Deborah Crombie - And Justice There Is None

"And you'd no idea before Mrs. Arrowood's death that she was pregnant?" Gemma asked.

"No. I've told you before. I knew she hadn't been feeling well, but that possibility didn't occur to me at the time, for obvious reasons. But now that I know, I will not entertain the idea that the child was not mine."

His face was set so implacably that Gemma wondered whom he most wanted to convince- them or himself? "Speaking of children, Mr. Arrowood, have you seen your sons lately?"

"My sons? What have my children got to do with this?"

"You told me the other day that you'd made it clear to them not to expect anything from you."

"I was fed up with them begging money for this and that. I never told them specifically- Surely you're not accusing them-"

"Money can be a powerful motivator. If they thought that Dawn's death would assure them of an inheritance-"

"No! That's absurd. I know my sons. They like things to come easily because their mother has spoiled them all their lives, but neither is capable of murder." Arrowood was visibly shaken.

"Nevertheless, our near and dear ones can sometimes surprise us," Kincaid commented.

Narrowing his eyes, Karl Arrowood retorted, "If you mean to intimidate me by badgering my family, Superintendent, it won't work. I'll be in touch with my solicitor as soon as I get back to my office."

"Both your sons are of age, Mr. Arrowood. We don't need your permission to question them. But this is simply a matter of following routine lines of inquiry, and the more cooperative everyone is, the sooner we can move on."

"Are you saying I should encourage my sons to talk to you?"

"Assuming they have nothing to hide, it would make the process easier for everyone."

Arrowood's smile was bitter. "You're assuming I have some influence over my children, Mr. Kincaid. Unfortunately, that's not the case."

"I thought they might be here today," Gemma put in mildly.

"They aren't here because I didn't invite them!" Arrowood snapped at her. "Why should I have given them the opportunity to disrespect Dawn in death as they did in life?"

"Perhaps they regret their behavior-"

"With their mother's constant poison in their ears? Highly unlikely."

"I'm assuming Dawn had nothing to do with the breakup of your marriage." Thirteen years ago, Dawn would have still been at school. "In which case, why did your ex-wife dislike her so much?"

"Because Sylvia is a spiteful bitch," he countered with grim amusement. "Does that answer your question, Inspector?"

Although Gemma felt inclined to agree with his assessment, she didn't say so. "What about your colleagues, Mr. Arrowood? Surely they might have come to support you today?"

"I didn't notify anyone at the shop. I meant this occasion to be private- or as private as possible," he amended with a glance at Dawn's parents and their friends, talking with the priest some distance away.

Gemma was suddenly furious with his callous disregard of the Smiths' feelings. "It's the least you could do for them!" she snapped. "You're not the only one who has suffered a loss."

Arrowood gave her a surprised look, then said slowly, "No, I suppose you're right."

"What do you have against your wife's parents?" Gemma asked. "I understand you've only met them briefly."

His eyes had gone cold again. "The fact that they are utterly and tiresomely middle-class."

"And you blame them for that?" she retorted. "As if it were a matter of choice?"

"Isn't it?" he asked. "Dawn chose to overcome her upbringing. So did I, for that matter," he added quietly, gazing at the nearby headstones as if seeking something familiar. Then he looked back at Gemma with a crooked smile. "If you'll excuse me, I had better pay my respects to my in-laws."

"There is one more thing, Mr. Arrowood," interjected Kincaid. "Do you know an Alex Dunn?"

"Of course I know Alex. I trade with him frequently. What has he to do with anything?"

"According to several sources, your wife was having an affair with him."

If Gemma had wished to see Karl Arrowood lose his infuriatingly tight control, she was now amply rewarded.

"Alex? An affair with Dawn? That's impossible!" Arrowood reached out for the nearest support, a block of lichen-stained granite.

"Why?" Gemma asked.

"Because- because Alex wouldn't- She couldn't- I won't even consider such a thing! Nor will I discuss it with you any further." His face was pinched with shock; the knuckles of the hand grasping the stone were white with strain. He turned away from them. "For God's sake… go."

"We will be speaking to you again, Mr. Arrowood," Gemma said, but he made no acknowledgment. Glancing back as they walked away, she saw Arrowood still standing over his wife's coffin, his head bowed, his shoulders sagging.

"Is he telling the truth?" Kincaid asked Gemma when they were once again ensconced in the warmth of the car. True to his prediction, the rain had begun again as they left the graveside.

"Which time?" Gemma's cheeks were pink from cold, her skin glowed, and damp tendrils of copper hair had escaped from her plait to curl round the edges of her face. It seemed to Kincaid in that moment that she was achingly beautiful, and he was about to tell her so when she added, "I'd swear he didn't know about his wife and Alex Dunn- Of course, that's assuming that what we've been told is true."

Disciplining himself into a professional state of mind, Kincaid wrenched his gaze away from her. "He didn't like the idea that his sons might be involved, either. If the thought had occurred to him before now, he's a bloody terrific actor."

Gemma frowned, tapping her fingertips on the steering wheel as the car bumped along towards the cemetery exit. "A good actor, yes. But somehow I think there's a vein of real grief for his wife in there somewhere."

"The human mind is a complex thing. It is possible that he could have killed her and yet still truly grieve for her."

He saw Gemma shudder as she said, "That's a hell I'd rather not contemplate. What about Alex Dunn, then? Everyone we've talked to says how much he loved her, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have murdered her. We've no idea what might have happened between them… Maybe Dawn told him she was pregnant but that she wouldn't- or couldn't- leave Karl, and Alex lost it… And if he wasn't involved in Dawn's death, why the hell has he disappeared from the face of the earth? His friends at the café and the woman in the arcade said he was terribly distraught-"

"You've requested a search warrant for his flat?"

"Melody had it in hand as we were leaving for the funeral."

"Then you'd better have her meet us there."

"Still no sign of Dunn's car," Melody had told Gemma when she'd rung the station.

As well as requesting all police forces to be on the lookout for Dunn's Volkswagen, Gemma had checked the previous address on his lease: a small flat in Kensington now occupied by someone who had never heard of him. His birth records had yielded as little. Alexander Dunn had been born in 1971 in a London hospital, to a mother listed as Julia Anne Dunn. No father was given, and the address of record, in the nether regions of Notting Hill, would have been a squalid bedsit in the early seventies. No one in the area remembered Julia Dunn, or her child.

Had he gone to university? she wondered. Would anyone know? Who had been close to Alex Dunn, except Fern and Dawn Arrowood?

She turned into the narrow mews, mentally congratulating herself as she pulled into a rare parking space. Alex Dunn's Volkswagen had not reappeared, nor was there any answer when she and Kincaid rapped on the flat's door.

There was a twitch, however, at the next-door flat's front window. "Ah, an interested neighbor," Kincaid murmured, and without consultation they retraced their steps and knocked next door. The window box was bare and the pavement round the door littered with windblown rubbish, but the door opened immediately.