To Dwell in Darkness (11 page)

He supposed he could have requisitioned a car, which would, this time of night, have got him home faster than the tube. Or he could take a taxi, but that idea didn't suit him, either. He wanted time to think.

His phone rang. An irritation, unless it was Gemma or news of Tam.

But when he checked the caller ID, he saw that it was Doug Cullen, and then he knew exactly what he needed.

“Where are you?” he asked before Doug could speak.

“Euston Road. I've left the hospital.”

Kincaid checked his watch again. “Look. There's just time and you're not far. Grab a taxi and meet me at a pub in Lamb's Conduit Street. It's called the Perseverance.” He hung up without giving Doug a chance to argue.

It was a short distance, even walking, and Kincaid was there first. The triangular frontage of the pub rounded the corner of Lamb's Conduit and Great Ormond Streets. Warm and unpretentious, during the day the pub was often filled with doctors and staff from Great Ormond Street Hospital, but this late on a Wednesday night it was quiet.

Kincaid had come to like it in the weeks he'd been working at Holborn, although he'd discovered that most of the coppers preferred the pub a bit farther along the street, the Lamb.

Having also acquired a fondness for the American Sierra Nevada beer the pub kept on tap, he ordered a pint at the bar while he waited for Doug. A glance at the chalkboard menu made him realize, suddenly, that it was hours since he'd eaten and that he was starving.

“Anything left to eat?” he asked the barmaid, a pretty young woman whose name he hadn't learned.

“Sorry. The food's off at ten. Kitchen's closed.” He must have looked desolate, because after a moment she added, “Look. There's some steak pie left. I can pop it in the microwave for you, but there won't be any chips.”

“Pie is just fine. More than fine.” He grinned at her and she smiled back.

“Right, then. Back in a tick.”

There was a blast of cold air as the door opened, and Doug Cullen said, “Charming the girls, as usual,” as he came up to the bar beside him.

“Well, I managed food.” Unabashed, Kincaid clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make Doug wince.

“What are you drinking?”

“Ale from the Wild West of Colorado. Have one on me when the barmaid comes back.” He took a good long swallow.

Doug looked at Duncan as if he might already be a bit tipsy. “American beer? Are you all right?”

“I'm fine.” Kincaid waved a dismissive hand. “How's Melody? You did see her?”

“She's— I hope she's going to be okay.” The glint off the lenses of Doug's gold-rimmed glasses hid his eyes. “They're keeping her overnight to monitor her blood and oxygen. She might have breathed enough of the damned stuff for it to have poisoned her.”

“Shit.” Kincaid's little burst of good humor vanished as quickly as it had come. “And Tam?”

“Andy showed up to see Melody, straight from sitting with Tam at the Chelsea and Westminster ICU. It sounds bad. It's not the burn itself. It's the poison from the white phosphorus getting into his organs.”

The barmaid came through from the kitchen, bearing a steaming portion of steak pie surrounded by some carefully arranged greens. “No chips, but I managed to put together some salad for you.” She put the plate in front of him with a flourish.

“Lovely. You're a star.” Kincaid managed another smile and gestured at his drink. “How about one of the same for my friend here?” While she filled the pint, he paid for their drinks and his meal, then nodded towards a nearby table.

They sat on opposite sides, a guttering candle between them. Kincaid had lost his appetite, but he knew eating was a necessity. He studied his friend as he waited for the pie to cool a bit. “You're limping.”

“Lots of walking in the cold. Aggravates the damned ankle.”

Kincaid knew they were both thinking about where Doug would be transferred when his ankle finally healed.

Doug confirmed it by saying, “So, how's the new sergeant?”

“You know she'd kill you with a glance if she heard you refer to her as a sergeant.”

“Sorry. Your new
DI
, then.”

Kincaid tasted the pie. It was still hot enough to burn his tongue. He sighed and put his fork down again, frowning. “She's an odd duck, Jasmine Sidana. Good in the interviews tonight—sharp as a tack. And she was kind to Melody. But me, she doesn't care for at all.”

“So your charm's failed you for once.”

“Apparently. And if I ever needed a good right hand, this would be it.”

Picking up his fork again, Kincaid ate, slowly, while he told Doug everything they had learned about the case, including the liaison with SO15, represented by DCI Nick Callery. He ended with the fact that the alleged victim, Ryan Marsh, did not, in fact, have a police record, the rumor of which had given him such credibility with the group. And that his case manager had not found a likely match in the public databases.

“Assumed name?” said Doug, draining the last third of his pint. “Not bad, this stuff,” he added, tilting his empty glass.

The barmaid came over. “Last call, gentlemen. One more?”

Kincaid considered the fact that he was not driving, and that if he had to take a taxi all the way back to Notting Hill, it was a worthwhile expense. “Why not?” he said. “Make it two.” When Doug started to protest, he cut him off. “You can have another. You're not hobbling your way home on the tube or the night bus. You can take a taxi on the Met. I'll put it down as a consultant's fee.” He was, he realized, only half joking.

He missed talking to Doug. He missed Doug, full stop, and he wondered if his friend was really all right. Doug looked thinner, his face drawn beneath the boyish blond hair and Harry Potter glasses, but perhaps it was the worry over Melody.

“So,” he went on, when they had their second pints. “Assumed name, that's one possibility. But what I keep wondering is why this supposedly experienced protester would attach himself to this piddling protest group. From all the accounts, he was a good few years older than the rest of them, and the group has never done anything noteworthy.”

“Maybe there's more to them than meets the eye, although they don't sound a very organized bunch,” said Doug. The candle gave one last flicker and went out, leaving a pall of smoke between them. “Or maybe this Ryan Marsh needed to lie low and the group gave him the opportunity.” Doug drank a little more beer, giving it an approving nod before getting back to the matter at hand. “But it's the lack of records that really bothers me. I've spent the last month and a half entering data, and I can tell you how rare it is for a person to not show up, anywhere, in any sort of public record. Even assumed names tend to creep into the system.”

Kincaid frowned. “So how is it possible that this guy is invisible?”

The pub was empty now except for the barmaid, who was putting up clean glasses at the far end of the bar. Still, Doug lowered his voice and glanced round the room before he said, “What if he's been scrubbed?”

“We late-lamented, resting here,
Are mixed to human jam,
And each to each exclaims in fear,
‘I know not which I am!' ”

—Thomas Hardy,
“The Levelled Churchyard,” 1882

Jasmine Sidana ground the gears on her Honda sedan as she pulled away from a traffic light on the Westway. When she reached Shepherd's Bush, she turned south, then west again, towards Hounslow, where she lived in a large detached house with her parents and her grandmother.

“Go home, get some rest,” Superintendent Kincaid had said, then strolled out of the CID room as if he hadn't a care in the world. She'd wondered, when he'd come in that morning, late and bleary-eyed, if he drank. Then, tonight, as she was leaving the station, she'd seen him walking up the street towards the pub. She knew they all sneered at her because she didn't drink alcohol, but she at least did her job.

Another light. This time she tried to keep the grinding to her teeth. “Go home, get some rest.” What was he thinking? If she'd been in charge, they'd have worked all night. She'd have executed the search warrant as soon as it came through, no matter the time, no matter how tired they were.

“Condescending bastard,” she said aloud, the swearword feeling alien on her tongue. “Bastard,” she said again, with more force, then added, “Bloody bastard,” for good measure. It was strangely satisfying, but it didn't temper her righteous indignation.

He'd taken all the important interviews for himself and thrown her the others like a bone.

And the way he'd manipulated the other woman. Jasmine could tell he was sneering at Cam Chen, with her suburban upbringing and striving professional parents.

What must he think of her, then, with her doctor parents, and the fact that at thirty-five she still lived at home? But good Punjabi girls did not get flats on their own, even if they could afford them. Good Punjabi girls finished their career training, then married someone suitable. But Jasmine had never found anyone that seemed worth taking the focus away from her job. Men only wanted to talk about themselves and their accomplishments, and Detective Superintendent Kincaid was obviously no different.

What had he done, she wondered, to get himself demoted from heading an elite Scotland Yard liaison unit to commanding a borough major incident team?

And if he cocked up this case, she'd make sure it was clear where the blame lay. By the time she reached Hounslow, she was humming.

He had disappeared.

What was one more average bloke in a dark hoodie, wearing a backpack, on a bitter London night?

Head down, hood pulled well up, careful not to hurry, he walked out of St. Pancras International before the police started cordoning off the evacuees.

And then he kept walking. Through Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, Soho, staying in the crowds whenever possible. No way he was getting on the bus or the tube—bloody cameras, bloody cameras everywhere.

He'd hesitated once, in Holborn, contemplating the flat he'd kept in Hackney under a different name. It was an ordinary flat in an ordinary estate, a bolt-hole he'd thought safe. But now he knew he couldn't depend on it, couldn't depend on anything.

What the hell had happened back there?

He shivered, from shock as much as cold. The images kept replaying in his brain and he couldn't shut them off.

If they'd wanted to take him out, why choose that way? Unless they'd used fire deliberately, a twisted sort of revenge for the thing he hadn't done. A wave of nausea swept over him. He staggered, and a passerby stepped away from him, probably thinking he was drunk. Jesus, the last thing he needed was to call attention to himself.

He had to get himself in hand, had to think.

So he couldn't go to Hackney.

God knew he couldn't go home. His eyes teared at the thought. When he wiped at them, his fist came away smudged with soot. Fumbling for his blue handkerchief, he spit on it and scrubbed his face. A dirty face was something people remembered.

He kept walking. Leicester Square. Piccadilly. The backstreets of Westminster. He lost sensation in his feet and hands. Finally, when he judged it late enough, he crossed the river at the Vauxhall Bridge. He kept a car in a lockup on the south side of the river. Its taxes were paid, it was insured and up-to-date on its MOT, all under another assumed name. He'd been very, very careful, and this one, he hoped, Uncle knew nothing about.

When he reached the lockup, he stood for five minutes, watching and listening, alert. There was the scurry of a rat, and the dank smell drifting up from the river, but nothing else. With a little breath of relief, he took the minitorch from his pocket and held it in his teeth while he unlocked the roll-up door.

No Aston Martin DB5 greeted him. The car was a ten-year-old Ford Mondeo, dark blue, nothing flashy about it but not a clapped-out banger, either. Ordinary. It was covered with a light coating of dust, and in this weather it would soon be sleet spattered, adding to the camouflage.

First he checked the emergency supplies in the boot. Tinned and dehydrated food. Water. Survival gear. A Walther 9-millimeter pistol and ammunition. And in a small zip bag, cash. Untraceable cash. It would have to do.

The Mondeo started first time—he'd put in the best battery he could buy. The petrol tank was full, the tires aired.

There were no more excuses for delay. But still, when he'd pulled the car out and relocked the storage door, he sat for a moment, letting the engine idle.

He had to have time to think, to figure out exactly what had happened and who was responsible. Only then would he have any hope of protecting himself and of protecting his family. And there was only one place he could go where he might be safe long enough to do it.

He put the car into gear and drove west.

Gemma woke, unsure if she'd been jarred by a dream or a sound. There was weight and warmth nestled against her side, and it took her an instant to realize that it was not Duncan, but Geordie. The cocker spaniel had taken advantage of Duncan's absence to creep his way up from his accustomed place at the foot of the bed and snuggle beside her.

The lamp in the adjoining bathroom cast a dim glow, just enough to reveal the familiar outlines of the furniture. The digital clock on Duncan's side of the bed read 1:15.

That brought her fully awake. She sat up, listening carefully. Had it been Duncan coming home she'd heard? Or Charlotte coughing?

Easing out of bed, she slipped into her dressing gown. Geordie snored, undisturbed, as Gemma left the room and tiptoed down to the first-floor landing. The children's rooms were dark. Gemma could hear Charlotte's slightly raspy breathing through her open door, but at least she wasn't coughing, poor love.