In A Dark House

7

“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want me to run you to the tube station?” Gemma asked as Kincaid gulped at a cup of scalding tea, and folded toast and bacon into a makeshift sandwich. “Then you’d have time to eat your breakfast sitting down.”

“Thanks, love, but I think I’d rather walk. Make hay while the sun shines – isn’t that what they say?” The morning had dawned bright and windy, but with a promise of more rain later in the day.

“Have you been listening to The Archers again?” she teased, turning from the fridge with a carton of juice in one hand.

“I confess. It’s my secret vice.” He set down his mug and gave her a one-armed hug. “No, seriously, I don’t mind the walk, and you’ve got to get the boys up if you’re going to make it to Portobello before the market’s jammed.” What he didn’t say was that he needed that brief time on his own to fold away the morning’s images, the bright kitchen filled with comforting smells, Gemma disheveled before the warmth of the Aga, the boys still safe in their beds upstairs. These were not things he wanted to carry too close to the surface when he walked into the morgue at St. Thomas’s.

“I’m sorry about this morning, about not going with you,” he added as she disengaged herself to turn a second batch of bacon cooking in the frying pan.

“You know it can’t be helped,” she answered, not glancing up from her task.

He hesitated, knowing this was not the time to discuss it, but he couldn’t be sure when he’d have another chance. Tess and Geordie were underfoot, tails wagging as they watched him expectantly, so he divided the last bite of his sandwich between them. “It worries me that Kit won’t talk about Monday.”

This time she did look at him. “He’ll be fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “We’ll be fine. We’ll have our treasure hunt at the market, maybe lunch at Otto’s, then after my piano lesson I’m taking them to tea at Erika’s.” Putting down her tongs, she came to him and grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Ring me when you know something. I’ll keep my phone with me.”

Her hair was sleep-tousled, her skin still free of the light makeup she wore during the day. With his thumb, he traced the faint pattern of freckles on her cheekbone. She turned her face into his hand. The tenderness of the gesture moved him to say what he’d been keeping back for weeks. “Gemma, are you sure about giving up the nursery? I think we should talk-”

“We can’t disappoint Kit now. You know that.” She stepped back, the momentary softness of her expression replaced by a bright smile. He had ventured onto forbidden ground and she’d withdrawn again. “Now go,” she added briskly, “or you’ll be late.”

She was right, of course, he admitted to himself a few minutes later as he walked up Lansdowne Road, towards Holland Park tube station. Kit had to come first just now, but acknowledging that didn’t make it any easier to deal with Gemma shutting him out – or the realization that she was, whether consciously or not, using the situation with Kit as an excuse to avoid talking about her miscarriage and the possibility of having another child.

And to add insult to injury, he’d had no luck trying to get Kit to discuss his feelings about Monday’s impending hearing. Arriving home a bit before ten the previous evening, he’d found Gemma at the piano in the dining room, practicing for her Saturday afternoon lesson. She’d been working on a simple Bach piece, and although she didn’t have much time to play, he could tell she was improving. Her tempo was still a little slow, but her fingertips moved lightly and surely over the keys.

Pausing, she’d looked up and smiled, but he’d waved her on. “Don’t stop. I’m going to check on the boys.”

He’d started up the stairs, and the dogs, having dutifully met him at the front door, settled back into position on the first landing. This had become their usual strategy for dealing with divided loyalties when the family was split between up-and downstairs. Their cat, Sid, on the other hand, operating on the principle of all things come to those who wait, would be curled on the foot of their bed.

First, he looked in on Toby, now sleeping alone in the room he’d shared with Kit until a few weeks ago. The five-year-old lay sprawled on his stomach, covers thrown back to reveal his train-printed pajamas, his stuffed bear tossed to the floor. Kincaid carefully tucked in the bear and pulled up the duvet, but there was no change in the rhythm of Toby’s slightly whuffly breathing.

Kincaid moved on to the room down the hall, once intended as the nursery. When his light knock brought no answer, he opened the door. Kit sat at his desk, hunched over a sheet of paper, drawing. A set of headphones explained his lack of response, and Kincaid could hear the tinny, muted sound of the personal CD player from across the room.

Rapping more loudly on the open door, Kincaid called out, “Hey, sport.”

Kit turned, startled, and yanked off the headphones. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”

“I’m not surprised.” Kincaid thought of all the times his mother had told him he was going to ruin his hearing, and refrained from further comment on the volume. “What are you listening to?” he asked instead, sitting down on the bed. Tess, Kit’s terrier, had followed him upstairs and now jumped up beside him.

“The Mighty Diamonds.” Kincaid must have looked blank, because Kit added, in the don’t you know anything? tone that had been creeping into his voice more frequently of late, “It’s reggae. Classic eighties.”

“Oh, right. I must have been listening to the Police in the eighties, myself.”

“But the Police were influenced by reggae, and by Bob Marley,” Kit told him with great seriousness, and Kincaid congratulated himself on inadvertently getting something right. He suspected that would become more and more difficult, but he meant to keep trying.

“Did you borrow the CD from Wesley?”

“He said I could.” Kit’s reply was unexpectedly defensive. “I haven’t scratched it or anything.”

“No. I’m sure you haven’t. You’re very good at looking after things,” Kincaid assured him, thinking he’d have to ask Wes for a crash course on reggae on the sly. In the meantime, he’d try an easier topic. He glanced at the paper on Kit’s desk. “Are you sketching?”

Kit held up a drawing of a tortoise, copied from the open zoology book beside it. “Galápagos tortoise.” The boy’s latest hero was Dr. Stephen Maturin, the surgeon/naturalist from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels, and he’d become determined to learn to draw.

“Wow, that’s terrific,” Kincaid said, and the sincere admiration in his voice elicited a smile from Kit.

“I could use some better watercolor pencils. There’s an art supply shop off Portobello, near Otto’s. I thought maybe I could get them tomorrow.”

“Listen, sport. About tomorrow. I’m going to have to miss out on our shopping expedition. Something’s come up-”

“I know. Gemma told me.” Kit’s expression was neutral, reserved.

“I’m sorry. I wanted-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kit shrugged and turned back to his desk. “It doesn’t matter.”

The absolution cut Kincaid to the quick.

When Kincaid arrived at the morgue, Farrell, Cullen, and Bell were there before him, and Kincaid suspected that Cullen, at least, derived some satisfaction from getting one up on his boss.

He joined them in the postmortem theatre gallery, where they looked down on Kate Ling and her assistant, and on the grotesque and blackened form on the steel dissection table. The smell made Kincaid wish he’d forgone even his light toast and bacon breakfast.

Dr. Ling and the assistant pathologist wore long green plastic aprons tied over their scrubs and, viewed from the back, made him think of gunslingers in chaps. Perhaps it was something in the assurance of their stance, feet apart, ready to take on the grim reaper himself.

Ling turned and saw him, her eyes crinkling in a smile above her mask. She switched off her mike. “Duncan, I was just saying to your colleagues that we’ve finished the preliminary exam. As I’m sure you all know, we can learn a good bit simply from measurements and radiology, even when the corpse is quite severely damaged.” She gestured towards the far wall, where a series of X-rays were mounted on light boards. “These things tell us that our victim was an adult female, of medium height – probably five-five or-six. Although fire can cause some shrinkage of bone, in this case I don’t believe the heat was that severe.”

“Could you narrow ‘adult’ down a bit, Doc?” Kincaid asked.

“Postadolescent, definitely. In females, by the age of twenty, the lower epiphysis – that’s one of the bony plates at either end of the forearm – and radius have fused. Shortly thereafter the upper epiphysis and radius fuse as well, as is the case here.

“The collarbone gives us our next marker – it has usually finished growing by the age of twenty-eight or so – but as the victim’s upper torso has suffered the most severe fire damage, I can’t give a definitive opinion on that.

“As to the upper end of the spectrum, older subjects show signs of degeneration around the edges of the vertebrae, and joints may show signs of arthritis. Neither of those are evident here, but we may want to have a forensic anthropologist take another look.”

“So you’re saying twenty to-”

“Midthirties, possibly forty.”

Kincaid winced at the idea that, according to a pathologist’s estimate, he was already going downhill. He caught a glimpse of the pained expression on Bill Farrell’s face and guessed the thought had occurred to him as well.

“Twenty to forty. That’s a big bloody help,” Cullen muttered in Kincaid’s ear. While his sergeant might approach the most tedious and time-consuming data search with equanimity, postmortems made him cranky.

“Any chance the victim could be older than forty, Doc?” Kincaid asked.

“With good genes, maybe. As I said, I’m no expert. Let’s move on to the exterior physical examination. Although it’s not unusual to find a burn victim’s clothing fused to the skin, we were unable to discover any fabric traces. Officer Farrell, has your team turned up any evidence of clothing at the scene?”

“Not so far. Even if the fire destroyed all fabric, we’d expect to turn up a bit of button or zipper, or a fragment of shoe leather. I’d say this woman was stripped and her clothing taken away from the scene, or she arrived there starkers.”

Ling nodded, as if he were a promising pupil. “That leads us to another interesting point. The stripping of a female victim usually implies some sort of sexual assault, but this woman shows no obvious signs of sexual trauma. Of course, that doesn’t completely rule out a sexual motive, but it does narrow things down a bit. We’ll know more when we get the results of the swabs.”

“What about race, Doctor?” asked Maura Bell. “The skin looks black, but the hair that’s left seems reddish.”

“Neither skin nor hair are good indicators here. The dark color of the skin is due to charring, but the hair color is also misleading. Dark hair can often lighten due to oxidation. My guess is that this woman was a Caucasian brunette.”

Bell looked puzzled. “Caucasian? But you’ve just said you couldn’t tell the color of the skin.”

“We can’t.” Ling smiled. “But we can tell the shape of the skull, both from visual assessment and from X-rays.” She touched a gloved finger to the head of the corpse. “This skull is high and wide. The nasal opening is narrow. The cheekbones do not project, nor does the jaw. These are all defining Caucasian characteristics.”

“Okay, Doc,” said Kincaid. “We’ve got white, female, brunette, medium height, between twenty and forty. But did she die in the fire?”

“Patience, Duncan, patience. I’m just getting to the interesting bit. Let’s take a closer look at the skull. We noted at the scene that there was fracturing, but we also know that intense heat can cause fracturing. In that case, however, the plates of the skull tend to separate at the sutures. What we can see here, on closer examination, is more consistent with a depressed fracture due to blunt force trauma.”

“Clear as mud,” Cullen said, and Kincaid gave him a silencing frown.

“Microscopic examination of the edges of the fractured bone will tell us more,” Ling went on. “But there’s also evidence of frontal trauma, moderate Le Fort fractures. The nose has been broken” – she traced the bridge of the nose with her finger- “as has one cheekbone.”

“Excuse me, Doctor.” Bell stepped forward, resting her hands on the gallery railing. “Are you telling us this woman was killed by a blow – or blows – to the head, rather than by the fire?”

“No, I’m merely saying that it’s more than likely the skull fractures were not caused by the heat from the fire. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that the victim was alive at the time of the fire, or that these injuries were sustained during the fire. Although the last scenario is unlikely, I’ll admit, as there was no evidence of structural collapse at the scene, and it’s not very plausible that the victim could have fallen and injured both the front and back of her head at the same time.

“There is some soot visible in the nose and mouth, which could indicate that she was still breathing, but it might also be a result of settling, as she was lying faceup. We won’t know for sure until we’ve examined the airway and lungs. So let’s have a look.” Switching her mike back on, Ling turned to her assistant, who had been patiently standing by, and accepted a scalpel. “Thanks, Sandy. Let’s begin with the larynx and trachea.”

Kincaid had never quite got over the instinctive flinch brought on by the pathologist’s first incision, but he forced himself to watch as Ling made a precise cut, murmuring a detailed description into the microphone. The mortuary cold had begun to make his bones ache, but at least, he realized, his nose had gone numb, acclimatized to the smell. Stealing a glance at his companions, he saw that Cullen looked increasingly cross, Farrell impassive, and Bell wore a glazed expression that made him think of a deer caught in the headlamps of a car.

“Ah, now this is interesting,” said Kate Ling, glancing up at them. “There’s no sign of soot in the windpipe, but there is something else – bruising of the underlying tissues of the throat that was not visible on the skin.”

“She was choked?” Kincaid asked, surprised.

“The hyoid bone is intact, but yes, I’d say so. She could have lost consciousness long enough to have been bashed in the head and face.”

“And the absence of soot means she was dead when the fire started?”

“Well, there is always the possibility of vagal inhibition – that’s a reflexive constriction of the pharynx – from inhaling hot gases, but considering her other injuries, I’d say yes, it’s likely she was dead when the fire started.”

“Hallelujah!” breathed Cullen, and a smile flickered across Bell’s face.

“Can you tell us what was used to inflict the blunt trauma injuries?” asked Farrell.

“We’ll know more when we get into the skull, of course, but I’d say something with a fairly large surface area.”

While Kate Ling continued with her examination, Kincaid let his mind wander over the implications of what she’d told them. Although Farrell still hadn’t found any definitive evidence of arson, this made it look as if they were dealing with a fire started to cover up a homicide – which in turn made it less likely that insurance fraud was the motive. But did that mean Michael Yarwood was out of the frame?

It didn’t explain how the murderer had gained access to the building, and Kincaid still harbored a strong feeling that Yarwood was somehow involved.

It hadn’t escaped him that he’d been asked to look after Yarwood’s interests, but if Yarwood’s bosses had thought that appealing to their connections at Scotland Yard would guarantee favoritism, they’d been much mistaken. As far as Kincaid was concerned, his brief was simply to make sure Michael Yarwood was not accused without grounds.

Kincaid also realized that Ling’s description of the victim could fit the profile of Winnie’s friend’s missing flatmate. He’d have to ring Gemma as soon as they were finished at the hospital and arrange to get a sample of the woman’s DNA for the lab. He could put in a sample request through official channels, of course, as a report had been filed, but out of consideration for Winnie he preferred to take care of it in person.

And he had to admit his curiosity had been aroused by Gemma’s description of the house and the missing woman’s odd lifestyle. If there was any chance the woman in the warehouse might turn out to be Elaine Holland, he wanted to see both house and flatmate for himself.

As Dr. Ling began the Y-incision that would allow her to remove and examine the victim’s internal organs, Maura Bell’s phone rang. She stepped back, shielding the phone and speaking quietly so as not to disturb the procedure, but when she rang off her face shone with barely suppressed excitement.

“That was Borough station,” she said. “About the CCTV footage. They’ve found something.”

Congratulating herself on her luck, Gemma slipped the car into a parking space in Pembridge Gardens, just off the top of Portobello Road. A spot so near Portobello Market on a Saturday morning was not to be passed up, although the location meant she’d have a struggle with Toby when they walked past the library. He’d begun to read simple books on his own, and their usual Saturday visits to the library were the highlight of his week, but today they had another agenda.

Having let the boys skip breakfast at home in the interests of speed, she distracted Toby with a reminder of her promise to buy them hot cocoa and croissants from the street stall at Mr. Christian’s Deli. That way they could eat and shop at the same time.

Soon they joined the lemminglike flood of pedestrians pouring into the top of Portobello Road. With one hand firmly gripping Toby and the other her handbag, Gemma relaxed into the flow, letting herself enjoy the color and bustle of the crowd. Beside her, Kit looked happier than she’d seen him in weeks.

She loved the view from the top end of Portobello Road, and it was never more beautiful than on a sunny autumn morning. Below them the street curved gently, lined on both sides with houses and shop fronts painted every color of the rainbow.

It made her feel she’d been picked up out of ordinary London and plunked down in the middle of somewhere more exotic – a village in Italy, or maybe the south of France – except that this, too, was typical of London, where it was not unusual for colorful and eccentric pockets to butt up against sedate Victorian villas. Snatches of music came from the buskers farther down the road, fading in and out, as if someone were twirling the dial on a cosmic radio, and the odor of garlic cooking wafted up from a basement kitchen as they passed.

It took Gemma a moment to put a name to the feeling that welled up inside her. With a start of surprise she realized it was contentment. It wasn’t only the view she loved, but all of Portobello, and Notting Hill, and the house she shared with Duncan and the boys. She loved the connections they had made – friends, neighbors, shopkeepers – and it came to her that she had never before felt so at home. Not in Islington, not even in Leyton where she had grown up.

Her parents had known that sense of community, of belonging, she was sure, but she’d always been focused on moving on, getting out, making her own life. Then, during her marriage to Rob, her pregnancy, Toby’s babyhood, she’d always been looking round the corner, anticipating what came next. Her life had been a litany of afters - after the wedding, after the baby, after she returned to work, after the divorce, after the promotion. Even living in Hazel’s garage flat, her perceptions had been colored by the knowledge that it could only be a stopgap, a temporary measure.

But now… now she didn’t want to move on. Perhaps it was partly her worry over Kit; perhaps it was the sense of life’s fragility that still lingered from her miscarriage; or perhaps it was watching the collapse of her friend Hazel’s seemingly perfect marriage.

Whatever the reason, she knew only that she wanted fiercely to hold on to things just the way they were and not take any risks that might bring about change.

The crowd thickened as Gemma and the boys crossed Chepstow Villas and entered the heart of Portobello’s antiques market, and she gripped Toby’s hand a little tighter. When Kit veered off to the right, towards the antique sporting goods shop that was one of his favorites, she pulled him back firmly. “Food first. Then we shop.”

A few minutes later, armed with hot drinks in paper cups and flaky chocolate croissants, they started a thorough perusal of the street stalls and arcades.

Gemma hadn’t expected finding an antique specimen cabinet would be easy, but three hours and four arcades later, she was beginning to despair. As the clock crept towards noon, the heat in the arcades had become suffocating, the crowds aggravating rather than exhilarating. Kit’s face had grown longer and longer, and Toby was whining because he was hungry and because she’d refused to buy him an outrageously expensive Matchbox car. If she hadn’t been so hot and tired, she’d have laughed at the look on his face when she’d tried to explain that the toys were not meant to be played with, only looked at. The concept of collecting made no sense to a five-year-old.

“What do you say we take a break for lunch?” she said, sighing with relief as they emerged once more onto the pavement. “We could go to Otto’s. Is Wes working today?”

“Yeah, I think so,” answered Kit, displaying none of his usual enthusiasm for food or for a visit to their friend Otto’s café. “Couldn’t we look just a bit longer?”

“Maybe after lunch-” Gemma broke off, realizing that the tinny sound she’d been hearing above the noise of the mob was her mobile phone. It was Duncan, she saw as she fished it from her bag, and she had a sudden sinking feeling that it was not good news.

She answered, and when she’d heard him out, said, “I’ll have to get in touch with Winnie. I’ll ring you when I’ve connected with her, and you can meet us there.”

“Gemma, you don’t have to come,” Kincaid protested. “You said the house is right across the street from Winnie’s church. Why don’t I just ask her to pop over and meet me?”

She thought of the boys, and of another missed piano lesson, and for a moment she was tempted to agree. But then she recalled Fanny Liu’s frightened face and the comfort Fanny had seemed to derive from her presence, and she felt ashamed of her selfishness. “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “I think I do.”

When she rang off, both boys were watching her.

“You have to go, right?” Kit said flatly.

“Yes,” she admitted ruefully. “But maybe we can grab a bite of lunch first.”

“And the cabinet?”

“What about next Saturday?”

“Next Saturday? But-” Kit shrugged and turned away, studying the display of antique jewelry on a street stall table with great concentration, but she’d seen the flash of panic in his eyes. Was he so worried about Monday’s hearing at the family court that he feared there wouldn’t be another Saturday?

Gently she said, “Kit, there’s no reason we can’t do this next Saturday. Maybe Duncan can-”

“Gemma-” Kit was pointing at the jewelry display.

“-come with us. You know he wanted-”

“Gemma, look.”

“At the jewelry? Whatever for?” But frowning, she followed his gaze, and then she saw what he had seen.

The glass-fronted display case lay on its back, covering most of the table’s surface. But the cabinet, although large, was shallow, and its interior was divided into dozens of small, square compartments. In the case’s current position, the compartments formed pockets, each of which held a small display of jewelry, but if it were stood upright, it would make a perfect specimen cabinet.

Their exchange had drawn the dealer’s attention. Gemma gave Kit’s shoulder a warning squeeze and said as casually as she could manage, “This for sale?”

The man lit a cigarette and squinted at her through narrowed eyes. “Well, now, that depends, luv. I’d have to find something else to put my stock in. Just how much are you willing to offer?”

The three detectives and Bill Farrell sat huddled round the video monitor in the room they’d been temporarily assigned at Borough High Street Station. After Bell’s phone call, they’d left Kate Ling to finish the postmortem. Ling had promised to let them know immediately if she found anything else significant; otherwise, she’d get the report to them as soon as the lab results came back. Kincaid, for his part, had been just as glad for an excuse to miss out on the sawing and slicing.

The CCTV tape had been loaded into the VCR, and even with the videotape in pause mode, the black-and-white image on the television screen looked blotchy and faded. Kincaid silently cursed the cheap security measures that encouraged reusing videotapes until they were bloody well useless.

“This is from the building across the street and a few yards to the east of the warehouse’s front entrance,” said the DS in charge of running the tape. “We were lucky to find a private camera scanning more than the building’s foyer, but as this is a credit reporting business, they tend to be a bit paranoid about external security. Unfortunately, the view isn’t great, as you can see.”

It took Kincaid a moment to match what he was seeing on the screen with his memory of the warehouse entrance. Then he realized that the camera’s field of vision ended at the western edge of the warehouse door. This meant that not only could they not see the side door, but they had no view of the street on which it faced.

“Any luck finding a view of the side door?” he asked.

“No, sorry.” The sergeant, a young Asian woman, sounded as if she took the failure personally. “There’s nothing there except the shelter, and they said that although they’d considered a security camera, they hadn’t managed to work it into their budget.” She picked up the remote control and continued more briskly, “Now, we’re just coming up to the critical time, if you’ll bear with me.” The time stamp in the screen’s bottom corner read 9:55. As she rolled the tape, a figure popped into view on the left-hand side of the screen and moved quickly across – a man, head down, coat collar pulled up high – then vanished on the right. “A harmless pedestrian,” said the sergeant, “but then things get more interesting.” She fast-forwarded the tape until 10:00 showed on the screen, then slowed to normal speed.

This time the figures came from the right, walking more slowly, and stopped before the warehouse door. Although their backs were to the camera, they were recognizable as male and female. The woman wore a short skirt with some sort of blousy jacket; the man was several inches taller and wore what looked like a set of motorcycle leathers. There was something oddly lumpy about the back of the man’s head, but Kincaid couldn’t quite make out what it was.

The couple shuffled and bumped against each other, as if they were a bit tipsy, while the woman dug in her handbag, and the man threw an arm briefly across the woman’s shoulders. Something glinted in her hand as she let the bag drop to her side, and then, for just an instant, she turned round and surveyed the street.

The sergeant froze the frame and they all gazed at the face looking eerily back at them, as if the woman were aware of their regard. The image was blurred and grainy, but still an identifiable likeness.

At first, Kincaid thought that she was too young to fit their profile, but as he studied her face more closely, he decided she could be in her early twenties, maybe even older. Although it was hard to be certain because of the poor quality of the image, she appeared to be white, and brunette. Her lips were pursed in a pout of concentration.

“Anyone recognize her?” the sergeant asked. When no one responded, she said, “We’ve printed photos from this frame – it’s the best shot – and so far none of our regular beat officers have recognized her, either. That makes it less likely she’s a hooker, but doesn’t rule it out altogether. I had my doubts about the skirt anyway – doesn’t look short enough for a girl on the game.”

“Were those keys in her hand?” Kincaid asked.

“She did pull something from her handbag. It might have been keys or lock picks, but it could just as well have been a small torch or even a light saber.”

“A warrior princess.” Kincaid grinned, then just as quickly sobered as he thought of what might have happened to this woman. “Okay, what next?” he asked.

“Go forward again, slowly, Sarah,” instructed Maura Bell.

As the tape jerked into motion, the woman turned back to her companion. Having evidently decided the coast was clear, they both stepped forward into the doorway. After a moment, the shadows round them seemed to darken. Then the couple disappeared.

The man’s face had never been visible to the camera.

“We’ve got two more hours of tape before the fire,” explained Sarah, “and neither of them comes out again – at least not by this door.” She pointed the remote at the screen. “I’m going to fast-forward again. You’ll see a few pedestrians, then, at a few minutes past ten, this man.” A few jerky figures crossed the screen without giving the doorway so much as a glance; then, as the tape slowed, a man in a dark coat came into view, again from the right. His head swiveled towards the doorway as he passed. He seemed to hesitate for an instant, then went on. “And that’s it,” said Sarah, “until the fire brigade arrives two hours later.” The camera had never caught the man’s face, and nothing else distinguished him.

“Did he see the open door and disregard it?” Cullen mused aloud. “Or hear someone moving about?”

“We can’t very well ask him, can we?” Kincaid said, venting his frustration in sarcasm. “And troops could have been moving in and out on the side street, for all we know, with a marching band and Hannibal’s elephants.”

“We’ve a photo of the girl that’s good enough for an ID,” Maura Bell said sharply, as if wanting to make sure her team got the credit they deserved. “I say we start by showing it to Michael Yarwood and his foreman.”

“I can take a batch and canvas the street,” offered the DS, showing commendable initiative.

Kincaid thought of the arrangements he’d made to meet Gemma. Could this woman possibly be old enough to fit the description of Elaine Holland? The camera could be deceiving, and it was dangerous to make assumptions at this stage of an investigation. And even if Winnie’s friend did not identify the woman in the photo as her missing roommate, they had no proof that the woman was in fact the victim found in the fire more than two hours later.

As much as he wanted to question Yarwood and the job foreman about the photo himself, it made more sense to delegate. “Doug, why don’t you and DI Bell try to track down Yarwood and Joe Spender? I’m going to follow through on the missing roommate, and I’ll need an evidence collection kit.”

Kincaid was tempted to regret his decision a few minutes later when Gemma rang to say she’d been delayed.

“Something came up,” she said enigmatically. “And I had to get the boys some lunch. Besides, Winnie’s tied up on a pastoral visit and won’t be free for another hour.”

“We could go without her,” suggested Kincaid, chafing at the delay.

“I’d rather not,” Gemma told him. “Fanny Liu is going to need all the support she can get. Besides, by the time I get the boys situated and get there myself, it wouldn’t save us that much time. I’ll ring you back when I’ve hooked up with Winnie.”

With that he had to be content, and a moment’s thought reconciled him to the setback. As efficient as Bell’s young DS seemed to be, he wanted to show the photo to the shelter’s staff himself, and the delay would give him time. Although Kath Warren had assured him that all the current residents were accounted for, the woman could be a former resident, or have some connection with one of the current residents.

Bill Farrell was also heading back to the fire scene to supervise the ongoing collection of evidence. “I’ve got a murder weapon to find,” he told Kincaid, “and at least now I have some idea what to look for.”

Kincaid found a parking space near Farrell’s van and walked down the side street to the shelter’s entrance. The front door stood open, as it had the previous day, but the inner door was closed, and there was no answer when he rang the bell. There was no sound or sign of activity, and he doubted the residents answered the bell when the staff was out.

Glancing at his watch, he decided to grab a sandwich, then give it another go. He walked back to Southwark Street and stood for a moment, trying to decide which direction offered the best prospect of food. As he scanned the street, he noticed a girl standing in the shadow of an office doorway. Something furtive in her posture drew his attention; then he realized her face was familiar. Her straight blond hair was loose today, half hiding the curve of her cheek, but he’d no doubt it was the young firefighter he’d met yesterday.

“Rose?” he said, going up to her. “It is Rose, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”