In A Dark House

16

KINCAID FELT A growing unease as he returned to Borough High Street Station. They’d made progress, with the discovery that Bryan Simms’s death was a possible homicide, and the positive identification of Laura Novak as the victim in the Southwark Street fire, but he couldn’t shake the sense that he was missing something crucial, and that his time was running out.

He’d taken what action he could, leaving the search for the arsonist in the capable hands of Bill Farrell and Rose, and mobilizing every resource in the search for Harriet Novak and Elaine Holland, but now he had to face giving Tony Novak the news about his ex-wife.

He’d had Novak brought into the interview room where they had spoken the previous day. The man looked a bit more tidy this morning, clean-shaven and dressed in a pressed shirt and chinos, but more hollow-eyed and gaunt than ever.

Cullen had rung while Kincaid was at the fire scene, saying he was still trying to trace Chloe Yarwood and Nigel Trevelyan, so Maura Bell would be assisting with the interview.

“Is there some news about Harriet?” demanded Tony as soon as Kincaid and Maura had taken their seats.

“No, we’ve heard nothing about your daughter,” Kincaid said, unwilling to keep him in suspense any longer than necessary. “But I have to tell you that Laura is dead. I’m sorry.”

“Laura?” Tony sounded shocked, but it seemed to Kincaid that there was the slightest easing of tension in the man’s body, as if the news had been expected. “But why – How did you-”

“We informed you yesterday that we were going to search your ex-wife’s house, Mr. Novak,” said Bell. “Her DNA sample matched that of the victim of the warehouse fire.”

“Dear God,” Tony whispered, blanching. “That fire… Laura… I can’t-”

“We think she was already dead when the fire started, if that’s any comfort,” Kincaid told him. “She didn’t suffer from the burns.”

“But who would – You don’t think Beth-”

“What time did Beth – Elaine Holland – leave you on Thursday evening?”

“It wasn’t late. Before ten, I think.”

Was it possible, Kincaid wondered, that Elaine had left Tony’s flat, somehow lured Laura to the warehouse, killed her, then returned to Fanny’s in time to watch the ten o’clock news without a speck of blood on her? And what would she have done with Laura’s clothes? She had no car, and she couldn’t possibly have walked out of the search area in that time. Nor did that explain the fire.

“Why would she do such a thing?” Tony asked.

“I don’t think she did.” Maura leaned towards Tony as if inviting a confidence. “I think Laura found out what you meant to do. I think she left Harriet with the sitter and came to confront you. You argued. Things got out of control. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but she was dead, and you had to dispose of the body. You took her to the warehouse, stripped her of any identification, then set the place alight. Then you drove out of London and dumped her clothes.”

Tony stared at her as if she’d gone utterly daft. “I live in Borough High Street, for God’s sake. How am I supposed to have carried Laura’s body out to my car without anyone noticing?”

“Wrapped in something, of course,” retorted Maura. “People carry rubbish out all the time, and no one thinks anything of it.”

“That’s bollocks, and you know it.” Tony had begun to let his temper show, and Kincaid had to give Maura credit for knowing how to wind up a suspect. Wearing a black leather coat and a bright blue sweater this morning, she looked tough and surprisingly sexy. He sat back, content to let her play bad cop for the moment.

“Okay,” she said, and smiled, but before Tony could relax, she dived at him again like a pecking gull. “Maybe Laura didn’t find you out, but you were afraid she would. Maybe you tried earlier on Thursday to get the passport, and a neighbor saw you. You knew it was only a matter of time before Laura heard you’d been in the house, and then she’d never let you get your hands on Harriet. So you lured her to the warehouse-”

“You think Laura would have agreed to meet me in a deserted building?” Tony shook his head in disgust. “You really are daft.”

“I didn’t say she agreed to meet you. I think you needed Elaine Holland’s help for more than one thing. You got Elaine to call Laura that night, pretending to be an abused woman who needed her help. You knew that was the one appeal she couldn’t resist.”

“No,” said Tony, but he was beginning to look frightened.

“That would explain why Laura left Harriet with the sitter – perhaps she thought she’d have to bring this distressed woman back to her own house.

“Of course you didn’t tell Elaine you meant to kill Laura,” continued Maura, her eyes alight with conviction. “She came to help you with Harriet on Friday morning, just as you’d agreed. Then, when she learned about the fire and the body, she realized what had happened. That’s why she took Harriet, to keep her safe from you.”

It was good, Kincaid admitted, inspired, even. But there was one problem with Bell’s scenario. He didn’t believe it.

There were too many gaps. It didn’t explain what Chloe Yarwood had been doing at the warehouse that night, or what had happened to her. It didn’t explain Elaine Holland’s strange and secretive behavior with Fanny, or how she could have managed to disappear with a ten-year-old child without leaving a trace. Why, if she had believed Tony guilty of murder, had she not come to the police?

Nor did it leave a place for Rose Kearny’s arsonist, unless that fire had not been part of the pattern – and yet it fit too well. After last night’s blaze, he was convinced that Rose was right and they were dealing with a serial arsonist.

And then there was Gemma. Kincaid had learned to trust Gemma’s instincts, and Gemma didn’t believe Tony Novak was a murderer.

Tony turned to Kincaid with a look of desperate appeal. “Tell her. Tell her it’s not true. I’d never have hurt Laura.”

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Kincaid said with genuine sympathy. “We have to follow up every possibility. Our forensics teams are searching your flat and your car.”

Tony stared at him as if he’d just become Judas Iscariot; then he leaned forward, gripping the table edge until his knuckles turned white. “Search all you want. Think what you want. I don’t care what you do. Just find my daughter.”

When they had first interviewed Tia Foster, Doug Cullen had made note of her saying that Nigel Trevelyan’s family lived near the golf course in Ealing. He’d found two telephone listings that seemed likely prospects, and had tried both numbers on a regular basis over the weekend, without result. This morning one of them had answered. The woman had sounded Punjabi, and had disavowed any knowledge of a Nigel Trevelyan.

Having exhausted all his other leads for Chloe, and having found Michael Yarwood in his office at last, but ensconced in a committee meeting, Cullen had decided to check out the second address in person.

He’d also had another agenda, a personal one, and had been glad of an excuse that allowed him to drive west from his flat in Euston, rather than south to the Borough. It took him half an hour in morning traffic to reach Kensington High Street, and the closer he got, the more reluctant he became to carry out his intentions.

But he knew if he backed out now, he might never get his courage up again, so he steeled himself and went on. He found a parking spot on a back street behind St. Mary’s Church, and walked quickly to the High Street.

It was too early for the shops to open for business, but when he peered in the window of the home furnishings boutique, the sales assistant recognized him and unlocked the door with a smile.

“Doug! What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to see Stella,” he said, feeling his mouth go dry. “Is she in yet?”

“In the stockroom. Go on back.”

He made his way through aisles filled with ribbon-tied linens and bundles of dried flowers, silk-tasseled lamp-shades, vases, mirrors, gardening implements – the inclusion of which he found very odd – and things he couldn’t even put a name to. He felt, as he always did in this place, like the proverbial bull in the china shop.

The scent of potpourri wafted out from the stockroom, and he stopped for a moment in the doorway, stifling a sneeze. Stella stood with her back to him, carefully refolding a flower-sprigged quilt. She wore a twinset in a pale yellow that set off her icy blond looks, with the cardigan tossed casually over her shoulders, and pearls. She was flawless, and faultless, and he’d come to the terrible realization that he didn’t love her.

“Maddie,” she said, sensing a presence behind her, “if you could hand me another bolt of the raffia-”

“Stella.”

She whirled around, dropping the cord she’d lifted to tie round the quilt. “Dougie! What are you doing here? Are you – Is everything all right? I’ve been ringing you since Friday. You said you’d come down if you could get away-”

“I know.”

She’d left half a dozen messages on his voice mail, the first few cross, the last, uncharacteristically for Stella, sounding uncertain, and even a little frightened. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s this case. We’ve had a woman murdered, and now her little girl is missing.” He saw her mouth began to thin in an expression of disapproval and irritation, as it did whenever he talked about a case, and he held up his hand to stop her.

“Stella, don’t. This is not going to change. I’m not going to change. You’re not going to change. I think it’s time we gave it a rest.”

She stared at him. “I – You don’t mean-”

“I’m good at my job, Stella. I can’t go on apologizing for it.”

“But things will be different, when you’re promoted-”

“No, they won’t. I’ll only have more responsibility, and you wouldn’t like it any better.” He smiled at her, trying to ease the sting. “Besides, there must be dozens of blokes with trust funds dying to take you away for a country weekend.”

Her pale blue eyes grew hard. “Meaning you don’t care?”

“No, of course I care. I only meant-”

“You’ve found some bloody policewoman to shag, haven’t you, Dougie?” she spat at him, crossing her arms tightly beneath her small breasts.

“No, I – I only want what’s best for both of us,” he protested, cursing the flush he felt staining his cheeks. “Stella, listen-”

“You always were a lousy liar, Doug, and too innocent to walk God’s earth. What do you think I’ve been doing all those weekends you couldn’t be bothered to join me?” She saw his shock and smiled. “What did you expect, Sleeping Beauty?” Turning away from him, she began retying the folded quilt. “Now, just bugger off, will you, and don’t keep your prison wardress waiting.” The raffia snapped in her fingers.

The address in Ealing wasn’t on the golf course, but near enough that Cullen thought Nigel Trevelyan might have felt justified in fudging his geography a bit. The house was detached, built of rose-colored brick with white trim, set back on a tree-lined road.

As he pulled up across the street, Cullen saw yellowed newspapers piled in the shadow of the porch, and a collection of advertising circulars decorating the doorknob. He swore aloud. No wonder the people hadn’t answered their bloody telephone.

Now he really was buggered. He’d used up his last lead, and a good part of a morning that could have been spent pursuing something more productive. The day, which had begun with such promise, had darkened, and a splatter of raindrops rattled across the windscreen on a gust of wind.

Well, he could at least talk to the neighbors, find out if he had the right Trevelyans. He sighed and reached for the door handle, then sat back, resting his hands on the steering wheel, as he replayed Stella’s parting words once again. Stung pride and guilt and relief jumbled all together in his mind, and he couldn’t begin to sort them out. There would be time for that, he knew, and time for regret, as well, but now he had a job to get on with.

Checking for oncoming traffic before reaching again for the door handle, he glanced in the side mirror and froze. A girl was walking up the street towards the house and his car. Young, brunette, she trudged head down, hands laden with two plastic carrier bags. He caught only a glimpse of her face as she shrugged her hair back with an irritated twitch of her shoulder, but he would have known it anywhere. He had seen it, over and over, on a loop of security cam videotape.

Chloe Yarwood looked younger than she had in the film, and thinner. Her skirt was too short, and made her white legs look oddly vulnerable, rather than sexy. As she passed the car, he reached for the cold coffee in his console and glanced away from her as he sipped. That was the one good thing about his old Astra – the car that had so humiliated Stella – it attracted no notice at all.

Once Chloe had passed him, he watched her again, openly. She turned into the drive of the house and walked, not towards the front door, but towards the back of the property, and he saw what he hadn’t noticed before – there was an outbuilding at the end of the drive, set back behind the house. When she reached it, she transferred both bags to one hand, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.

Cullen jumped out of the car and followed. He didn’t want to give her time to get comfortable. There were no cars in the drive and he hoped he’d caught her alone. It was only as he knocked on the door that he remembered Nigel Trevelyan didn’t have a driving license, but then it was too late for caution.

There was no answer, and not a peep of sound from within. The quiet seemed suddenly to hold a palpable sense of fear, and he knew she was listening just the other side of the door.

“Chloe Yarwood? I’m Detective Sergeant Cullen, from Scotland Yard. I’d like a word with you.” He waited, then knocked again. “Come on, Chloe. I know you’re in there. If you don’t open up I’ll have to call for a patrol car. I’m not going away.”

Another long minute passed. “Chloe!” He’d raised his hand again when the door swung open. Chloe Yarwood stared out at him. She looked ill, and terrified, and relieved.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought you were them.”

The story came out in bits and starts, between small hiccupping sobs. Cullen sat beside her on an old sofa covered with a woolen horse rug. The place had obviously been converted from a garage at some point in its history. The floor was still concrete, covered only with a couple of dirty rugs, and the interior walls were unfinished. There was a small cooker and fridge to one side, and a curtain that he assumed hid the bathroom facilities. The room’s only ambience came from the half-dozen Harley-Davidson posters tacked to the bare board walls. It was cold, even now, on a fairly mild day, and Cullen thought the place must be unbearable in winter.

“Where’s your friend Nigel?” he asked, wanting to settle that little matter straightaway.

Chloe seemed to take it for granted that he knew who Nigel was. “Gone to France. His family’s there for the month. They have a farm in Normandy.”

“And he didn’t take you with him?”

“He didn’t want any trouble. I can’t blame him. It wasn’t Nigel’s fault – none of it was. He said I could stay here, as long as I wanted.”

“That was good of him,” said Cullen, and Chloe nodded, seemingly unaware of the sarcasm.

Now that he knew he didn’t have to worry about Nigel Trevelyan popping in unannounced with a shotgun or a blunt instrument, he relaxed a little and studied her more closely. It was hard to see a trace of the smiling girl in the photo Kincaid had found at Tia’s flat. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Chloe, and tell me why you went to your father’s warehouse on Thursday night.”

“You know about that, too? How did you-”

“Security cam in the building across the street. It caught you and Nigel going in.”

“Oh.” She didn’t ask who had identified her from the photo, and he didn’t volunteer the information.

“Come on,” he encouraged. “What were you doing in the place?”

“There were these blokes, see.” She pulled at the hem of her skirt, which had ridden up even farther when she sat down. “I’d been to this club, in the West End. My mum gave me a little money, when I moved out from Dad’s, but then Tia didn’t charge me rent…”

“And?”

She hesitated, picking at a spot on her cheek, then locked her fingers in her lap and said with a sigh, “There were cards. I won a bit at first. But then I lost. They let me keep playing, these blokes, saying I’d be sure to make it back. And it was fun. It was like, every time, anything was possible. But I kept losing.”

So it was not Michael Yarwood who had been gambling, but Chloe. It all began to make sense. Doug didn’t bother to tell her that the mark always lost, and that the only reason they’d let her ride so long was that they’d seen the potential for making a bigger profit.

“And then” – she gave another little hiccup- “then one night they turned me away from the table. They – they told me how much I’d lost.” She paled even at the memory of it. “They said I had to give them the money. When I said I didn’t have it, they said I’d have to get it or – or they’d hurt me.”

“They wanted you to ask your dad?”

Nodding, she tugged harder at the skirt. “But I couldn’t. He’d kill me. I mean, it was one thing to make him mad over things like moving out or not finishing my school course, but this – something like this could ruin his career.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t. They gave me a few days, and I thought if I just didn’t go back to the club…”

Cullen groaned inwardly. And to think Stella had called him innocent. “But they came to you.”

“First at Tia’s. Then they came to Nigel’s friend’s flat, where he’d been staying. I don’t know how they knew…”

If the police had an information network half as good as the London gangsters’, thought Cullen, they’d solve every case on the books. Chloe Yarwood had been a perfect pigeon, had possibly even been marked before she ever set foot in the club. Had the gallant Nigel been in on it? he wondered.

“So I thought… maybe I could stay at the warehouse at night, and just hang out somewhere in the daytime, you know, where no one knew me, until…” Her expression was bleak. She’d have realized by that time that they weren’t going to forget about her, but she’d been cornered.

“You had a key to the warehouse?” Doug prompted her, gently.

“I’d made it for a lark. I’d told Nigel that Daddy was going to give me the top-floor flat, when it was finished, and I’d wanted to show it to him. I got him to go with me that night. He was going to leave for France, after the blokes came round his flat, and I didn’t want…”

“You didn’t want to be alone.”

“No.” She glanced up at Cullen, then back at her hands. “We went in, and I showed him round a bit. I had a torch. We went upstairs… and after a while, we heard voices. I thought – I thought it was those guys, looking for me, but then we heard a woman. It was a woman and a man, and they were arguing. There was something – I don’t know.” Her shoulders jerked. “I got really scared. We got our – Nige and I got put together again, you know? And then we ran down the stairs, as quietly as we could, and out the back door.

“Nige left. He went – I don’t know, to another friend’s, I think. He – he didn’t want to take me with him. But I was afraid to go back to Tia’s, and I kept thinking about the woman I’d heard. She’d sounded frightened. I walked for an hour or two, and then I went back.

“But the warehouse was on fire. It was… terrible. The heat and the smoke, and the shouting. I thought maybe they’d done it, to show me they meant business. And then, the next morning, when I heard about the body, I thought maybe they’d thought it was me… or, I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to disappear, and I couldn’t bear my dad finding out it was all my fault… His building… He loved that building…”

“Chloe…” Doug tried to sort out the relevant bits of her story. “Could you or Nigel have started the fire? Did either of you smoke, or light a match, while you were there?”

“No.” She looked horrified. “We don’t smoke, and I told you, I had a torch. Why would I light a match?”

He thought about the CCTV film and what it had not shown. “Chloe, did you unlock the back door before you and Nigel went upstairs?”

“Well, yeah. I was showing him my private entrance, like, and we looked up at the balconies. Then we went up. I never thought of anyone coming in-”

“When you and Nigel ran out, did you see anything? Did you see the man and the woman?”

She shook her head.

“Did you recognize the voices?”

“No.” She frowned and chewed on a fingernail. “No, but I heard her say something like ‘How could you, of all people, when you knew what would happen?’ It didn’t make any sense.”

“And him? Did you hear what he said?”

“No. It was just that one bit, as we went out the door.”

“Do you know what time it was, when you left the warehouse that first time?”

“We can’t have been there more than half an hour,” she said slowly. “Half-past ten, maybe.”

“Good girl.” He patted her shoulder. “One more thing, and then we’ll get you out of here. Did you ever know a woman named Laura Novak?”

“No. Who is she?”

“Right.” Doug stood up, avoiding the question. It would be some time before they released Laura Novak’s name. “Get your things together, luv. You’ll need to come into the station with me, to make a statement, but first we’re going to your dad’s office.”

“My dad?” Her voice rose in a squeak. “But I don’t want him to-”

“Chloe, your dad’s been desperate with worry,” he said, adding with certainty, “The blokes from the club went to him, probably when they didn’t get anything out of you on the first try. Your dad thought the fire was a warning to him that they’d kill you if he didn’t find the money. And then, for a while, after he saw the videotape, he thought the body was yours.”

At daybreak, Harriet got up and crossed the room to the chest by the window. Trying to ignore the growing pain in her arm, she ate the last of the apricots and picked at the dried crust of oatmeal in the bowl. Then she tilted the water glass above her mouth, licking at the last drops. That made her dizzy, and she crawled unsteadily back to bed.

She waited, then, for the sound of footsteps and the creaking of the door, at first with dread and then, as her hunger and thirst grew worse, with dread and longing, but no one came.

After a while, even that ceased to matter so much. Her arm was swollen and hot to the touch, and she shivered and sweated in turn.

She thought she heard the patter of rain against the window, but the sound faded away as she drifted in and out of a restless sleep. In her dreams, she wandered in a long corridor filled with endless rows of doors, hearing voices she could never quite reach.

As noon approached, Kincaid called Maura Bell and Cullen into their temporary office. “Maura, will you take charge of coordinating the searches of Tony Novak’s flat and car? Doug, you can take the statements from the Yarwoods. I’ve got to go, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He meant to get a bite of lunch, then to meet Gemma, Kit, and their solicitor at the family court. “You’ll let me know if there’s any news about Harriet?”

“Right, guv,” said Cullen, then he hesitated a moment before adding, “Good luck with the hearing.”

Kincaid nodded his thanks and left the station, his mind occupied with sifting and sorting what they’d learned to date.

When Gemma had called a few minutes earlier to say she’d pick Kit up from school, he’d told her about Rose Kearny’s theory, and the news about Laura.

She’d listened in silence as he confirmed what she’d already guessed. After a moment, she said quietly, “You know Harriet’s running out of time, don’t you? Every hour she’s missing lessens our chances of finding her alive.”

“I know,” he told her, “but I’ve run out of ideas.” They’d put out an all-points bulletin, now that they were sure the child was not with her mother. He and Bell had sent uniformed officers to interview the children and personnel at Harriet’s school, to reinterview hospital staff who had worked with Laura and with Elaine Holland, and to search for any useful background information on Elaine.

At least they had reunited one child with a parent. Michael Yarwood, Cullen said, had crushed his daughter to him in a spasm of relief, then shaken her and called her an idiot, then hugged her again. Yarwood admitted that the men from the club had threatened him, and that he’d feared Chloe dead when he couldn’t reach her after the fire. He’d gone on in desperate hope, trying to raise the money, trying to find Chloe, and cursing the involvement of Scotland Yard.

“I couldn’t very well protest when the AC asked you to look into things,” he’d said to Kincaid when he arrived at the station. “Not without buggering my own pitch.”

“You should have been honest with us from the beginning,” Kincaid had told him, but without great conviction. In Yarwood’s place, he might have withheld the truth, too.

“Do you think those bastards were responsible for this?” Yarwood asked, beginning to sound like a crusading politician again. “Do you think they killed that poor woman as an example? Or because they thought she was Chloe?”

Kincaid thought back over what Cullen had told him. “No. First of all, I don’t think they wanted Chloe dead. That would have meant killing the goose before it laid the golden egg. And from what Chloe’s told us, it seems pretty obvious that the victim knew her killer.”

“Then why kill her in my warehouse? And why burn it?” Yarwood shook his head. “I’m sorry. That sounds callous. I only meant-”

“We don’t know. We don’t know if the fire was set as the last attempt to hide the victim’s identity, or if there was an unrelated motive. We may never, in fact, prove that the fire was set at all.” Kincaid couldn’t broadcast the fact that they suspected they might be dealing with a serial arsonist turned murderer, not to someone with Yarwood’s media connections, and not when Yarwood stood to gain by making such news public.

But the conversation had started him thinking about Rose’s theory again, and as he paid for his sandwich at a takeaway near the station, he had an idea. Glancing at his watch to make sure he could squeeze in a few more minutes, he went back into the station and found Sarah, the sergeant who had helped with the CCTV video.

“Can you print me another still from the tape?” he asked. When he’d shown her what he wanted, he ate his sandwich while waiting for the photo, then drove to Southwark Fire Station.

He found Rose and Bill Farrell sequestered in an unused office, surrounded by a mountain of files. They both looked tired and discouraged. The London Fire Brigade only hired new staff irregularly, and then they were inundated with thousands of applications for a few hundred positions.

“No possibles?” he asked, and they both shook their heads.

Rose sat on the floor against the back wall, her knees drawn up, a box of files beside her.

Kincaid handed her the print he’d made. “Maybe this will help.”

She took it and stared at it. “What – where did you get this?”

Hearing the excitement in her voice, Farrell joined her and bent to look.

“It’s the man who walked by the Southwark Street warehouse a few minutes after Chloe Yarwood and her friend went inside. He only hesitated a moment as he passed, so we didn’t think anything of it. Do you recognize him?”

“Yes. I – I think so.” She looked at the time stamp on the print. “But this was only a little after ten. The fire wasn’t reported until after midnight.”

“Maybe he came back,” Kincaid suggested.

“At midnight?” asked Farrell.

“Or earlier, if he killed Laura Novak.” Kincaid told them what they’d learned from Chloe Yarwood. “We’ve no way of knowing exactly when she died, and even if it was nearer ten than twelve, we don’t know how long he spent… preparing the body.”

Rose flinched. “But why this particular woman? I mean, I can understand, in a bizarre sort of way, his wanting to kill a firefighter if he has some sort of grudge against the brigade. But why Laura Novak?”

Kincaid thought again of the words Chloe had overheard. Could Laura have learned about the fires and confronted the arsonist? But how could she have discovered something like that? What connection could she have had with this man?

His phone rang and he snapped it open, irritated at the interruption when he knew he was in danger of running late for Kit’s hearing. It was Maura Bell.

“Guv, we’ve found another body.”

“What? Where?” He felt a sick dread. “It’s not Harriet-”

“No. But you’d better come. It’s Crossbones Graveyard, just behind the Southwark Street warehouse. And we’ve met her. It’s Beverly Brown, the young woman who reported the fire.”

“The woman from the shelter? Mouse?” He saw instantly the pinched little face, the hair with its badgerlike white streak.

“Yes. And it looks like she’s been strangled.”