Deborah Crombie - Leave The Grave Green

“So how did Kenneth come into this?” asked Gemma.

“My sister is not a bad sort. We all have our crosses-Kenneth is hers. Our mother died while she was still at school. I was barely making ends meet at the time and wasn’t able to do much for her, so I think she married Kenneth’s dad out of desperation. As it turned out, he stayed around just long enough to produce his son and heir, then scarpered, leaving her with a baby to look after as well as herself.”

Gemma saw an echo of her own marriage in Tommy’s account of his sister, and she shuddered at the thought that in spite of all her efforts, her own little son might turn out to be like Kenneth. It didn’t bear thinking of. She finished her sherry in one long swallow, and as the warmth spread to her stomach and suffused her face, she remembered she’d gone without breakfast that morning.

Tommy shifted in his chair and smoothed the fold of his dressing gown across his lap. The cat seemed to take that as an invitation, leaping easily up and settling herself under his hands. His long, slender fingers stroked her chocolate-and-cream fur, and Gemma found she could not force herself to see those hands wrapped around Connor’s throat. She looked up and met Tommy’s eyes.

“After Matty died,” he said, “I went to my sister and poured out the whole story. There was no one else.” Clearing his throat, he reached for the decanter and poured himself a little more sherry. “I don’t remember that time very clearly, you understand, and I’ve just been piecing things together myself. Kenneth can’t have been more than eight or nine, but I think he was born a sneak-possessive of his mother, always hiding and eavesdropping on adult conversations. I had no idea he was even in the house that day. Can you imagine how shocked I was when Connor told me what he had heard, and who had told him?”

“Why did Connor come to you?” asked Kincaid. “Did he ask for money?”

“I don’t think Connor knew what he wanted. He seemed to have got it into his head that Julia would have loved him if it hadn’t been for Matty’s death, and that if Julia had known the truth about Matty, things would have been different between them. I’m afraid he wasn’t very coherent. ‘Bloody liars,’ he kept saying, ‘They’re all bloody hypocrites.’” Tommy laced his fingers together and sighed. “I think Con had bought the Asherton family image lock, stock and barrel, and he couldn’t bear the disillusionment. Or perhaps he just needed someone to blame for his own failure. They had hurt him and he had been powerless, unable to nick even their armor. Kenneth put the perfect weapon into his waiting hands.”

“Couldn’t you have stopped him?” Kincaid asked.

Tommy smiled at him, undeceived by the casual tone. “Not in the way you mean. I begged him, pleaded with him to keep quiet, for Gerald’s and Caro’s sake, and for Julia’s, but that only seemed to make him angrier. In the end I even tussled with him, much to my shame.

“When I walked away from Connor I had made up my mind what to do. The lies had gone on long enough. Connor was right, in a sense-the deception had warped all our lives, whether we realized it or not.”

“I don’t understand,” said Kincaid. “Why did you think killing Connor would put an end to the deception?”

“But I didn’t kill Connor, Superintendent,” Tommy said flatly, weariness evident in the set of his mouth. “I told Gerald the truth.”

Gemma started the Escort’s engine and let it idle while Kincaid buckled himself into the passenger seat. She had been silent all the way from Tommy’s flat down to the car. Kincaid glanced at her, feeling utterly baffled. He thought of the usual free give-and-take of their working relationship, and of dinner at her flat just a few nights ago, when they had shared such easy intimacy. At some level he had been aware of her special talent for forming bonds with people, but he had never quite formulated it. She had welcomed him into her warm circle, made him feel comfortable with himself as well as her, and he had taken it for granted. Now, having seen the rapport she’d developed with Tommy Godwin, he felt suddenly envious, like a child shut out in the cold.

She swatted at a spiraling wisp that had escaped her braid and turned to him. “What now, guv?” she said, without inflection.

He wanted urgently to repair the damage between them, but he didn’t quite know how to proceed, and other matters needed his immediate attention. “Hold on a tick,” he said, and dialed the Yard on the mobile phone. He asked a brief question and rang off. “According to forensics, Tommy Godwin’s flat and car were as clean as a whistle.” Feeling his way tentatively, he said, “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my conclusions about Tommy. That’s more your style,” he added with a smile, but Gemma merely went on regarding him with a frustratingly neutral expression. He sighed and rubbed his face. “I think we’ll have to see Sir Gerald again, but first let’s have something to eat and see where we are.”

As Gemma drove he closed his eyes, wondering how he might mend their relationship, and why the solution to this case continued to elude him.

They stopped at a cafe in Golders Green for a late lunch, having rung Badger’s End and made sure that Sir Gerald would see them whenever they arrived.

Much to Kincaid’s satisfaction, Gemma ate her way steadily through a tuna sandwich without any of the reluctance she’d shown at breakfast. He finished his ham-and-cheese, then sipped his coffee and watched Gemma as she polished off a bag of crisps. “I can’t make sense of it,” he said when she had reached the finger-licking stage. “It can’t have been Gerald whom Con phoned from the flat. According to Sharon, Con made that call at a little after half-past ten, when Gerald was busy conducting a full orchestra.”

“He might have left a message,” said Gemma, wiping her fingertips with a paper napkin.

“With whom? Your porter would have remembered. Alison what’s-her-name would have remembered.”

“True.” Gemma tasted her coffee and made a face. “Cold. Ugh.” She pushed her cup away and folded her arms on the table-top. “It would make much more sense if Sir Gerald rang Con after Tommy had left.”

According to Tommy, Gerald had expressed neither shock nor outrage at his revelation. He gave Tommy a drink, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, then said as if to himself, “The worm ate Arthur’s empire from the inside, too, as he always knew it would.” Tommy had left him sitting slumped in his makeup chair, glass in hand.

“What if the call Sharon overheard had nothing to do with Connor’s murder? We have no proof that it did.” Kincaid drew speculative circles on the tabletop with the damp end of his spoon. “What if Con didn’t follow Sharon out of the flat? He didn’t tell her he meant to leave right away.”

“You mean that if Gerald had rung him after Tommy left, he might still have been there? And he might have agreed to meet him at the lock?” continued Gemma with a spark of interest.

“But we’ve no proof,” said Kincaid. “We’ve no proof of anything. This entire mess is like a pudding-as soon as you sink your teeth into it, it slides away.”

Gemma laughed, and Kincaid gave thanks for even a small sign of a thaw.

By the time they reached Badger’s End, the drizzle had evolved into a slow and steady rain. They sat for a moment in the car, listening to the rhythmic patter on roof and bonnet. Lamps were already lit in the house, and they saw a flick of the drape at the sitting room window.

“The light will be gone soon,” said Gemma. “The evenings draw in so early in this weather.” As Kincaid reached for the door handle, she touched his arm. “Guv, if Sir Gerald killed Connor, why did he want us in on it?”