Deborah Crombie - Where Memories Lie

Clothes were strewn across sofa and floor, the coffee table was littered with glasses and mugs, and the room had a slightly unwashed aroma.

"Didn't seem much point in tidying," said Dom, with a shrug of apology, but he swept the sofa clean and tossed the bundle of clothing in the direction of the bedroom. He motioned them to the sofa and sat on the edge of a scuffed leather Morris chair, seemingly unaware of the crushed suit jacket beneath him. "So what did you want to talk about?" he asked, and Kincaid saw that his eyes were more focused than the previous day.

"Harry Pevensey."

"Harry?" Dom looked at them blankly, but his hands twitched. "What about him?"

"How do you know Harry, Dom?"

"He's just a bloke I met in a bar." Dom's fingers moved to his T-shirt, began to pick at the fabric. "What does Harry have to do with anything?"

"Why did you go to see Harry yesterday?" Kincaid asked, his voice still casual.

"What? But I-How could you-" Visibly rattled now, Dom clutched at his shirt with one hand and rubbed at his nose with the other.

"What do you know about a diamond brooch that Harry Pevensey put up for auction through your girlfriend, Kristin Cahill?"

"I don't-"

"Oh, come on, Dom." Kincaid leaned forward, holding Dom's gaze, and said quietly, "I don't believe you. Were you Harry Pevensey's connection with Kristin?"

Dom let go of his shirt and seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. "So what if I was? Look, I told you. I met Harry one night in a bar, the French House, in Soho, when I went with some friends. It's an actors' bar. Harry liked to hang out there. We talked, and sometimes I'd pop in when I was in the West End. It was…comfortable…you know. Not like most of the places I go. And no one knew me.

"Harry was always hard up. I'd buy him a drink, but he never asked anything of me." There was a plaintive sort of innocence in the words, as if Dom Scott didn't have many interactions with people who didn't want something from him.

"Until a couple of weeks ago," Dom went on, his voice going flat. "He rang me. He said he had this brooch. He said he'd found it in an estate sale, but he thought it might be really valuable. So I introduced him to Kristin. I thought that if it was true, it might be a good thing for her, too, to bring in something.

"But then the police came round asking questions about it, and Kristin got into trouble with her boss. So yesterday I went round to ask Harry to take it out of the sale. I told him that the bloody thing was jeopardizing Kristin's job, and that was never part of the agreement. But he said he wouldn't do it, and I couldn't change his mind, so I left.

"And then-then you came, and said Kristin was dead." He sagged into the chair, his eyes dull again.

Kincaid didn't mean to let him off so easily. "Dom," he said sharply. "Did Kristin tell you why Mr. Khan was angry about the brooch?"

He frowned, as if thinking were an effort. "She said there was some woman claiming it was stolen from her during the war. It was that part that pissed him off. Mr. Khan said they would take items of unknown provenance, but they didn't want the kind of investigation that would ensue from claims that might involve war looting. Like it was Kristin's fault."

"And that's why you had a row with Harry?"

"That's what Harry told you? I wouldn't exactly call it a row, but Harry likes his bit of drama-What?" He had caught some telltale flicker in their faces. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Harry's dead, Dom," answered Kincaid. "Just like Kristin. Where were you last night between midnight and two?"

Kerry Boatman greeted Gemma with a warm smile as she ushered her into her office. "I didn't expect to see you back so soon. Is it the Cahill case?"

"It's actually not about that at all," admitted Gemma, taking a seat. "Or only in a very odd and roundabout way. My friend who claims the brooch Kristin Cahill put into the sale at Harrowby's…well, I've just learned from another source that her husband was murdered here in Chelsea, after the war. I don't see any obvious connection, but I thought I should know more before I spoke to my friend. Don't want to put my foot in it." She smiled, feeling an idiot. "I wondered if I might look through your files. His name was David Rosenthal."

"And the year?"

"I don't exactly know. Say within ten years after the war?"

Boatman raised both brows and peered at Gemma over the tops of the reading glasses she'd perched on her nose. "Good God, Inspector, have you any idea of the state of our records?"

"Well, if they're anything like ours…" Gemma looked down at the pretty skirt and top she'd put on that morning, and shrugged.

Boatman grinned. "You'll find them in the basement. Enjoy."

"So what did you think?" Kincaid asked Cullen when they were back in the car.

Cullen gave a snort of disgust. "Total bollocks."

Dom had not repeated his dramatic faint, but he had gone white as a Victorian damsel and said he refused to believe Harry was dead. When Kincaid had told him that the police didn't usually lie about things like that, Dom had just shaken his head like an obstinate child.

"I'm afraid it's true, and I am sorry," Kincaid had said. "And we still need to know where you were last night."

"I was here. What would I be doing, with Kristin dead?"

"Did you drive your mother's car?"

Dom looked as horrified as when they'd told him Harry was dead. "Are you out of your mind? And even if I were that daft, her car's been in the garage for two weeks, waiting on a part from Germany."

Cullen had got the name of the garage. Now he said, "Want me to check out the car, guv?"

"Yes, and see if you can find any mobile records for Harry Pevensey. There was no mobile phone on his body and we didn't see one in the flat." To Kincaid's astonishment, the phone in Pevensey's flat had been rotary dial. No wonder Cullen hadn't reached an answering machine.

"What about Amir Khan?" asked Cullen. "I talked to my mate in Fraud. He said the salesroom has skirted the law a number of times, falsifying imports, documentation, and so on. What if Khan knew more about the brooch than he let on? Could he have recognized it as stolen and allowed it in the sale anyway? I could have sworn he looked worried this morning."

"I'm not sure Erika ever reported it as stolen." Kincaid glanced at his watch. "I need to check with Gemma, and before we tackle Mr. Khan again, I'd like to know a little more about Harry Pevensey. I think I'd like to check out the bar where Dom Scott said they met, the French House."

By the time Gemma found David Rosenthal's case file, her back hurt, her fingers were grimy, and the smell of old dust seemed permanently embedded in her nostrils.

"Why the hell couldn't the Met pay some low-grade clerk to sit in the dungeon all day and transfer the bloody things to computer?" she'd groused when she first began searching the boxed files.

But when she had taken the box to the table, sat down in the utilitarian chair provided, and finally held David Rosenthal's file in her hands, she changed her mind. Slowly she shuffled through the pages. Typed reports, with the occasional uncorrected error. Handwritten notes by the senior detective in charge of the case, an inspector named Gavin Hoxley. It all felt suddenly, undeniably, real.

David Rosenthal, she read, had been found lying on the ground beside a bench in Cheyne Gardens, on a Saturday night in May 1952. He had apparently been robbed of all his belongings, so that he had not been identified until his wife reported him missing.

His wife. Erika . Good God.

He had been stabbed multiple times with a double-edged blade, the reports went on, and was thought by the pathologist to have died instantly. There had been no defensive wounds.