Where Memories Lie

CHAPTER 15

…class pervaded almost everything that took place at Sotheby’s. If people came from the right background they would start as porters, to introduce them to the objects, or maybe, if they were women, they would be put at reception, where they were felt to be more presentable. But this was only for a short time, after which they would be promoted on a fast track directly to the specialist departments, as cataloguers, prior to becoming junior experts.

—Peter Watson, Sotheby’s: Inside Story

They settled for sandwiches and tea from a snack bar, but Gemma managed to grab one of the two plastic tables on the pavement, and so they sat in the sun as they ate and watched the crowd flow by. It always seemed to Gemma that on warm spring days like this she could feel an extra surge of energy pulsing through the city. The colors seemed brighter, more intense, the sounds sharper. And all around them, light-starved Londoners bared as much skin as they could manage, regardless of the consequences.

She looked across at Kincaid, who had not only removed his jacket but stuffed his tie in his pocket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. The bridge of his nose was beginning to go pink, and Gemma was glad she’d learned the trick of using face cream with sunscreen—otherwise she’d be freckled, as well as the color of a lobster, if she sat out in this glorious heat much longer.

When they were down to pushing crumbs round on their plates, she said, “So where are we, then?”

He frowned and swirled the dregs in his teacup. “If the bartender is right, Dom Scott lied about having met Harry by chance at the French House.”

“Maybe the bartender didn’t see the first meeting.”

“Even so, the unhappy, huddled-in-the-corner conversation he described argues for more than a brief—or casual—acquaintance, wouldn’t you say?”

“Could they have been lovers, Harry and Dom?” Gemma countered.

“Not according to Harry’s neighbor, who said Harry liked girls.” Kincaid shrugged. “But then again, Andy the wannabe rock star may not be the most reliable source. Maybe he and Harry were better friends than he admitted. It could be Harry liked anyone who paid him attention, but I can’t see what would have been in it for Dom.”

“The bartender said Harry claimed to have had connections with a fast crowd in the seventies. That probably meant drugs—maybe Harry still dabbled,” Gemma suggested.

“Could Harry have been supplying Dom with drugs?” Kincaid asked, then shook his head. “But if that were the case, from the looks of his flat, it was a poor living. And that doesn’t explain what Harry was celebrating last night, or where he got the funds, or what he was doing with Erika’s brooch—” His mobile rang, and with a glance at the caller ID, he mouthed, “Cullen,” as he answered.

She watched him as he said, “Right. Right. Okay, meet you there,” feeling a small stab of jealousy. Ridiculous, really, when the severing of the partnership had been her choice, not his, and she should consider that she had the best of both worlds now. But sometimes it seemed that the almost instantaneous communion they’d felt when they worked a case together got lost in the domestic shuffle, and that it had been easier to share their disparate personal lives when they’d worked together than the other way round.

Oh, well, she’d made her bed, as her dad would say, and she doubted she’d won any points with Doug Cullen by sticking her nose in this case.

“Woolgathering?” said Kincaid, and she realized he’d disconnected.

“Knitting with it.” She smiled. “What did the fair Doug have to say?”

“Harry Pevensey had no mobile phone account with a provider—not even a pay as you go. And Ellen Miller-Scott’s Mercedes is in the garage, and has been for more than a week. So dead end on both those fronts.”

“So what’s next?” Gemma asked.

“I think we’ll pay another call on Mr. Khan at Harrowby’s. These two deaths, Kristin’s and Harry Pevensey’s, have to be connected, and the two points of contact are Dom Scott and the brooch. Dom seems to be a nonstarter as far as the car goes, so I want to talk to Amir Khan again. We know he had an argument with Kristin the day she died, but it’s only an assumption that it was about the brooch. And we’ve assumed that it was Giles who was jealous when Dom Scott sent her roses at work, but what if it was Khan?”

“She was a very pretty girl, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a woman has fallen for her good-looking boss.” Gemma gave him a sly look.

“Or vice versa. And I’ll take that as a compliment. Do you want to come to Harrowby’s with us?”

Considering, Gemma shook her head. “Thanks, but no. I think I’ll go back to Lucan Place for a bit.”

“You never told me what you were doing there.”

“No.” A little reluctantly, Gemma said, “I discovered that Erika’s husband was murdered, and I feel an idiot for not having known.”

“Erika never told you?” Kincaid looked as surprised as Gemma had felt.

“I’d no idea. It happened in 1952. So far I don’t see any possible connection with the brooch or our murders, but I haven’t finished reading the case file. So I think I’ll go back to Lucan Place for a bit before I go to see Mum, and leave you and Doug to the charms of the handsome Mr. Khan.”

Standing, she leaned over and touched her cheek to his, feeling sun-warmed skin and the slight friction of beginning stubble. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Mrs. March greeted Kincaid and Cullen with a smile of pleasure, as if they’d become old friends. It was a part of her job, making the regular clients feel welcome, and it came naturally to her. “It’s Mr. Kincaid, isn’t it? Is there any news…” Then her face fell, as the thought of the reason for their presence overcame her instinctual response.

“No. But we wondered if we might have a word with Mr. Khan.” A quick glance into the main arena of the salesroom revealed an auction in progress, and as Kincaid focused on the large overhead television, he saw that it was jewelry being sold. The seats were full, and the bidding seemed to be quite brisk.

“Is this the Art Deco jewelry?” In his concentration on Kristin Cahill’s death, he hadn’t realized the sale was coming up so soon.

“Yes, but if it’s the Goldshtein brooch you’re concerned about, Mr. Khan removed it from the sale this morning. After you came,” she added, with a disapproving glance at Doug, as if he were personally responsible for upsetting their routine. “Mr. Khan felt that since the house had been forced to compromise the seller’s privacy, he couldn’t in good conscience offer the item without checking with the seller, and I understand that he was not able to get in touch.”

No, not unless he had the ability to commune with ghosts, Kincaid thought, but he quelled any comment. He wanted to be the one to tell Khan that Harry Pevensey was dead. That was the only way he could attempt to gauge Khan’s reaction. “Could you tell Mr. Khan we’d like to see him?” he asked.

“Oh, but you can’t.” Mrs. March again gave Cullen an accusing look. “He left at lunchtime. Said he wasn’t feeling well, although I really can’t imagine that. Mr. Khan is never ill.”

“How very coincidental,” Cullen muttered, but Kincaid smiled and said, “Do you have a home address for him?”

Mrs. March drew herself up, all her earlier bonhomie gone. “I can’t give you that. Not without speaking to one of the directors.”

“Then I suggest you make a phone call, Mrs. March. You can tell your director that we will get the address—it’s just a matter of how much inconvenience it causes the firm.”

“It’s most irregular.” Mrs. March gave an offended sniff, but began thumbing through a phone list. Kincaid didn’t like bullying her, but he suspected that delaying tactics had already cost one life.

A dazzle of color caught his eye from the television screen in the main room. Focusing, he saw that the piece was a bracelet, a wide band set in a glittering chevron pattern made up of red, green, and blue stones, all appearing seductively larger than life. Such baubles had inspired envy and greed at the very least, he thought. What would people have been willing to do for the diamond brooch Gemma had described?

“And in the meantime,” he added, “I’d very much like to see the Goldshtein brooch.”

It was Giles Oliver who led them back to Khan’s office. He was less red faced and puffy eyed than when Kincaid and Gemma had seen him at his flat the previous day, but not much more attractive. Mrs. March had fetched him from one of the phone stations on the auction floor, and he looked none too pleased.

“I see you felt well enough to come back to work,” said Kincaid as the auctioneer’s voice faded behind them.

“Can’t afford to lose my job.” Oliver unlocked the office with a key from a key ring Mrs. March had given him. “It’s not as if I can take off whenever I bloody well please.”

“Like Mr. Khan.”

Oliver gave Kincaid a resentful glance. “And he locked the office, so that every time I need a document, I have to get the key. Damn nuisance, and for what? Daft, if you ask me.”

“Do you not usually keep it locked?”

“No. But usually he or I or Kris—” He stopped, looking stricken, clutching the keys in his fist. “Christ. I just can’t—I keep thinking she’ll walk in the room, or that I hear her voice.”

“I expect it will get easier.” Kincaid’s sympathy was genuine, and Oliver’s posture relaxed a little.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can stay on here, after what’s happened. And it was bad enough without Khan going round like a simmering volcano after you served that warrant this morning.” He nodded at Cullen, who looked as if he’d just received a compliment.

Kincaid sat on the edge of a desk and crossed his ankles, deliberately inviting Oliver’s confidence, while Cullen leaned against a file cabinet, doing his best to look unobtrusive. “He was upset, then?” Kincaid asked.

“Maybe I should have said ‘gliding round like a glacier,’” said Oliver. “He was icy, the way he gets when he’s about to give someone a royal bollocking.”

“Like the one he gave Kristin the day she was killed?”

“Yeah. Well, I suppose…” Giles Oliver fiddled with the keys, looking suddenly uncomfortable. Did he know more about that argument than he had admitted?

“You said Mr. Khan always had it in for Kristin. Had it grown worse lately?”

An instant’s calculation flickered in Oliver’s eyes, then he shrugged and said, “Look, I’ve never been one to get anyone into trouble…but he had been harder on her the last few weeks.”

Kincaid waited, but Oliver was looking uncertain now. The kid knew something he wanted to give up, but apparently wasn’t prepared to do it easily. Did he feel guilty, Kincaid wondered, or did he just enjoy the drama? Either way, he was willing to play along. “You were Kristin’s closest friend here, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, you could say that. I mean she talked to the girls, but not the way she talked to me.”

“So she confided in you. Did she tell you what was going on with Mr. Khan? Was there something between them?”

“Kristin and him?” Oliver looked shocked. “No way. She couldn’t stand him. Especially after—” He paused again, pushing out his lower lip.

“Come on, Giles,” Kincaid said, knowing he wouldn’t stop now. “After what?”

The keys jingled in Oliver’s hand as he said in a rush, “She caught him. Khan. Copying papers. I don’t know what they were, but Kristin did, and she wouldn’t tell me. Khan was furious with her, and after that he’d use any excuse to tear into her. She thought he was trying to get her fired.”

It was after five by the time Gemma emerged from the police station, blinking like a mole forced out of its burrow in daylight. She was tired and grimy, and her head hurt from squinting at papers in inadequate light. Slowly, she walked up Lucan Place towards the Brompton Road, musing over what she had learned.

Gavin Hoxley had been a good copper. He had followed every lead meticulously, and had documented his results with a thoroughness that Gemma respected. But his every avenue had led to a dead end, and as she read she had begun to feel his frustration as if it were her own.

If Hoxley’s perceptions had been accurate, David Rosenthal had been an enigma, a withdrawn and reclusive man who shared little of his thoughts and feelings with his colleagues and acquaintances. Had he, Gemma wondered, shared anything with his wife?

And had he, as Hoxley had begun to suspect, been involved in some way with Jewish vengeance? Gemma could not imagine that Erika would have countenanced such behavior under any circumstances. Was that why she had never spoken about her husband or his murder?

There had been things moving in the shadows, of that she felt sure. Hoxley had merely hinted at the blocking of inquiries, but she was used to official jargon and could read between the lines.

Then, just when she had begun to think that Hoxley was making progress, the notes had stopped. She’d searched the file pages once, then again, then a third time. There was simply nothing else. David Rosenthal’s murder had not been solved, nor had the case been declared officially cold. Had Rosenthal’s murder been shelved because he was Jewish and therefore the crime had been considered insignificant? Or had it been just the opposite? Either implication made her equally uneasy.

She would like to have asked Kerry Boatman to trace records, and to pull Gavin Hoxley’s personnel file for her, but Boatman was gone for the day, and there was no one on evening rota at the station with access to the information she wanted.

Having reached the South Ken underground station, Gemma hesitated, torn between going in one direction for Notting Hill and the other for St. Paul’s.

There was, of course, the one obvious source of information about David Rosenthal’s death—Erika. But she felt unsure of herself now, as if the sands of their relationship had shifted, and she wanted to know more before she asked questions that could be more painful than she had imagined.

And besides, if she didn’t get to hospital, she’d have missed official visiting hours again, and would have hell to pay with the charge nurse.

St. Paul’s it was, then, and a visit to her mum in St. Barts. But as she edged herself into the mass of people descending the stairs to the South Ken platform, she pulled out her mobile and rang Melody Talbot.

The brooch was beautiful, Kincaid had to admit. Giles Oliver had taken it from the small safe and placed it on a black velvet board with such care that it might have been made of eggshells rather than the hardest substance on earth.

Kincaid had admired the design and the artistry of the piece—it had undoubtedly been made by a master craftsman—and the diamonds were quite literally brilliant. Real diamonds of that size, and displayed in such a way, were unlikely to be mistaken for their cheap imitations.

But in spite of its beauty, the Goldshtein brooch left him cold. Diamonds did not fascinate him—in his mind they carried the reek of corporate corruption and of the spilled blood of innocents—but most of all, he did not understand the desire for possession.

Cullen, apparently, was no more taken than he, having merely glanced at the piece, murmured something appreciative, then fidgeted, ready to get onto the scent.

“Thanks very much,” Kincaid had told Giles Oliver, and was amused to see that Oliver seemed disappointed by their lack of reaction.

But as they passed back through the salesroom, stopping to retrieve Amir Khan’s personal information from a grudging Mrs. March, Kincaid had seen that all the seats in the auction were still full and that the clerks handling the phone and online bids were busy as well. There were many people, obviously, who did not share his sentiments.

As they reached the doors, Kincaid stood aside for a dapper elderly man who was leaving as well.

“Any success?” Kincaid asked.

“Oh, I only come to look,” the man answered in an accent that still bore a trace of French. Smiling, he added, “But that is enough.” He lifted his catalog to them in salute, and Kincaid felt suddenly a bit more optimistic about the motivation of his fellow man.

Amir Khan lived in a terraced house on the Clapham side of Wands-worth Common. It was, Kincaid knew, pricey enough real estate, as was anything near central London, but it was not what he had expected. This was suburban London, an area where the Victorian red-brown brick terraces had back gardens and were mostly occupied by families, while he had imagined the debonair Khan in a Thames-side loft conversion with a panoramic view.

It was late enough in the afternoon that cars lined both sides of the street, and they had to circle round several times before Cullen managed to maneuver the car into a space in the ASDA car park at the top of the hill. They walked back, listening to the sounds of televisions and children’s voices drifting from the occasional open window. But most of these families, Kincaid thought, would be like his own, with children in after-school care and both parents working.

Khan’s house was midterrace, and undistinguished except for the ornate black-and-white-tiled path that led through neatly trimmed privet hedges to the front door. There was only the one bell, which meant that Khan owned the entire house, not a flat, and that piqued Kincaid’s curiosity.

Amir Khan answered the door himself. He still wore suit trousers, but his collar was open and his shirtsleeves rolled up. His perfectly barbered dark hair was tousled, and in one arm he held a chubby, red-faced infant. “What took you so long?” he said.

There was such a thing as being too dependable, thought Melody, when the first thing your boss said on finding you at the office after five o’clock was “Oh, I knew you’d still be there.”

She was, of course, finishing up paperwork that Gemma would normally have been doing herself, and she felt the tiniest twinge of resentment. Not that Gemma could help her mother being ill, but Melody felt unsettled and would like to have been out doing something other than tackling Gemma’s latest request, which meant ringing up newspaper morgues trying to track down copies of every paper printed on the day David Rosenthal had died in May 1952.

She sighed as she pulled out her phone list. As much as she liked working with Gemma, maybe she should put in a request for a transfer to an MIT—a Murder Investigation Team at Scotland Yard. As much as she hated to admit it, she was beginning to envy Doug Cullen his job.

For a moment, Melody let the idea take hold, then shook her head. If this job was risky, that one would be akin to running blindfolded into oncoming traffic. It was definitely out of bounds, and if she knew what was good for her, she wouldn’t kick at the traces.

“I take it you were expecting us?” Kincaid asked as Khan motioned them inside.

“I’d have been an idiot not to. And I couldn’t talk at work, although my taking the afternoon off will probably fuel the gossip mill for a month.” Khan’s Oxbridge accent had softened round the edges, and his tone lacked the animosity Kincaid had heard when they’d met in the salesroom. Khan’s expression was still tense, however. “Let’s not stand about having a convention on the doorstep.” Shifting the baby on his hip, he called up the stairs, “Soph!”

There was the sound of quick footsteps, and a woman came round the landing carrying another child, this one a sleepy-eyed toddler with her thumb in her mouth. “Just now changed,” she said, and gave them a cheerful smile.

She was fair-skinned, with a pleasant face and a mass of brown hair that curled in corkscrews. “Hullo. I’m Sophie. And this,” she said, jiggling the child on her hip, who promptly hid her face against her mother’s breast, “is Isabella, and that,” she said, nodding at the baby, “is Adrianna, as Ka probably hasn’t bothered to tell you. You must be the police.”

“Ka?” Kincaid repeated, certain he had missed a page, but not quite sure which one.

“Sorry,” said Sophie Khan. “Silly university nickname. He hates it when I call him that in public, but then this isn’t exactly public, is it?”

“Can you take the baby, Soph?” Khan asked, sounding only mildly exasperated.

“Why don’t you put her in her high chair in the kitchen? Then you can go out into the garden for a bit of peace and quiet, and I’ll bring you something to drink.”

They followed Khan and his wife through a sitting room that at a casual glance had more the ambience of IKEA than antiques, and then through a kitchen, where Khan stopped to ease the baby into a chair that latched on to a sturdy tile-topped table.

French doors led out to a flagged patio overlooking a long, narrow garden with neat borders and grass still the emerald of spring. A red-and-blue plastic swing set took center stage on the lawn.

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Khan as he sank into a chair in the shade. “I’ve a kit for a proper one in the storage shed. I just haven’t had the time to build it. Maybe when this is all over…”

“What exactly are you talking about, Mr. Khan?” asked Kincaid, now completely at a loss.

Khan stared back at him, looking equally befuddled. “Are you saying they didn’t tell you?”

“Who didn’t tell me what?”

“Jesus bloody Christ.” Khan closed his eyes and wiped a hand across a forehead already damp from the heat. “Don’t you people ever communicate with one another? SO6. Fraud. Whatever the hell they’re calling themselves these days.”

“I talked to Fraud,” said Cullen, sounding defensive. “They said they didn’t have anything definitive on Harrowby’s.”

“Not yet, they don’t.” Khan leaned forward, hands clasped on his knees. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened to Kristin Cahill. She was a nice girl, and I tried my best to get her out of it.

“But do not, do not”—he chopped a hand in the air for emphasis—“come stomping in with big boots and screw up what I’ve been working on for the last three years. I don’t know what you’ve stumbled into, but it has no bearing on what’s going on at Harrowby’s.”

“What do you mean, what’s going on at Harrowby’s?” asked Cullen. “And what do you mean, you tried to get Kristin Cahill out of it?”

But it had clicked for Kincaid. “You tried to get Kristin to quit, didn’t you? Giles Oliver said she saw you copying papers.”

“So she told the little weasel. Damn.” Khan looked pained. “And he thought he’d finger me before I fingered him. Tosser.”

The door opened and Sophie Khan came out with glasses on a tray. “Orangina,” she said, placing the tray on a small table. “Not elegant, but there it is. That’s the last of the ice, I’m afraid. We’ve rather gone through it today.”

She gave Khan a questioning look, but when he merely said, “Thanks, Soph,” and took his glass, she went back into the house, giving them a nice retreating view of jeans and her colorful batiked cotton top.

“You’ve known each other a long time, I take it,” Kincaid said, after a grateful sip of his own drink.

“Since university. Oxford. We were at Balliol together. I read art history, and Sophie literature, for all the good it does her now.” His fond grin transformed his lean face.

Khan was, Kincaid decided, perhaps only in his midthirties. His poise, his clothes, and the veneer of arrogance he had worn so well at the salesroom had made him seem older. He said, “I think, Mr. Khan, that you had better start at the beginning.”

“Ah, well.” Khan’s smile vanished. “I never thought it would come to this. I specialized in Eastern art and meant to teach. But there were no suitable openings after uni, and the job at Harrowby’s came up. I thought it sounded glamorous, wet behind the ears as I was.

“I came up from the floor, like Kristin and Giles Oliver, and I soon found out that it wasn’t glamorous at all. But by the time I really began to see all the cracks in the porcelain, Soph and I were married and had bought a house. So I had commitments, and couldn’t afford to jump ship, but the higher I climbed, the more rotten things got.”

“What sort of rot are we talking about?” Kincaid asked.

Khan waved a hand. “You name it. Dealing in stolen or illegally exported antiquities. Falsifying import documents. Forging provenance. Collusion in the setting of the reserve. Phantom bidding. That, by the way, is Giles Oliver’s little specialty, when he works the phones.”

“Is it, now?” Kincaid asked thoughtfully, reconsidering his opinion of Oliver. “And this dirty dealing—it goes all the way up?”

“To the top. And between international branches of the firm.”

“Why doesn’t Fraud step in?” asked Cullen, sounding incensed.

“Because they can’t prove anything. And even if they managed to bring a charge against the firm—and believe me, a collector who has paid an obscene amount of money for an antiquity that he thinks might have been illegally exported is not going to admit it, much less complain to the police—the relevant documents would disappear in a heartbeat.”

“The documents that Kristin saw you copying—what were they?” asked Cullen.

“Memos from one of the directors to the heads of several departments, very clearly setting out a scheme for the smuggling of listed Italian objects.”

“Did Kristin know what they were?”

“God, no. That would have been disastrous. She just saw me copying things in the director’s office when I had no reason to be there. I thought if I was hard enough on her, she’d leave.”

“It seems to me that you—”

Kincaid cut Cullen off. “You still haven’t said exactly what you were doing.” He wasn’t ready to antagonize Khan, not until they had the whole story. “Or why Fraud should have told us about it.”

“No.” Khan sat back in his chair and looked out at the garden. One of the little bucket swings moved very slightly in the breeze. “I wish now I’d never had the mind to be so bloody noble. It was before Soph got pregnant with Izzy, and I hadn’t so much to lose.

“It ate at me, to see what I’d loved so tarnished, but I didn’t know what I could do. Then one night I ran into a friend from university, an investigative journalist. We got to talking, and after a few too many bottles of wine, I told him everything. He lit up like a bloody Christmas tree. He said that if I was patient, I could collect enough evidence to mount a damning exposé. And that we could sell it. Not only to a publisher, but he had a contact at ITV that might be interested in doing a program.”

“And the police?”

“My friend met with SO6, told them what we were planning. They said they’d keep a watching brief, whatever that means. I’ve never spoken directly to anyone, for fear that it would compromise my position. But I assumed that someone would have told you, or at least asked you to tread carefully. I suppose they took our request to keep it quiet a bit too literally.”

Khan smiled, this time with no humor. “I didn’t know the meaning of patient. Or what it would be like to lead a double life. I suppose I had juvenile fantasies of being a spy.” He shook his head, and in the shadows the planes of his face looked hollow.

“Sweating. Lying. Sneaking. I’d always put on a bit of a facade, as it impressed the punters, but this went much deeper. I began to bring that other man home, and Soph was getting fed up. I was getting fed up. But we—my friend and I—had finally come up with a concrete scheme for nailing them, a trail of documents that led all the way through the chain. But my position is getting more precarious every day, and you can see why I couldn’t appear to be cooperating with the police.

“I want out.” Khan sliced his hand through the air, a figurative cut. “I’ve had a teaching offer from the University of London, but first I have to finish what I started.”

“I can see you wouldn’t want to lose out on the money, after all you’ve done,” said Cullen.

Khan gave him an unfriendly glance. “Money would be welcome, especially now that Sophie isn’t working. But so far I’ve not seen a penny, nor do I have any guarantee that I will. It’s just that I’d like all my effort to count for something.

“It’s a bloody racket,” he went on, shaking his head in disgust. “Buy something from a barrow boy at a market, mark it up twenty, fifty, a hundred times, and call it a priceless antique. It’s bollocks.”

“You’re not saying it’s all worthless?” said Cullen, sounding as if he’d been told there was no Father Christmas.

“No, of course not. But you have to know what you’re doing, and you should never trust an auction house—at least not ours. Kristin liked to sneer a bit at her mum’s little antiques shop, but from what Kristin said, her mum is an honest trader and makes an honest living at it.”

“And the Goldshtein brooch?”

“Oh, that’s real enough. The hallmark and the work are unmistakable,” Khan answered with a shrug. “Although I never thought to see an authentic Goldshtein that had not been cataloged. But these things do happen, even if not as often as the salesrooms and the telly auction shows would like you to think. But my guess, with a piece like that, would be that someone had it tucked away. I doubt it’s been floating about unidentified on the market for years.”

“And you had no previous connection with the seller, Harry Pevensey?” Kincaid asked.

“No. Although I didn’t buy the story about the car boot sale—Pevensey just didn’t seem the type to go digging about in car park stalls—but you can’t exactly call a client a liar if you want to keep the business.”

“And Kristin? Do you know what her connection was with Pevensey?”

“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, although I thought it was an unlikely liaison. Kristin was a bit of a social climber, and Pevensey was obviously not going anywhere but down, no matter what sort of profit he might have made on the brooch.” Khan frowned. “You’ll have talked to him, now that you have the warrant? What did he say?”

“We didn’t have the chance to ask,” Kincaid answered levelly. “Someone ran Harry Pevensey down last night, just like Kristin. He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Khan stared at them blankly, then his face hardened and he stood. “You bastards. You came here, to my home, accepting my hospitality, and all the while you meant to trick me into making some kind of admission? You think I killed that poor sod?” There was nothing icy about his rage now, and Kincaid saw him glance at the open kitchen window and make an obvious effort to lower his voice. “Have you put me in the frame for Kristin, too?”

“Mr. Khan.” Kincaid stood, but more slowly. “You must realize, from what you yourself have told us, that you had a great deal to lose if Kristin Cahill reported your undercover activities to the directors of your firm. And if she had some connection with Harry Pevensey, he might have been able to compromise you as well.” He lifted his jacket from the back of the lawn chair, feeling suddenly weary. He would find no enjoyment in bursting the bubble of this man’s family life, and if Khan were genuine, he admired what he had set out to accomplish.

“But Kristin Cahill and Harry Pevensey died very nasty deaths,” he went on, “and if what you’ve told us is true, you should certainly know that the job sometimes requires doing things one doesn’t personally like.

“We’ll need to talk to your wife, and your journalist colleague, and we’ll need to check over your house and your car.”

Khan met his eyes for a long moment, then nodded. “You can do whatever you like. But if I were you, I’d spend my time looking for the person who really killed Kristin Cahill. She was young and a bit shallow—like most of us at that age—and she didn’t deserve what happened to her.”

If Gavin had stopped to wonder why he hadn’t rung first, he would have had to admit that he was afraid she would turn him away. He had walked from the empty flat in Tedworth Square, up Sydney Street and Onslow Street, then through Knightsbridge and across the park by the Broad Walk. He was sweating and his feet ached, but he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of the tube or a bus in this heat. And choosing a destination, rather than letting his body do it for him, was, again, more of an admission than he was willing to make.

He had walked a beat as a constable, and the rhythm of his stride seemed somehow to connect him with that phantom Gavin who had walked the bombed-out streets after the war and seen potential in the destruction. When had he lost that gift?

When he reached Notting Hill Gate, he wavered, and at the last moment delayed again, taking the fork into Pembridge Road and turning down Portobello. He loved walking down the twisty hill as evening came on. The shops were closed, the street quiet, and the colors of the buildings always seemed most intense when the light was fading. It made him think of villages he had seen in France during the war, as if a small piece of a foreign country had been set down in the midst of staid London like the wrong piece in a puzzle.

But when he reached Westbourne Grove he turned left, without more debate, and from the open windows of the flats above the shops came the sound of voices in languages he didn’t recognize, and the odors of strange foods cooking.

The assault of the unfamiliar on his senses seemed to galvanize him, and a wave of giddy recklessness carried him into Kensington Park Road and round the corner into Arundel Gardens. Finding the address, he rang Erika Rosenthal’s bell with an only slightly trembling heart.

But Erika answered the door as naturally as if she had been expecting him. “Inspector. Please come in.”

He shivered slightly as he followed her into the flat—the air had cooled suddenly as the darkness came on. But she saw it and said, “Here. Please sit down. I think there might be some sherry, if you’d like.”

Taking the chair she had indicated, he looked round the lamp-lit room, exhaling in relief as a dread he only now acknowledged eased away. This room, this flat, felt as if it were Erika’s alone, and he sensed no hovering shade of David Rosenthal.

An open book and an empty teacup sat on a table beside the other chair, and beside it, a basket of sewing. A worn rug that had once been of good quality covered most of the bare floorboards, glass-fronted cases on either side of the fireplace held books, and the mantel top held a collection of colorful and eccentrically carved wooden animals. He knew instinctively that they were Erika’s.

“From Bavaria,” she said, having come back into the room and seen his gaze. “My mother brought them to me when I was a child. One of the few things I managed to save when I went back to Berlin after the war, as they weren’t considered of any value by the Nazis or the looters.”

“And that?” he asked, nodding at the small grand piano that took up most of the remainder of the sitting room.

Erika handed him a small crystal glass, and as he took it he felt ham-fisted, clumsy. But the sherry was dry and gold and, when he sipped it, tasted like distilled sunlight.

“The piano?” She sat in the chair beside the open book, crossing her ankles beneath the bell made by the skirt of her pale blue shirtwaist dress. “I worked the neighborhood watch during the war. When a house was bombed, we tried to find relatives to take any undamaged possessions. Sometimes the owners had been killed, or sometimes families had left London and we had no way to contact them. The piano was the only thing left standing in a house on Ladbroke Road. No one wanted it, and so some of the men made a sort of pallet with wheels and rolled it here for me.

“We became very ingenious at making things to do what we needed—cobbling together, I think you would call it, although I can’t imagine why.”

“Something to do with shoes,” said Gavin. “Do you play?” he added, not distracted from the piano.

She smiled. “My mother made me take lessons as a child. But I was always better at listening than playing.” She took a small sip of her sherry, not, he thought, out of abstention, but because she wanted to savor it. Erika was a person who savored things…a book, a sip of wine, an abandoned piano, the faded colors in a rug. How had she lived in compromise with David Rosenthal, whom Gavin had come to believe had occupied only the blind tunnel of obsession?

“I can’t imagine your husband here,” he said, astounded by his rudeness even as he spoke his thoughts aloud.

“Oh, but he wasn’t here very much,” Erika answered, with no hint of offense. “He was working or he was at the Reading Room, and often he did other things that he did not choose to share with me.”

“You didn’t mind?”

“It would have made no difference whether I minded or not.” She set her glass on the table, the crystal making the faintest chink against the wood, and met his eyes directly. “Inspector Hoxley, what have you come to tell me?”

“It’s Gavin,” he said, knowing he had introduced himself to her when they first met, and feeling a fool.

“Gavin. Yes, I know.” She regarded him with the same gravity that had so fascinated him during that first interview.

The words came out in a rush. “I’ve been warned off the case. Told I’d lose my job if I didn’t leave it alone.” He lifted his glass, saw to his surprise that he had finished the sherry, and to his further astonishment, added, “And my wife left me.”

“Because of this? Because of David?” For the first time that night he heard distress in her voice.

“No. Or if so, it was just the last little piece.”

She nodded slowly. “I know about last little pieces. They are the ones that cause the edifice to topple.”

He had stopped noticing her accent until she said a word like edifice, and then it made him want to smile. “Yes.”

Erika rose and took his glass. “I will find us something else to drink. Tea, if all else fails. I became very English, during the war.”

Finding he couldn’t sit, Gavin followed her into the kitchen. Had she meant her husband, when she said she knew about last little pieces? Had her marriage failed before her husband’s death?

She stood with her back to him, reaching up into the cupboard for cups and saucers. Gavin felt a return of the light-headedness that had brought him to her door, although surely it couldn’t be the sherry.

Erika paused with the cups in midair, as if she sensed his nearness. Then she very carefully lowered the china to the worktop and rested her hands on its edge. She stood so still that she might have been waiting for a clock to tick or the world to turn on its axis.

He cupped his hands round her shoulders and felt the heat from her skin through the thin cotton of her dress. A quiver ran through her body, but she neither turned nor pulled away. “Erika,” he whispered, “I shouldn’t—your husband—this is wrong—”

In answer, she placed her hands on his and slipped them down until they covered her breasts, and he gasped with a desire so intense it left him shaking.

She said, “My husband never touched me after the night we left Berlin.” Then she turned in his arms and tilted her head until she could meet his eyes. “And this—this is whatever we make it, my love.”