Deborah Crombie - Mourn Not Your Dead

“What about your sister?” asked Gemma. “Can she stay with you for a bit?”

Susan nodded. “She’s packed her kids off to Grandma for a few days. She’ll help me go through…Jackie’s things. She… Jackie, I mean… hadn’t any family, so there’s no one else to see to things…” Susan stopped, and for a moment Kincaid thought she would lose control, but she managed to go on. “She didn’t want to be cremated. She actually worried about it, and I used to laugh at her. Do you suppose she knew… I’ll have to try to find a cemetery that will take her. Then I’m going back to work-I don’t care how callous anyone thinks me.”

She turned around and faced them. “Jackie talked about you a good bit in the last few days, Gemma. It meant a lot to her to see you again. I know there was something she was anxious to talk to you about, but I don’t know what it was-only that I heard her mumble something about a ‘bad apple where you’d least expect it.’”

“I saw her yesterday. Before her shift. She told me-”

“You saw her? How did she-what did she-” Susan swallowed and tried again. “She didn’t happen to say anything about me, did she?”

Kincaid saw Gemma hesitate, then quickly collect herself “She talked about your promotion. She was really proud of you.”

The front door opened and Cecily came in with a shopping bag full of purchases. Twisting her hands together again, Susan smiled at her sister, then said to Gemma, “You will let me know, won’t you, if you find out… anything?”

“We’ll be in touch.” Gemma stood and gave her a quick hug. Cecily let them out and they descended the stairs in silence.

By the time they reached the street, tears were streaming down Gemma’s face. “It’s not bloody fair,” she said furiously as she got into the car. “Susan should have seen her last, not me.” She slammed the door so hard the car shook. “It’s not bloody fair. Jackie shouldn’t be dead-and if it’s because of me, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“We’re treading on very delicate ground here,” Kincaid said as he pulled into the Notting Hill Police Station car park. “We have absolutely no grounds for pursuing inquiries concerning the involvement of a senior Met officer, other than an unsubstantiated rumor. I’d suggest that we begin with discretion.” He pulled the car into an empty space, then thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “I think we’ll have to disclose Jackie’s interest in the Gilbert case in order to justify our poking our noses into her murder, but I don’t know that we need go any further at this point.”

Gemma nodded, then fished a tissue from her bag and blew her nose.

“We could just say that Jackie told you she’d heard something dodgy about Gilbert, but that you don’t know what it was. Then in the meantime, let’s see if we can trace Ogilvie’s movements last night and the night of Gilbert’s murder, but in a roundabout way. That’ll be enough to get the wind up him, if he’s dirty.”

“Chat up his secretary, why don’t you?” Gemma suggested. “She has an eye for a pretty face.”

Kincaid glanced at her, wondering if the comment was a dig or an attempt at banter, but she was examining her fingernails with great concentration. “Who was the sergeant that Jackie said stonewalled her?” he asked.

“Talley. I remember him from my days here.”

“I think we might want to have a word with him, too.” Watching her, Kincaid wished again for something he might say, some comfort he might offer without sounding condescending, but no words seemed adequate. He resisted the urge to touch her shoulder, her cheek. “Are you ready?”

She nodded. “As I’ll ever be.”

“This is a stroke of luck,” Kincaid murmured to Gemma as they were shown into Superintendent Marc Lamb’s office. He and Lamb had met during their first development course, but it had been several years since they had bumped into each other.

“Duncan, old chap.” Lamb came around his desk, beaming, and pumped Kincaid’s hand. “The Yard’s wonder boy in the flesh. Do have a seat.”

Kincaid introduced Gemma with a small, unworthy spark of satisfaction, for although he and Lamb were the same age, Lamb was decidedly losing his hair and gaining a paunch.

When they had spent a few minutes chatting about mutual acquaintances, Kincaid explained their interest in Jackie Temple.

Lamb sobered immediately. “You never think something like that will happen at your station. Brixton, maybe, but not here. Jackie Temple was one of my best officers-levelheaded and well liked by the public as well as her fellow officers. You know how it is-sometimes coppers starting out have a lorry load of good intentions and not a particle of common sense, but Jackie had both from the very beginning.”

Now Kincaid noticed the hollows under his old friend’s eyes, and the slept-in state of his jacket. He had probably been up all night. “Was there any indication of a burglary in progress?”

Lamb shook his head. “Sweet eff-all. Nor has forensics turned up anything useful so far.” Glancing at his watch, he added, “We should be getting the autopsy report anytime now, but I’ll guarantee you right now that from the powder burns on the scalp and the size of the entrance wound, she was shot at point-blank range. She never had a chance.”

Kincaid saw Gemma’s fists clench convulsively in her lap. “So what do you make of it, Marc?” he asked.

Lamb straightened a picture frame on his cluttered desktop. Wife and kids, thought Kincaid, but he could only see the back of the frame. “This is a tough patch,” Lamb said slowly, “with its gentrified neighborhoods and its ethnic population, but we try to keep it clean.” He looked up and met Kincaid’s eyes. “As much as I hate to admit it about my own territory, this reeks of a gang-style execution.”

With Lamb’s permission, they found Sergeant Randall Talley having a tea break in the canteen. “That’s him,” said Gemma, nodding in the direction of a small, grizzled man in his fifties who sat alone at a table.

When they reached him, Gemma held out her hand and introduced herself, adding, “Do you remember me, Sergeant Talley?”

Studiously avoiding her hand, Talley glanced at her, then looked away. His eyes were a light, faded blue. “Oh, aye. And what if I do?”

Seeing Gemma’s surprise and confusion, Kincaid pulled out a chair for her and one for himself. Talley was obviously not the sort of man who would allow himself to be questioned by a former subordinate, but perhaps rank would induce a bit more cooperation. “Mind if we sit down, Sergeant?”

“You can do as you like.” He finished his tea in a deliberately long swallow and pushed his chair back from the table. “Break’s over for me.”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions, Sergeant. We’ve cleared it with your guv’nor. You were one of the last people to talk with Jackie Temple, and we thought she might have said something that would give us a lead to her murderer.”

“She was shot down in the street by a bunch of effing thugs! How the hell should I know anything about that?” He glared at them with bulldog aggressiveness, but there were tears in his eyes. “And you have no bloody jurisdiction over Jackie Temple’s murder.”

“But we do have jurisdiction over Alastair Gilbert’s,” Kincaid said. “And Jackie had been asking questions about Alastair Gilbert. She told the sergeant here, in fact, that you very nearly boxed her ears for it.”

“Why shouldn’t I? She had no business digging for dirt on a senior officer, dishonoring his memory. Gilbert was a good man.”

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “Ah, a supporter in a legion of detractors. That’s a nice surprise. And what do you think about Detective Chief Inspector David Ogilvie, Sergeant?”