyond that another door. Kincaid looked round the room with interest. The paintings, spaced generously around the walls, seemed to be mostly late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century watercolours, and most were river landscapes. In the room’s centre a pedestal held a sleek bronze of a crouching cat. Kincaid ran his hand over the cool metal and thought of Sid. He had made arrangements with his neighbour, Major Keith, to look after the cat when he was away from home. Although the major professed to dislike cats, he looked after Sid with the same gruff tenderness he had shown to the cat’s former owner. Kincaid thought that for the major, as well as himself, the cat formed a living link to the friend they had lost. Near the garden door stood a desk, its cluttered surface a contrast to the spare neatness he saw everywhere else. Kincaid glanced quickly at the untidy papers, then moved into the second small room which lay a step down from the first. He caught his breath. The painting on the opposite wall was a long narrow rectangle, perhaps a yard wide and a foot high, and it was lit by a lamp mounted just above it. The girl’s body almost filled the frame. Dressed in shirt and jeans, she lay on her back in a meadow, eyes closed, hat tilted back on her auburn hair, and beside her on the grass a basket of ripe apples spilled over onto an open book. A simple-enough composition, almost photographic in its clarity and detail, but it possessed a warmth and depth impossible to capture with a camera. You could feel the sun on the girl’s upturned face, feel her contentment and pleasure in the day. Other paintings by the same artist’s hand were hung nearby, portraits and landscapes filled with the same vivid colours and intense light. As Kincaid looked at them he felt a sense of longing, as if such beauty and perfection existed forever just out of his reach, unless he, like Alice, could step through the frame and into the artist’s world. He had bent forward to peer at the illegibly scrawled signature when behind him a voice said, ‘Lovely, aren’t they?’ Startled, Kincaid straightened and turned. The man stood in the back doorway, his body in shadow as the sun lit the garden behind him. As he stepped into the room, Kincaid saw him more clearly – tall, thin and neat-featured, with a shock of greying hair and glasses that gave him an accountant-like air at odds with the casual pullover and trousers he wore. The door chimed as Kincaid started to speak. A young man came in, his face white against the dead-black of his clothes and dyed hair, a large and battered leather portfolio tucked under his arm. His get-up would have been laughable if not for the look of supplication on his face. Kincaid nodded to Trevor Simons, for so he assumed the man who had come in from the garden to be, and said, ‘Go ahead. I’m in no hurry.’ Rather to Kincaid’s surprise, Simons looked carefully at the drawings. After a few moments he shook his head and tucked them back into the portfolio, but Kincaid heard him give the boy the name of another gallery he might try. ‘The trouble is,’ he said to Kincaid as the door chimed shut, ‘he can’t paint. It’s a bloody shame. They stopped teaching drawing and painting in the art colleges back in the sixties. Graphic artists – that’s what they all want to be – only no one tells them there aren’t any jobs. So they come out of art college like this wee chappie,’ he nodded towards the street, ‘hawking their wares from gallery to gallery like itinerant peddlers. You saw it – fairly competent air-brushed crap, without a spark of originality. If he’s lucky he’ll find a job frying up chips or driving a delivery van.’ ‘You were courteous enough,’ said Kincaid. ‘Well, you have to have some sympathy, haven’t you? It’s not their fault they’re ignorant, both in technique and in the realities of life.’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘I’ve nattered on long enough. What can I do for you?’ Kincaid gestured towards the watercolours in the second room, ‘These—’ ‘Ah, she’s an exception,’ Simons said, smiling. ‘In many ways. Self-taught, for one, which was probably her salvation, and very successful at it, for another. Not with these,’ he added quickly, ‘although I think she will be, but with the work she does on commission. Stays booked two years in advance. It’s very difficult for an artist who is successful commercially to find the time to do really creative work, so this show meant a lot to her.’ Realizing the answer even as he asked and feeling an utter fool, Kincaid said, ‘The artist – who is she?’ Trevor Simons looked puzzled. ‘Julia Swann. I thought you knew.’ ‘But . . .’ Kincaid tried to reconcile the flawless but rather emotionally severe perfection of Julia’s flowers with these vibrantly alive paintings. He could see similarities now in technique and execution, but the outcome was astonishingly different. Making an attempt to collect himself, he said, ‘Look. I think perhaps I ought to go out and come in again, I’ve made such a muddle of things. My name’s Duncan Kincaid’ – he extended his warrant card in its folder – ‘and I came to talk to you about Julia Swann.’ Trevor Simons looked from the warrant card to Kincaid and back again, then said rather blankly, ‘It looks like a library permit. I always wondered, you know, when you see them on the telly.’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘I don’t understand. I know Con’s death has been a dreadful shock for everyone, but I thought it was an accident. Why Scotland Yard? And why me?’ ‘Thames Valley has treated it as a suspicious death from the beginning, and asked for our assistance at Sir Gerald Asherton’s request.’ Kincaid had delivered this with no intonation, but Simons raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Ah.’ ‘Indeed,’ Kincaid answered, and when their eyes met it occurred to him that he might be friends with this man under other circumstances. ‘And me?’ Simons asked again. ‘Surely you can’t think Julia had anything to do with Con’s death?’ ‘Were you with Julia all Thursday evening?’ Kincaid said, pushing a bit more aggressively, although the note of incredulity in Simons’s voice had struck him as genuine. Unruffled, Simons leaned against his desk and folded his arms. ‘More or less. It was a bit of a free-for-all in here.’ He nodded, indicating the two small rooms. ‘People were jammed in here like sardines. I suppose Julia might have popped out to the loo or for a smoke and I wouldn’t have noticed, but not much longer than that.’ ‘What time did you close the gallery?’ ‘Ten-ish. They’d eaten and drunk everything in sight, and left a wake of litter behind like pillaging Huns. We had to push the last happy stragglers out of the door.’ ‘We?’ ‘Julia helped me tidy up.’ ‘And after that?’ Trevor Simons looked away for the first time. He studied the river for a moment, then turned back to Kincaid with a reluctant expression. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen Julia already. Did she tell you she spent the night? I can’t imagine her being silly enough to protect my honour.’ Simons paused, but before Kincaid could speak he went on. ‘Well, it’s true enough. She was here in the flat with me until just before daybreak. A small attempt at discretion, creeping out with the dawn,’ he added with a humourless smile. ‘She didn’t leave you at any time before that?’ ‘I think I would have noticed if she had,’ Simons answered, this time with a genuine flash of amusement, then he quickly sobered and added, ‘Look, Mr Kincaid, I don’t make a habit of doing this sort of thing. I’m married and I’ve two teenage daughters. I don’t want my family hurt. I know,’ he continued hurriedly, as if Kincaid might interrupt him, ‘I should have considered the consequences beforehand, but one doesn’t, does one?’ ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Kincaid answered in bland policemanese, all the while thinking, Does one not, or does one consider the consequences and choose to act anyway? The image of his ex-wife came to him, her straight flaxen hair falling across her shuttered face. Had Vic considered the consequences? ‘You don’t live here, then?’ he asked, breaking the train of thought abruptly. He gestured towards the door across the garden. ‘No. In Sonning, a bit further upriver. The flat was included in the property when I bought the gallery, and I use it mainly as a studio. Sometimes I stay over when I’m painting, or when I’ve an opening on.’ ‘You paint?’ asked Kincaid, a little surprised. Simons’s smile was rueful. ‘Am I a practical man, Mr Kincaid? Or merely a compromised one? You tell me.’ The question seemed to be hypothetical only, for he continued, ‘I knew when I left art school I wasn’t quite good enough, didn’t have that unique combination of talent and luck. So I used a little family money and bought this gallery. I found it a bit ironic that Julia’s opening also marked the anniversary of my twenty-fifth year here.’ Kincaid wasn’t inclined to let him off the hook, although he suspected his curiosity was more personal than professional. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’ ‘Yes, I paint, and I feel insulted if I’m referred to as a “local artist” rather than an “artist who paints locally”. It’s a fine distinction, you understand,’ he added mockingly. ‘Silly, isn’t it?’ ‘What sort of things do you paint?’ Kincaid asked, scanning the paintings on the walls of the small room. Simons followed his gaze and smiled. ‘Sometimes I do hang my own work, but I haven’t any up just now. I’ve had to make room for Julia’s paintings, and frankly I’ve other things that sell better than mine, although I do paint Thames landscapes. I use oils – I’m not good enough yet to paint in watercolour, but one day I will be.’ ‘Is what Julia does that difficult, then?’ Kincaid allowed himself to study Julia’s lamplit painting, and discovered that he had been deliberately resisting doing so. It drew him, as she did, in a way that felt both familiar and perilous. ‘I always thought that one just made a choice, watercolours or oils, depending on what one liked.’ ‘Watercolour is much more difficult,’ Simons said patiently. ‘In oil you can make any number of mistakes and just as easily cover them up, the more the merrier. Watercolour requires a confidence, perhaps even a certain amount of ruthlessness. You must get it right the first time.’ Kincaid looked at Julia’s paintings with new respect. ‘You said she was self-taught? Why not art college, with her talent?’ Simons shrugged. ‘I suppose her family didn’t take her seriously. Musicians do tend to be rather one-dimensional, even more so than visual artists. Nothing else exists for them. They eat, sleep and breathe music, and I imagine that to Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline, Julia’s paintings were just amusing dabs of colour on paper.’ He stepped down into the lower room and walked over to the large painting, staring at it. ‘Whatever the reason, it allowed her to develop in her own way, with no taint of graphic mediocrity.’ ‘You have a special relationship,’ Kincaid said, watching the way Trevor Simons’s slender body blocked the painting in an almost protective posture. ‘You admire her – do you also resent her?’ After a moment Simons answered, his back still to Kincaid. ‘Perhaps. Can we help but envy those touched by the gods, however briefly?’ He turned and the brown eyes behind the spectacles regarded Kincaid candidly. ‘Yet I have a good life.’ ‘Then why have you risked it?’ Kincaid said softly. ‘Your wife, family . . . perhaps even your business?’ ‘I never intended it.’ Simons gave a self-mocking bark of laughter. ‘Famous last words – I never meant to do it. It was just . . . Julia.’ ‘What else didn’t you intend, Trevor? Just how far did your loss of judgement take you?’ ‘You think I might have killed Connor?’ His eyebrows shot up above the line of his spectacles and he laughed again. ‘I can’t lay claim to sins of that magnitude, Mr Kincaid. And why would I want to get rid of the poor bloke? Julia had already chewed him up and spat out the partially digested remains.’ Kincaid grinned. ‘Very descriptively put. And will she do the same to you?’ ‘Oh, I expect so. I’ve never been able to delude myself sufficiently to think otherwise.’ Pushing aside an untidy stack of papers, Kincaid sat on the edge of Simons’s desk and stretched out his legs. ‘Did you know Connor Swann well?’ Simons put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight in the manner of a man suddenly territorially displaced. ‘Only to speak to, really. Before they separated he came in with Julia occasionally.’ ‘Was he jealous of you, do you think?’ ‘Con? Jealous? That would be the pot calling the kettle black! I never understood why Julia put up with him as long as she did.’ A passer-by stopped and peered at the painting in the window, as had several others since Kincaid had come into the gallery. Beyond her the light had shifted, and the shadows of the willows lay longer on the pavement. ‘They don’t come in,’ Kincaid said as he watched her move towards the tea shop and pass from his view. ‘No. Not often.’ Simons gestured at the paintings lining the walls. ‘The prices are a bit steep for impulse buying. Most of my customers are regulars, collectors. Though sometimes one of those window-shoppers will wander in and fall in love with a painting, then go home and save up pennies out of the housekeeping or the beer money until they have enough to buy it.’ He smiled. ‘Those are the best, the ones that know nothing about art and buy out of love. It’s a genuine response.’ Kincaid looked at the illuminated painting of the girl in the meadow, her eyes gently closed, her faintly freckled face tilted to the sun, and acknowledged his own experience. ‘Yes, I can see that.’ He stood and regarded Trevor Simons, who, whatever his sins, seemed a perceptive and decent man. ‘A word of advice, Mr Simons, which I probably shouldn’t give. An investigation like this moves out in ripples – the longer it takes the wider the circle becomes. If I were you I’d do some damage control – tell your wife about Julia if you can. Before we do.’ Kincaid sat at the table nearest the window in the tea shop. The tin pot had leaked as he poured, and his cup sat in a wet ring on the speckled plastic tabletop. At the next table he recognized the woman who had stopped at the gallery window a few minutes before – middle-aged, heavyset, her greying hair tightly crimped. Although the air in the shop was warm enough to form faint steamy smudges on the windowpanes, she still wore a waterproof jacket over her bulky cardigan. Perhaps she feared it might rain unexpectedly inside? When she looked up, he smiled at her, but she looked away, her face frozen in an expression of faint disapproval. Gazing idly at the river again, he fingered the key in his trouser pocket. Gemma had acquired Connor’s key, address and a description of the property from Thames Valley along with the initial reports. Until a year ago Julia and Connor had lived together in the flat he thought must be just along the terrace, near the willow-covered islands he could see from the window. Julia might have stopped in here often for a morning coffee or a cup of afternoon tea. He imagined her suddenly, sitting across the booth from him in a black sweater, smoking jerkily, frowning in concentration. In his mind she rose and went out into the street. She stood before the gallery for a moment, as if hesitating, then he heard the door chime as she opened it and went in. Shaking his head, Kincaid downed the remains of his tea in one gulp. He slid from the booth and presented his soggy bill to the girl behind the counter, then followed Julia’s phantom out into the lengthening shadows. He walked towards the river meadows, gazing alternately at the placid river on his left and the blocks of flats on his right. It surprised him that these riverside addresses weren’t more elegant. One of the larger buildings was neo-Georgian, another Tudoresque, and both were just a trifle seedy, like dowagers out in soiled housecoats. The shrubbery grew rankly in the gardens, brightened only by the dark red dried heads of sedum and the occasional pale blue of Michaelmas daisies. But it was November after all, Kincaid thought charitably, looking at the quiet river. Even the kiosk advertising river trips and boats for hire was shuttered and locked. The road narrowed and the large blocks of flats gave way to lower buildings and an occasional detached house. Here the river seemed less separate from the land, and when he reached the high black wrought-iron fence he recognized it from the scrawled description in his pocket. He grasped two of the spiked bars in his hands and peered through them. A commemorative ceramic plaque set into the wall of the nearest building informed him that the flats were quite recently developed, so perhaps Julia and Connor had been among the first tenants. They were built to look like boathouses, in a soft-red brick with an abundance of white-trimmed windows, white deck railings and white peaked gables adorned with gingerbread. Kincaid thought them a bit overdone, but pleasantly so, for they harmonized with both the natural landscape and the surrounding buildings. Like the Prince of Wales, he found most contemporary architecture to be a blight upon the landscape. Dodging an array of parked boats and trailers, Kincaid walked along the fence until he found a gate. The flats were staggered behind a well-tended garden, and none was quite identical to the next. He found the house easily, one of the three-tiered variety, raised above the ground on stiltlike supports. Feeling suddenly as if he were trespassing, he fitted the key in the lock, but no one called out to him from the adjacent decks. He had expected black and white. Illogically, he supposed, considering the intensity of colour Julia used in her paintings. This was a softer palette, almost Mediterranean, with pale yellow walls and terra-cotta floors. Casually provincial furniture filled the sitting room and a fringed Moroccan rug softened the tile floor. On a tiled platform against one wall stood an enamelled wood-burning stove. A small painted table in front of the sofa held a chess set. Had Connor played, Kincaid wondered, or had it been merely for show? A sports jacket lay crumpled over the back of a chair, an untidy pile of newspapers spilled from sofa to floor and a pair of boat shoes peeked from beneath the coffee table. The male clutter seemed incongruous, an intrusion on an essentially feminine room. Kincaid ran his forefinger across a tabletop, then brushed off the resulting grey fuzz against his trouser leg. Connor Swann had not been much of a housekeeper. Kincaid wandered into the adjoining kitchen. It had no windows, but opened to the sitting room with its view of the river. Unlike the sitting room, however, it looked immaculate. Cans of olive oil and coloured-glass bottles of vinegar stood out like bright flags against the oak cabinets and yellow countertops, and a shelf near the cooktop held an array of well-thumbed cookbooks. Julia Child, read Kincaid, The Art of Cooking. The Italian Kitchen. La Cucina Fresca. There were more, some with lavish colour photographs that made him hungry just looking. Glass jars filled with pasta lined another open shelf. Kincaid opened the fridge and found it well stocked with condiments, cheeses, eggs and milk. The freezer held a few neatly wrapped and labelled packages of meat and chicken, a loaf of French bread, and some plastic containers of something Kincaid guessed might be homemade soup stock. A pad beneath the telephone held the beginnings of a grocery list: aubergines, tomato paste, red-leaf lettuce, pears. The descriptions Kincaid had heard of Connor Swann had not led him to expect an accomplished and enthusiastic cook, but this man had obviously not resorted to zapping frozen dinners in the microwave. The first floor held a master bedroom and bath done in the same soft yellows as the ground floor, and a small room which apparently served as an office or study. Kincaid continued up the stairs to the top floor. It had been Julia’s studio. The wide windows let in a flood of late afternoon light, and over the willow-tops he could see the winding Thames. A bare table stood in the centre of the room, and an old desk pushed against one wall held some partially used sketch pads and a wooden box filled with odds and ends of paint tubes. Curious, Kincaid rummaged through them. He hadn’t known that professional watercolours came in tubes. Winsor Red. Scarlet Lake. Ultramarine Blue. The names ran through his mind like poetry, but the tubes left the fine dust of neglect on his finger-tips. The room itself felt empty and unused. He slowly retraced his steps, stopping once more at the door to the bedroom. The bed was hastily made, and a pair of trousers lay thrown over a chair, belt dangling. The sense of a life interrupted hung palpably in the air. Connor Swann had meant to shop for groceries, prepare dinner, put out the newspapers, brush his teeth, slide under the warmth of the blue-and-yellow quilt on the bed. Kincaid knew that unless he came to an understanding of who Connor Swann had been, he had little hope of discovering who had killed him, and he realized that all his knowledge and perceptions of him were filtered through Julia and her family. This was Julia’s house. Every room bore her imprint, and except for the kitchen, Connor seemed to have only drifted across its surface. Why had Julia left it, like a commander who held all the advantages retreating from the citadel? Kincaid turned from the bedroom and went into the study. The room contained nothing but a desk and chair facing the window, and a wing-backed chair with a reading lamp. Sitting in the straight-backed chair, he turned on the green-shaded desk lamp and began picking desultorily through the clutter. A leather-bound appointment book came first to hand. Starting with January, Kincaid flipped slowly through it. The names of the racetracks jumped out first – Epsom, Cheltenham, Newmarket . . . They rotated regularly through the months. Some had times written beside them, others sharp exclamation points. A good day? Kincaid went back to the beginning, starting more carefully. In between races he began to see the pattern of Connor’s social life. Dates for lunch, dinner, drinks, often accompanied by a name, a time and the words Red Lion. Bloody hell, thought Kincaid, the man had kept up an exhausting social schedule. And to make it worse, pubs and hotels called the Red Lion were as common as sheep in Yorkshire. He supposed the logical place to start would be the plush old hotel here in Henley, next to the church. Golf dates appeared often, as well as the notation Meet with J., followed by a dash and varying names, some cryptic, some, like Tyler Pipe and Carpetland, obviously businesses. It looked as though these weren’t all social engagements, but rather business appointments, entertaining clients of some sort. Kincaid had assumed that Connor lived off the Asherton income, and nothing in the Thames Valley reports had led him to think otherwise, but perhaps that hadn’t been the case. He closed the book and began shuffling through the papers on the desktop, then had a thought and opened the diary again. Lunch at B.E. appeared every Thursday, regular as clockwork. The stack on the desktop resolved itself into ordinary household bills, betting slips, a set of racing-form books, a corporate report from a firm in Reading, and an auction catalogue. Kincaid shrugged and continued his inventory. Paperclips, paper knife, a mug emblazoned with HENLEY ART FEST, which held a handful of promotional pens. He found Connor’s cheque book in the left-hand drawer. A quick look through the register revealed the expected monthly payments, as well as regular deposits labelled Blackwell, Gillock and Frye. A firm of solicitors? wondered Kincaid? An interesting pattern began to form – he returned to the beginning of the register, double-checking. The first cheque written after every deposit was made out to a K. Hicks, and the amounts, although not the same, were always sizeable. Lost as he was in speculation, it took a moment for the soft click from downstairs to penetrate Kincaid’s consciousness. He looked up. Dusk had fallen as he worked. Through the window the outline of the willows showed charcoal against a violet sky. The sounds were more definitive this time – a louder click, followed by a creak. Kincaid slid from the chair and moved quietly out into the hall. He listened for a moment, then went quickly down the stairs, keeping his feet carefully to the outside of the treads. When he reached the last step, the light came on in the sitting room. He listened again, then stepped around the corner. She stood by the front door, one hand still on the light switch. The glow from the table lamps revealed tight jeans, a fuzzy pink sweater in a weave so loose it revealed the line of her bra, impossibly high heels, blonde hair permed into Medusa-like ropes. He could see the quick rise and fall of her chest beneath the sweater. ‘Hullo,’ he said, trying a smile. She took one gulping breath before she shrieked ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ Chapter Five Disoriented, Gemma reached out and touched the other side of the double bed, patted it. Empty. Opening her eyes, she saw the faint grey light brightening the wrong side of the room. She came fully awake. New flat. No husband. Of course. Sitting up against the pillows, she pushed the tangle of hair away from her face. It had been months since she dreamed of Rob, and she had thought that particular ghost well laid to rest. The hot water had just begun to gurgle through the radiator pipes as the automatic timer switched on the central heating. For a panicked moment she wondered why the alarm hadn’t gone off, then relaxed in relief. It was Sunday. She closed her eyes and snuggled down into the pillows, feeling that luxurious laziness that comes with waking early and knowing one doesn’t have to get up. Sleep, however, refused to be coaxed back. The thought of the interview she’d managed to schedule later in the morning at the Coliseum niggled at her consciousness until finally, with a yawn, she swung her feet from under the duvet. The opera had seemed the logical place to start checking out Gerald Asherton’s story, and she found herself looking forward to her day with a tingle of pleasure. When her toes touched the floor they curled involuntarily from the cold, and she fumbled for her slippers as she shrugged into her dressing gown. At least she could take advantage of the time before Toby awakened to have a quiet cup of coffee and organize her thoughts for the day. A few minutes later the flat was warming nicely and she sat at the black-slatted table in front of the garden windows, cradling a hot mug in her hands and questioning her sanity. She had sold her house in Leyton – three bedrooms, semi-detached with garden, a symbol in brick and pebbledash of Rob’s unrealistic plans for their marriage – and instead of buying the sensible flat in Wanstead she’d had in mind, she’d leased . . . this. She gazed round the room, bemused. Her estate agent had begged, ‘Just have a quick look, Gemma, that’s all I ask. I know it’s not what you’re looking for, but you simply must see it.’ And so she had come, and seen, and signed on the dotted line, finding herself the surprised tenant of the converted garage behind a square detached Victorian house in a tree-lined street in Islington. The house itself was unexpected, standing as it did between two of Islington’s most elegant Georgian terraces, but it occupied its space with the confidence of good breeding. The garage was separate from the house, and lower than the garden, so that the hip-high windows which lined one entire wall of the flat were actually ground level on the outside. The owners, a psychiatrist who worked from a shed in the garden, and his wife, had done up the garage in what the agent described as ‘Japanese minimalist’ décor. Gemma almost laughed aloud, thinking of it. An exercise in ‘minimalist living’ would be a fitting description of what it had become for her. The flat was basically one large room, furnished with a futon and a few other sleek, contemporary pieces. Cubbyholes along the wall opposite the bed contained kitchen and water closet, and a storage room with a small window had become Toby’s bedroom. The arrangement didn’t allow much privacy, but privacy with a small child was a negligible quality anyway, and Gemma couldn’t imagine sharing her bed with anyone in the foreseeable future. Gemma’s furniture and most of their belongings had been stored in the back of her parents’ bakery in Leyton High Road. Her mum had shaken her faded red curls and tut-tutted. ‘What were you thinking of, love?’ A quiet, tree-lined street with a park at its end. A green, walled garden, filled with interesting nooks and crannies for a little boy to hide in. A secret place, filled with possibilities. But Gemma had merely said, ‘I like it, Mum. And it’s nearer the Yard,’ doubting her mother would understand. She felt stripped clean, pared down to essentials, serene in the room’s black-and-grey simplicity. Or at least she had until this morning. She frowned, wondering again what had made her feel so unsettled, and the image of twelve-year-old Matthew Asherton came unbidden to her mind. She rose, put two slices of brown bread in the toaster that stood on the tabletop and went to kiss Toby awake. Having deposited Toby at her mum’s, Gemma took the tube to Charing Cross. As the train pulled away, the rush of wind down the tunnel whipped her skirt around her knees and she hugged the lapels of her jacket together. She left the station and entered the pedestrian mall behind St Martin-in-the-Fields, and rounding the church into St Martin’s Lane she found the outside no better. A gust of north wind funnelled down the street, flinging grit and scraps of paper and leaving tiny whirlwinds in its wake. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles and blinked several times to clear them, then looked about her. Before her on the corner stood the Chandos Pub, and just beyond it a black-and-white vertical sign said LONDON COLISEUM. Blue and white banners emblazoned with the letters ENO surrounded it and drew her eyes upwards. Against the blue-washed canvas of the sky, the ornate white cupola stood out sharply. Near the top of the dome, white letters spelled out ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA rather sedately, and Gemma thought they must be lit at night. Something tugged at her memory and she realized she’d been here before. She and Rob had been to a play at the Albery Theatre up the street, and afterwards had stopped for a drink at the Chandos. It had been a warm night and they’d taken their drinks outside, escaping the smoky crush in the bar. Gemma remembered sipping her Pimm’s and watching the opera-goers spill out onto the pavement, their faces animated, hands moving with quick gestures as they dissected the performance. ‘It might be fun,’ she’d said rather wistfully to Rob. He had smiled in his condescending way and said, light voice mocking, ‘Old cows in silly costumes screeching their lungs out? Don’t be stupid, Gem.’ Gemma smiled now, thinking of the photo she’d seen of Caroline Stowe. Rob would’ve fallen over himself if he’d come face-to-face with her. Old cow, indeed. He’d never know what he had missed. She pushed through the lobby doors, feeling a small surge of excitement at her own entrance into this glamorous fairy-tale world. ‘Alison Douglas,’ she said to the heavy grey-haired woman at the reception desk. ‘The orchestra manager’s assistant. I’ve an appointment with her.’ ‘You’ll have to go round the back, then, ducks,’ the woman answered in less than rarefied accents. She made a looping motion with her finger. ‘Round the block, next to the loading bay.’ Feeling somewhat chastened, Gemma left the plush-and-gilt warmth of the lobby and circled the block in the indicated direction. She found herself in an alleylike street lined with pub and restaurant delivery entrances. With its concrete steps and peeling paint, the stage entrance to the London Coliseum was distinguished only by the increasingly familiar ENO logo near the door. Gemma climbed up and stepped inside, looking around curiously at the small lino-floored reception area. To her left a porter sat inside a glass-windowed kiosk; just ahead another door barred the way into what must be the inner sanctum. She announced herself to the porter and he smiled as he handed her a sign-in sheet on a clipboard. He was young, with a freckled face and brown hair that looked suspiciously as if it were growing out from a Mohawk cut. Gemma looked more closely, saw the tiny puncture in his earlobe which should have held an earring. He’d made a valiant effort to clean up for the job, no doubt. ‘I’ll just give Miss Alison a ring,’ he said as he handed her a sticky badge to wear. ‘She’ll be right down for you.’ He picked up the phone and murmured something incomprehensible into it. Gemma wondered if he’d been on duty after last Thursday evening’s performance. His friendly grin augured well for an interview, but she had better wait until she wouldn’t be interrupted. Church bells began to ring close by. ‘St Martin’s?’ she asked. He nodded, checking the clock on the wall behind him. ‘Eleven o’clock on the dot. You can set your watch by it.’ Was there a congregation for eleven o’clock services, Gemma wondered, or did the church cater solely to tourists? Remembering how surprised she’d been when Alison Douglas had agreed to see her this morning, she asked the porter, ‘Business as usual here, even on a Sunday morning?’ He displayed the grin. ‘Sunday matinée. One of our biggest draws, especially when it’s something as popular as Traviata.’ Puzzled, Gemma tugged her notebook from her purse and flipped quickly through it. ‘Pelleas and Meli-sande. I thought you were doing Pelleas and Melisande.’ ‘Thursdays and Saturdays. Productions—’ The inner door opened and he paused as a young woman came through, then continued to Gemma, ‘You’ll see.’ He winked at her. ‘Alison’ll make sure you do.’ ‘I’m Alison Douglas.’ Her cool hand clasped Gemma’s firmly. ‘Don’t mind Danny. What can I do for you?’ Gemma took in the short light brown hair, black sweater and skirt, platform shoes, which didn’t quite raise her to Gemma’s height, but Alison Douglas’s most notable characteristic was an air of taking herself quite seriously. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk? Your office, perhaps?’ Alison hesitated, then opened the inner door, indicating by a jerk of her head that Gemma should precede her through it. ‘You’d better come along in, then. Look,’ she added, ‘we’ve a performance in just under three hours and I’ve things I absolutely must do. If you don’t mind following along behind me we can talk as we go.’ ‘All right,’ Gemma agreed, doubting she’d get a better offer. They had entered a subterranean maze of dark green corridors. Already lost, Gemma followed hard on Alison Douglas’s heels as they twisted and turned, went up, down and around. Occasionally, she looked down at the dirty green carpet beneath her feet, wondering if she recognized the pattern of that particular stain. Could she follow them like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs? The smells of damp and disinfectant made her want to sneeze. Alison turned back to speak to her, stopped suddenly and smiled. Gemma felt sure her ‘bewilderment had been entirely visible, and thought for once she ought to be grateful her every emotion registered on her face. ‘Back-of-house,’ Alison said, her brusque manner softening for the first time. ‘That’s what all the unglamorous bits are called. It’s quite a shock if one’s never been backstage, isn’t it? But this is the heart of the theatre. Without this’ – she gestured expansively around her – ‘nothing happens out front.’ ‘The show doesn’t go on?’ ‘Exactly.’ Gemma suspected that the key to loosening Alison Douglas’s tongue was her work. ‘Miss Douglas, I’m not sure I understand what you do.’ Alison moved forward again as she spoke. ‘My boss – Michael Blake – and I are responsible for all the administrative details of the running of the orchestra. We—’ Glancing at Gemma’s face, she hesitated, seeming to search for a less complicated explanation. ‘We make sure everything and everyone are where they should be when they should be. It can be quite a demanding business. And Michael’s away for a few days just now.’ ‘Do you deal directly with the conductors?’ Gemma asked, taking advantage of the opening, slight as it was, but the corridor turned again and Alison pushed aside the faded plush curtain which barred their way. She stepped back to allow Gemma to pass through first. Gemma stopped and stared, her mouth open in surprise. Beside her, Alison said softly, ‘It is rather amazing, isn’t it? I begin to take it for granted until I see it through someone else’s eyes. This is the largest theatre in the West End, and it has the largest backstage area of any theatre in London. That’s what allows us to put on several productions simultaneously.’ The cavernous space bustled with activity. Pieces of scenery belonging to more than one production stood side by side in surreal juxtaposition. ‘Oh,’ Gemma said, watching a huge section of stone wall roll easily across the floor, guided by two men in overalls. ‘So that’s what Danny meant. Thursdays and Saturdays Sir Gerald conducts Pelleas and Melisande – Fridays and Sundays someone else is doing . . . what did he say?’ ‘La Traviata. Look.’ Alison pointed across the stage. ‘There’s Violetta’s ballroom, where she and Alfredo sing their first duet. And there – ’ she gestured towards the section of stone wall, now slotted neatly into a recess – ‘that’s part of King Arkel’s castle, from Pelleas.’ She looked at Gemma, studied her watch, looked once again at Gemma and said, ‘There are a few things I simply must see to. Why not have a look round here while I get things in hand? After that I’ll try to manage a quarter of an hour in the canteen with you.’ She was already moving away from Gemma as she finished, the soles of her platform shoes clicking on the wooden floor. Gemma walked to the lip of the stage and looked out. Before her the tiers of the auditorium rose in baroque splendour, blue velvet accented with gilt. The chandeliers hung from the dome high above her like frosted moons. She imagined all the empty seats filled, and the expectant eyes upon her, waiting for her to open her mouth and sing. Cold crept up her spine and she shivered. Caroline Stowe might look delicate, but to stand on a stage like this and face the crowd required a kind of strength Gemma didn’t possess. She looked down into the pit and smiled. At least Sir Gerald had some protection, and could turn his back on the audience. A thread of music came from somewhere, women’s voices carrying a haunting, lilting melody. Gemma turned and walked towards the back of the stage, straining to hear, but the banging and thumping going on around her masked even the sound’s direction. She didn’t notice Alison Douglas’s return until the woman spoke. ‘Did you see the pit? We jam a hundred and nineteen players into that space, if you can imagine that, elbow to—’ Gemma touched her arm. ‘That music – what is it?’ ‘What – ?’ Alison listened for a moment, puzzled, then smiled. ‘Oh, that. That’s from Lakme, Mallika’s duet with Lakme in the high priest’s garden. One of the girls in Traviata is singing Mallika next month at Covent Garden. I suppose she’s swotting by listening to a recording.’ She glanced at her watch, then added, ‘We can get that cup of tea now, if you like.’ The music faded. As Gemma followed Alison back into the maze of corridors she felt an odd sadness, as if she’d been touched by something beautiful and fleeting. ‘That opera,’ she said to Alison’s back, ‘does it have a happy ending?’ Alison looked back over her shoulder, her expression amused. ‘Of course not. Lakme sacrifices herself to protect her lover, in the end.’ The canteen smelled of frying chips. Gemma sat across the table from Alison Douglas, drinking tea strong enough to put fur on her tongue and trying to find a comfortable position for her backside in the moulded plastic chair. Around them men and women dressed in perfectly ordinary clothes drank tea and ate sandwiches, but when Gemma caught snippets of conversation it contained such obscure musical and technical terms that it might as well have been a foreign language. She pulled her notebook from her handbag and took another sip of tea, grimacing at the tannin’s bite. ‘Miss Douglas,’ she said as she saw Alison touch the face of her wristwatch with her fingertips, ‘I appreciate your time. I’ll not take up any more than necessary.’ ‘I’m not sure I understand how I can help you. I mean, I know about Sir Gerald’s son-in-law. It’s an awful thing to happen, isn’t it?’ Her forehead creased as she frowned, and she looked suddenly very young and unsure, like a child encountering tragedy for the first time. ‘But I can’t see what it has to do with me.’ Gemma flipped open her notebook and uncapped her pen, then laid both casually beside her teacup. ‘Do you work closely with Sir Gerald?’ ‘No more so than with any of the conductors – ’ Alison paused and smiled – ‘but I enjoy it more. He’s such a dear. Never gets in a tizzy, like some of them.’ Hesitating to admit she didn’t understand how the system worked, Gemma temporized with, ‘Does he conduct often?’ ‘More than anyone except our music director.’ Alison leaned over the table towards Gemma and lowered her voice. ‘Did you know that he was offered the position, but declined it? This was all years ago, way before my time, of course. He said he wanted to have more freedom to work with other orchestras, but I think it had something to do with his family. He and Dame Caroline started with the company back at Sadler’s Wells – he would have been the obvious choice.’ ‘Does Dame Caroline still sing with the company? I would have thought . . . I mean, she has a grown daughter . . .’ Alison laughed. ‘What you mean is that she’s surely past it, right?’ She leaned forward again, her animated face revealing how much she enjoyed teaching the uninitiated. ‘Most sopranos are in their thirties before they really hit their stride. It takes years of work and training to develop a voice, and if they sing too much, too soon, they can do irreparable damage. Many are at the peak of their careers well into their fifties, and a few exceptional singers continue beyond that. Although I must admit, sometimes they look a bit ridiculous playing the ingénue parts when they get really long in the tooth.’ She grinned at Gemma, then continued more seriously. ‘Not that I think that would have happened to Caroline Stowe. I can’t imagine her looking ridiculous at any age.’ ‘You said “would have happened”. I don’t—’ ‘She retired. Twenty years ago, when their son died. She never sang publicly again.’ Alison had lowered her voice, and although her expression was suitably concerned, she told the story with the relish people usually reserve for someone else’s misfortune. And she was brilliant. Caroline Stowe might have been one of the most renowned sopranos of our time.’ Sounding genuinely regretful, Alison shook her head. Gemma took a last sip of tea and pushed her cup away as she thought about what she’d heard. ‘Why the title, then, if she stopped singing?’ ‘She’s one of the best vocal coaches in the country, if not the world. A lot of the most promising singers in the business have been taught, and are still being taught, by Caroline Stowe. And she’s done a tremendous amount for the company.’ Alison gave a wry smile, adding, ‘She’s a very influential lady.’ ‘So I understand,’ said Gemma, reflecting that it was Dame Caroline’s influence, and Sir Gerald’s, that had dragged the Yard into this investigation in the first place. Seeing Alison straighten up in her chair, Gemma asked, ‘Do you know what time Sir Gerald left the theatre on Thursday evening?’ Alison thought for a moment, wrinkling her forehead. ‘I really don’t know. I spoke to him in his dressing room just after the performance, around eleven o’clock, but I didn’t stay more than five minutes. Had to meet someone,’ she added with a dimple and a lowering of her lashes. ‘You’ll have to ask Danny. He was on duty that night.’ ‘Did Sir Gerald seem upset in any way? Anything different about his routine that night?’ ‘No, not that I can think—’ Alison stopped, hand poised over her teacup. ‘Wait. There was something. Tommy was with him. Of course, they’ve known each other practically forever,’ she added quickly, ‘but we don’t often see Tommy here after a performance, at least not in the conductor’s dressing room.’ Feeling the sense of the interview fast escaping her, Gemma said distinctly, ‘Who exactly is Tommy?’ Alison smiled. ‘I forgot you wouldn’t know. Tommy is Tommy Godwin, our Wardrobe Manager. And it’s not that he considers one of his visits akin to a divine blessing, like some costume designers I could name – ’ she paused and rolled her eyes – ‘but if he’s here at the theatre he’s usually busy with Running Wardrobe.’ ‘Is he here today?’ ‘Not that I know of. But I expect you can catch him tomorrow at LB House.’ This time Gemma’s bewilderment must have been evident, because before she could form a question, Alison continued. ‘That’s Lilian Baylis House, in West Hampstead, where we have our Making Wardrobe. Here.’ She reached for Gemma’s notebook. ‘I’ll write down the address and phone number for you.’ A thought occurred to Gemma as she watched Alison write in a looping, schoolgirl hand. ‘Did you ever meet Sir Gerald’s son-in-law, Connor Swann?’ Alison Douglas flushed. ‘Once or twice. He came to ENO functions sometimes.’ She returned the pen and notebook, then ran her fingers around the neck of her black sweater. Gemma cocked her head while she considered the woman across the table – attractive, about her own age, and single, if her unadorned left hand and the date she’d alluded to were anything to go by. ‘Shall I take it he tried to chat you up?’ ‘He didn’t mean anything by it,’ Alison said, a little apologetically. ‘You know, you can tell.’ ‘All flash and no substance?’ Alison shrugged. ‘I’d say he just liked women . . . he made you feel special.’ She looked up, and for the first time Gemma noticed that her eyes were a light, clear brown. ‘We’ve all talked about it, of course. You know what the gossip mill’s like. But this is the first time I’ve really let myself think . . .’ She swallowed once, then added slowly. ‘He was a lovely man. I’m sorry he’s dead.’ The canteen tables were emptying rapidly. Alison looked up and grimaced, then bustled Gemma back into the dark green tunnels. Murmuring an apology, she left Gemma once again in Danny the porter’s domain. ‘’Ullo, miss,’ said Danny, ever cheerful. ‘You get what you came for?’ ‘Not quite.’ Gemma smiled at him. ‘But you may be able to help me.’ She pulled her warrant card from her handbag and held the open case where he could see it clearly. ‘Crikey!’ His eyes widened and he looked her up and down. ‘You don’t look like a copper.’ ‘Don’t get cheeky with me, mate,’ she said, grinning. Resting her elbows on the counter-sill, she leaned forward earnestly. ‘Can you tell me what time Sir Gerald signed out last Thursday evening, Danny?’ ‘Ooh, alibis, is it?’ The glee on Danny’s face made him look like an illustration in an Enid Blyton novel. ‘Routine inquiries just now,’ Gemma said, managing to keep a straight face. ‘We need to know the movements of everyone who might have had contact with Connor Swann the day he died.’ Danny lifted a binder from the top of a stack and opened it at the back, flipping through the last few pages. ‘Here.’ He pointed, holding the page up where Gemma could see. ‘Midnight on the dot. That’s what I remembered, but I thought you’d want – what is it, corroboration?’ Sir Gerald’s signature suited him, thought Gemma, a comfortable but strong scrawl. ‘Did he usually stay so long after a performance, Danny?’ ‘Sometimes.’ He glanced at the sheet again. ‘But he was last out that night. I remember because I wanted to lock up – had a bird waiting in the wings, you might say.’ He winked at Gemma. ‘There was something, though,’ he said more hesitantly. ‘That night . . . Sir Gerald . . . well, he was half-cocked, like.’ Gemma couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. ‘Sir Gerald was drunk?’ Danny ducked his head in embarrassment. ‘I didn’t really like to say, miss. Sir Gerald always has a kind word for everybody. Not like some.’ ‘Has this happened before?’ Danny shook his head. ‘Not that I can remember. And I’ve been here over a year now.’ Gemma quickly entered Danny’s statement in her notebook, then closed it and returned it to her bag. ‘Thanks, Danny. You’ve been a great help.’ He passed over the sign-in sheet for her initial, his grin considerably subdued. ‘Cheerio, then,’ she said as she turned towards the door. Danny called out to her before she could open it. ‘There’s one other thing, miss. You know the son-in-law, the one what snuffed it?’ He held up his ledger and pointed to an entry near Sir Gerald’s. ‘He was here that day as well.’