Deborah Crombie - All Shall Be Well

Gemma sounded uncharacteristically cross until she recognized his voice. Even then she hesitated after he explained what he wanted, but he put it down to concern about her small son and assured her she could bring him along.

Satisfied with the arrangement, he got up and headed toward the kitchen and coffee. The sight of his sitting room jolted him to a stop, arousing something akin to panic. Although Gemma had dropped him off or picked him up on occasion, she had never been up to his flat. She'd think him an absolute slob if she saw this shambles. A major tidying-up was definitely in the offing.

Gemma James pulled her Ford Escort into a space before Kincaid's building by midmorning. She killed the engine and sat for a moment, listening. The silence in Carlingford Road always surprised her. At her own house in Leyton, the traffic noise from Lea Bridge Road never dropped below a muted roar. It must be the Victorians' solid construction, she thought, looking up at the still shadowed faces of the flats. They were all red brick, rescued from severity by white trim on the windows and from conformity by the brightly colored ground-floor doors. Toby began squirming in his car seat and she moved a little reluctantly, unbuckling him and wincing as he climbed across her and began bouncing on her lap. "Oof!" she said, and he giggled with delight. "You'll soon be too heavy to get in Mummy's lap at all. I'll have to stop feeding you." She tickled him until he squealed, then slipped her arms around his chubby body and nuzzled his straight, fair hair. At two, he was already looking more like a little boy than a baby and she begrudged any infringement on her time with him.

Her earlier annoyance flooded back. Did Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid think she had nothing better to do with her Saturday than help him with some vague personal problem? Then she frowned, admitting to herself that her reluctance had more to do with her own discomfort at crossing the carefully drawn line between her personal and professional lives than with his presumption. She had come because she was flattered that he had thought of her, and because she was curious.

Kincaid opened his door and stared at her, appreciation lighting his face.

"You said personal," she reminded him sharply, looking down at her burnt-orange T-shirt which she had fancied made her hair look more copper than ginger, then at the printed-cotton skirt and sandals.

"I'm glad I did. Gemma unstarched." He grinned at her, then swung Toby up in the air.

"You're not exactly a picture of sartorial elegance yourself," she added, looking pointedly at his faded jeans and Phantom T-shirt.

"Granted. Been tidying in your honor." He stepped back and waved her into the flat with a mock flourish.

"It's lovely," Gemma said, and heard the echo of surprise in her voice. Walls painted white to make the most of the southern light, blond Danish furniture with colorful cotton covers, one wall lined with books and another holding stereo equipment and framed London Transport posters-the overall effect was bright and comfortable and spoke of a man confident in his own taste.

"What were you expecting, squalid bachelor digs furnished with jumble-sale castoffs?" Kincaid sounded pleased.

"I suppose so. My ex-husband's idea of designer decorating was leaving the labels on the orange crates," Gemma said a little absently, her attention on the room's real draw-the view of North London's rooftops from the balcony doors. She crossed the room as if pulled by an invisible string, and Kincaid quickly opened the door for her. They stepped out together, Gemma unconsciously hooking a hand through Toby's braces.

Her delight and envy must have shown on her face because Kincaid said contritely, "I should have invited you up before now."

Gemma judged the balcony Toby-proof and let him go, then leaned against the rail with her eyes closed and her face turned up to the sun. She felt a sense of peace here, of retreat, that she never found at home. She didn't wonder that he guarded it jealously. Sighing, she turned to face him and found him watching her. "You didn't ring me just so that I could admire the scenery. What's up?"

Kincaid explained the circumstances of Jasmine's death, and more hesitantly, his doubts. As he spoke he watched Toby digging happily with a stick in his sole pot of pansies. "Stupid of me, I suppose, but I feel somehow responsible, as if I let her down without knowing it."

In the clear light Gemma saw the shadows under his eyes and new lines framing his mouth. She looked out across the rooftops again, thinking. "You were close friends?"

"Yes. At least I thought so."

"Well," Gemma turned reluctantly from the view, "let's go have a look then, shall we?"

"Afterwards, I'll take you and Toby for lunch at the pub, and then maybe a walk on the Heath?" His tone was light but Gemma sensed entreaty, and it occurred to her that her usually self-contained superior dreaded spending the day alone.

"A bribe?"

He smiled. "If you like."

The first thing Gemma noticed about Jasmine Dent's flat was the smell-faintly elusive, sweet and spicy at once. She wrinkled her nose, trying to place it, then her face cleared. "It's incense. I haven't smelled incense since I left school."

Kincaid looked blank. "What?"

"You don't smell it?"

He sniffed, shook his head. "Must be used to it, I suppose."

Gemma squelched an illogical flare of jealousy that he had spent so many hours in this flat, with this woman she'd known nothing about. It was none of her business how he spent his time.

She looked around, while keeping a wary eye on Toby. A lifetime's accumulation, she thought, of a woman who had cared about things-things loved for their color and texture and their associations rather than their material value.

One wall held prints and Gemma went closer to study them. The center of the grouping was a sepia-tinted photograph of Edward VIII as a young man in Scouting uniform, smiling and handsome, long before the cares of Mrs. Simpson and abdication. A memento of Jasmine's parents, perhaps? Beside it a delicate, gold-washed print portrayed two turbaned Indian princes on elephants charging one another, their armies ranged behind them. The artist apparently had no knowledge of perspective and the elephants appeared to be floating in mid-air, giving the whole composition a stylized and whimsical air.

Gemma moved to the sitting room window and ran her fingers lightly over the carved wooden elephants parading across the sill. "Aren't elephants supposed to be lucky? Here, Toby, come and look. Aren't they lovely?" She turned to Kincaid and asked, "Do you think he might play with them? They seem sturdy enough."

"I don't see why not." He came across to her and lifted the window sash, and they leaned out and looked down into the garden together.

"Ohhh." Gemma exhaled the word as she took in the square of lawn, emerald green, smooth as a bowling green, bordered by ranks of multi-colored tulips, crowned with springing forsythia and the opening buds of the plum trees. "It is lovely." She thought of her shriveled patch of garden, usually more mud than grass, and looked at Toby intently lining the elephants up nose to tail. "Could he-"

"Better not." Kincaid shook his head. "Not until we can go down with him. If he trampled the tulips the Major might eat him." He grinned and ruffled Toby's fair hair. "Do you think we should divide up the-"

They both heard the mewing, faint even in the quiet flat.

They turned and watched as the black cat crept from under Jasmine's bed and crouched, ready to retreat. "A cat! You didn't tell me she had a cat."

"I keep forgetting," Kincaid said, a little shamefaced.

Gemma knelt and called to him. After a moment's hesitation he padded toward her and she scooped him up, holding him under her chin. "What's he called?"